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$AMZN
f u l f i l l m e n t


    

    
  

by Miracle Jones

I am working at the new Amazon fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas as a seasonal, part-time picker. It is winter. We aren’t workers here: we are associates. It is a job that I can do hung-over and high and I can make just enough money here to technically have my own apartment, a place to store all my empty beer cans and all my crumpled Taco Cabana wrappers and all my stacks of shitty sci-fi novels.

I am back home because I don’t want to be in Dallas anymore, or maybe I couldn’t “handle it,” and maybe I want to forget how the internet works for awhile.

Technically, I’m not even employed by Amazon. Technically, I’m employed by Amazon’s staffing agency, a place called “Human Solutions.” 

The Human Solutions rep for Haslet is this lady named Ashley Hood (as in John Hood, as in Fort Hood, as in Hood’s Rangers, as in Texas Rangers). She is an excellent chick that I have known forever, which is how I got the job in the first place. We used to do whippits and fuck each other in the Cici’s Pizza parking lot after theater practice when we were in high school. 

Sex back then for us was as satisfying as fixing an oily carburetor with your bare hands and then gunning the engine. We were both on the same sad level back then, and even though Ashley has far eclipsed me now, we still have some of the same problems.    

We reconnected again thanks to this website DRNKR, which is basically like grindr, except for getting drunk instead of getting laid.    

You flag places where free drinks are being served in your community. Weddings, funerals, corporate promotional events, gastropub grand openings, etc. You get DRNKR points based on how many people use your DRNKR post to get wasted for free. You then unlock promotional prizes from liquor companies like t-shirts and neon signs for your bathroom and trips on party buses.

While I was in Dallas, I accumulated basically as many DRNKR points as you can possibly get. I now have the capacity to flag and moderate posts. I am a goddamn DRNKR superstar. I have DRNKR boxer shorts and a DRNKR phone cover.  I am not proud of this. Thanks to DRNKR, Ashley Hood and I end up at the same BBQ restaurant doing a Sunday open bar to promote some new brisket rub.  We hug each other. There is zero chemistry, or else the chemistry is weird and specific and non-sexy, like a bleach titration or something.   

She is all like: “You always have good weed. Do you still have good weed?”

I am all like: “Do you know of any place that might be hiring dudes without any qualifications or experience or hygiene skills?”

I am all like: “Can I have a job please?” 

She is all like: “Can I have my copy of Dragon Warrior 3 back?”

I get the job. 

I fill out a bunch of paperwork at the Human Solutions office at a strip mall behind an orthodontist. The job is explained to me. Basically, the job is shopping at Wal-Mart for people who are too embarrassed to actually shop at Wal-Mart. 

On my first day, I show up at the Amazon Fulfillment Center wearing my best black “Tool” t-shirt. At the last minute, I turn it inside out, deciding that the deodorant stains are better than the glow-in-the-dark picture of a man giving himself a blowjob. I wonder if I have just now, in this instant, become an adult.

There are three hundred of us here to be temporary associates at the Haslet fulfillment center; new recruits for Christmas season. 

Our new manager, an actual Amazon employee, explains that we begin as seasonal employees, but that Amazon tends to hire “from inside” if volumes stay high. They explain that the thing that makes volumes stay high is people loving Amazon’s service so much that they use these services during the rest of the year.

We get an informational packet with elaborate sexual harassment policies and we are forced to watch an informational video about Amazon’s humble beginnings and its crafty rise to the very top of every marketplace. 

THE GIST: they are so powerful because of CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!!!!!! And now in some markets: SAME DAY DELIVERY!!!!!!!!!!!

There is a guy sitting next to me with lots of tattoos of Looney Tunes cartoon characters. During the video, he says pretty loudly that Jeff Bezos “looks like a guy who shaves all of his body hair and likes to have his dick locked up in a little dick cage while truck drivers from Craigslist take turns fucking his wife.”

Lots of the other temporary associates laugh at this joke. 

He is not fired for making this joke.

“I heard he is building a spaceport out in West Texas,” says somebody else.

“Bullshit,” says the dude with the Looney Tunes tattoos. 

“No, for real,” says this other guy, a stringy fellow with a long white beard and a Confederate flag do-rag. “Ten cents of every dollar that Amazon makes is going toward putting rich immortal faggot vampires into orbiting space stations, and then they are gonna turn the REST OF US down here on EARTH into a nature preserve.”

“Bullshit,” says the dude with the Looney Tunes tattoos, but you can tell he sort of admires this plan.  

“You’ll see,” says the stringy Confederate. “Immortal faggot vampires gonna be running the show from here on out.”

The warehouse is the biggest covered building I have ever been in. It is explained to us that we will not need to become familiar with the merchandise and how it is laid out. We are supposed to follow the trails of millions of LED lights that will light up to steer us where we need to go, from item to item and then over to a pick station. The fulfillment center is covered in conveyor belts that deliver items we find to the sorter, which then dumps the packages out for pick-up by trucks that come and go around the clock.

I once read a book about cockroaches, where they explained that if you put roaches in a maze suspended over a tank of water to keep them from escaping, they will become faster and faster at running the maze if you shock them every time they go the wrong way. But here’s the crazy part: even if you chop off their heads, the ganglia in their abdomens will still run the maze correctly. 

Even the asshole of a cockroach can be taught to do the job that I now have.

We have battered, modified touch-screen Kindles. These Kindles tell us which items to pick and in what quantities and beep when we are close to them. We scan each item with these Kindles when we pick it up, and then again before we put in on a belt.

We are told that we can wear headphones and listen to whatever we want while we pick; as long as it is at an appropriate volume and does not disturb others.  We are shown where the bathrooms are and we are told that we get either two fifteen minute breaks during our ten hour shifts or one long thirty minute break. 

We are given cards and shown how to punch in and out. We are told that it is okay if we get sick, but if we fail to call in ahead of time, we will be let go immediately. We are told how many other people have applied for the positions that we now have and that these people are waiting on standby so they can work to make enough money to buy Christmas presents for their children. We are told that we are the real elves. That Amazon is the real Santa Claus.

“When do we start?” asks the guy with the Looney Tunes tattoos. “Do I have time to go grab a beer and get laid? Haw haw.”

“You are already on the clock and getting paid right now,” says our supervisor, a man named Spivey who has the bluster, paunch, jaw, shorts, and smell of a junior high football coach. He wears a tight Polo shirt with the Amazon logo over the floppy triangle of his left breast.

“Now here’s something we do a little different around here that you might not find at your other jobs you have had,” says Spivey.  “If you do a good job, you get to scream.  It’s just a thing that we do different.”

He waits for somebody to ask him what the hell he is talking about, but no one does.

“Yep, if you do something particularly great, you might just be allowed to rear back and let out a scream as loud as you want,” says Spivey.  “Let’s all try it together, huh?”

He counts down from three and we all half-heartedly scream.  He makes us do it again and again until we are sufficiently loud and passionate enough for him.  It is 100% just exactly like being on a junior high football team.

“Round about Christmas, if ya’ll learn what the hell ya’ll are doing, you are gonna hear screaming all over the place around here,” he says with smug satisfaction.

Spivey also introduces us to a woman named Kathy Jane, who runs what he calls “the book machines.”  In a dark corner are ten machines that make so much noise that my chest vibrates and I feel sort of sick.  They print paperback books to order.

“HELLO,” shouts Kathy Jane over the churning machine noise.  She is not wearing an Amazon uniform.  She is wearing a sweater with an 8-bit cat on it. 

It is an extremely cool sweater.  Kathy Jane is about five feet tall and about five feet wide.  I like her very much.  Everybody else walks on by, continuing the orientation.  But I linger.

“WHAT ARE BOOK MACHINES?” I ask.  “WHAT IS THIS EMPIRE THAT YOU RUN?”

Kathy Jane makes me follow her until we are standing behind a wall of cheap hammers. So she can explain.

“We do print-on-demand for Amazon CreateSpace over here,” she says.  “It’s called self-publishing.  Lots of people want to see their work in print, but they can’t get published, or don’t want to share their profits with a publisher. We print the books up one at a time as a person orders them.”

“You have the best cat sweater,” I say.

“Thank you,” says Kathy Jane, looking over my shoulder and turning bright red.

“Are you a writer yourself?” I ask. 

Am I hitting on her?  What am I doing? 

“You seem like a writer,” I say.

“I do a little writing,” she says.  “I mean, I am not published or anything.  But I actually did write a couple books. It’s kind of a joke around here.  How did you know?  Somebody told you, huh?”

“Can I read them?” I ask.

She pretends not to hear me.  I don’t ask again.  I slink away to rejoin the rest of the group.

The items on the floor of the fulfillment center are not in any kind of order.  It is explained to us that this is to keep us from accidentally grabbing the wrong one. Two different kinds of cat litter, for instance, would be on opposite sides of the fulfillment center if they have different SKUs.

The job is exhausting and easy.

I listen to podcasts and try not to make any friends. All the people who work here seem like the sort of people who would need a lot of help from you, and I don’t want to help them. 

I take my twenty minute break and get a candy bar and eat it in the break room, where people are watching a basketball game.  There are no books to read in the break room, though there is a “Golf Digest” from last month.  I pick up the “Golf Digest” and start to read an article about how to stop missing four-footers.  The advice is to “relax and stay straight.”

“I will relax and stay straight,” I assure the Golf Digest.

Kathy Jane comes in and sits alone, eating a sandwich from a bag. I do not jump up to join her, though I want to.  We both eat in silence.

When she gets up to go, I also get up to go.

“People sure do buy stupid books,” I tell her, trying to make conversation.

She smiles at me.

“I spend most of time printing up some pretty weird ones,” says Kathy Jane.  “Imagine books that even publishers won’t print. They are pretty filthy.  I mean, they are just about as filthy as you can get. It’s mostly pornography. Amazon doesn’t like it, but that’s freedom of speech.”

“His truth is marching on,” I say. 

She laughs at me.

“Why would a writer work here?” I say. “It seems pretty depressing, for a writer.”

“I do it for the discount,” says Kathy Jane. “I buy a lot of books, and I also get a discount on the books I print.  I get discounts on design, edits, and even sending books out.  It is really nice for me.  I don’t think I could afford to make books if I wasn’t working here.”

“What kind of books do you write?” I ask.

But she is done talking to me.  She veers away and returns to her book machines, where the noise drowns out all possibility for conversation.

“Kathy Jane prints all the PORNOS,” says Spivey, putting his hand on my shoulder.  “She WANTED the job.  Can you believe that?  Ya’ll gonna be friends?”

“Maybe,” I say.

Spivey laughs at me.   

“Where ya’ll from?” he asks. “Fellow like you.”

“I am from right here in this town,” I say.  “I mean, you can pretty much see the hospital where I was born.”

I point.  He actually looks where I point, even though we are standing inside a warehouse.  Amazon does not sell hospitals yet.

Where I point, there are words painted on the wall in giant human-sized letters:

OBSESSION
FRUGALITY
BIAS FOR ACTION
OWNERSHIP
HIGH BAR FOR TALENT
INNOVATION

I wonder what bias for action means, but I do not ask Spivey.

A week goes by. The monotony makes the job grueling. Many people quit after a few days because there are much easier ways to make not very much money. I am glad it is not summer: the winter is probably the best time of year to be humping around in a warehouse, boxing up Stephen King novels for people. 

I try many more times to talk to Kathy Jane, but she is very good at evading me.  I get the sense that she does not care much for the seasonal help. Seasonal employees probably don’t make good allies. She needs to seem above us in order to maintain her position in the Amazon hierarchy.

Thinking and wondering about Kathy Jane gives me focus and keeps me sane.  People come for a few days, they keep their heads down and listen to music and make what they need to make, and then go. It is weird, like working construction. Only we aren’t building anything. We are just making sure that when people buy a box of soap or a DVD about how it is bad to keep whales in captivity they get it AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE AND DAMN ALL THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS.

Because what if they changed their mind?

Because what if getting it seemed difficult, and so they decided to buy nothing instead?

One day, Kathy Jane comes up to me grinning. She is pinching a silverfish between two fingers. It is wriggling.

“Rock on,” I say.

“Do you want to see something crazy?”

“Of course I do,” I say.

She takes off. I follow her through the stacks of books, excited to be having any interaction at all with the famous Kathy Jane who runs the book machines. She stops, frowning, and seems to have lost her way. Then she finds what she is looking for again.

“Look at that,” she says, pointing beneath a giant stack of “Helter Skelter,” by Vincent Bugliosi. “Under there.”  

I get down on my knees and look.

“That is a big glass jar full of silverfish,” I say, standing back up.    

She giggles. She unscrews the jar and adds her silverfish to it.

“Whenever I find one, I add it to the jar,” says Kathy Jane. “They can live for a year without food. I looked it up.”

I fumble in my pants for my phone.

“We gotta take a picture for the internet!” I say. “Maybe we should put it on top of a stack of books. See if we can get the Amazon logo in there.”

I tap the jar.

“The next time somebody buys a Mackenzie Bezos novel, we could dump them all in the box,” says Kathy Jane. “That’s Jeff’s wife. She’s a novelist. I guess she’s famous.”

“Kathy Jane!” I say, shocked. “You are terrible. Do you think this place is infested?”

“Maybe,” says Kathy Jane. “I mean, exterminators come every week.”

“Did you know there are cockroaches on the moon?” I say.

“There’s no cockroaches on the moon,” she says.

“Sure there are,” I say. “And on the international space station. They are built for space. They can smell food in three dimensions and are extremely adaptable. One of the astronauts took some up as pets and they started breeding and now the ISS is infested with them. It caused an international incident once between India and Russia.”

“But the moon though,” she says.

“Oh, sure,” I say. “We left all kinds of crap up there, just in case. They eat each other. And Tang. And space ice cream. They live in the moon rover. It’s pretty cold for them, but all that gear made of aluminum foil or whatever absorbs warmth and lasts for thousands of years.”

The closer we get to Christmas, the harder we have to work. Spivey seems increasingly uncomfortable, and I get the feeling that he is getting chewed out on a regular basis. I get the feeling that our particular fulfillment center is not doing so well compared to the other ones. 

One day, I decide to see how hard I can possibly work, just to do something different. I spend the whole shift grinding away, following the lights, nearly sprinting to put shit on conveyor belts. Anytime somebody says something to me about “sucking up,” I tell them that I have a bias for action now. 

I work so hard that I catch Spivey’s eye. When the shift is about to end, he comes up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. He leaves it there while I grin into his face like a giant bastard.

“You know what,” he says. “You can scream. You’ve earned it. How about it?  You want to do a scream?”

“I can scream?” I say.

“That’s right. You been doing a real good job lately. You are an inspiration.  If you wanna scream, you can scream.”

“Do I have to do it right now, or can I like have it as a credit that I can use when I am really feeling it?”

“I don’t know,” says Spivey, thinking about it. “Most people want to scream right away.”

“Can I save mine, though?”

Spivey takes his hand off my shoulder.

“You can save your scream,” he says, walking away from me, disappointed in me.

The week before Christmas, I buy Kathy Jane a giant gift basket full of cheese, tea, and smoked meats. I do not order it from Amazon. I present it to her, grinning, wearing my best “Cannibal Corpse” t-shirt. 

“I got you this cheese basket,” I say.

She takes it from me. She frowns at it, and then she bursts into tears.

“Thank you,” she says, miserably.

“What’s wrong?” I say. “It is a cheese basket! Everybody wants one of these.”

“I know,” she says. “It is great. I am getting fired, though. After the 1st of the year they are getting rid of me.”

“What?” I say. “How come? That doesn’t make any sense. You run the book machines!”

“I know,” says Kathy Jane.  “But they say they don’t need a person to handle the printing and all anymore. They are just gonna print them straight to the conveyor belts. There was a meeting here, and they are also gonna stop selling adult and erotic titles. That’s most of what I do, honestly. I’m not gonna get my discount anymore. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I won’t be able to print my books and ship them out. I won’t be able to afford it.”

“Don’t leave,” I say. “Make a little fortress in the boxes, deep in the stacks.  Come out late at night and use the machines to print your books and then sneak them into the shipping.”

She laughs.

“Nah,” she says. “They got cameras everywhere. They’d find me.”

I sigh. “Well that is some terrible bullshit.”

“You want to see my books?” she says in a tiny voice.

“Of course I want to see your books, Kathy Jane,” I say.

She leads me away to her book machine empire, still sniffling. She goes over to one of the machines which is not currently printing out POD paperbacks for direct sale.

“I wish I had enough money to buy one of these machines,” says Kathy Jane.  “Amazon bought all the technology so they could sit on it, making sure it stays too expensive, but I would start a coffee shop in Dallas where the book machine was right in the middle. People could come in and print up any book they wanted. I would print up and sell my favorite books there. We would also sell books people brought back as returns, paying a dollar a piece for them. Instant bookstore.  You wouldn’t even have to wait the two days it takes to get a book shipped to you from Amazon.”

She punches some numbers into one of the book machines. The machine starts to whir and churn.

We stand there side by side in silence. Eventually, the machine stops printing.  The machine glues on the cover, and cuts everything to the proper trim size.

She looks at the book, smells it, and then hands it to me.

It is called “PUSSY PATROL ONE: MEOW MIXXXER.”

“It’s sex stories, but for kitty cats,” says Kathy Jane. “I have written ten so far. This first one is about a tom named Lester who throws a big party for all the cats and then things get a little crazy.”

“Oh wow,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “They’re not for everyone. Nobody has reviewed them yet on Amazon. I sell a couple a week, though. I price them pretty low so that people who really want them will be able to afford them. I guess I won’t be able to do that anymore.”

“I can have this?” I say.

“Take it,” she says.

I clasp it to my heart. 

I cash my second to last paycheck.  One day, Kathy Jane stops showing up.  I try to figure out her address or number, but no one will tell me anything. Spivey comes up to me the week before Christmas.  It is the last day that people can order things and still expect to get them in time for Christmas morning. 

“Did Kathy Jane ever show you how to run these book machines?” he says.  “Ya’ll was friends right?  She showed you how?”

“Sure,” I say.  I start to tell him how they work, but he cuts me off.

“We are automating them all in a couple months,” he says.  “But we are still getting thousands of orders right now and she has stopped coming into work.”

“Do you know where she lives?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Do you think you might be able to run these book machines temporarily for a little bit?  I mean, we can’t hire you officially or anything.  But it sounds more fun than picking on the floor, right?  And who knows, maybe we can find a place for you after everything?  Since you was born right here in this town and all.”

“I’d love to do that,” I say.

“Great,” he says.  “Tomorrow, go right to the book machines instead of the floor.”

I decide that tomorrow will be my last day.  I don’t want to spend Christmas here. I wish nobody did. When I am punching out for the night, I steal a handful of packaging labels from the front office, pretending that I need a new ID card. 

I stay up all night reading Kathy Jane’s cat porn, which is surprisingly readable.

“Lester Bootykins, fearless leader of the Pussy Patrol, you will have your goddamn revenge,” I say to myself, sitting cross-legged on my shitty stained carpet, naked, drinking a Bud Light Lime Michelada tallboy and using it to keep my testicles cold, because I have no control over the heat in my apartment and my landlord has cranked it to the max, meaning that even with the windows open I am sweating so hard that I can suck on my top lip and fill my mouth. 

I do not sleep. I am too excited to sleep and I have too much to do, looking up addresses of bars around the country, sending them DRNKR messages, and creating DRNKR events for them.

The next morning I go quietly to the book machines. Spivey comes around to check on me.  A few orders come in and I dutifully print them up and put them on the conveyor to be scanned, sorted, and packaged.

Then I start printing up copies of “PUSSY PATROL ONE: MEOW MIXXXER.” I use one book machine for the orders that are still coming in, just to keep Spivey from getting suspicious.

I use the other machines to print as many copies of Kathy Jane’s cat porn as I possibly can. The machines can print a book every five minutes. This means I can do twelve an hour with each machine, sixty altogether.  I crank them out, stacking them in boxes of thirty a piece.  There are boxes at the station, and I load the books into boxes for bulk orders, slapping address labels on them that I have already filled out, and then sealing them.

When boxes like this go through the conveyor belt, there is an automatic override and they are sent straight to shipping. 

I am able to fill two boxes an hour.  I am working a ten hour shift, so I am able to send boxes to twenty cities around the United States. 

Getting the beer is a little harder.  Amazon sells beer and wine, but they don’t fulfill it themselves.  For this, I have to sneak over to the manager’s station and edit already existing orders using Spivey’s account info, which we all know by heart by now, since we have spent six weeks looking over his shoulder whenever we fuck up the slightest thing and he has to fix it. 

I change these already existing orders, people’s last minute Christmas presents, into orders for cases of Bud Light Lime Michelada tallboys.

All day long, people have been responding to my DRNKR posts.  I have set up events in twenty cities around the country:

MEOW MIXXXER CHRISTMAS EVE NATIONAL BOOK RELEASE PARTY!

Says the DRNKR post

Sponsored by Amazon.com and BUD LIGHT LIME

Free BUD LIGHT LIME till it runs out.  Free copies of PUSSY PATROL NUMBER ONE: MEOW MIXXER by Kathy Jane Freshnell.  This is totally legit.  The only catch is that you must give the book a five star review on Amazon or you don’t get free beer.  MERRY XMAS YOU HORRIBLE DRUNKS.

I put the last box of the books on the conveyor and wait.

I wait an hour, doing pretty much nothing.  The 5 PM truck shows up to take away the next-day delivery boxes, including the cat porn.  I have won.  Time for my victory lap.  Time to make sure Kathy Jane gets away with it. 

I look around for Spivey.

“Spivey!” I call out.  “Where are you man?  Come manage me!”

After a few minutes he strolls over, his thick hands rubbing his belly, looking reptilian and mean.

“What do you want?  Don’t tell me you got a problem over here.”

I don’t say anything.  I sit down on the conveyor belt, swinging my legs. 

“Don’t be sitting on that,” he says.  “Hey now hey.”

I push back and sit cross-legged on the conveyor belt.  The belt starts carrying me away, carrying me to the big central sorter and the rows of flatscreen computers in the center of the fulfillment center.

“Hey come on now,” says Spivey.  “It’s good to have fun, but come down off there.  Where you going?”

I stand up.

“HEY GET DOWN OFFA THERE,” says Spivey, jogging along to catch up with me, crashing through stacked boxes of novelty coffee mugs and cheap plastic lawn furniture.

A crowd gathers round.

“Somebody’s riding the conveyor belt!” I hear somebody shout from miles away.

“Surf it, man, surf it!”

I stand up.

Everybody cheers.

“YOU BETTER GET DOWN OFFA THERE THIS MINUTE,” shouts Spivey.  Some of the other managers are running over to me now, trying to keep pace with me, but they are also utterly unwilling to climb up on the conveyor belt with me and risk breaking it, busting the tread.

I am shooting through the fulfillment center at an alarming clip.

“Same day delivery,” I shout to Spivey.  

I drop my pants.  I squat.

At first, I panic, thinking I won’t be able to do it. 

But then I remember the best part.  I start screaming.  My primal scream.

Everybody shuts up.  They are all watching me.  Scrutinizing me.  I can feel myself burning into all of their memories.  I am not a “temporary associate” now.  I am not temporary at all.  I am permanently searing myself into all of their minds and all of their dreams and all of the cameras that are watching me.

I dry fart a few times, and then I squeeze out a big ropy shit on the conveyor belt, making sure to shit downbelt so I don’t step in it. 

The people chasing me stop.  They look ill.  Everyone else is cheering.

“You are gonna pay to have that cleaned,” shouts Spivey.  “That is coming right out of your paycheck! Get him!  Somebody get him down.  Somebody call the police!”

“Don’t you dare,” says Spivey’s boss.  “You want a police report of this?”

I pull my pants up and run along the conveyor belt, running against it, staying in approximately the same place.

“Ya’ll better catch that shit,” I say.  “It is heading right for the sorters.  It’s gonna gunk up everything, especially if gets caught in the teeth at the end and gets smeared along the whole tread.  If it gets down there in those gears, ya’ll will never get the stink out.  And then those sorters are gonna dump my shit all over all those Christmas packages waiting down there.  Ya’ll will have to repack everything. Ya’ll will be stalled out for the whole day.  But ya’ll can catch my shit if you hurry. Come on, now, hurry, run, go get it, go get my shit!”

The constellation of managers and security realize I am telling the truth, though none of them think to simply turn the conveyor belt off.  They veer away from me and chase after my rage turd, trying to catch it before it is sucked into the sorting machine and starts smearing along the tread.  I wait until I am free and clear, and then I hop off the belt and run for the doors.  Everyone is cheering me, holding their hands up for high fives which I do not grant.

“I GOT IT,” shouts Spivey.  “Sweet fucking Jesus, it is still warm.  Somebody get me a goddamn towel or some packing foam or something.”

I hit the big steel emergency exit doors and I burst through them, the cold night air hitting me like a wet mop on a tile floor.  My bicycle is right there where I put it, and I hop on, pedaling like mad.  

I am unemployed again. 

But this year, no matter how hard they scrub, there’s gonna be a little bit of my shit in everybody’s Christmas. 

I feel great, like I used to feel jumping out of the window into the bushes late at night in high school and sneaking out to a party in a field somewhere. I did my time. I got some money. I know I don’t matter in this world.  I am not a millionaire genius.  I am not a brilliant start-up entrepreneur innovator. 

But I can still do things they can never do, and I feel great right now, and maybe all experiences are equal, and they might own everything, and I might never own anything larger than a duffel bag, but Gradatim Ferociter, goddamn it, “Step by Step, Ferociously,” even if that means walking the wrong way on a conveyor belt, never getting anywhere, never getting properly sorted or arriving fast enough so nobody complains.






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(c) Miracle Jones 2014