My latest job that I have been sent on is to work an Exxel job called the Reserve at SeaTac. I already worked out here once before about a month ago. I like working Exell jobs for the fact that safety actually seems to matter to them and that I am not going to be asked to do jobs above my pay grade and then still only get paid the minimum.
No being asked to climb into an unprotected elevator shaft while concrete demolition is going on overhead dropping large chunks of concrete down the shaft. I tell the foreman that I am thankful for this and he laughs with a mix of facial expressions partly because he knows that would be an insane thing to ask someone to do and partly because he realizes that I have been asked to do just that at a previous site. A story for another post.
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| Métro, bulot, dodo. - Tukwila Station. |
To get to the Reserve at SeaTac it takes an hour from TLC using public transportation. Only one transfer, so it isn't too bad, plus because of its location I get to take the light rail most of the way there. In fact, the next station just south past the airport is not even a block from this site and the line goes right by the fourth floor western balconies, but it is sadly not yet completed. Reserve at SeaTac might just be the first of future developments changing the fabric of this area. It is somewhat a dead area with empty used car lots, a gas station, a few small immigrant businesses, and hotels for those presumably needing to be very close to the airport. One of those places that feel so hot just because there is a lack of trees and so much asphalt. Not a place for foot traffic.
The other TLC worker, Don, that was sent out with me just arrived in Seattle about a week ago from Phoenix. On the hour long commute by train to get to the site he tells me his story of being in his mid to late fifties, grandfather to nine, just getting out here to Seattle, living in one of the shelters, and wanting to find more stable work. I gather that something went wrong in his marriage leaving her with the car and him moving to Seattle where he has no friends or family. At one point during the day he tells me that he spent something like $900 just taking buses to get up here from Phoenix. He fears the rainy season will halt the need for day laborers and wants to find work indoors. He repeats about wanting to find a job with Popeye's. I try to tell him that chain doesn't really exist up here, but he seems keen on it.
Before Don left Phoenix he was working at an assisted living facility. I tell him that the site we are headed to is going to be an affordable retirement community. Apparently his work with assisted living was for recovering drug addicts. Wandering at all hours. Drinking coffee to try and cut their jitters.
All of Don's belongings are with him in the small backpack he carries. It looks empty and flaccid and about the size of something a middle school student would use. Apparently he arrived with a couple of suitcases, but being too cumbersome to carry to job sites he asked someone at the shelter to watch them. He said he was paying this guy $2 every day after coming back to the shelter for this service, but after only a few days they disappeared. This isn't the first time I have heard this story from the TLC workers. Don iterates multiple times that in one of the suitcases was all of his medication. I tell him about the Goodwill Bins in SoDo as perhaps a method of how to get some more clothes than just those off his back in a hopefully cheap method by paying by weight. Perhaps this might be a place to find some work boots too. The boots TLC lets people borrow are rubber galoshes with a steel toe. Everyone who wears them hates them. They don't bend right and give people horrible blisters. Thankfully with the two suitcases I arrived with a year ago I included my French combat boots. They don't have a steel toe, but they looked close enough to work boots so that I didn't have to borrow the TLC boots.
A man in a pink polo shirt keeps looking uncomfortably as we talk and break the silence of the train. He doesn't make eye contact, but it definitely feels as through he is going out of his way to not look in our direction as a slight scowl appears on his face.
Don remarks about the diversity of Seattle as we pass though the many neighborhoods. He tells me that Phoenix has nothing like our light rail.
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| Reserve at SeaTac. - courtyards of small ponds and winding walkways. |
Working at the job site we just do basic cleanup. Apparently the door installers put the fire doors in the far corners of the apartments which is getting the carpet installed and they left the small plastic hinge covers all over. The foreman tells us that we are going to pick these things up and then they are going to charge the door installers so much for not following through on the details of their contract regarding picking things up. Last time I was at this site they had me going through cleaning up because the electricians were refusing to pick up any wire scraps they dropped because then they would be cleaning up dirt that wasn't their doing.
The trash chute has been removed so we collect everything into a single room on the third floor and then the foreman puts on a harness, goes out onto the balcony which has still yet to have it railing installed and is above the garbage container. He tosses everything we hand him over the side.
I need to work on building up the motivation in the morning to pack myself a lunch.
The area is one of those places where cars reign. Large streets with small trees lining between the opposite directions of traffic but few trees for the pedestrians. There is no jaywalking for fear of not being able to make it across six lanes fast enough . It is an area where odd immigrant shops pop up. "Bob's Burgers and Teriyaki." I went there last time I worked this site. I watched men's volleyball at the Rio Olympics on an old TV as I attempted to scarf down yakisoba as quickly as possible. Thirty minutes for lunch never feels long enough.
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| Taqueria Jacrandas Mexican Food. |
This time for lunch I go by a Mexican taqueria. It exists in that limbo between fast food and a sit down restaurant and seems to be filled with the cast-offs of previous "restaurants." An empty nachos dispenser sits next to a confusing water and utensil station.
A business created by immigrants to fill a niche that they found missing and giving a patchwork feeling to the area. I wonder if it will last after the light rail station opens a block away. The construction of the building feels strip mall shack-like sharing it's space with a salon and a tabac. Nothing to be admired architecturally and pulled back from the sidewalk it won't promote a walk-able neighborhood feeling. The street even feels as though it is building up away from it for some strange reason. I feel like there has to be a more neighborhood like area off this drag.
By the end of the day we have run out of trash bags so Don and I are assigned to clean the grounds which is more of a "we don't know what to have you do because we don't want to run and buy more trash bags right now, but we don't want to short you a full day" busy task. Picking up multitudes of rusty nails along the edge of the building. We get let go a half hour early but our ticket is signed for a full eight hours and a request for a return.
While walking to the bus stop we come across two pairs of nice looking shoes sitting on the side of the road. A pair of ladies sandals and some Nike Air sneakers. Don gets really excited and quickly grabs the sneakers, too excited to check the size he stuffs them in his backpack saying that they look like they will fit. The tattered once white Sketchers on his feet looking worse for wear, hopefully these will fit him.
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