BY LANCE DOILY I should have known how the day was going to turn out when Rex walked in with a carton of eggs tucked underneath his arm. As he’s proved time and time again, the dude couldn’t make eggs for shit, and we were all too hungover to eat anything besides a couple tugs off a Slim Jim and a fistful of Percocets anyway. Once again, we’d closed Murph’s the night before (truth be told, we actually got Dusty to come back to reopen at quarter after 2 and drank huddled next to a candle until about 5:30 this morning) and were already looking for excuses to either not work, or go right back to the bar. Rex’s egg gesture was not without merit, but we all should have guessed that the first one he tried to crack open would spill out a dead baby chick in lieu of yolk. We made some new temp hire in the repack department eat it for 20 bucks and with one collective stumble made it to our truck runs to see what was in store for the day.
Luckily for me I had the Food Basic in Paterson on my truck, which is a godsend after a particularly rough night. They’re always good for over 100 cases, they’ve got a guy who unloads all of it straight off the truck with a forklift, and the dairy manager usually lets me fire off a couple whippets in the storage fridge while waiting. The case drop would almost always clear a bay door first thing in the morning, enabling me to pick up a parliament of illegals off Straight St. to do the lion’s share of the work for me. I’ve got a reputation for treating them well, possibly too well, given that sometimes I’ll find five or six of them suctioned to the side of my truck like barnacles miles from where I passed them. I’ve been doing it for about eight years, so I know how to weed out the weak and the lazy to the point where I can confidently stack my team against any other in the beverage delivery world, in this state or any other.
My team was already well-versed in the subtle nuances of my daily route and were on fire all day, requring me to do little else aside from pull up to the account and open the bay door for them. And then trouble came knockin’. It was one of the Kohler guys, and he was none too pleased that I had eight obvious illegals of various ethnicities effectively doing most of my job. His name was Pat Lincoln, one of those wife-two kids-and-a-dog assholes, a big union guy who went strictly by the book and called out those who didn’t. I could see him getting all the info ready to make the call on me and was ready to walk over, trick him into looking at the sky and punch him in the adam’s apple, but today I would be the better man. When Lincoln was inside rotating his product (another sign he’s a “union or die” douche, no self-respecting driver rotates their stock), I casually slipped a 50 to his helper, some juicehead in his early 20s with a Mark McGwire head and no issues volunteering the info I needed.
I made a quick trip to Home Depot for materials, where I also picked up a few more illegals that looked sturdy enough for the job, and obviously knew no English. As you’ll see, I make sure no one on my team speaks English, or if they do they know to un-learn it at the right times. So after we blast through the rest of the route in record time it was time to make a pit stop on 17 Linwood Ave. in Caldwell. I pull up, open the bay door to let my workers out and hand them each a large hammer or similar tool of demolition. I walk them to the house and smash down the front door as a quick tutorial and let them have at it while I walk back to my truck, giving them the universal “I’m going to grab you guys some lunch” gesture, never to return again. As much as I wanted to be there to witness the entire demolition of Lincoln’s house, or just to hang around and watch his face as he pulled up and a group of non-English speaking illegals were destroying everything he had worked for in his life thus far, I had an obligation. Besides obviously not wanting to be anywhere near that area when the cops are inevitably called, I got a text from Freddy asking where the fuck I was. Apparently all the other drivers went straight to Murph’s from the office this morning, so basically I ended up working for no reason and lost a veteran team of illegals in the process. But I can always rebuild. After all, I’m not at or near the top of the Driver Of The month lists in the break room for no reason.
PREVIOUSLY: The Auspicious Debut Of BLOTTO
PREVIOUSLY: The Second Installment Of BLOTTO
PREVIOUSLY: The Third Installment Of BLOTTO
PREVIOUSLY: The Fourth Installment Of BLOTTO
PREVIOUSLY: How I Came To Know Lance Doily