Made To Be Broken

by RWS/PNN

Revolutionary worker scholar I am--that's what POOR Magazine calls me--and I am out of work again. You might remember an article I wrote a few months back where I spoke of the non-profit organization in the city that gave me the boot after a year of altruistic service to my fellow man and woman. The organization is still there--in fact I saw the woman who fired me. She came through the front door of a donut shop on Market Street. I darted to the rear of the donut shop like a mouse. All the verbs and adjectives and expletives I'd saved for a chance meeting with this woman disappeared. I waited for her to leave. She took her time. Some revolutionary worker scholar I turned out to be.

Funny thing about being unemployed is that I keep running into the people I used to work with--people I helped get jobs. I see them on the streets. To be honest I try to avoid them but I can't escape 100% of the time. It's not that they are not pleasant, good, personable human beings--they are but they ask me inevitably if I have found a job yet. I tell them no and they start telling me of positions that might be available. They take out napkins and wrinkled business cards, scribbling on them with pens low on ink. One fellow gave me the phone number of a friend who runs a towing service in South City. "You'd be good at it" I was told. "Be good at what?" I asked. "Towing cars" he replied, incredulously. This was a guy I had helped get a job as a janitor in a church. He was cleaning the toilet in the house of the lord and giving me a tip for a job in hell. I took the number and tossed it.

Despite my ducking and dodging and meandering ways I ended up finding a job at another non-profit organization (a temporary assignment). My title was vocational rehabilitation counselor in a job-training program serving people with various mental and physical disabilities. On my first day I walked into the bathroom. Inside was a Chinese guy at the urinal with his pants down at his ankles letting it go. He stood with his hands on his hips staring at the ceiling whistling that US Marines tune:

From the halls of

Montezuma

To the shores

Of Tripoli

I turned around and walked out thinking, my God, what have I gotten myself into? My job was teaching job skills to the participants--about 25-30 of them--some of who were monolingual Chinese speakers. My co-teachers were young, in their 20's, and I wondered if they had ever been fired from a job. We covered various topics such as job interviewing techniques, skill assessment and how to make a good impression at a job interview. I would be at the front of the class, giving my bullshit lecture, drawing from my bullshit experience that really wasn't bullshit at all. I would watch the reactions of the participants. Some of them--no, most of them would doze off. I didn't take it personally though. I just figured that these folks were tapping into their subconscious minds; perhaps they were cultivating solutions to the world's problems such as houselessness, police brutality and world hunger. Rather than rudely and abruptly wake them, I watched as they dreamed.

The job-training program included hands-on work in the warehouse where participants sorted through boxes of mosaic tiles destined for hobbyists who use them to spice up bland picture frames or make coasters for frosty libations. I watched as the workers counted mini tiles that resembled cheez-it crackers into cellophane packages. Some folks weighed the tiles and others heat-sealed the cellophane packs while others stuck labels on cellophane packages. The division of labor was concise and everyone did their jobs. On occasion, a worker or two would break into a fit of laughter out of the blue. I would watch these folks from the corner of my eye, laughing inside. I caught the eye of a fellow in the midst of a laughing fit; I smiled at him in a display of laughter solidarity. He quickly lost his laughter and asked me, "what the hell are you laughing at?" I turned away and tried to walk with a supervisory gait (which generally means, without grace).

The workers were paid piece rate. Some had not worked in decades and some had been in the training program for a decade.

Initially I was told that I would be filling in at this program for a woman on maternity leave. My job was to end upon her return--which was scheduled for December 24th, Christmas eve. I began to enjoy the job and the people I was around. The guy I saw in the urinal on my first day whistling the US Marines anthem turned out to be a pretty revolutionary guy. He blurted out the following one day in class: Just because you were born in America or have a job in this country doesn't make you better or your work more valuable than anybody else's. I thought, here's a guy with some balls; how often do you ever hear that on a gig?

Another participant of the program going by the name of Big Mack approached me and asked me if I were a client. I told him that I was the new trainer. He then asked me if I liked old school music. I answered in the affirmative and he reached into his pocket and produced 3 cassette tapes. He told me of his side business making "mix tapes". "Yeah man" he said, "I got the stylistics, Blue Magic, Switch, Bobby Womack, all that shit". He offered me a deal--3 tapes for 5 dollars. He had that look in his eye that told me music was his life. I signed up for 6 tapes. He informed me that the other tapes might take a little time to produce because he is buying a new cassette player to replace his broken one. He told me what songs he was going to put on that tape and I could taste that music as he spoke. It didn't matter that I no longer listened to cassettes or I hadn't owned a cassette player in years--it was in his eyes, the music of life. He asked me to loan him a dollar for cup o' noodles. My tapes are pending.

I spent some of the classroom time reading poetry. I read Langston Hughes, Bukowski and a little bit of Raymond Carver. It was hit and miss. Sometimes the poetry went well and sometimes folks dozed off. Some of my coworkers probably wondered what poetry had to do with a job-training program. It had everything to do with it. Making a poem is the hardest work of all. All those cellophane bags stuffed with poems; all those heat sealed bags filled with poems; all those punch presses punching out poems--what a beautiful thing.

One funny thing I remember were the stickers that were used on the cellophane packages destined to hold those mosaic tiles. The stickers were small, like the kind you see on bananas. They read: Made to be broken. I got into the habit each day of putting that sticker on my chest above my heart. My co-workers laughed and I'm sure the clients thought I was crazy. I sat among the workers, some laughing to themselves, some swaying and rocking back and forth. I fit in like a puzzle. Never had I known such peace at a job.

Christmas Eve finally came. I was summoned to the boss' office and told how much they liked me and how they wished they could retain my services. The woman who I filled in for had resigned but due to the budget crisis at city hall, the organization had been forced to eliminate the position.

I bid everybody farewell. I never got my mix tapes and to be honest I never would have played them anyway. What I got was something better: laughter and poetry and true revolution on the job with folks who supposedly had mental/physical disabilities. Those people were among the most sane I've ever met and on a job that's rare to find. I left that place with my discharge letter and my final check. As I approached the door for the last time I peeled the "Made to be broken" sticker off my chest. I went outside.