I look forward to Thursdays like the rest of the world anticipates the weekend. The majority of guests attend the luau and the accompanying feast of local cuisine on Kauai. A lucky few get the night off while the rest of us show up to an empty-ish restaurant in our flower-patterned Hawaiian shirts. Wearing short sleeves makes me feel lighter as though customers expect less of me as less of my body is covered.
Although a fair portion of my coworkers often gripe about enduring the same shit on a different day, not every day is an exact replica of the one before. There are days of exception, days in which I feel more like a sailor rather than a regular guy who happens to work in a restaurant that happens to be floating on the sea.
On Saturdays we dock in Honolulu, where we dump off passengers and refill with a new batch of pot-bellied senior citizens prone to possessing zero self-awareness amidst high traffic areas as well as a dangerously apathetic stance toward their diet. In addition to amassing another small town population, we get most of our provisions delivered on Saturday.
The provisions department is the epitome of manual labor. In order to secure a job in this field, one does not need to possess impressive cognitive abilities. Sharp minds are in short supply, and so are bodies. Thus, restaurant workers are required, every now and then, to lend our hands.
I slip into my blue jumpsuit that looks like a cross between kiddie pajamas and a mechanic's uniform. I don a pair of gloves and proceed to the second deck. A grimy elevator delivers a pallet stacked high with boxes filled with an assortment of food and beverages. JoAnne, a middle-aged black woman with sculpted forearms and a permanent scowl, operates the fork lift and drives the pallet into the refrigerated cavern called the fruit box. Here I stand with a thirty-ish Korean-American named James who possesses a penchant for mumbling and a strong desire to avoid teamwork.
JoAnne drops off the load as James and I stare at the massive pile of boxes before us. Each box contains six watermelons that accumulatively weigh sixty pounds. As the assistant storekeeper, it is James' responsibility to organize the giant cooler into neat columns of fruit. The old produce is to remain accessible so they can be used first, and the new stock is pushed to the back.
The fruit box is probably fifteen by thirty feet. The floor is silver and has those crisscross marks you find in the bed of a pick-up truck that transports a lot of heavy machinery. Shelves on one side of the room house Granny Smith apples and grapes of both colors. Boxes of Dole pineapple are stacked next to the papaya. This job is like playing Tetris in real life as we attempt to fit a week's worth of essential nutrients into a tiny chamber.
The task is simple: I lift the heavy watermelons onto a steel platform and then proceed to stack five more boxes on top. You may be wondering where the challenge arises, and superior minds would realize there is none, but superior minds do not often work in provisions, so problems frequently ensue. We finish with the watermelon, then James is stumped with the arrival of honeydew.
"Shit," James says, "Where am I gonna put this?"
I recall from an earlier conversation that James has worked here for two years and has expressed a lack of interest in performing the same actions over and over again for two round-trips around the sun.
"Don't you arrange the fruit the same way each week?" I ask.
"The shipments are different each week," he says, and I begin to wonder how much variation one can find inside such a cramped refrigerator. James freezes, lost in deliberation. I try to imagine the inner workings of his mind as he calculates the benefits of his limited possibilities.
"Fuck it," he says, "We'll get another pallet and put the honeydew next to the watermelon." A brilliant idea, I assure him, as that particular location is better than leaving the fruit to rot in the hallways that already smell faintly of overly ripe bananas.
After solving the honeydew puzzle, I am needed in the dry goods store, where many of my fellow waiters stand around a bag of Lays Ruffles and a jar of herb cheese dip freshly pilfered from cardboard boxes. Managers are rarely around, so the workers often steal a few incoming treats: a grape here, a sleeve of Oreos there. The greatest benefit of working in provisions, however, is that one gets to escape the guests for one shift. For roughly five hours, I don't have to wait on impatient, short-haired women with calves that resemble a series of marshmallows impaled on a stick.
I approach my coworkers, take off my gloves and grab a handful of chips. A skinny Puerto Rican fellow says that his muscles are growing. A dainty Filipino laughs at this while a tall Romanian guy takes his break away from this eclectic duo. A corn-rowed black woman with tattooed forearms and thick biceps walks past the door and into the bread storage.
Everyone is required to wear a name tag that also includes the city from which we were hired. Minor research has led me to conclude that the company recruits inner city workers from areas with weak economies. Many dishwashers are from suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and a vast majority of waiters come from Florida, the state that played a huge role in the 2008 economic collapse. Tent cities were popping up everywhere in the Sunshine State because of all the foreclosures of cookie-cutter neighborhoods built and then sold overnight to attract a new flock of snowbirds and recent retirees with poor credit histories.
Since the company is based out of Miami, it is easy for them to suck up all the Floridians desperate for jobs. I searched for two months and found nothing in St. Petersburg before I landed an interview at the Hilton in downtown Tampa. Now here I am lifting heavy boxes like a stevedore for a wage just above minimum alongside immigrants from poorer nations and the young American working class from areas of little economic promise.
When I look around in provisions, I often find that I am the only white American around. It is difficult to avoid treading in racist waters when I realize that members of my particular pigmentation are not often employed in these environs. Rather, almost all the department heads, major officers, and corporate hotshots are white; they are not the ones straining under the weight of sixty pounds of watermelon.
I don't want to feel like I shouldn't be here as though I am merely visiting and can come and go whenever I please. It is true: I am fortunate that I do not absolutely need this job unlike many of the international employees who have few choices but to stay here because this job is more reliable than the available options at home. I have observed the popular sentiment that certain individuals feel they are above such a line of work, but I find dignity in the type of labor that results in sweat stains under my arms.
JoAnne delivers another pallet consisting of strawberry preserves, corn starch, and various shapes of pasta. The waiters finish their chips and put their gloves back on. We dismantle another pallet in what seems like an endless series. We ask where each box should go, and JoAnne points a gloved finger and says, "Over there," until eventually we know exactly where everything belongs.
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