Beer at work - Part 1

While I was a student at Michigan, I used to work part-time as a technician at the Michigan League, a building where all kinds of events ranging from weddings for underage kids to superbowl parties would take place. The work wasn’t very interesting, it was merely setting up a room with chairs and tables or breaking them down by removing chairs and tables. The workout was good and it was like being paid by the hour to go the gym. There was the occasional pushing and pulling of TV carts for those meatless heads that wanted some kind of animation/amusement in their talks in order to keep the audience alive. Money wasn’t that great but was sufficient to pay my bills. As a desi, I found it utterly embarrassing to admit to anyone that I was a technician, so I would often tell people with a constrained expression of genuine seriousness that I was working as an event organizer. Some would enthusiastically say “Oh that is great yaar. You can put this on your resume while you apply to B-Schools.” Hell yeh, in the name of Alito I can.

The hours of work was crazy and varied depending on the day. On most week nights I was required to work from 10pm until 3am. Nights were freaky since I was the only non-white working in the building. There was always a random desi who attended a conference meeting in the hope of getting some free food but other than that it was mostly me. Most of the kids I was working with were also a lot younger than I was, probably in their late teens. Even the kinds of things that they talked about put me off by at least two degrees of freedom.

There was this one time when it was just me and this other normal looking kid working during the night shift. Around 1am, he comes up to me while I am in the middle of lifting a heavy table and walking down the hall way and excitedly says “Dude, I got a six-pack in my back pack. We need a break from this shit man. ” I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying since the table weighed a little more than my usual lifting capacity. All I heard were the words "six pack". But then he stood right in the middle of the hallway and obstructed my path to completion. I agreed to whatever he said and didn’t give room for discussion at that point when my face was completely red and I was almost out of breadth from lifting this heavy table over my head that was smelling of some gooey mix of ketchup and rotten meat. Once I dropped the table in the storage room, I came to my senses again. With the soreness in my arms from lifting, a beer sounded like a great idea to me but later I would regret this offer. Besides, the building manager left around 10pm and there was no one to monitor the building except the security guard who really didn’t care what went on inside the building.

I decided to start working after my first bottle while this kid was having a go at his six-pack. He finished five bottles in less than 15 minutes flat and I knew that that was trouble waiting to happen. As always with drunken white kids, he started talking about the other times that he was drunk “There was this one time when we threw a bachelors party for this dude who was my room mate and we got so shit-faced that we shoved a beer bottle in the groom’s anus. The next day at his wedding, he couldn’t even stand straight while taking the oath. That shit was fucking hilarious man.” HELL NO, that wasn’t funny to me. I was done with his crazy stories since it was just adding fuel to the already existing stereotypes about a particular group in me. I told him that we’d better get work done and leave early. The kid was so drunk that he asked me to wake him up in half hour and that if he didn’t, I'd have to stick a beer bottle in his anus. He even gave me a lubricated condom to use on the bottle if necessary. He passed out immediately after he gave me the instructions so I couldn’t argue furthur. Now, I didn’t have anyone to assist me at work so I hoped he would wake up on his own. But my mind was already wandering with the technicalities of the operation if the kid didn’t wake up. Each time I looked at the condom I was reminded of the graphics of the operation I was to perform. Never ever had I done this in my whole life and there I was sitting glum with my hands on my forehead thinking what would my family say if they caught me firstly with a beer bottle, secondly with a condom in my hand and thirdly sticking them both in someone's privates.Fortunately for me, I saw him walk down the hall way in half an hour and he helped me carry the rest of the tables with a heavy head. Now I knew who wasn’t going to be in my wedding.

(To be continued)