Everybody called him Fat Larry. He was the boss. While we were on the floor keeping the food court clean and emptying garbage cans around the mall, he sat on his ass in his backroom office watching a small portable TV. When I interviewed for the job, I’m pretty certain that my desperation showed through. I wore one of my two dress shirts – the white one – and a tie that I’d been carrying around since I bought for the last time I had to wear a tie – which was maybe ten or fifteen years ago. There were five other guys interviewing for the position. I was the only one wearing a tie.
“Why do you want a job like this?” he asked me. He was eating peanuts from a can on his desk, and every time he talked, he spit little bits of peanut on my resume. “A guy with an education like yours ought to do more. Teach, maybe.”
I’d heard this kind of thing before. One of the ironies the high school guidance counselor never mentioned was the downside of having a college degree – namely that you’re over qualified for regular work. I could also tell that he sort of enjoyed having the college boy tottering on the rickety chair in front of his desk, begging for a job. I’d seen that before, too. But I needed a job, and I had actually been a janitor before and didn’t mind it.
“Look,” I told him. “It’s true, I went to college. But I didn’t really graduate, ok? A lot was going on. Got married. Got divorced. Started drinking…” I looked at him, hoping the silence would fill in the blanks. The story wasn’t strictly true. It was vague enough, though, to sound true.
He squinted at me, popped several peanuts into his mouth, and chewed them loudly. Like a horse. The reception on the television was lousy. Some game showed fizzled in and out between bouts of white static. The Wheel of Fortune, I think. I don’t know how long I sat there, but my ass was starting to hurt. The seat of the little chair I was sitting on was split into two pieces and a splinter was digging into my right ass cheek. I was considering standing up and leaving.
“When can you start?” He finally spoke.
“Tomorrow,” I answered. “Or whenever you want me here. Sir.”
Fat Larry smiled, sat back in his chair, and folded his hands across his giant belly. The chair creaked so loudly, I expected it to collapse. “You can start on Monday,” he said.
I stood up and shook his large plushy hand. There were no calluses on his hands. It was Friday.
On Monday, I got there early to fill out forms and take the grand tour. Fat Larry left me alone in a small room next to his office, where there was a small table and a slightly more comfortable chair. The application packet was one page of tedium after another. The first few pages were the actual application, which was basically where I filled in all the information on my resume. I had to list personal references and all my past jobs and why I left. Then I had to fill out the I-9. Then there was a 10 page packet explaining OSHA regulations in regards to cleaning chemicals and handling garbage, with a page long quiz after. According to the directions, the quiz was supposed to be given to me after I’d studied the ten page packet thoroughly and put it away. I passed the quiz without really reading the whole ten page packet.
When I was finished, I walked out of the room. Fat Larry wasn’t in his office, so I went down the short hallway and through the double doors that led to the food court. I opened the doors and Fat Larry was talking to one of the women. She didn’t look very happy. He dismissed her and then turned around to face me.
“Finished already?” He smiled. My stomach turned, just a little.
“Yeah.”
“Ok. Come on. We gotta get you a uniform shirt.”
He took me back into his office, where he unlocked a metal cabinet. He kept the uniform shirts inside – baby blue polo shirts with the mall logo on it. “Size?”
I told him and he threw three shirts at me. “You’re responsible for these shirts,” he said. “You have to wear one every day. If you’re not wearing a uniform shirt, you get sent home. You have to make sure it’s clean. If it’s not clean, you get sent home. You get sent home three times, you’re gone.” He paused for a beat to let it sink in. Come this way. I’ll show you the time clock.”
When we got there, there was a time card with my name on it and a nine digit number that was my new employee identification number. He demonstrated how to clock in. I would have two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour lunch. I would have to clock out and clock back in for each of them. “You get a seven minute overlap,” he told me. “If you clock back in more than seven minutes late, you get docked an hour’s pay.” He paused a beat to let it sink in. “Ok. Come on.” He led me back out into the food court, and flagged down one of the other janitors. He was a short and shriveled and walked with a shuffle. Fat Larry beamed. “This is Harold. He’s one of our BEST. He’s going to show you the ropes. Just follow him around today so you can get the feel for things.”
“Ok.” Fat Larry turned around and wobbled back into his office to catch the last bit of The Bold and the Beautiful.
I followed Harold around the rest of the night. Basically, he pushed a cart around the mall, emptying garbage cans, cleaning up kiddie puke and scraping up discarded chewing gum, candy, and ice cream. “It ain’t a hard job,” he said over and over. “So long as you get a good pair of shoes.”
The shift ended an hour after the mall closed. That was when we got out the floor machines and went over the entire mall. The only thing that complicated this was the movie theater: it was still open and when shows let out, kids were always running through the mall when it was empty, leaving drink cups, popcorn, candy, and footprints all over the place. I was pushing one of the machines around when Fat Larry found me.
“How you doin’ with that thing?” he asked.
“Ok. I’ve ran them before.”
He nodded. “Good. Be sure to get under the benches in and behind the garbage cans.”
“Ok.”
Fat Larry stood there, watching me.
“Yes sir. No problem.”
He smiled and nodded and wobbled off. Prick, I thought. Asshole. By the time I finished my shift, my feet were killing me.
The next night I got there about twenty minutes early. We couldn’t clock in until seven minutes before the start of the shift – a seven minutes that we weren’t paid for, naturally. So I walked into the break room. Harold was sitting there, along with five other people: Kate, Jim, Russ, Keisha, and Bev. I recognized Bev as the woman Fat Larry was yelling at the previous day. She looked like she was beautiful – once. Straw colored hair, hazel eyes, a thin frame. She was sitting at the table nearest to the refrigerator, smoking a cigarette and reading Us Weekly.
I sat down next to Russ. “Hey buddy,” he said. “Is this your first week? It’s my first week, too.” He stuck his hand out. I shook it. Russ was older than me. He sported a mop hair cut that was probably a dark brown once upon a time, but was now mostly gray. He had a large droopy mustache of the same color. He talked a lot, but I liked him ok. He talked about being new at the job, but being grateful that he had a job. He needed to work, he said, because his wife needed all kinds of medicine. “She’s older than me,” he said. “Rose is almost 70.”
“Damn man,” I said. “That’s gotta be stressful. You’re not anywhere near that old.”
“Nah. She’s like 30 years older than me. She wasn’t always sick, though.”
If you say so fella. “Cool.”
“When do you take lunch?”
I had to think about it. We all took lunch at different times. “7:30, I think.”
“That’s awesome,” Russ said. “Me too. We should eat together.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
Harold was the first to stand up. That meant it was time to clock in and go to work. I clocked in and looked at the assignment sheet. I was given a zone on the other side of the mall – near Sax Fifth Avenue. That meant walking around with a cart, just like Harold. At least, I told myself, I didn’t get placed near the movie theater.
The thing about taking my smoke breaks was that I had to make sure I started wandering back towards the food court in plenty of time if I wanted the full my full fifteen minutes. I didn’t mind walking in rectangles pushing a garbage can, but I sure as shit was going to make sure I got all my break time in. I ran into Harold coming back from the food court on my way to my second break.
“Where’re you going?” he asked.
“Heading in to take my break.”
Harold shook his head. By the look on his face I knew what he was thinking: Lazy fucking kid. “Be careful,” he said instead. “If Fat Larry catches you, you’ll get written up.”
“Written up for going to take my break?”
Harold nodded. He was about to push off when I asked him how long he’d been working at the mall.
“Well,” he said, “I worked for the city, and retired. Then I got this job. It’s beeeen about… ten years.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Nope.”
“How many people have you seen come and go in this job?”
“Plenty,” he said. He looked at me and smiled – sort of. “And I’ll see plenty more, I bet.”
When he pushed off I watched him shuffle off. He walked like the cart was the only thing keeping him upright.
Sure enough, when I was almost to the food court, Fat Larry found me. “What’re you doing?” he demanded.
I told him I was on my way to take my second break.
“You don’t leave your zone until it’s time for your break to start,” he scolded. “This is your first write-up. Don’t do it again. You get two more write-ups and you’re out on your ass. Got me?”
For a month I kept my head down and stayed out of Fat Larry’s line of vision. It wasn’t all that hard. I was careful not to leave my zone until my breaks started, and I made up for it by hiding in during my shift and taking small breaks throughout the day. When I clocked back in from lunch, I always made sure to wait the extra seven minutes. Bev warned about this on several occasions.
“He doesn’t like it when we do that,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Fat Larry. He doesn’t like it when we take the seven minutes on purpose.”
“Fuck him,” I said. “I do my job. Besides, he’s had me on Saturdays ever since I started. Most everyone else rotates.” Saturdays were the worst day to work; the mall was flooded with kids who bought 50 ounce buckets of sugar-filled pop, took two sips and, once the ice started to melt, threw it away. They spilled smoothies, ice cream dots, and nacho cheese everywhere. Sometimes they made messes because it was funny to make me work. By the time I emptied all the garbage cans, they were all full again. Plus, the cheap ass liners Fat Larry gave us for the garbage cans always leaked. The only time I ever saw him out on floor at all on any day of the week was when he was yelling at somebody. And most of the time, he was yelling at Bev.
“How do you do it?” I asked her. “What do you do to keep from getting fired? I see him on you all time, shaking one of those sausage fingers in your face.”
She was taken a little aback. “I do my job!”
“I KNOW you do,” I said. “We ALL do our jobs. But he seems to take special pleasure in giving you a hard time. I don’t think it’s fair, actually. He’s a bully.”
“Oh.” She softened a little. “He just… well… he… he calls me names a lot.”
“Like what?”
“He thinks I’m stupid,” she said. “He’s the same with all the girls. That’s why most of them moved to the day shift.”
“So he’s a pig.”
“Oh YES,” she hissed. “I hate him.”
“So why don’t you move to day shift, too?”
“He WANTS me to, I think. But I can’t. My husband works days, and somebody has to watch the kids.”
“Oh. They must be small.”
“They’re both in school,” she shrugged. “But somebody has to make sure they get up and dresses and fed and out on the bus. And if there’s a SNOW day…” she smiled. It was a sad smile. “Well, SOMEBODY has to be there.”
“And he knows that.”
She nodded. “Yes. He tells me that if I were a good mom I’d be home all the time. He tells me if I had better husband…”
“And you LET him say those things?”
“I need this job,” she said. “We get health insurance through my husband’s job, and that takes a lot out of his paycheck. If I don’t work, we can’t afford groceries.” She looked down at her watch. “It’s time to clock back in.” She looked hurried, and a little scared.
I sat for another five minutes and stood up to go clock back in. When I passed by Fat Larry’s office, he was leaning back in his chair watching what looked like American Idol. I watched him for a split second then passed by to clock in.
That’s when I heard the crash and I heard Fat Larry scream. “SHIIITTT!” I turned and looked back in the office. He was wallowing on the floor, on top of what used to be his chair. In fall, he must’ve kicked the desk because the television was laying dead on the floor. He looked shaken, but not hurt. I watched him cuss and huff and puff, struggling to get to his feet. I walked away before he could turn around to see me.
When I got to the clock and punched my card, I looked at the time. I was eight minutes late.
