Side Gig

Bob was the leadman for his factory work team. He and the team were all noisy and drinking a tad too much around their favorite four-top at the pub that evening. They were hooting it up about some silly new guy at work who always wanted to follow every rule. Bob and his team had been doing this work for years and knew which shortcuts to take to get the job done easier and not get hurt.

As far as they were concerned, this guy came from another planet. He whined on and on about how they should follow the rules or they could get hurt or maybe even fired. They tried to tell him no one cared and that they were always careful. “Just watch us and how we do it and you won’t get hurt and you’ll get done quicker so you can take a longer break,” they told him repeatedly.

They hazed him a lot and, between sips of Guinness that night, they made fun of him and speculated what planet he must have come from. They were rough on him, but swore it was all good fun.

Being young men in a noisy pub staring at each other and hooting at their own inanities, they were still quite capable of noticing a pretty woman coming in the front door. 

And that’s what she did; kind of. Actually, she sashayed through the door, past all the tables and into the head down the hall from the bar. Her black leather outfit and spiky heels snagged everyone’s attention. It was so outrageous, it got poor Johnnie slapped by his wife when his head swiveled to follow her. That broke the spell and the whole pub erupted at Johnnie’s expense.

The emergency exit is down that same hall and opens out to the alley. Many wandered out that way every little bit to grab a smoke. Nobody paid a lot of attention to anyone going out that way for a lungful.

I’m the new guy they’re mocking. An actor most of my life, I learned how to dress to make a dramatic entrance years ago. I also know how to become a milquetoast so that no one sees me. 

If I want to be seen and remembered, I dress like tonight. Black leather and stiletto heels always does something to the male libido that amuses me. On the other hand, a shapeless duster practically guarantees no eyes will register my existence. In a duster, I am background; wallpaper that is recognized as being there but unremembered.

Want to find someone in a crowded pub? Get everyone’s attention. The one you’re hunting will pop out of whatever hidey hole he’s in just to see what has everyone else’s attention. 

I started working at the factory about a month ago. It’s an easy enough job that requires little ingenuity and a fair amount of attention. The bozos I work with are careless with the rules and brag about their brushes with Miss Maiming and Doctor Death. The other day, one of the jerks walked between a stanchion and a rotating four-foot diameter blade that caught his shirt and ripped it off of him. The only reaction from the gang was, “Thank God it was a cheap shirt!” 

They all hooted like it was the funniest thing they ever saw. Of course, there signs all over the place not to walk through that area, but it’s okay as long as you don’t get caught. At least, that’s what the gang tells me.

These guys are not all that innocent or stupid. They just learned to live on that proverbial edge that many nut cases prefer. No amount of training or admonishment will keep their kind from doing stupid stuff. 

Occasionally, when someone is particularly careless, someone else gets hurt. That’s what happened a few months ago here. This chaotic foursome had a young woman working with them. Fresh out of college, she was starting on the floor of the factory as part of her engineering rotation to become a leader in the company.

She was sharp and intent on making a good impression on her hiring manager. One way to do that would be to reduce accident claims, thus reducing insurance costs for the company. During her interview, she outlined a multi-faceted plan to improve the safety culture throughout the company.

Instead of assigning her to work with a high-performance team, they stuck her with the bozos. She tried to get them to follow the rules explaining that all the rules had been written in somebody’s blood and did they want to edit the rule with their own blood?

Apparently, they tolerated her for quite a while. 

Then, in a vindictive move, the team leadman told her to go under the inhouse conveyor to get a part off the work bench just out of the work zone. “It will take too long to go around the belt and no one wants to stop production, so we won’t shut down the belt. Just be careful,” he instructed her. He knew she would do as he told her because he was the leadman and she did not want to jeopardize her standing with the manager by getting a bad mark from him.

Besides, what could one time hurt?

This was a relatively high-speed belt and a return idler was inches from where she intended to walk under. That split second decision to raise up to look where she was headed was just enough to yank her in and pop her skull like a melon.

The story goes that all four of these guys laughed and talked about how stupid she was for straightening up under the belt.

Actors go through dry spells just like writers or other artists. Most of us have some kind of side gig. I’ve met actors at auditions who are concerned about an article deadline or about how many passengers they are going to need to make up for this down time from their Lyft gig.

My side gig is a little different than the usual waiting tables, washing cars, writing poems or any of the stuff artists find themselves doing to make ends meet and to eat regularly.

I contract out my skills as a former soldier. Not the nation-building kind of soldier, but the other kind that forces someone to build a nation. One enemy at a time. Quietly, discreetly, or with just the right amount of drama required to provide a maximum statement.

I spent a month learning about these guys. Their work habits, their after-hours haunts, their specific peccadillos that could lead them to serious mistakes of judgment. I learned what made them think they could get away with whatever they were getting away with whenever.

I listened. I watched. Eight hours a day for five days for four weeks I learned these guys. Their families, their fears, their weird little quirks, their braggadocio. This breed can’t wait to tell you all about themselves if they don’t see you as any kind of threat or if they see you as inferior to themselves in some manner.

I was just the new wimp that worried about safety too much. Because I kept to myself, they quickly decided I wasn’t some kind of snitch. That made their caution evaporate. They bullied and bragged way too much. 

“John Smith. Yeah, it really is my name. Officer, I swear. That woman paraded through the pub like she owned it. Everyone stared at her, except me, of course. My date, Rhonda here, was right next to me. But I noticed she dressed well, in black leather, I think.

“She had a funny-looking purse; it didn’t match her outfit at all. It was a purple carpet bag, like a purple tube. About two feet long and six inches round. Just big enough to carry a sawed-off 12-gauge. Which it did, apparently.   She went to the restroom and came back out with the gun. I don’t know if she had the purse with her or not.

“I never would have guessed she hated bad guys so much. She got all four of those punks and dropped the shotgun right on the floor. I don’t know what they did to her, but she’s even now.

“She dropped the gun, turned around and hurried back to the restroom. Everyone was screaming and running and I don’t know when she came back out to the restroom. 

“Rhonda here went to the restroom to be sick and found the bag and the fancy clothes in one of the stalls. I wonder if she had more clothes in that bag….”

Of course, I had more clothes in that bag. No one noticed the frumpy woman who hurried out of the restroom and out the back door wearing a shapeless duster dress under which she wore a jogging outfit. Two blocks away in an empty doorway, Miss Frumpy disappeared and some jogger paced himself away from the area.

Those bozos didn’t know that the poor college girl they killed and mocked was the daughter of a rather ruthless and unforgiving man. He hired me to mete out justice for his daughter’s death.

Another side gig completed to carry me over until my next audition….