Kenny is the chief fire builder and camp cook for a rag-tag team of dreamers. He holds a BA in English and has worked as a cook in a variety of different food service establishments. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded a short lived, but delicious, fried hand pie company. He loves wandering around flea markets and hiking through the woods. He has a passion for pizza and good beer. |
It’s been almost a month since our van, Big Red, was stolen in St. Louis. In that month, we have rented at least five cars, bought one lemon van, moved our trailer to central Tennessee, had Big Red recovered (thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend who saw a post about it on Facebook), and begun our winter jobs as Christmas robot elves for Amazon. The saga of Big Red, including its theft, our efforts to make it to Tennessee for our job at Amazon, its rediscovery and our ultimate reunion, is going to be for another post. There are just too many details and hairpin curves in that story to keep it clean and simple. This is just a post to tell you all that we are back with our old van, Big Red, and are safe in Tennessee. As I say, we got Big Red back. Which may lead some of you to question: “But didn’t you buy another van when Big Red disappeared?” The answer is, yes, we did. We bought a 1995 GMC Vandura off of Craigslist in St. Louis. We bought it because we never thought we’d see Big Red again, and we needed to get us and our trailer down to Tennessee for our job at Amazon. The day after we bought the GMC, it began to have trouble starting. Once we got it started, it ran fine, though, so we hitched up the trailer, and drove the three hundred fifty odd miles to our Tennessee campground. We left it running while we unhitched, then drove it to a mechanic in Murfreesboro. It sits there now, needing a new fuel filter, fuel pump, and fuel tank. So…. Our mechanic has been incredibly patient with us. The plan is to sell the GMC to the mechanic or a wholesaler who the mechanic knows. It will be sold for a loss. There is no way around it, really. We don’t want to put the money into the GMC, we don’t have time to sell it on Craigslist, and we don’t need a second vehicle. But, it got us down to our winter job at Amazon, which we were not certain of making it to. Big Red is running fine, but still needs a new steering column. The mechanic just located a column and it will be another few weeks until the part arrives and we’re able to take Big Red in to get worked on due to our crazy work schedule. We are working at an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We are required to work 50 hours (10 hour days, Sunday-Thursday) with the option of working as many as 60 hours a week. Of the three weeks we have left, we’re tentatively planning to work two 60-hour weeks, but — we’ll see what happens. The work is awful. I would not describe it as “hard” or “difficult” work. But it is mind numbing and monotonous. Angelica and I work as “pickers.” Our job is to push around a cart and carry a scanner. The warehouse is an immense space, three stories tall, and filled with shelves of merchandise. The scanner tells us where to go and what to pick. The shelves are organized by numbers and letters, rows and columns, like a massive real-life spreadsheet. The computer knows what is on each shelf, the contents of which are for the most part random. Scan the shelf, scan the item. If the scanner sounds the good beep, all is well, put the item in your tote, and move on. If the scanner sounds the bad beep, try again. We have been told by some of the other pickers who wear Fitbits that they walk between thirteen and nineteen miles during a ten hour shift. It feels about right. We walk a lot, and our legs and joints feel it. We eat a lot, because we are burning calories. They call it the Amazon diet. We live about twenty miles from the Fulfillment Center at a campground in the Tennessee hills. It’s a lovely spot. We have had a few days off from dealing with the van ordeal and work, and we have capitalized on the opportunities to go on hikes with the dog (she really deserves it after this month!). The hills have been breathtaking! Thanks goes out to all of our friends and family who have rallied behind us since Big Red was kidnapped. We never thought we’d see her again. We got lucky, and the van came back, but the whole ordeal cost a good chunk of change and created a whole bunch of new grey hairs. Thanks again for all of your kindness, love, concern, and support. We would be lost without you.
1 Comment
11/30/2020 11:07:11 pm
This is highly informatics. crisp and clear. I think that everything has been described in systematic manner so that reader could get maximum information and learn many things.
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