Drive-By Truckers

Yeah. So. Above my desk there are these two sliding glass windows, just like the ones in some banks, or in those gas station kiosks where the customers can’t actually enter because they might rob the place. So pretty much all day long, I stare out of these two bullet-guard windows immediately in front of me. Immediately in front of the bullet-guard windows is the foyer (but if we pronounce it foy-YAY, it might take a little bit of the sketchy sting out of the gas-station glass), which is maybe six feet by six feet, and immediately in front of the foy-YAY is the glass door that leads out of the place (i.e. “to freedom”). On the other side of the glass door, there is some sweet parking lot action and a single evergreen tree, and beyond that, there is the rest of the industrial park. The sign at the entrance of the industrial park proclaims the area an “Executive Park,” but although admittedly, I don’t have much first-hand knowledge about whatever it is “executives” do, I don’t think it would require all the semi-trucks that are constantly coasting by my window.

[A quick tangent worthy of editor brackets[] instead of parentheses(): again, I don’t know exactly what “executives” do, but I do know that it involves wearing flashy ties and talking in these loud, booming voices all the time, even though everyone could hear them just fine if they used their “inside voices”. That, and for the ladies it involves a distinct lack of jewelry, while for the men it involves way, way too much jewelry. Oh, and it also seems to involve lots of *talking* about how much stuff has to get done, and lots of very quick physical movement—*grabbing* the pen instead of picking it up like a regular person, speed-walking to the toilet—as if the extra quarter of a second gained by grabbing the pen actually adds more time to the day. But, according to my observations, very little actual *doing* of stuff. Lots of blah, blah, I’m so busy, blah, blah, blah, I need a rush job, blah, blah, pressure I’m under, blah, without actually doing the thing and thus helping to alleviate the time crunch. Again, a totally limited understanding of these executive duties, but I’m pretty sure they don’t need semis just to talk too loud and speed-walk to the coffee maker.]

So despite the sign, I work in an industrial park. And often times, I find that I have completed the whole day’s tasks before lunch, or if I’m really unlucky, before my morning break. Then I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the day while I’m waiting for the phone to ring. Now normally I’d whip out a book, or at least a fashion magazine (see “Ya Get What Ya Pay For, Part the Second”), but as I have already indicated, the rules that apply to the rest of the work world don’t seem to apply to The Company, so I’m still a little tentative about everything I do. First I switched the radio station and then waited a couple of days. Nothing bad happened. Then I busted out the notebook and started writing. Nothing bad happened. But I’m holding off on the books and magazines as long as I can because once that cat’s out of the bag, it ain’t never going back in. So lots of the time I’m sitting there, trying to keep my mind active so it doesn’t atrophy like so much muscle. So I started keeping a list of the trucks that I see driving by my window each day. (I’m sorry to disappoint you if you actually thought this was going to be about the band Drive-By Truckers, who are decidedly more bad-ass than this blog. You can always check them out at http://www.drivebytruckers.com/.) I keep hoping that they—the trucks, not the band—will give me some insight into the nature of the universe, but so far all I’ve learned is that, for some reason, bread can ride in a semi, but Twinkies only come in a van. Here are the usual suspects:

Conway Freight

Plunkett Furniture

Roadway

Healthy Life Bread: “Bread Is The Answer!”
[Note: Is bread really the answer? Is that the secret I’ve been searching for all these years?]

FedEx Express

R&M Trucking Co.

Unlimited Graphix

Hostess Twinkies
[Again, technically a van, but the Twinkies still deserve a shout out.]

TopLine Furniture Wholesalers

Home City Ice

Dayton Freight

RPC Disposal

ViTran Express

Corporate Express

Bonnie Plant Farm

USF Holland

Yellow

Quast

WM Waste Management

Exide Technologies

JafRate

McLane Distribution

Keebler: “A Little Elfin Magic Goes A Long Way!”
[Word to ya motha, Keebs.]