UPS

Toward the end of October I started to get desperate. I knew that Christmas hiring was going on, but I wanted a full time job, or at least enough hours to make ends meet. I drove around Chicago just looking for something, anything. Warehouse offices had lines of 20 or 30 guys looking for a job. Finally I filled out an electronic application with UPS and was told to go to their building at Jefferson. I had an appointment for an "interview". I dressed up, which meant that when I was waiting in the office for two hours, the other people there for the job kept thinking I was the person who was going to interview them. There were all sorts of people, a Ukrainian weightlifter, old black men in flannel and work gloves, a group of Mexican men wearing cowboy hats who all shook hands. Myself and another racist white guy who thought I was going to be his best friend and that we would stick together through training since we would be the only white people.

My interview went fine. I did well in college which was a bonus, but more importantly I have had years of experience in picking up heavy things and setting them down in alternative locations.

training was taught by a man who was very good and what he did, but fit the mode of a corporate man, a man who lived only for the company, and for having a beer and talking about how much he loved the company. I picked up on the Diad thing that we had to train with very easily, but it was a very clumsy device and if you made a mistake, very difficult to deal with. Several guys quit midway through the 8 hour training. I felt bad for them, most were industrial workers who had lost good jobs and were frustrated trying to make do.

I was put on a truck in my own neighborhood and further over in Humboldt Park. Learned how to hit the ground running up to the houses. Humboldt Park is the largest Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago, it is very nice but has a terrible poverty rate, and isolated streets that are very dangerous. The area of Chicago Ave I live in is dominated by Poles and Ukrainians.It is interesting to suddenly have access to so many people, so many businesses and apartments, to see how people live, to see children answer the door in a place that smells like beer and urine. And to see the most beautiful smiles and smell the best cooking and to be able to say merry christmas and be automatically welcomed.

It was a little bit dangerous sliding around in the snow, and frequently the kings would follow us in case we left a package that they could pick up.

One of the most interesting places was a large building that was a landscaping accessories factory. Watching a hundred people work with heavy machinery, and knowing that the majority of them were illegal. The crew that helped us load the truck were three juvenile Somalians and an older one. They had mean faces, scarred or tattooed. Occasionally they would start singing and laughing in unison without warning. They did not speak English, but we could still joke with each other as we load packages weighing over 200lbs into the truck.

All people, all narratives, all buildings in this city contribute to my greater understanding of America and humanity.