Stanley
decided to stick with Donald because he had a family support.
And
so, began the daily trudged from his home in Belleville to the Fairfield warehouse
complex on Bloomfield Ave.
Since
Donald had started the business in 1968, Stanley must have started with him
right from the beginning.
I
was aware of him as the neighbor next door after I started at the card company
in 1972.
And
he was still there when I got hired as driver in June 1974.
I
had had such frequent contact as a neighboring employee that the transition was
easier than it might have been had I gone to a strange place because I knew him
and knew he knew me.
I
needed to learn was the job the stops and to put up with Donald unpredictable
moods.
Stan
and Donald were both moody but in different ways.
Donald
was manic, an agitated gerbil not much different from the Energizer Bunny,
always moving, always ambitious for something more than he had. If he did not
yet have a complete clear vision of what it is he wanted, then he had a clear vision
of the road that would take him somewhere better than it was at any given
moment.
Stan
was a turtle. He followed the same road Donald did but did not -- despite his
dreams of success -- seem in a hurry to get anywhere.
Sure,
he wanted to make more money and wear white shirt. Yet once he fell into the
situation with Donald he trudged along as if he really had nowhere to go nor
wanted directions on how to get anywhere.
More
to the point, the products Stan was hired to pack scared the hell out of him.
Accustomed
to dealing with steel -- which was for the most part indestructible -- Stan
suddenly faced items contain in glass, perfumes and fragrances so costly he
sometimes handled them as if they were nitroglycerin.
Stanley
was so obsessive in his need to pack everything so securely that an atom bomb could
not have caused it to break -- though some drivers might have managed it.
Orders
took many times longer to get ready than was actually necessary. This seemed frustrate
Donald to no end and was the source of the most disputes between them, one the
urging the other to hurry in a constant game of the unstoppable force seeking
to move the unmovable one.
While
Donald disliked damaged goods, he already set up a system with the
manufacturers to get credit for anything destroyed in shipment. We had whole
shelves dedicated to these, a thankless and stench-filled task of going through
them set aside for off-season when we mostly had little else to do.
Stan
would have done better had he pursued a career as a teacher since he tended to
lecture me or anyone else as we worked.
He
often talked about his past and how disappointed he was with the bargain he had
made with Donald, yet -- as if a bargain with the Devil -- he could not get out
of it.
Working
across the backing table from him, I learned a lot of how he'd come there about
his early years at the steelworks in Harrison.
“I
grew up with metal,” he told me. “My old man made me sweep up the shavings
during summer vacations when I was young. Then took me on as an apprentice when
I was still in high school.”
Stan
blistered his fingers on hot metal and he pulled splinters of steel out of the
backs of his hands -- the scars of both showing like shameful tattoos he kept
from sight as often as possible.
When
his hands were not in his pockets, he kept them hidden in a box and when
exposure was unavoidable, he gripped a clipboard to expose only his thumbs.
Stanley
never talk to me about his personal problems. But over time -- especially when
he became manager at the new warehouse -- I would overhear him on the phone
with his wife, talking about a bounced check or a telephone bill from her long-distance
calls to her sick sister in California.
Stan
repeated talked about those seven years of hell, keeping himself going with the
idea that the hell would end when the day finally handed him the diploma.
“I
hated steel,” he said. “I hated it smell when the torches cut it. I hated the
touch of the warm metal when I had to help move it after it was cut. The place
was always hot, and I was always dirty, sweating my balls off and stinking of
metal even after I took a shower. I used to go out for dinner sometimes with my
family and I could smell the metal in the restaurant. I wanted to quit the job
a million times, but I knew I could not afford to I kept telling myself it
would get better and wouldn't always be like that. That's what got me through
those seven years.”
He
told me he saw himself working in an office building in Manhattan or Newark as
one of those “soft men” with “soft jobs” he always saw you going into and
coming out of buildings made of glass, carrying briefcases, and dressed as if
every day was a graduation ceremony -- suits always pressed nobody breaking out
in a sweat.
While,
he didn't get a solid job offer from the places he applied to, a few brought
him in on as trial jobs slightly better paying then the mailroom. They were not
at all what he thought the degree would qualify him for.
“I
didn't feel right in any of those places,” he said. “I kept looking around and
scratching my head wondering what I was doing in a place like that. Nobody
seemed to do any work or very little. When I asked someone what they needed me
to do next, they told me to slow down and not make them look bad by doing too
much work. I know I should have stayed
in one of those places if I could have then I wouldn't be putting in the kind
of hours I am now.”
Donald’s
offer seemed attractive at the time.
“He
said I wouldn't make a lot of money at first but that I would be on the ground
floor of a growing business,” Stanley said. “If I showed a little patience, I
would end up better off than I would if I worked in one of those corporations.”
Later,
after we moved to the new warehouse, Stanley came to really regret his choice.
“It's
like I never left the steel company,” he said. “but instead of being out on the
floor doing honest work, I'm the boss I hated when I was working, and everybody
hates me the way I hated my boss back then.”
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