Wednesday, November 12, 2008
At Least I KnowWhere I Stand
One of the reasons we are constantly yelling at the tourists to “Get down!!” when they decide it’s acceptable to climb up on the driver’s seat of the airboats we drive is because the potential for them to fall OFF of that and get hurt is high. One of the things that was drilled in to my head when I first started this job was exactly how to get off the driver’s seat because it is easy to fall off of these things and get hurt.
(No that’s not me but that is one of our boats.)
I’ve fallen once. As I was docking, the front end of the boat hit the dock first instead of the back end and I was too busy looking at the idiot tourists who were standing RIGHT at the edge of the dock to make sure they didn’t get hurt and didn’t notice that the front end was going to hit first. I was climbing down, the front end hit, I went through the air, split second decision later I twisted in the air to prevent massive injury and landed in the back seat. Embarrassing? Yes. Injured? Just a giant bruise on my behind. Only one person at work knew about it. Because of the embarrassment, I asked her not to say anything.
Of course, she did. Because she is one of those I was talking about in the last post. Can’t keep her fucking yap shut about a damn thing.
No, it was not out of concern. You don’t know her, I do. It was NOT out of concern.
Anyway, this morning, I was going to pull my boat around to clean it up for the day. It was tied up to another boat, a small boat, that was not tied very well to the dock and it also only has one end to tie up instead of two. That makes this small boat move around a lot. Add in some wind. I don’t have anything sturdy to use to kick my boat out to get going.
This morning, while trying to kick my boat out on unsturdy surface, I started to fall in the water. Like hell if I’m going to fall in to the water. It’s not so much because of alligators. It’s because of the embarrassment factor, again. One leg, up to the shin, went in the water and I fought like hell to keep the rest of me out of the water.
Remember the wind?
Well, it swung my boat back and slammed in to me, right in the right kidney, and I was fighting to get back up in between two boats. Oh, should I mention how much these fucking things weigh? About 1500 pounds. Have that slam you in the kidney and tell me how it feels.
So, I do manage to get myself back up but now I’m in pain. Jesus fuck that hurt like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, it hurt so much, that I had to just stand there for a second trying to even breathe. Another driver came over right at that time and saw me. He’s not the kind to blurt shit out so I told him why I couldn’t move. He got my boat for me, parked it and said to just take a seat.
I tried that. Couldn’t sit. The pain in my back was on fire. I learned that we were going to have a lot of people coming in this morning and I really needed to clean the boat. Couldn’t fucking do it. Asked a co-worker to help me. (Another who doesn’t talk shit.) He helped me out and also told me to take a seat and just relax.
Couldn’t sit.
I finally realized, I’m not going to be able to get up and down off the fucking boat today. I was going to have to swallow my pride and tell the boss what happened. That is hard for me to do. I’d rather suffer through the pain than fucking tell anyone I fell off a boat. Or in the water.
So I told him. And instead of asking, “Are you ok?” or anything like that, all he could say was, “You fall off the boats a lot.”
That seriously pissed me off. I replied, “I do not fall off the boats a lot. I’ve fallen once.” (A year and a half of working there, I fall off the boat one time and now it’s “a lot”? What kind of fucking math is that?) He just stared at me, all angry.
The fuck.
Then he says, “I suppose you mean you want to go home.”
Now, not really. I knew I just needed to lie down for about an hour, take some Ibuprofen and I’d probably be ok. But I knew I wouldn’t get that. I knew I would get some bullshit asking for just an hour. So I just said, “Yes”.
Isn’t that nice? I have 1500 pounds of boat slam in to my back and catch me between two boats and all I get is, “You sure do fall off boats a lot.” Which is entirely untrue. And this is the sort of thing I was talking about in my last post. When people run their fucking mouths, things get blown out of proportion, lies are made up and spread around and everything turns to shit.
I’m not the only one who has fallen. A lot of people out here have hurt themselves on these boats. Multiple times. We just never fucking tell anyone if no one sees us. We deal. If someone sees us, we get laughed at. And they talk about it for years. But today, it was just too much pain and I couldn’t fake it off like I did the ONE fucking time I ever fell.
So, not only do I have asshole, gossiping, loud mouthed co-workers, I have a boss who doesn’t give a shit. Are we starting to get the picture here? I like driving air boats. That part I’m still not tired of. It’s why I keep this job. I actually enjoy it when I’m on the airboat. Even on the worst tours, when I have a bunch of cock smokers on board, I still enjoy it more than my best day in any corporate America job.
But the atmosphere that surrounds this place....between the boss and the co-workers...I’m so over it. I also don’t like those who play both sides of the fence. I’m sitting here thinking about what other job I could get. I do not want to work in an office again. Now that I’ve been out, I want to stay out. But I’m really done with this kind of treatment.
No, it’s not just me. The boss doesn’t like anyone and every one talks about everyone else around here. It’s really all very sickening. We’ll see what happens in the near future. Maybe the boss will fire me for “falling off the boats a lot”. Maybe that’s just an excuse. Who the hell knows. I do know you can’t trust but one or two people around here and even those I question some times.
And while I don’t want a whole lot of attention put on me for something, if I hurt myself so bad I tell you I need a moment, it would be nice if you would ask if I’m ok. Oh well. At least my boss isn’t a phony. There is no phony concern or care because he doesn’t give a shit about any of us. We all know that. Doesn’t make you feel any better but at least there’s that.
Where are the adults? Can I work with them?
