Topher Allen – Thinking Out Loud

In a previous life I worked for Delta Airlines. I started my employment there standing around a large circular conveyer belt loading US mail onto carts that would be taken out to the planes, bound for exotic places like Bozeman and Idaho Falls. It was called “mail sort.” The full timers called it “mail resort” because it was easy work.  Mail sort was located below the gates in a dungeon like atmosphere with poor lighting looking somewhat like the mail room in the movie “the hudsucker proxy”.

The bottom dwellers knew their lower status and hated the people from upstairs in their white shirts and shiny name badges. 

Not only was it mind numbing, it was depressing. I worked next to Cathy, a woman who looked like a Norman Rockwell grandmother but I later found out that looks are deceiving when she accused me of working too fast. 

“Look here you little freak, we have a speed that we like to work at down here in the mail resort, don’t jack it up. I have my eye on you now, and I can make your life hell”.

 That was highly censored from what she really said, but you get the idea: Cathy was evil.

 After my smack down for “loading mail too damn fast” the only other moment of excitement in the circular nausea was when a shipment of baby chicks got loose on the conveyor. My idea was to also let loose the snakes contained in burlap bags that happened to be there on the same day to go after them. My plan was shot down by my supervisor as “extreme”. We ended up trying to scoop them off the conveyor with brooms and anything else we could reach them with.

 There were casualties.

 After the baby chick/conveyor belt carnage (and yes, people ship snakes and chickens in the mail) I decided that as much as Cathy thought mail sort was a great place to be, it wasn’t so cool.

  I asked my supervisor “how do I get from here (mail sort)” while pointing down “up there (gates and ticketing)” while pointing up.

 My supervisor looked at me annoyed “why would you ever want to leave the mail resort?

 I answered “I think I have skills that the company is not taking advantage of?”

 After he tried to convince me that one day I could supervise the mail sort if I just “hung in there for a few years” I learned that a typing test separated me from where I was, and where I wanted to be. I took the test.

 Insert your own moral of the story here: _________________________________

Boats on the lake