Unfinished Object

We have a sign in front of our building that says “Now Hiring Techs”, its just a metal ‘realty’ sign, but it brings us a wide assortment of people. Our building is in a business park and there is a great deal of vehicle traffic. But my little sign (yes I made it) is mostly invisible to the speeding cars. The foot traffic however has time to stand around it, and consider its implications before pointing themselves to our front door. Most of this sort of applicant is walking past on their way to or from ‘Bagel Bites’. Yep, the factory that makes those nasty little things is straight out our back door and across the lake. And as icky as they are, on bread baking day the whole park is rife with the heady scent and you briefly find yourself considering that they may not be so bad. Anyway, back to the sign. The factory employees go past all day long, usually in little knots of five or so. And each day at least one group will stop and discuss my sign and then move to the business sign (which is right outside my window) and point and discuss and sometimes argue over it, all the while casting wary glances at our front door (as if no one could possibly be looking out of that big sheet of glass they are standing in front of). And then one poor guy will draw the short straw and wander into the lobby to inquire about the job. He’ll gather applications for himself and his friends and return to the huddle. If we see these pieces of paper again, and we usually don’t, the front and back form will contain little more than a name and address, seldom a phone number, and almost never school and work history.

Occasionally, an individual will stop and actually fill an application out while sitting at the kitchen table. Sadly, these too, will have little more than a name and address when they are turned in. We suspect that sometimes it is just an excuse to sit in the comfortable a/c for a half hour and cool off.

And then, there are the individuals like the gentleman who came in yesterday. I did not notice his vehicle pulling up and he surprised me a bit when he came in. He was dressed in ragged shorts, slid half down his ass, a dirty white t-shirt with the sleeves torn off and one of the sleeves firmly planted on his head as a ‘do-rag’. He had a wide smile and a booming voice, and he answered most of his own questions before I could. We keep the applications in the lobby on the copier table, but someone had used the last one so I had to leave him in the lobby and go find an original. When I returned he had a fist full of brochures from the brochure racks and happily claimed “I used to work on these”, and showed me the one for freezers. A few more moments of unstoppable talking and he disclosed that he actually had delivered them - not repaired them. The copier is in the lobby, so he continued to talk as I ran the application through, and as he talked he edged closer and closer to me. So close in fact I could feel his breath on my ear as he spoke, and his mass effectively blocked me into the corner between the copier and the wall. I was prepared to sink my elbow into his mid-section, had he touched ... no way I could have taken him, but I planned on making the first hit count. I turned away from the copier quick enough that he had to step back (sorta like tapping the brakes when someone is following too close) and handed him his application. There were several more moments of idle conversation, and three trips to the stapler to staple his application together, his brochures together and then his brochures to his application. And with each trip he followed me to my office, close enough that he’d have to back up when I turned around. And then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he exited, climbed into his beat up van and left.

I don’t know about you, but even for people I like my ‘personal space’ is somewhere around 2-3 feet if we’re having a conversation (closer of course for hugs and kisses) and anything nearer than that makes me damn uncomfortable. I still have no idea if the guy was ‘up to something’ - my gut says he was, and cocktail waitresses grow pretty smart guts in my experience. Even if he just has no concept of personal space, I was very, very happy not to be working late last night and leaving my myself.

Posted by Shan on 02/23 at 02:14 PM
Plain Old Everyday • Permalink

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Unfinished Object

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