Dangerous Folks...

The boss calls me over the radio. "Come up front. I need you to help someone."

That means its either a friend of his, or someone he can get something from. I walk in from stone yard outside.

The guy who he's talking to is short, wearing a black t-shirt and those Adidas running pants that only the wops wear. His hair is thinning, gray, but he looks somewhat fit in the way that guys who jog alot do.

"Help this guy out. He needs a couple hundred wallstones. Just put the pallets in his truck."

"OK."

The short guy says something about pulling the truck around, and walks out the door. I'm about to follow him, and my boss grabs my shoulder.

"Be careful what you say to this guy. Don't fuck him around. He, uh...went to college for a while."

"Sure thing."

What the fuck does that mean, I'm thinking as I walk out the door. I get on the forklift, grab the two pallets worth of stone that he wants, and drive out to the box truck that's backed in the driveway. It's one of those that has the metal racking on the sides, and they're full of Pepsi bottles and other assorted sodas.

He opens the gate, and I put the first pallet in without a problem. As I'm sliding the second one in, he's yapping about something that's in GuidoSpeak, and I never know what the hell they're saying. I'm mostly just smiling and nodding.

For some reason the second pallet isn't going in nearly as easy, and I get out to see what I got caught on- it's the base of all these soda racks that's slowing me down. Suddenly it clicks: this guy works vending machines, and now I don't have to ask what the boss meant when he said that this guy "went to college." Fuck.

For the next ten minutes, I'm a lot more careful with that forklift.



When I walk back in, the boss asks me if he tipped me.

"Yea. He dropped me ten bucks."

"You got them all in OK?"

"Yea, no problem", I say, fingering the bill in my pocket.

"Good."