The second week of the rest of my life... continued

OK, so where was I?

OH YEAH! We talked about Monday. Let's head on over to Tuesday and go from there with the "Adventures of Mike The Jordan: Parks Maintenance Worker" *insert cheesy theme music here*

When last we left our hero, he had fallen down, been attacked by a dog and cleaned up a smelly mess left by a bum that almost caused his co-worker to vomit.

Here we are on Tuesday. The is still a lot of aerating to be done with the tractor. The very first thing that Paul and I do is decide to split up to get more done. I elect to take the tractor to an area we thought we could finish on Monday and never got to.

Paul agrees and says he'll go out and cover some areas in other parks that require the walk behind aerator.

After arriving on the scene to aerate a particular piece of land a few hundred yards from the miniature golf course, Mulligans, here comes Paul pulling up behind me.

Paul had forgotten to mention that we needed to mark sprinkler heads and valve covers with little flags so we could see where they are in the tractor. He also decides that he is going to show me how to aerate this piece of land since it can be difficult.

He hands me the flags, hops on the tractor and takes off. I stand there for a couple of minutes realizing that he has no intention of marking the damn sprinkler heads or valve covers.

As a matter a fact, it looks like he is doing everything he can to stay away from having to use the walk behind aerator. He then proceeds to aerate the entire piece of land I had originally come to do.

Angry, I put the flags away into the work truck and grab a garbage bag to collect trash that has collected in the area.

Once he gets done with the tractor, he comes to help me collect trash. As we move along and pick up garbage, he finds a $20.00 bill in the brush we are working along.

ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!

Of all the dumb luck. Here I am trying to make a difference and work hard and this guy comes along and fucks everything up because he feels like being lazy and finds $20.00 bucks.

I look at him and say: "You're buying lunch whether you want to or not".

He agrees.

When we finish that area, we move onto another park called "Shields Park" off of 800 West and 9800 South. It's a nice little park that has one of the entrances to the Jordan River Walkway.

After I drive the tractor to the park, Paul takes over operating the thing and aerating. I'm starting to get fed up with this guy. I, once again, start collecting trash in the area.

As I'm picking up trash, I happen to notice a small amount of graffiti on the 9800 South bridge that crosses over the Jordan River and the walkway. I call it in to my supervisor.

Several minutes after I call it in, a truck comes into the parking lot of the park. Out of the truck come four Hispanics. Two males and two females. One of the males and the two females look young. Probably about high school age. The driver, however, looks a little older. Maybe in his 20's.

I noticed right away they weren't up to no good just by the way they were acting, the way they were dressed and the truck they pulled up in.

I watched as they walked from their truck to the tunnel entrance where the Jordan River Walkway begins in this park. Not long after, I saw all four of them get under the bridge from the North side and start spraying graffiti under the overpass.

I was standing on the South side of the overpass wondering how to deal with this situation. At first, I wanted to walk right under there and beat the living shit out of every single one of these shitbags until they were dead and toss their worthless bodies into the Jordan River.

Then I realized that I would more than likely be shot or shanked or harmed in some way if I approached them. Besides, it's the police of the city to not engage anyone should you witness someone committing a crime.

So I got wise and called my buddy Dennis over at the South Jordan Police Department. Only problem was, he wasn't answering his phone. I then called Paul over to witness what was happening.

I then called South Jordan City Hall and they transfered me to dispatch to get a police unit out there. While I was one the phone with dispatch, the youths came walking back to their truck which gave me the opportunity to describe all of them to dispatch.

I also described their truck and gave the license plate number. Unfortunately they left before the police arrived on the scene.

Paul and I gave statements including the description of the vehicle. If any of you that read my blogs live in or around the South Jordan area, be on the lookout for a gray Dodge Dakota extended cab pickup truck. On the driver's side extended cab window is a large white sticker of a scorpion. There is also white lettering on the back of the truck I couldn't make out. The license plate number is 486 DEK, if I remember correctly.

Funny enough, the younger of the two males was wearing a long, blue shirt that had the words "South Side" printed at the very bottom of the shirt on the back. When Paul and I went to look at the damage done to the overpass by their graffiti, sure enough, we saw many areas (and could still smell the odor of the paint) where they had tagged those very words "South Side".

The more I thought about it, the more pissed at myself I am for not doing something more. Why didn't I have Paul park our truck or the tractor behind their truck? Why in the fuck didn't I take pictures of them and their truck with my CAMERA PHONE?! SHIT!

I want these fuckers to pay in blood. I HATE these fucking panty waste gangs. Not only did they tag underneath the overpass but they also hit the North side of the bridge with graffiti. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to get that shit to come off?

My opinion is that we catch them, they pay thousands of dollars in fines, they are made to clean up the mess, they get to be spray painted with paint that doesn't wash off for weeks by the citizens of South Jordan and their families get deported back to Mexico where they are executed by having aerosol cans shoved up their asses and imploded with explosives that have been wired on the can before insertion.

Too much? I don't think so.

That was the only real highlight of Tuesday. Well, that and the fact that Paul did take me to lunch with the $20.00 bucks he had found earlier that morning. Of course, he did stick me with the hand aerator for the rest of the day where I wound up aerating a place known as the Gale Center.

The Gale Center is like a museum of South Jordan. South Jordan used to be called Gale, Utah because of the constant gusts of wind that occur in the area. Reno, Nevada is a lot like that, too. Windy. But a great area to fly kits, no doubt about it.

Anyway, I finished out my Tuesday by aerating all the property of the Gale Center as well as doing some raking of leaves and seed pods and cleaning up the curb and gutters with a shovel.

Go me.

On Wednesday, I went to work with Ronda as we went out to help Paul finish up aerating. We went to the parks Paul hadn't aerated yet to prep them. By this, I mean that we used the walk behind aerator to get into the areas where Paul wouldn't be able to get with the tractor.

We also aerated the property all around South Jordan Fire Station #2. At lunchtime, we headed back to the shop. We still had more work to do after but were almost complete in helping Paul.

When we returned to the shop, I noticed that the tractor Paul was using was in the parking lot. I found it odd that he just didn't leave it at whatever location he had been working in and gotten a ride back to the shop.

After lunch, we went back to aerating. We spent the rest of the day finishing up that project. When it was quitting time and we got back to the shop, the tractor was still sitting where it was since lunch.

It turns out that Paul had left early to go to a doctor's appointment. Someone had failed to mention that to Ronda and me. This would have been useful information because one of us could have been using the tractor to aerate and the other could have been using the walk behind in the smaller areas.

This really pissed me off that we lost productivity time. We could have gotten a bit more done had we known Paul was leaving early for the doctor. But, alas, what do I know? I'm just the FNG.

After work on Wednesday, I went home and showered and changed. I then went back to South Jordan to meet up with a few other co-workers who had volunteered, as I had, to be bad guys for some police officer training.

My assigned scenario was to be a subject that was acting crazy and talking to himself. I had two reactions I could do for responding officers. The first one was to just be nutty and comply with officers. The second was to attack the officers if they got too close.

My reaction was always the first one. A couple of times I'd get a little more crazy than normal and they'd have to be forceful. Personally, I wish I would have done a better job and been more ballsy and attacked every single time.

I was afraid of getting shot. The officers are equipped with fake tazers but with real Glocks that shoot 9-mm rounds with paintball tips. I wear a vest and a safety helmut during the role playing in case things get ugly.

We have to do it again in two weeks and I'm going to be more crazy and attack. The other guys I work with were all equipped with guns because their scenarios called for them to be some really bad criminals. Of course, they were all shot repeatedly.

Anyway, back to work.

On Thursday morning, Ronda and myself were assigned the task of going back to the areas we were at the day before to aerate the properties that Paul didn't get to because he had left early. We also found out that Paul had called in sick and we'd be backtracking all day.

I like working with Ronda. She's very nice and funny. Plus we're always quoting "South Park" episodes while we work. Some people we work with already think we're getting it on. I assure you, cyber friends, that IS NOT happening.

Anyway, by the third park we got to for aeration, we ran into trouble. At a park known as "Triangle Park", Ronda broke the tractor. I'm not saying that to be funny, either. I mean she really broke the tractor.

As she pulled off the road to go up on the grass into the park, the aerator on the tractor got hung up on the curb and snapped completely away from the tractor dropping it to the sidewalk.

Uh-oh.

Upon looking at the metal harness that holds the aerator to the tractor, it looked like where the aerator bolts to the metal harness had been rusting away for a while. Ronda didn't hit the curb at 40 miles an hour or anything like that. She stopped, went at an angle up onto the sidewalk and proceeded to drive slowly up into the park.

It wasn't until she was bringing up the last wheel on the aerator that it snagged on the curb in such a way that it pulled the tractor back and snapped the aerator off. I know this because I was driving behind her in our work truck.

It was the damnedest thing.

So we had to report it to our supervisor who sent out two of our leads to asses the situation. They both agreed that it looked more like equipment failure than operator error.

Ronda was relieved because she thought she'd have to go before a review board and take a pee test and everything that involves an equipment accident. From my perspective, it was just and odd incident that could have happened to me just as easily.

Luckily, our two leads, Kim and John, were able to take the metal harness off and take it back to the shop and weld it. They did it in less than an hour and had us back up and running by lunch.

We spent the rest of the day trying to finish up the aerating with the tractor. But the accident set us back a bit.

On Friday morning, Ronda and I thought we were going out to finish aerating. As it turns out, the higher ups had different plans for her, I and Paul.

We were sent out with two other people I work with, Angela and Sunita. We had been assigned the task of prepping 250 holes in a sectioned off area for a tree farm.

Most of the holes had been drilled already by an auger. There were still a couple of rows of holes that needed to be drilled. Sunita used a Bobcat tractor with an auger attachment to finish up the holes while Angela, Ronda, Paul and myself dug out the dirt within the holes so that we could place plastic pots in the holes.

This sucked ass. We spent all day digging with shovels and placing these pots in the ground. We had to make sure they were level, straight and even with one another. One particular area was a TOTAL BITCH because it was nothing but sand and rock. This made it very difficult to line the pots correctly and keep them even and level because the Earth was so terribly shitty.

This is what we all spent Friday doing. Digging holes and placing plastic pots. My question is, when the hell are we going to finish up the aeration? We need to do that because we're supposed to be fertilizing next week.

If also found out that on Monday, the 250 BARE ROOT trees will be coming for us to place in these pots we put in the ground. No, wait... actually, we're putting the trees in different pots that will be placed in these other pots we put in the ground.

The reason I put BARE ROOT in all caps is because that means will have to take these trees, one by one, hold them steady in an empty pot while filling the pot with fresh soil. Then we'll place that freshly potted tree into a pot in the ground.

You following me?

So, there you have it. A look back on my second week. And look at what I have to deal with on Monday.

By the way, if any of you here in the Salt Lake area would be interested in taking a seasonal job working in Parks Maintenance for the City of South Jordan, let me know. They're looking to take on eight more people for the summer season and we could use some decent, hard working help.

And, in most cases, the seasonal people are brought on full time since South Jordan hires within. I got lucky because they had already hired all their seasonal help on a full time basis. I was the first hire they've ever employed by placing an ad with outside agencies like the newspaper or the Department of Workforce Services.

Go me.

Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go clean my bathroom to the sounds of La Bouche with "Be My Lover".

-Mike The Janitor
©2007
Millenoma Publishing