City Workers

With a little time left before I had to be back from lunch, I sat in the post office parking lot and decided to finish the rest of my lunch I had packed, while on the run. "A Decade Under the Influence" came on the radio. Nodding my head, I watched a yellow city truck pull up, as its tires slowly crept their way over the curb, to land on a grassy knoll outside the park restrooms. The street is only 15 feet away, though I suppose in comparison to other people's jobs and the shortcuts they create for an efficient workday, driving over and parking on planted environments is perfectly fine, as long as it makes the job easier. This is a stereotype, but a rather widely known one--certain city workers have a knack for sacrificing quality in the wake of quantity--quantity being the number of hours they get to sit around on their butts all day, smoking cigarettes, making crude comments to passing teenage girls, and bitching about their girlfriends/wives.

So I proceeded to watch these two gentlemen as they stepped out and around to the back of the vehicle. The driver was a middle aged, black elder who looked like a mighty fine hard worker. The second one, though, dopeyly trotted over to the rear, instinctively pulling out his cell phone and proceeded to text his friends while the older gentleman began pulling out supplies for park clean-up. I pictured the old man shaking his head and thinking that the younger generation is nothing but a dumb sack of lazy potatoes. Well, for the most part, he is right. Fingers glued to cell keys about 80% of the day, while I ponder in serious contemplation of getting rid of mine completely.

The old man grabs a broom and a door stop and proceeds to the men's restroom. The young kid follows the man into the restroom, assuming that he is asking the older gentleman what it is that he is supposed to be doing. The kid then returns back to the truck and pulls out one of those over-sized trash tweezers (I call it like I see it). He then returns back to the restroom for a few prolonged seconds, before slowly walking over to a white, crumpled napkin that he snatches up. For some time I watch him picking up single pieces of garbage and returning back to the truck to drop them into the plastic trash bucket. One white crumpled napkin, one tarnished cigarette butt, one McDonlads cup. In my head I am cursing this kid to bloody hell and back, trying to stop myself from sticking my head from my open window and telling has lazy ass to grab the damn bucket and do his job properly. "Come on Humpty Dumpty! If you moved a little faster you might actually be able to classify this as manual labor! My tax dollars are paying you for this? What the hell do you do all day anyway?!" I didn't... I wanted to, but I didn't. He did eventually grab the bucket, clunking it around with him as he spanned the tiny 100 sqft. park.

Strolling back to the restrooms, I raise an eyebrow as he looks up at a black spot on the tan-painted cinder bricks. He lifts his over-sized tweezers, and like a child who can't resist pulling the legs off a daddy long leg, he snatches the big black bug up in his tweezers. He proceeds to another black spot on the wall. Oh, this must be a game. He snatches up another bug. I wonder how much mental capacity this kid has. Seriously... omg Seriously, he could very well be the next Homestar Runner.

A few minutes until 1:00 pm. I should go. Pulling out of the parking lot and stopping at the stop sign, I look over one last time to see if he was still being productive. Trudging across the basketball court, tripping over the emergence of grass, he drops his over-sized tweezers to the ground and stares at them far too long for comfort. I counted the seconds it took him to stop, pull up his pants, and slowly bend over to retrieve his foul. 1..2..3..4.. I began imagining a giant black bug zeroing in on him,  snatching him up, and then proceeding to eat him.