Out With The Old

At my job, which I really can’t tell you anything about, it’s the kind of business where for whatever reason, we need personnel present 24/7.

Maybe some idiot needs his life to be saved. Maybe we’re filling Amazon.com orders all night. Who knows.

Anyway, given that we need to man the place all day and night, 365, (even Christmas too!) we work in what they call “sections” where anywhere between 7 and 9 people are just working together, living together, eating, breathing, shitting together. Staring at each other all the live long day.

Given this, you tend to develop a bond with these people. They become somewhat of an extended family, brothers and sisters whom you work with, but share stupid idiosyncrasies and events with. You become those type of people where you can just share a glance and know what the other is thinking without saying a word.

Needless to say I’ve grown very attached to these people that I work with. That’s why the people in charge have decided to move me to the other section.

Nothing fucks me up more than an abrupt change in my schedule/routine. Call me boring ol’ vanilla-face, but I fucking live for a routine. I love having shit planned out ahead of schedule, knowing what’s coming around the bend. Of course, I love the occassional nice surprise, be it a party or gift, but mostly, I like knowing exactly what’s going to be coming down the pipe.

Seriously, I lose sleep when I don’t know what’s going to happen the next day. I’ll lay there, staring at the ceiling in my own little neurotic shell consisting of my fucking color-coordinated bed linens and strategically placed pillows, and gnaw my fingers bloody until the sun rises.

So they switched me. The reason I was told was that the guy from the other section, my new section, wasn’t getting along much with everyone in that he was working with. He’s from a different background you could say, and he’s been feeling somewhat disenfranchised by… well …. everything. He’s 20 years old, has spent the last three years of his life doing the things he’s been doing, and right up until now, he’s been allowed to just do as he pleases as long as he abides by the golden rule that as long as no one gets hurt or lands in the slammer, no one cares.

Well, you have this guy, good guy, hard worker, keeps his nose to the stone, but he’s just not getting it. He’s not getting the programme. So what do you do? You give him a change of atmosphere, and you replace him with probably the best up and commer from the other side.

And I’m suddenly thinking: What may impact my readers more than anything else, out of all of this, is the fact that no longer will I be working side by side with my roommate. No more wacky antics or malapropisms. No “my roommate says the weirdest shit ever” no more frustration. No more little brother to watch over and fret and worry. No one to give advice to or try to steer in a good direction. Instead of him leaving the nest, it’s me.

I took the news well the other day when we were both pulled into the office and told what the change of scheduling was going to be. My schedule for the next week or so is kinda banged up a little, but after that I should fall back into a regular routine, god willing. I had to change my room, which meant physically moving all my shit (and you’d be surprised how much shit one can accumulate in like, 8 months) down a flight of stairs and down another hallway and reorganizing it. And then there’s the whole thing about the people.

Once I get in good with a certain group of people, similar to my routine, I don’t like them just pulled out from under me. Granted, I didn’t get along with EVERYONE in my section, but I fucking tried. I really liked them. They were like… like family that I was forced to … spend half my weeks with like some sort of group drug therapy but without the fun of methadone.

I hate meeting/working with new people. It’s awkward, it’s … like, you have to pretend to be someone else, so they think you’re one of them. Then slowly you can start to ease out your actual personality; low, you shed your skin too soon, and then they’re going to think you’re a freak! You have to gain their trust first and then, through ever slight changes, relax all those muscles and reveal that you’re as decrepit as they actually are. Because this is all a two way street, mind you. They’re just as terrified about you as you are them. They’ll actually be twice as reluctant to reveal their true selves, which will only add to the tension in the opening few weeks.

So this morning, my (now) old section decided to send me off in a classy fashion: I was up early, manning the early watch, bleary eyed from waking up way before I should be. I was under shaven and pudding filled (long story.). Then, about an hour into every thing, I hear the clicking of boots in the hallway.

My entire section had gotten up early, and came downstairs. Someone took over the watch for me, relieving me, and the rest of us walked down our long pier with the sun just starting to break over the eastern horizon, coffee cups clutched in hands, steam rolling out of noses.

No one said a word the entire length of the pier – at least nothing I remember being said. The mood is set to somber, as the sky was fading like a bruise, from black to purple to yellow to red. All the ball busting and teasing had vanished like the mist over the water.

We all climbed into our boat, and rolled out towards the sun rise, stopping about two miles out, turning the boat east and everyone just sitting there, sunglasses on, silent sentinels. After the sun had broken well enough over the ground to heat this section of the planet, we turned again, back and rode in over the chop.

I miss them already.

I’m just sayin’…