My boss at work had told me that he might be loaning me out to some construction crews in the near future to help out. We do a lot of schools, so there is always a huge rush to get things done toward the end of the summer. It's not construction in the traditional sense, thats just what we call our guys that do installation and testing of our systems. So yesterday, the ol' boss, Andy, walks into my cube with a hard hat and huge grin on his face and says, "What're you doing tomorrow." And I said, "It looks like maybe you had better tell me."
So this morning I arrived in Lewisville at Center Elementary school at 7am equipped with jeans, boots, safety glasses and a hard hat. I was introduced to Garry, who was really cool and was in charge of me for the day. We immediately went up to the roof and started working. At first, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is great, out here in the open air, working with my hands. Fuckin' A." That thought started to wane when the temperature hit about 95 and was completely gone into the 100's. All in all fairness, though, when my brother asked me if it was fun or sucky, I had to answer "both."
My job was to open up the control panel on all of these rooftop air conditioning units. Then I would find the unit on a layout of the building, match its physical label, find its position on the LAN, and then set dip switches on the controller to indicate its address. We did some other shit but that was the majority of my day. The coolest part was I got home at 3. Maybe I do belong in construction. Even though everyone else on the site was like REAAAALLLY a construction guy. We're talking handlebar mustaches, pot bellies, and rawhide skin. I got called an albino a few times. Then there were the obligatory Mexicans baking adobe bricks.
The only problem for me was that the roof was not even. There are two portions of it that are a good 6 feet higher than the rest, and about 11 of the rooftop units were on these two portions. And I had to get up to them. I don't exactly have "ups" but Garry suggested that I stand on a piece of adjacent equipment and then kinda jump up there. I am not some fucking gazelle. I am arthritic and unathletic. BUT, I am a problem solver. There was some kind of equipment about 4 feet from the platform that was about 3 feet tall. Any of you could have stairstepped your way up to the tall portion, but I have zero leg muscles. If I had tried to just hop and skip up there I would have eaten it and ended up with a faceful of gravel. So instead I did a wicked 180 in the air and did a sweet butt plant onto the high level. It was so fucking hilarious but no one was around to see me, so I had to sit and laugh by myself. My brother said the story was hard to understand and that I should illustrate it, so I am going to do just that.
|