Don Mann: Focusing on my Craft

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005 - 1:51 a.m.

"Who am I? Better yet, who will I be? In the end, will
any of it really matter? Why am I obsessed with making an impression, with being
important to someone after the fact?"

All I got for a response was a blank stare from the mirror,
still hazed with fog from my showering.

God, I'm hideous.

I quickly shook the thought from my head, and I could almost
hear my self-loathing splash against the walls of my tiny bathroom as it dripped
from my shoulder-length black hair. I straightened the collar of my snug work
shirt, fashioned out of some low-quality fabric that itched where it touched
me. I glanced to the thermostat on the wall to my right, a device which also
functioned as a clock. Three forty-two p.m. I had to be at work in a little
less than twenty minutes. My chest heaved for an instant as anxiety took hold.
I swallowed hard, and felt my knees go weak for an instant.

I slammed a palm down on the tacky off-white sink to stabilize
myself.

Calm down. It's only a five-minute ride.

I took a deep breath, and fastened my shoddy cloth belt. I
fiddled with my nametag for a moment, then looked back to the mirror. The fog
had begun to recede more, and my chapped lips and half-squinted eyes protruded
into focus. My jaw was slack, hair draped aimlessly about my visage like paint
carelessly poured from some great height upon my large, round head. Sometimes
I forget how ridiculous I look when I lose myself in thought. Or just how ridiculous
I look in general.

I yawned lazily, having just arisen about thirty minutes before. My sleeping
habits were quickly forming into a serious disorder. Bed at sunrise, wake at
sunset. Falling asleep as the first rays of the sun clawed furiously at my windowblinds,
stumbling numbly out of my makeshift bed as the sun finally gave up its efforts
to intrude. Winter's lethargy didn't apply only to animals; but also to college
dropouts.

Taco Bell, here I come.

I grabbed my hair with my thumb and index finger, pulling
it all into a tight knot behind my head. My right hand still holding my hair
back, I opened the bathroom door and recieved a blast of chill, dry air to the
face and neck. My skin was still moist, so the change in temperature stabbed
at my flesh like needlepoints. I winced, snatched up my hat from the counter,
and tossed my hair through the loop in the back. A voice from across the hall
yanked me from my haze.

"Your work called. They said you don't need to come in." Jeremy sat
at his computer desk, his spine fully un-supported by his chair, his body seemingly
paying full attention to the monitor flickering before him. His head, however,
was turned slightly so as to imply that he was paying attention to both the
monitor and I simultaneously.

"Seriously? Kickass." I heaved a sigh of relief.
I truly did not want to go anywhere, I wanted to go back to sleep.

I thought you liked work...

"Still gotta pick up Nate though." He said, his
attention now directed entirely to his monitor.

Fucking fuck you fucking motherfucker what the fuck...

My brain pointed a million poison-tipped fingers of blame
at everything it could imagine for my circumstances. It screamed at Nate for
not getting his car fixed, it screamed at me for not getting enough sleep, it
moaned and hypothesized about the harsh weather outside. It began fabricating
complex stories of snowy-condition wrecks and vehicular misfortune.

Calm down. You were about to go there a second ago, and
you were fine with it.

For an instant I wondered how long I'd been standing there
with a stupid look on my face, my body waiting patiently for my brain to stop
ripping itself apart. I shook the thought aside, and tossed it away with my
work shirt onto my tousled mattress.

Nate and I worked the same job, at the same place. Taco jockeys,
willing slaves to the fast food industry. Scrubbing dishes, cleaning floors,
making food, dealing with idiot customers whose ignorance and stagnance aplified
exponentially based on how fed up you were with them already. Thanks to the
impudence of jackass coworkers, the day-to-day labor was actually quite tolerable,
however. If you were considering doing something wild and idiotic on the job,
chances are one of your fellow slaves was already doing it, and you were about
to run into them around a corner or behind a rack juggling apple pies or throwing
tater tots at one another.

Another wonderful factor that added to the Taco Bell Employee
atmosphere was the soundtrack of the day. Basically, you were bombarded by trendy
pop music, interjected occasionally by the shout of one of the other taco jockeys.
What they'd shout was never important, unless it started with your name. Typically,
what you'd hear is the ambiguous muffled form of one of your favorite expletives,
like a prisoner languishing in his ill fate by forever marking the occasion
with a "FUCKING SHIT!!!" or "Cock SUCKER!"

They were all good people, many of whom I had no trouble relating
to in some way or another.

Delve Into The Past - Onward Into The Future