Get Some Shit For Snacktime

She returned from her vacation, jet-lagged and exhausted, to an office in chaos. The photocopier was down. The scanner was broken. The shredder made low, groaning noises, and smelled of smoke whenever forced to shred more than 5 pieces of paper at a time. The sewage hadn't been pumped out in two days, which didn't matter because they hadn't had water in the tanks in three days, which didn't matter because they'd run out of coffee the week before.

Having traveled for 12 hours--the last 4 of which were spent in a filthy truck with no shocks, driving across the dusty tundra--her only intention was to quickly grab a few things from the office, then get as much sleep as possible, but The Receptionist hovered over her. The Receptionist rocked on his feet, shifting his weight back and forth. The Receptionist cleared his throat. Sometimes, it was clear that he wanted something from her, but the words he chose were too vague for her to quickly grasp his meaning. Other times, his words simply made no sense. Although he spoke English more clearly and articulately than most of the other locals, language often failed him. Occasionally, he would resort to acting out what he was trying to say, and this time, he was attempting to describe the dimensions of a man. He stretched, arched an arm in front like a belly, swirled a flat palm on his head to indicate a combover, gestured that the man was short. Then he stuck his index fingers in both ears, and made a cringing face.

It was in that moment that the short, fat, balding man walked, loudly, into her office. The receptionist scrambled away. The short, fat, balding man was sweating, even though it was winter in the Arctic. He was sweating, red in the face, and he was swearing. A lot. She quickly remembered that Jerome was in the building, and rose to shut her door behind the cursing man. Jerome was incredibly religious, and particularly sensitive to coarse language. She couldn't afford another complaint about the office environment from Jerome. He was a terrible employee, frequently absent without explanation, but it was imperative that the local employees be kept happy.

The door closed, she returned to her desk, working her way around the man, who was still sweating and swearing. She interrupted him to introduce herself. He quickly spat out that his name was Bill before returning to his tirade, which continued to make no sense. He had a thick Newfoundland accent, his vowels bouncing as though elasticized. Bill suddenly fell silent. He took off his coat, but not his work gloves, and stood on the other side of her desk. He was still breathing heavily, and his coveralls rustled every time he took in air. After about a minute, he took a slow, deep breath, removed his gloves, and moved to shake her hand. He smelled like diesel. Without thinking, and before she could stop herself, she put her hand to her nose and sniffed. There was a pause, and he locked eyes with her. Somewhat calmly, Bill explained that he'd arrived just after she'd gone on vacation. In the three weeks he'd been there, he said, he had not had one decent meal. This was, unfortunately, not an uncommon complaint. The food situation had been deteriorating since Christmas, and moving two rotating cooks into the guesthouse hadn't appeased people in the way that had been expected. Instead, it just gave people more to complain about. They developed preferences, allegiances. One cook's brown sauce was superior to the other's, they insisted, despite the fact that all the brown sauce was made from the same dusty powder. One cook's meat sauce was superior to that of the other, despite the fact that it had been sent to town from the mine site, prepared by neither of of the cooks in question. The white sauce was delicious. The white sauce was wallpaper paste. So much cheap frozen meat, so much sauce, so much disagreement.

"I ain't fuckin' around," he said. "We need snacks for morning breaktime. I don't want no bullshit pudding cups for snacks. Pudding isn't for morning break. My men need cookies. And Red Rose tea. Not that fuckin' Tetley bullshit. Nothing is worth this bullshit in this fuckin' cold! But I'M diabetic! So I can't haves cookies. I need bananas. I will pull my men, and we will walk. Like I said, I ain't fuckin' around. We gotsta to have the shit we asked for, or we will walk." He turned on his heel and left. She needed to appease Bill. Barge season was close at hand, and he and his crew were repairing an ancient, rusty, dilapidated crane that was to be used to offload materials. Without the crane, the entire mining project was sunk. So she went out and bought the cookies and the tea and the bananas, and several hundred dollars more in snacktime-appropriate groceries.

The next morning at ten, she heard the back door slam. She heard him swearing his way down the hall to her office. She rose and stood by the door for his arrival, which she quickly shut behind him as he entered the room. Again, he was swearing and sweaty and red. "Macaroni is bullshit," he muttered, seemingly to nobody in particular. "I comes up here, and I work some fuckin' hard in this God-foresaken shithole of a town, and they can't even serve me real fuckin' juice? It don't have to be freshly squeezed or nothing', but not even from concentrate?" He drew a deep breath. His face grew redder still. "And then this?! Macaroni is bullshit. My wife knows better than to put bullshit macaroni on my fuckin' table. She would never serve me fuckin' macaroni." A long-distant customer service job had taught her to ask probing questions in the face of perplexing complaints. No, he did not have a gluten allergy. Yes, he liked spaghetti just fine. But no, he would not eat macaroni, and he would pull his crew and leave town if macaroni appeared on the table again, without a moment's hesitation. She suggested that perhaps the matter could be resolved by simply not eating the macaroni on the days that it was served, but this was not satisfactory to Bill. So at 2 pm, when she knew the cook would be taking her mid-day nap, she snuck up to the house and threw out all the macaroni in the pantry.

Two days later, he again presented himself in her office. It was breaktime, and he was loudly insistent that the groceries had been stolen, throwing accusations at the local housekeepers who worked days at the guesthouse. She defended the housekeepers, and in a patronizing tone, explained how quickly groceries get eaten in a house of 15 people. She reminded Bill of her long-standing experience in matters relating to the crew house, and ushered him out the door, promising to buy more food. She went out and bought two kinds of cookies and tea, a dozen very green bananas (at $6/lb), a wide assortment of non-macaroni foodstuffs, brought them to the house, then went back to work.

The next day, Bill returned. Again. He was clutching a black plastic garbage bag that appeared to be mostly empty. His hands quickly fell limply to his sides, dropping the bag. It hit the floor with a muffled thud, and the bag rustled in the draft that blew under the door. He took two steps towards her. He took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. She could only imagine what the problem was this time. "They were the only bananas I could get, Bill. It's the Arctic. I am doing my best. But you need to meet me halfway." He opened his eyes. He took another deep breath. He nudged the bag towards her with his steel-toed boot. He looked her in the eyes.

"Some fuckin' eskimo got into the fuckin' kitchen. She corrected him, reprimanded him for using the offensive term. "Shit, man. In the kitchen." Again, he nudged the bag with his boot, pushing it even closer to her. "Someone got into the house. Someone got into the kitchen." "We went for break. We went for cookies and tea." "And bananas", she interjected, sarcastically. He looked her in the eye. He was not amused. "My men," he continued, "sat down for tea. In the kitchen." In the kitchen, he said, on top of the garbage can, they found a pair of men's briefs. The briefs had been "unloaded in", he said. Deliberately removed, then extensively, enormously, and attentively shat in. "You asked for shit for the kitchen?" she joked. He did not laugh, and she had to buy two $11 cartons of orange juice a day for a month so he wouldn't tell her supervisor.

Just another day at work.