Cassius

I can actually feel the calluses growing on my hands. Fridays are our big day at work. Let me set the stage here for you. We have in the ballroom 1500 chairs. Obnoxious teenagers exit. We enter and stack all of these chairs. We were short handed today so when we began stacking there was no "we", only me. I had stacked almost two cartfuls of chairs before another girl came to help. Eventually there were six of us stacking, all girls. The guys were taking down the stage. I'm not really a sexist, but it's irritating to have guys (who are known for having upper body strength) taking down risers (not very difficult) when they could be stacking chairs. Us girls can do it fine, it just seems a little odd to have the guys do the lighter lifting.

So we cleared the ballroom. Midway into cart 5 I caught my finger. Man alive that was painful. I had to leave to go run it under cold water, and once I came back it throbbed slightly but was otherwise fine. I alone stacked over 13 carts worth of chairs.There are 45 chairs per cart. Total, I stacked 589 chairs. Each chair weighs 15 pounds, so I stacked 8,835 pounds worth of chairs. Not bad for an hour's work. Keep in mind this is all pre-set type stuff. We cleared the ballroom of all these chairs so we could reset it for the EFY banquet.

There were 6 or 7 of us when we should have had twice as many people. Where was the other crew? All the chairs we'd stacked were dropped at the tables by D and I set them out . It went on that way, just the two of us doing quite a bit of work. We'd set half the ballroom before some reinforcements came. But catering came then too to set out their tablecloths and place settings and stuff. And we hurried even more to keep ahead of them. I pulled chairs for other people to go behind and straighten, 3 and 4 at a time. Don't tell OSHA.

We were almost finished by 2pm and it was then that the other crew showed up. I was more than somewhat miffed. The main thing I kept thinking was, "who do you think you are?! Honestly, showing up after all the work is done. What the crap is that about?" I was exhausted.

I was about to head for lunch when my supervisor asked me to count all the chairs in the ballroom. Up and down each row straining to pick out the chairs with my eyes until they all ran together into a maroon nothingness. 346, 763, 1203, 1497. Four chairs over;possibly the closest we've ever come to getting an exact count.

We spend a few hours setting up the ballroom for this banquet, but as soon as that's over we tear it all down in 30-45 minutes. It's quite the rush I must say. Catering is supposed to get a head start of 2-3 rows. (That's what we told the new people in our meeting today. We laid out all sorts of rules, but everyone lost their heads and dove right in.) Then we follow right behind, throwing chairs and flipping tables while slipping on butter pats. And then there's the yelling - not just to be heard above the din, but honest to goodness yelling, usually catering telling its people, "hurry up! Custodial's coming right behind us! Don't ever roll butter into the cloths -take 'em off and pick 'em up at the end of the table."

And we run. It's us at our fastest, scrambling to get everything done. And even once we've tossed all the tables and chairs the floor needs to be cleaned. At that point the DJ will have set up, so we squirt and we scrub while the lights swirl and a hefty beat is pumped out into the air and there are blue curtains set up to keep the EFYers at bay. Then I vamoose, because the worst is the smell. The smell of 1500 teens and pre-teens crammed into one dark room. Their sweat fills the air. Mmmmm - smells like teen spirit.

And this will go on every Friday between now and the end of the summer. And I will continue to glory in it and exhaust myself setting up a banquet for people I cannot stand, because there's something satisfying about it all, about buckling down and doing manual labor, about knowing you're strong enough to lift 15,000 pounds worth of chairs in one shift. It's challenging, and I enjoy that to a great degree. I may not feel the same way by summer's end. In fact, I know I won't, but for now I'm going to enjoy the feeling of a job well done.