Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor
\nat a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers.
\nMrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths
\nof talkative students by the time she neared retirement,
\nand Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day,
\ndidn\u2019t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers,
\na fact that didn\u2019t stop him from tinkering
\nin our basement until the house was consumed by flame.<\/p>\n
I used to want to be this bad at a job.
\nI wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings
\nwhen the power point slides were already dissolving
\none into another, but I had this bad habit
\nof showing up on time
\nand more sober than any man should be
\nwhen working audio\/visual hospitality
\nin a three star hotel that was a four star hotel
\nbefore he started working there.<\/p>\n
When the entire North Atlantic blacked out,
\nevery soul in the Hyatt Regency Dearborn flooded
\nthe parking lot panicked about terrorists and rapture,
\nwhile I plugged in microphones and taped down cables
\nby flashlight\u2014you know, in case whatever cataclysm
\nunfolded didn\u2019t preempt the meetings. Meetings,
\nbefore which I\u2019d convince a children\u2019s hospital
\nto pay fifteen dollars to rent a nine dollar laser pointer.
\nThirty-five bucks for a flip chart,
\nextra paper on the house. Is it good to be good at a job
\nif that job involves pretending to be a secret service agent
\nfor Phizer\u2019s George Bush impersonator? I don\u2019t know<\/p>\n
if it\u2019s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job,
\nbut there must be some kind of satisfaction
\nin doing a job so poorly, you\u2019re never asked to do it again.
\nI\u2019m not saying he\u2019s a hero, but there\u2019s a guy out there
\nwho overloaded a transformer and made a difference,
\nbecause in a moment, sweating through my suit,
\ngroping in the dark when my boss was already home,<\/p>\n
I learned that I\u2019d work any job this hard, ache
\nlike this to know that I could always ache for something.
\nThere\u2019s a hell for people like me where we shovel
\nthe coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces
\nthat burn the flesh from our bones nightly,
\nand we never miss a shift.<\/p>\n
BY\u00a0JAMAAL MAY<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.jamaalmay.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday November 13 \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job\u201d What\u2019s sweet about Thanksgiving, at least one of the sweet things, is a 3 day work week followed … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2017\/11\/JamaalMay.jpg\")
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