The Triple B

I work in the loading zone of a garden center, mostly with cement and stones. I load patio blocks, loose boulders, bags of rock, bales of hay, fill propane tanks, etc. It's not bad as far as staying in shape goes; I consider the job all the endurance and GPP work I'll ever need (as long as you remember it's GPP that I do while smoking a cigarette and most likely hungover- there's nothing better than having a racous, wild Saturday night where you drank so much you woke up naked having pissed yourself, and then having to go into work at 9 in the morning on a Sunday.)

There always manages to be some old fucking guy who snuck around the gates and is there at 8:55, ready and waiting to bombard me with questions. They are always chipper, walking while swinging their arms like he's trying to fucking fly, with an enthusiastic, "Hey how we doing today!". It's always the same.

It's kind of funny to me, because I tend to already be on my third cup of coffee, trying in vain to sober up, unlit cigarette hanging out of my mouth because I either think it's lit or I lost my lighter the night before and have no means of fire; I also know I reek like booze. My answers to their asinine questions are normally slow and drawling, simply because I can't manage to get them out any quicker, and the words stumble around my pulled down Boston hat and squirm into the air.

Sometimes, I'll get people who I actually recognize because they have pissed me off so badly in the past. One that comes to mind is the woman I refer to as the "Triple B", which is an acronym for "Broken Bag Bitch".

You see, when you get ten or twelve trailers of bagged stone in a year, a few of the bags are bound to break, either by mishandling, the ride in from Pennsylvania, etc. You can't do much with them, and most of us that deal with them end up throwing them out. As a last ditch attempt of getting rid of them, we give them out two-for-one, which is really a decent deal for the consumer. But no, there's gotta be a couple assholes that ruin it for everybody. One of these assholes is the Triple B.

She drives in innocently enough, in her beat up white Dodge Caravan with black hubcaps. When I see people like this come in, I give them breaks, being as I figure they are working class fucks like myself. This bitch? Absolutely not.

She gets out of her truck, short, squat, with grey hair that came too early, waddling towards the wet pallets of mulch and stone, and utters that phrase, "Do you have any broken bags of anything?". She seems nice enough at first, but as you get to know her you can tell this broad ain't playing with a full deck. Flighty is not the word for what she is.

If the guys that work there remember who she is, she doesn't get helped at all; eventually she gets tired of being ignored and starts dragging the bags to the front of the yard herself. I'd like to say I feel bad for her, but I've moved thousands of pounds of rocks for her over the years, and never gotten any kind of tip; in the book of the hourly laborer, this puts you in the first circle of hell, right next to Judas.

I've worked there for so long that I have seniority over all the other guys that work, so I don't ever have to help this bitch anymore. No more lifting heavy shit for this freaky, cheap broad; no, I make the younger guys do it. They learn, the same way I did, that she is a cunt- they load all the rocks of all different types into her car, only to get a half-aware wave and an absent minded, "Thanks".

Once, just once, I'd like to grab her scream, "Well bitch, 'Thanks' doesn't pay that bar tab, or put a dollar in that strippers' G-string, or pay my fucking car insurance; so pull out your damn wallet once in a while and throw us a couple fucking dollars for helping your decrepid, pathetic ass out."

One day....