Life in the Express Lane

March 21, 2014

I’m a painter by trade, so that’s what I’m busy doing when I’m not pretending to be a writer or a graphic artist.  I’m not gonna front and say that it’s my dream job, but that definitely doesn’t mean that I don’t like doing it either.  Plus, and I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but ok yes I do, I’m pretty good at what I do. 

This is a picture of us working at the market. Circa 2014

There are a lot of perks, like, for instance, I don’t have to work inside of an office tackle box like 95% of the country; I get to work in a lot of different locations on a variety of different projects; I get weekly gratification because of the quick turn around on most of our projects; and I don’t have to wear Khaki’s and a Polo and listen to some passive aggressive guy named Greg tell me about his kid’s tap dance recital by the water cooler every day.

One of the coolest ongoing projects that I have the pleasure of working on is a ginormous upscale shopping market in an uber hipster region of the metro-Detroit area.

It’s a night shift-only project, which is awesome for the first couple hours of the first couple of nights.  It seems like every time I walk in there to do a job that Frankie Valli song from the movie, Grease, is playing on the overhead speakers.  I think they do that on purpose, and I always feel like I’m in the climax scene of a really cool movie about painters or something.

*Slow Motion Entrance*

However, by hour four of every shift, and about 150 doo-op songs later, I want to swan-dive off the roof head-first.

Hey, Pop Trivia Time:

What is the most frequently asked question that I get asked as a painter while working at the market?

*Jeopardy Theme*

Answer:  Daily Double.

The most frequently asked question that I get as a painter while working at the market:

“Painting, eh?”

The world is chalk full (<–blatant grammatical error) of observant people, and I tip my cap to all of you eagle-eyed lookie-lou’s.

But anyways, this store is huge.  If I had to conservatively guess, there are probably about 40,000 employees working there because I’ve never seen the same person twice.  There’s like an employee-making portal or something somewhere in the store that these people come out of before they promptly begin stocking shelves and crushing bulk pineapple slice boxes.

One person who I know for sure works there on a regular basis is Matt; a highly attentive, very slow-talking, Asian night shift dude.

“Yeah, any one of those will work, Matt”

Matt is a cool guy, but our conversations are full of too much information and they take a lot of time to complete.  Matt gave us access to the intercom system the first night, so that if we ever need him for any reason, like, to move somebody’s coat or something, we could send out a page and bring him to the break room area where he will promptly move the coat for us.

As you might have already guessed, we’re abusing this privilege:

“Matt to the break room; we have a thermostat question.  Not sure if 68 degrees is the preferred temperature in here or not.

“Matt to the break room;  we’re gonna need some imported beer up here pretty soon.  If that’s cool with you.”

“Matt to the break room; we ran out of coffee.”

“Matt to the break room; we’re gonna need some help finding a spatula.”

Tonight is the third night of the project.  My eyes are scratchy right now.  I feel like hammered shit.  I’m over-caffeinated.  I’m listening to my neighbor talk about her appointment with her podiatrist this afternoon on the front porch.  I’m crazy-laughing.

But that’s life in the Express Lane.  Cue the Frankie Valli.

*Puts on Shades*

*Pages Matt*

Salute \m/

Written by Adam Posted in Blogging, humor, Non-fiction, Short Story, weird shit Tagged with blogging, ChowderHead, do it yourself painting, Frankie Valli, humor, humour, life, non-fiction, Painting, Painting jokes, painting tips and tricks, short story