We Can be Happy Underground. . .

To get to my new job, I had to descend a staircase into a sauna-like cavern with books stacked everywhere. Sauna. After biking across town to get to work, the last thing I wanted to do was hang out in a 100-plus degree basement.

And if hanging out was the last thing I wanted to do, then what I actually did requires a new word to indicate its relative position. Shortly after manning my post at the register, I volunteered to assemble whatever was in the stack of white boxes on the floor next to the counter. Me and Rock DJ open the boxes and stare for a few minutes at the parts and pieces of a 6-and-a-half foot tall metal bookshelf.

I have this thing when I have to focus: sometimes I forget to breathe. So, I was standing and squatting and tightening bolts and balancing shelves--which all comes together really nicely and with little fuss--all the while taking only 4 or 5 breathes per minute. The combo of jungle swelter and oxygen deprivation loosened the gates on my sweat glands and soon my all-orange t-shirt was no longer a solid color. We were assembling the shelves right in the middle of the main thoroughfare (not my idea) and soon the word was out: go around the smelly guy in the middle aisle. A coworker walks by and mentions that I am "doing God's work."

My boss didn't approve of the shelf-building scheme and when I asked where to put the completed shelf, he tells me, "Yeah, that was my wife's thing. I didn't even want those shelves. I just got suckered into paying for em. So, I don't know. Just find a place to hide it I guess."
This was the first of many non-answers I got from my new boss. Others included: "I don't know. Just figure out something" and "Yeah, that's something they took on themselves. I'm not even sure what they're doing."

Boss's wife is very nice, but also very stern-looking. When she saw Book Mover 1 and I assembling the last shelf in the furnace room with 3 inches of workspace on either side of the metal bars, she asked, "[My husband] didn't make you come in here, did he? Or say anything rude about being out there?" I know she had our backs, but her stern look made me feel so accused.

Other co-workers include:

1. Book Buy Back-er: this dude has tattoos of french poems on his forearms and eats baked goods compulsively. I saw him polish off three muffins in a sitting (and by sitting I mean about 30 seconds) and wash them down with pumpkin bread. Ten minutes later, he was eating double chocolate chip cookies.

2. Counter help 1: cheap beer connoisseur. He had very good advice on where to find Blatz.

3. Counter help 2: Regarding a "hip" co-worker, he said, "Hmmm, she might fit very well into the fold." When I asked him what the fold was, he responded that he and his wife called their group of bizarre and interesting friends "the fold." The fold has movie night. When I told him that the fold sounded like a cult, he agreed: "We are kinda like a cult."

As expected, there are many characters at this job. So far, I like it, but that good feeling doesn't get to last too long--I start my non-profit job on the 4th of September.