Jennifer Schmitt

Meat Slinging

I finally ventured out of Brighton (the boonies, but lots of cheap housing!), and in to Cambridge, this past weekend. Some friends of mine were meeting at a little Irish dive bar called Sligo's for drinks, where I met a funny guy from Luisiana named Shawn. Shawn is now a grad student at Harvard, and was pretty buzzed when I talked to him -- or was it that Southern drawl? -- but it's amazing who you meet in bars, these days. He told me the funniest story I've heard, a little tale he likes to call "Meat Slinging". For all you VISTAs out there working your fingers to the bone for no pay, I thought that I'd pass this one along.

First we were talking about worst jobs ever. Since I spent my youth supporting myself as a janitor, dishwasher, busser, waitress, refrigerated wherehouse worker, nanny, secretary, salesperson, receptionist and personal assistant, I can say with confidence that I've worked about every crappy job out there. Almost...

Shawn had also had his share of crappy jobs. For example, he worked in a wherehouse, assemblied microchips, sold vacuum cleaners door to door, was a delivery driver and a waiter in a diner, for starters. "That's about all you can do with a philosophy degree, these days. It's not what I'd call a marketable skill!" He's a little worried that his Harvard Ph.D. in the History of Science, with a focus in Red Scare Physics, might not pay off the way he had hoped. In the meantime, he indulged me in his "Meat Slinging" story.

His story began when he responded to an ad asking for customer service employees. When he showed up on the scene, the manager said, "Well, what we really need are drivers..." Shawn had driven trucks before, so didn't complain too much about the manager changing his mind about the position.

Then Shawn made this gesture he would repeat over and over again over the course of the conversation -- it was a hand drawing something towards it with an imaginary gravitational pull -- while saying, "And so it begins..." in an ominous voice.

Then, when Shawn showed up for his first day on the job, the job title suddenly changed from driver, "well, what we really need is salespeople, the boss said." Shawn had just quit his job selling vacuum cleaners door to door, and was a little bummed that he'd end up in sales again. But that didn't deter him from turning down a job offer. "Sure, whatever," was his response.

"And so it begins..." Shawn said, pulling me in with the funny hand gesture.

Shawn was shown the truck where he would be conducting his sales -- a giant, mobile meat freezer. His product? "Country-Fed Meats," which, as Shawn remarked, "was a name I couldn't make up if I wanted to. Still got the t-shirt." He was then introduced to his partner, George, a shady character and fellow Meat Slinger, living out of a Motel 6, and told to hit the streets and sell meat off the back of the truck.

Within 30 minutes of Shawn being on the job, George had gotten a frantic call from his girlfriend, who said that they were thrown out of their "apartment" at the Motel 6. Although, whether the slum landlord was the issue, or whether George didn't pay the rent is still up for debate. So, what do you think became of George's entire household belongings?

The stuff went into the meat locker, and George's girlfriend joined them in the truck. Shawn was not impressed by the girlfriend, who in his words was, "excuse me for saying this, but a bit of a skank." I couldn't help but laugh at the way that "skank" sounded in a Louisiana accent. Then he interjected, "that's right, she was a stripper!"

"And so it begins..." Shawn said, and I leaned in closer to hear the rest of the story over the din of the bar.

So, with George's crap in the back of the freezer, he asked Shawn, who he had only known for 30 minutes, if he couldn't put his stuff in his apartment. Shawn, being the eternal nice guy (or sucker?) reluctantly said, "oh, sure alright." Meanwhile, George is trying to sell "Country Fed Meats" at every red light they hit. When potential customers expressed their skepticism towards the product, George would say, "So where do you usually get your meat?" Inevitibly, the skeptic would say, "at the grocery store." Then George would say, "and where do you think that the grocery store meat comes from? That's right, off the back of a truck!"

At one point, while Shawn took the truck through the drive-through teller to get some cash, George offers to send individual hamburger patties through the tube, if the teller will just buy some groung beef from him. "Now you can't tell me that y'all don't got a freezer in there," George said, as the teller insisted that she had no such place to store ground beef, even if she would buy it off the back of the truck. George was persistent, "I used to work in a bank, and I know you got a breakroom with a refrigerator and freezer." For all his efforts, though, George couldn't make the sale.

Soon after, Shawn, George and the stripper are driving though town when George decides that he urgently needs to use the restroom. He asks Shawn if they can stop at his place and unload the stuff from his apartment, and also use the bathroom. Shawn agrees, and the three of them, two meat slingers and a skank, get off the truck and make a pit stop.

"And so it begins..." Shawn said, yet again.

At Shawn's place, which is really an "efficiency" (read: one bedroom for kitchen, dining room and bedroom, plus tiny closet for bathroom) George goes into the bathroom and closes the door. George turns on the showerhead, and Shawn is puzzled by the sound of George taking a shower. "Maybe he was trying to cover up for other business," he said. But then, to Shawn's suprise, the skank followed George into the bathroom.

"That's right, and what do you think happned next?" Shawn made a gesture that suggested, "the two went into his bathroom to the deed! And I've only known the guy for three hours!" Afterwords, the stripper smoked in his bathroom, George, who turned out to be a heroin addict shot up, and the two came out as if nothing had happened.

And that was only day one.

In the next couple of days, Shawn would encounter a homeless employee so hard up that he had to LIVE in the frozen meat storage facility, where all the trucks and surplus meat were kept. And, the ironic part was, the guy was so broke he couldn't afford to eat, but was constantly surrounded by raw meat. And I thought I had it tough living in Brighton!

On top of that, a week later, four fellow Meat Slingers, including the once formerly homeless guy, would move in to the efficiency apartment next door to Shawn, bringing with them a number of other skanks, junkies and various shady characters into his apartment building.

By day ten, and the final day of Shawn's employment with "Country Fed Meats", he had become the third most senior employee at the company. So, next time I'm having a bad day as a VISTA, and I feel like grumbling about how tough it is to work for nothin', I'll fondly remember Shawn and say to myself:

"And so it begins...!"

Posted by Jennifer Schmitt at March 1, 2005 07:55 PM