Down in Front.

I sat in the car. It was seven in the morning, and it was already hot. I didn't want to go. The weekend had gone by much too fast, and I had spent most of it dreading this moment. I had my work pants, my steel toed boots, a pen and a notebook. My hair was wet and pulled back, my beard a little rougher than it probably should have been on the first day of a new job. I didn't care about that. Secretly, I hoped they fired me over it.

I started the car, took a deep breath, and backed out of my driveway. The whole world seemed to be covered in dew. Glistening and beckoning "Don't go, James, we love you, don't go."

Well, fuck you world.

I drove slowly, not in any rush at all, across town toward the interstate, first stopping at my preferred gas station for a coffee.

"Good morning," the woman behind the counter said.

"Morning."

I got my coffee (black), paid, and got back in the car. I like my coffee only slightly warmer than warm, so I took the lid off, and set it in the cup holder to cool. I never understood why coffee needs to be so fucking hot. I backed out of the parking space.

A loud thud on my trunk. I slammed the brakes, sending my fucking coffee all over the goddamned car and burning the shit out of me through my shirt. "Hey asshole!" Someone said from behind me. I looked in the mirror. I almost hit a guy. He was coming around to my door. My heart pounded, and instinct kicked in. He was walking, so he must have been fine. When he was on my side of the car, I backed up quickly, and got the fuck out of there while he screamed some shit about the cops. Fuck him, I was going to work.

I spent most of the ride down the interstate thinking about all of the witty cowboy shit I would have said to that guy, followed immediately by I am covered in fucking coffee. I was running a little behind as it was and didn't have time to go home and change. I would have to tough through it. The sun had come up in full pink and orange force, blasting across my wet shirt and face. It was heating up in the car, the air conditioner didn't work, and despite the inevitable disaster it would create of my hair, I rolled down the window. The cool air swam around me, calming me, filling me. I hoped this morning wasn't some sort of omen.

Twenty minutes after dowsing myself in coffee and nearly killing a man, I pulled into the gravel parking lot, and park. I was ten minutes early, and the only car in the lot. I wondered if it had been rescheduled, and they didn't tell me. I realized I could have gone home and changed. I sat in the lot for another five minutes, and decided to go in. I got out, locked up, and walked to the front door.

My reflection was more than a little similar to the average bridge dweller. My shirt was destroyed, my hair was everywhere, my beard was untamed. I ran my fingers through it, and decided it was too late for everything else. I went in. They had already hired me.

No one was behind the desk in front. The lights were dim. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was nearly eight. Someone should be here, I thought. There were two chairs. I sat down, keeping my notebook and pen in my lap, and stared at the two regional accolades from 1998 and 1999 posted on the wall. Apparently, this company had decent sales reps over a decade ago.

A young guy, maybe only a little younger than me came through the door. He was ugly. Large forehead. A gut. His shirt was ripped along the seam. At least I didn't look like him.

"Orientation?" He asked.

"Yeah. no one is here yet though."

"Just us?"

"Yeah."

He sat in the chair next to me and joined in admiring the achievements of years long gone. One by one, more guys came through the door, some looking to be fresh out of high school, others nearing retirement. I thought about how odd it was that these men had gone all different paths of life, some barely starting, some with half a century behind them, and yet, here we all were, in an empty lobby, waiting to see if we can make the cut for a ten dollar an hour job. It only reaffirmed my belief that it didn't matter what you did in life. Your career, your choices. You could still end up here, with the rest of the trash and idiots. If life wanted to fuck you, it was going to. It would yank away your pension, your house, your wife, and your kids. It would steal your life's effort, stare you down and whisper "tough shit." On the other hand. These younger guys, maybe this was the first step to a long, rewarding career. Maybe this is a day they would look back on and think "it all started here, my beautiful house, wife, kids, life, all there." I didn't relate to them. No job has ever given me satisfaction, reward, or peace and I found it hard to be enthusiastic about anything involving a paycheck. If someone was giving you money, they were looking for a way to give you less. Always, they were trying to fuck you.

 I just wanted to write. I opened my notebook and began jotting down notes of the morning. The coffee. The asshole in the parking lot. The desperation. Marie's incredible body pressed against mine as I had to force myself out of bed. Life was all backwards.

A woman came out from somewhere and went behind the front desk. She had blonde curly hair, and a face like a large tree mushroom, but the rest of her made up for it. "Are you all here for orientation?"

Everyone said nothing. It was all tits and eyeballs in there. It got boring fast.

"Yes," I said.

"Follow me," she said. She came around the desk and she was wearing tight grey suit pants with black pinstripes. Dangerous. She rolled through the group of pounding hearts and sweaty palms and down a hallway to our right. I stood up, and we began to follow. There were twelve of us, by my quick count, and seven of them were blocking my view.

"Down in front!" Someone behind me said.

I laughed.

We turned a corner, and followed her into a large room. There were three plastic tables set up on either side, each with three steel chairs. A whiteboard was at the front of the room, and there were various tools zip-tied to boards on the wall. We shuffled in and took seats. I grabbed the one closest to the door. I hated having to get up in front of a room of people I didn't know.

We all looked straight ahead as she leaned against the whiteboard, saying nothing, and forcing us to revert to memories of fifth grade math teachers, rulers, and Van Halen videos.

"Are you teaching us?" Someone on the other side of the room, a large pot bellied bald man probably in his mid forties, asked.

"No," she said. "That would be Shawn. He should be here momentarily." Then, without a reason, she strut between the tables, and out of the room. I still have no idea why she lingered against the whiteboard in the first place.

"Man," the guy next to me said, "her face is like dogshit, but I would fuck that bitch for fucking days with that body. Fuck!"

A few of the guys nodded and smiled. Some did nothing. I didn't like knowing the guy next to me probably had a dick as hard as the table at that moment.

Another guy came in, wearing company colors. "Hey guys," he said. "I'm Shawn. Sorry to keep you waiting." I immediately pictured him playing hacky-sack at a Dave Matthews concert, over-using (well, just using) "bro" and wearing Birkenstocks year round. Eventually, it turned out that I wasn't too far off.

We went around the room, giving short introductions about ourselves. Names, what we did before this, why we joined the company and other lies. I was last.

"My names is James. I used to work with the disabled. I needed a job."

"Well, you're honest," said Shawn. "What do you like to do in your free time?"

No one else had gotten the extra question. I wasn't prepared. "Drink."

He and a few others laughed. "Aw, bro, I brew my own beer. It's fucking fantastic. You ever brew?"

"No."

"Oh. You a beer man?"

"If it's around."

"What do you like to drink?"

"Alcohol."

"Oh, easy to please, I guess, right?" Shawn said.

I said nothing. He looked at me, and then spoke to the class. It was going to be a six week training program. Two days in the class, three in the field. We would get assigned field trainers and ride along with them in their vans. We would make ten dollars an hour. We would get some tools, but we would need to buy a whole lot more. I texted Marie.

"I am going to need to buy tools."

Shawn handed out large plastic binders and a plastic-wrapped bundle of papers. We assembled our "books", and opened to the first page. There were three thousand, that we would have to cover in twelve days.

"How many pages are we covering a day?" I asked.

"Depends. Why?"

"Just wondering when we'll be done today."

"Oh, man. You should probably try not to think like that in this job. You're done when you're done."

"Estimate?"

He laughed. "Bro, I don't know. Like, four, maybe?"

I nodded. I didn't like Shawn.

I texted Marie again. "Should be home around 430 I think."

The morning dragged on. We read page after page, watched training videos with smug assholes, and listened to Shawn drag on and on about who the fuck knows what. Eventually, around noon, he said, "All right guys, lunch. See you in an hour. Don't be late."

I was out of the room before he could finish the sentence. My back ached. My legs had fallen asleep, and the endless bro-droning was giving me a fucking blood clot. I needed tacos.