In September 2003, I worked at a mattress factory for a temp agency. For two days, I did nothing but slide mattresses into long, thick plastic bags and seal them up with a hot iron.  I took turns working the iron with a man who had recently arrived from Italy.

On the second day we had about two hours left on our shift when a sharply dressed, slightly pudgy man with glasses and neatly combed brown hair appeared.  He clearly put a lot of work into his hair.  It was very clean looking. Shiny.  It hung down gracefully on both sides of his head just past the middle of his ears. He looked like a grade six choir teacher who went home at night, listened to instrumental guitar albums and mumbled, “You know, this makes a lot of sense,” while reading Aryan Brotherhood Monthly.

Aside from his appearance I knew he was the guy in charge by what came out of his mouth.  He talked loud because he could.  He dashed around and tread that fine line between chumming it up with the guys and letting his power show.  “Yeah, ya gotta watch out for those mattresses!  They’re heavy!  Hey make sure you guys are meeting the quota!”

On this occasion, he marched up to my partner and me to say, “Guys, if you’re gonna go fast ya gotta wanna go fast!”  Then, with his hair swaying like curtains he took the iron from me and performed a drama of obscene hilarity. 

“Come on bitch! Get in there you slut! Oh you fucking skank, don’t do this to me! No you don’t! Don’t do this to me slut!” he bellowed at the mattresses as he drove them into the bags one after another and sealed them up with a speed that put us to shame.  When he was finished bagging five mattresses in the time that it took us to do one he wiped the sweat from this brow and said, “Alright guys, I think they need ya over at the loading docks.”