The View From Scranton

Slog Free

On Sunday I was a sap. Yesterday I was a scold. Today I'm slog free. Well, not entirely. I'll be slogging again elsewhere come Monday, but right now I'm off the slog. Straight outta UG Hell, the slog of all slogs. And it feels delicious.

This forlorn morn they had me bent up on a rickety electric scaffold and propped in the top of a steel bin the size of a soccer mom's mini-van, head down, elbows askew, fists wrapped 'round a filthy instrument of disruption, scraping away weeks of caky caulk and pourable concrete. The fossiled remains a hundred and one production runs. It was a crushingly filthy sweat, requiring muscles I never knew I had, never knew I had to use, muscles so reticent they turtled. A daunt made all the more petulant by the noxious, toxic fumes steaming from the solvents required to break down the industrial crust.

I'd had it. In fact, I've long had it. And I'd said so, again and again and again. I said it to myself, and I said it to others, each and every day of my slogsistence, including the very first. It became a running joke among some of my cooler co-workers: What time you leaving today Hood? At 8 I'd say 9. At 9 I'd say 10. And so on, through the dog day's droll of hellsome hours. Each idle threat met with a rejoinder: You ain't going anywhere.

But today I decided to kill the idle. Make good on the threat. Do something. Today I was going somewhere. Somewhere else.

Of course I first had to get permission from my counselor (don't want a little thing like a walk-off to send me back rivering), and of course at first nobody believed I'd do it. I don't know whether it was 'cause they couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't. I know they never had. And they couldn't fathom someone who would.

And did. I made the calls. To my EC editor: She can't promise me more work but she'll try. Good enough. Then to the counselor. She says stay. I say no way, it's toxic. She says okay. Then, just like that, I go. Pick up my unread New York Times and walk UGL right outta my life.

I can still feel the disbelieving faces. A little bit haughty (he can't handle the work) and a lotta bit green. I was doing what they'd wanted to do forever. Thing is, I just had the guts to do it. Had they and their forebears done likewise ages ago, there'd be no need for me – or them – to do so now. They'd be making a fair wage in a safe place, respected and fed. Instead they make pennies, still, and the place is a menace. They're disrespected and fed up. I don't blame 'em. I was too. That's why I walked.

I heartily recommend it to every indentured someone.

posted by John Hood. @ 8:53 PM