Musings of an Ignorant American

For those who don't know, I withdrew from Roberts Wesleyan College for a semester in order to work diligently and pay off my credit card bill, which is rather...big. The first problem with this was that I had no work lined up to be diligent about, and diligent work is no good in this situation if its diligent PAID work. However, Pete's dad came up aces, and had an opening for a janitor at his machine shop.

For those who are always having trouble dealing with ignorant customers, I must say, better a stupid person than a stubborn metal bin with a few hundred pounds of metal shavings in it that you push around a shop for all to see, like the guy from Monty Python's Holy Grail that kept yelling, "Bring out your dead!" It is rather humbling to have a bunch of guys that might have a couple years at a community college laughing at the college guy pushing the bin around like a moron.

Yesterday, I almost died, and I learned a few things from it. Mr. Gallagher came to me as I was cleaning out a machine (which is a real pain, because the coolant in them looks like Mylanta, and can cause you to wretch violently very quickly if you inhale too much of the fumes) and pointed at a random light and said, "That's the night light in here."

I wasn't really sure what he was driving at, so I said..."Oh." (Tyler, that ellipsis is to indicate the pregnant pause that preceded my statement.) So I stared somewhat blankly at Mr. G, and waited for him to inform me of why that was in any way significant to me. He then said, "It burned out. Go grab the ladder from the back and climb up there and pull it out, and we will find another."

So I grabbed said ladder and climb up. It's a 12 foot ladder, and I had to stand on the second rung from the top in order to just barely reach the fixture. I got the light out, and then went on an expedition to find the bulbs, which get changed about once every 30 years apparently. Mr. Gallagher and I went all over the shop looking in boxes, and then ended up in the unheated warehouse, climbing over machinery and metal from pre-World War II, and a whole bunch of munitions boxes from the Vietnam War. Finally he points at a random box and says, "Oh, there it is." So climbing over another large pile of metal and boxes, I pull the box down, which is coated in about 3 inches of dust.

I pull out a new bulb and prepare to climb the ladder again. The layout is thus: To my left is a wall, with a couple metal file cabinets and miscellaneous parts on top of them, to my right is a metal chip bin with a lot of sharp metal, and a machine, with more sharp metal in it. I ascended the ladder, and I made a mistake. I assumed that Mr. Gallagher had shut the power off to the fixture. Because it was not an easy reach to the fixture, I was staring very intently at the 300 watt light bulb I was screwing in. Suddenly there was a blast of heat, and blinding light (probably like the light people see when they are dying), which of course scared the crap out of me.

I jumped, and the ladder started to rock back and forth, as I wisely had no one holding the bottom of the ladder for me. Also, I don't really like heights very much, and I would contend that standing on a rocking ladder 12 feet in the air with the possibilty of falling on to large metal objects with pointy angles is the sort of thing that can really boost one's anxiety when dealing with heights.

After a moment, I got the ladder to stop shaking and cautiously climbed down. I blindly felt around for the door, with my vision rather spotty after peering into a 300 watt light bulb. I poked my head into Mr. Gallagher's office and said, "In the future, can we operate under the idea that giving the janitor a heads up the light fixture is still on is a good idea?"

Mr. Gallagher looks up at me with this slyly unnerving grin and simply said, "Light a bit bright for ya, eh? Gotta be careful on the ladders."

Posted by Pastahjay on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 6:00 PM | Permalink