"Clock-In" - new poem is long and raw

[Son of Mallin]

Hi guys.  This turned out much longer than I thought, but I know there's good stuff in here.  Its form was partly inspired by Mike McGee's "In Search of Midnight", and its content was inspired by two years worth of personal job experience.  Feel free to tell me what you think, and don't spare the whip!

"Clock-In"

At 3am, on Annacis Island, Alvino pulls into R.J. Spagnols to clock in.  The warehouse is empty, but there’s a crate of shaken beer to safely destroy before the prouder work begins.

At 7:45, at Yokahoma Tire, the temps report for duty, and Rob the manager lines them up and tells them he wants “a good hard day’s work”, and that he “doesn’t want to hear any of this ‘coffee-break’ bullshit”.  He says he’s required to tell them not to climb the rafters to get at the top, but implies the job can and should be done however they need to.

At 7:50, at Canda Enterprises, a temp comes into the warehouse for the umpteenth time, and says hello to everyone in Mandarin. William recognizes a returning temp, and goads him into jogging a lap around the parking lot with him, smiling and heckling all the way around.

At 8am, at R.J. Spagnols, a lone temp shows up and is hazed by a bored forklift driver who pretends the boy’s trespassing.  The boy earns the nickname “Rook” and is taken under the man’s wing.

At 8:15, at <Lucurne Dairy Inc.>, a temp salutes the receptionist, apologizes for being late, and is escorted to the floor, where milk is bagged as it pours out of angry pipes. The floor is inch-deep in old white liquid and the smell is both alien and recognizable as milk. The temp won’t be able to consume dairy for a month.

At 8:30, at <Komie Foods>, one life-long temp and one university graduate are partnered in a daily project to open boxes and label, using child-safety knives. The older one spends the morning talking about her band, trying to choose a cool name.  The younger tells her about alliteration and she looks at him like an alien.  The younger one decides it’s going to be a long morning.

At 9:15, at Canda Enterprises, Arthur the manager approaches a temp and asks him to operate the fork-lift.  The unlicensed temp is afraid to say no and be sent home, and gets in the seat, thankfully only impaling rice with the forks.

At 10am, at Canda Enterprises, one temp begins a conversation with his Shipping/ Receiving partner about a botched operation to give him Caucasian eyelids.  He says he wanted to enter the music business and he heard this was the only way, but the surgeon took off too much, making him unable to emote with his eyes.

At 12pm, at International Sources, the manager points out a passing secretary to a new temp and says that if he were to get a job there, he can look at her and more like her whenever he wants.  The secretary pretends to giggle and walks away without a word.

At 12:30, at Yokahoma Tire, one of the temps insists on spending ten minutes eating his sandwich in as small a voice as he can. The look Rob the manager gives him speaks very convincingly of dereliction of duty.

At 12:45, at R.J. Spagnols, a bored Assembly Line temp is almost caught typing the characters of a love letter into his cell-phone between boxes. It is the tenth love letter of the day.

At 1:10, at Christie Lites, a temp listens to recordings about Eastern philosophy while he spray-paints stem-bolts gold. Anyone asking him will be told he’s listening to Death Metal.

At 1:15, at Yokahoma Tire, the half-asleep forklift driver lifts a four-level rafter too quickly.  The rafters are 32-tonne houses of cards made out of hardboard and reinforced cardboard, and 200 tires free-fall towards three ambitious young men almost faster than they can sprint.

At 1:30, at Canda Enterprises, the secretary from the front desk comes into the men’s lunchroom and talks to a temp about food. She says he mentioned baking yesterday, so she gives him a stack of the best dessert cookbooks he’s ever seen. She says she likes the ones with pictures better, because her English isn’t good. He vows to make her cookies some day.

At 1:45, at R.J. Spagnols, a temp, encouraged hours before by Alvino, refuses to open an assembly-line machine with his bare hands to remove jammed cardboard.  Lung accuses him of refusing to work.

At 1:50, at <Komie Foods>, the band-owning life-long temp is now arguing what Jesus was probably really like. She tells the young man Jesus was a hippy.  He tells her “Jesus was a hippy” is the best name for a rock band he’d ever heard. Look her up.

At 2pm, at R.J. Spagnols, a temp on kit duty gets his week-long task done in 2 ½ days, and is faced with the threat of being sent home with half the money he was hired to earn if he’s caught working faster than he has to. Seeing the fear in his eyes, <George>, who’s worked there 30 years, tells the boss he needs help doing his job.

At 2:15, at Canda Enterprises, James wipes the sweat from his brow and, looking both ways, shows a temp his favourite blind spot from the warehouse’s surveillance cameras.  James gives him some expired aloe juice and shows him pictures of his first son and pregnant wife.

At 2:30, at Christie Lights, Bull the manager is told by his long-time temps that the 120-pound chords in boxes of 32 each don’t add up, and somewhere in the 10 boxes is an extra chord.  Voting leave is in half an hour.  Bull crouches into a foetal position and giggles and sobs at the same time. The young man who comes up with the brilliant plan of discerning which box has the extra chord will be fired one week later for laziness.

At 3:30, at Canda Enterprises, William asks a young temp if he’s happy.  William tells him about growing up as a police officer in Taiwan, and about coming to North America to feed his family. The temp asks how much he gets here, and if he’s ever asked for a raise. William says that if he asked for a raise, Arthur would find someone who wouldn’t ask. William heckles the temp about looking tired. The temp challenges him to an arm-wrestle while the boss isn’t looking and loses in less than two seconds.

At 3:45, Alvino clocks out and goes home to sleep for three hours, until his wife comes home.

At 4pm, at International Sources, the manager takes the temp aside and offers him a full-time job for less than he makes as a temp, and asks him to accept it quietly, “no need to tell the agency”.  Something in the manager’s face makes the temp say No.

At 4:30, at Canda Enterprises, William sees the temp checking his watch again, and asks me why he’s waiting, “Always waiting!”  To “live now!” 

At 4:59, at Canda Enterprises, William asks the young temp not to come back, but to go be a teacher.

At 5pm, at Yokahoma Tire, Rob the manager asks a temp to stay over-time, and the temp apologizes and declines, saying his back aches. The manager asks him whether he’s ever done physical labour, and he shows Rob his changed hands and tells him about being awarded Associate of the Month. He checks the “inadequate” box on the temp’s timecard.

At 5:30, at R.J. Spagnols, Alberto begins to dance on the Assembly Line; within two minutes five men in a row have choreographed their duties on the line into a Broadway-quality dance number.

At 6:15, at Iotron Industries Canada, the assistant manager approaches a lone temp as he fills a container truck with sacks of spice, to offer the advice that maybe he could go a little faster. 

At 7pm, at R.J. Spagnols, a temp approaches Big Ed and says he’s been there 10 ½ hours and would like to go home. Big Ed says he’s not done yet. Somehow it never occurs to the temp that he’d done his duty at 4. 

At 7:30, at R.J. Spagnols, Alberto has made a tower of milk carts into a throne in his place on the Assembly Line, upon which he lies in a sideways position, placing packs of syrup into wine boxes between yawns and armpit scratches. He is the embodiment of our spirit.

At 9:15, at Iotron Industries Canada, the lone temp pushes the final create of spice sacks onto the truck. The thin layer of spice on the floor makes it all but impossible to push anything heavier than himself. He says he’s done and he’s dismissed.  He discovers as he leaves that the bus that got him to that corner of Port Coquitlam stopped hours ago, and he has no way home.

At 10pm, at Iotron Industries Canada, a temp is picked up by his father and the boy tells him what he actually does for a living. The boy says he’s just as surprised as he: it’s not what he signed up for, but then again, there was no job description. His father tells him to beware a vacuously vague job description: it’s either a con or a hole.

At 3am, at R.J. Spagnols, Alvino pulls into R.J. Spagnols to clock in.