Today I ordered my coffee at the Starbucks at 78th and Lexington on my lunch hour from training a new seasonal package helper. It's expensive on the Upper East Side, so each day I'm bringing my lunch, which I eat along with a coffee at Starbucks while I sit and look out the window at the people passing by. Today no seats were available in the store when I ordered—which I'm finding is quite common in Manhattan--but as I walked toward the rear of the store not knowing what to do, a woman with a baby in a stroller got up and left. We made eye contact and smiled, a mutual understanding of my good fortune of being at the right place at the right time. I went right over and took the seat, a nice leather bench against the wall. A job interview was in progress on my right—a twenty-something professional Jamaican man was being interviewed by a twenty-something American woman. He looks like a young Forest Whitaker, whom I had recently seen in the movie The Last King of Scotland
. I think he did well in the interview, but he has one huge problem that she may not notice—his socks are hideous! He is wearing a nice, dark pinstripe suit, but his socks have alternating thick dark blue and gray bands around them with a large red band around the top of the sock. If the interviewer sees that, he's toast! Of course, she's wearing UGGs with tan leg warmers and a non-matching skirt, so she may not care. Besides, it looks like his legs are bent at an angle that will prevent her from seeing the socks. He's pretty slick the way he's doing that, I think to myself, and go back to eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, trying to pretend I'm not noticing what is happening next to me. But how can you not listen in on a job interview that is going on right out in the open? Of course, she'll probably hire him, and then he'll show up with his crazy socks on and everyone will wonder, “Who hired this guy?”
On the other side of me a man is typing on a laptop occasionally interspersed with long periods of just sitting and looking around. I can see he is updating his resume. This means I am sitting between two men looking for jobs, so I feel fortunate. But even the moment of gratitude doesn't change the fact that my borrowed brown UPS uniform is a size 36 waist when I'm a 32 and my uniform jacket is large enough to be a tent that sleeps four. I look ridiculous. I know what they are doing. Let's give the IT worker with the cushy job a humongous uniform and see how he makes out! One of the supervisors at the UPS Center laughs every time he sees me in it and is working on a good Native American name for me such as “Chief Big Coat” or a made-up name that means “he of big coat.” This might be a long assignment.
Finally lunch hour ends, so I get up, pull up my pants to my chest, zip up my jacket, and head back for the package car to start delivering packages again on the Upper East Side. Oh yes, while I was on lunch I also wrote this little ditty:
I deliver packages
On the Upper East Side
Designer purses
None made from Naugahyde
I smile at all of the doormen
Yet at the end of the day
My body aches
My mind feels dismay
I'm the UPS man
Wearing UPS brown
Sometimes this gig
Can get a man down
I'm a Teamster in a truck
A blue-collar guy
Delivering the stuff
I could never buy
On the Upper East Side.
. I think he did well in the interview, but he has one huge problem that she may not notice—his socks are hideous! He is wearing a nice, dark pinstripe suit, but his socks have alternating thick dark blue and gray bands around them with a large red band around the top of the sock. If the interviewer sees that, he's toast! Of course, she's wearing UGGs with tan leg warmers and a non-matching skirt, so she may not care. Besides, it looks like his legs are bent at an angle that will prevent her from seeing the socks. He's pretty slick the way he's doing that, I think to myself, and go back to eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, trying to pretend I'm not noticing what is happening next to me. But how can you not listen in on a job interview that is going on right out in the open? Of course, she'll probably hire him, and then he'll show up with his crazy socks on and everyone will wonder, “Who hired this guy?”On the other side of me a man is typing on a laptop occasionally interspersed with long periods of just sitting and looking around. I can see he is updating his resume. This means I am sitting between two men looking for jobs, so I feel fortunate. But even the moment of gratitude doesn't change the fact that my borrowed brown UPS uniform is a size 36 waist when I'm a 32 and my uniform jacket is large enough to be a tent that sleeps four. I look ridiculous. I know what they are doing. Let's give the IT worker with the cushy job a humongous uniform and see how he makes out! One of the supervisors at the UPS Center laughs every time he sees me in it and is working on a good Native American name for me such as “Chief Big Coat” or a made-up name that means “he of big coat.” This might be a long assignment.
Finally lunch hour ends, so I get up, pull up my pants to my chest, zip up my jacket, and head back for the package car to start delivering packages again on the Upper East Side. Oh yes, while I was on lunch I also wrote this little ditty:
I deliver packages
On the Upper East Side
Designer purses
None made from Naugahyde
I smile at all of the doormen
Yet at the end of the day
My body aches
My mind feels dismay
I'm the UPS man
Wearing UPS brown
Sometimes this gig
Can get a man down
I'm a Teamster in a truck
A blue-collar guy
Delivering the stuff
I could never buy
On the Upper East Side.