The Best and Worst

Thursday was the best and worst day IES has ever had.

I was dropping three guys off at a job site on Dorchester road when a landscaper called, wanting a guy as soon as possible. This meant we would be putting out 7 guys, a new record for a single day. The best day IES has ever had.

I scrolled through my phone and picked an individual who had been through our system, who I knew worked for another labor agency. I picked him up and took him to the jobsite. I told him I was excited for him because this landscaper wanted somebody everyday for the entire summer. A STEADY ticket is what every day laborer dreams of.

At 12:30 I called the landscaper to see how things were going. “Well, your guy listens to me, he does what he’s told…but he’s a little slow. But I’m going to talk to him about it.”

At 3:15 I got a call from my laborer. “This man says he needs somebody who will work faster. So I told him you’d find somebody else who will.”

“You need to finish the day for him,” I said.

“No,” he told me, “I already quit.”

The worst day IES has ever had (probably not the last).

I refunded the landscaper for the entire day, and ended up paying my laborer too, who insisted he worked a full eight hours and seemed willing to do whatever it took to get his money.

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People, in general, have been wearing on me. I get lots of calls from a friend of a friend of a friend who walked by our door. Sometimes people call 4 or 5 times in a row until I pick up, at 1 and 5am, as if I were a 911 operator and their house were on fire. “Can you get me a job?” they ask in urgent desperation. I tell them how it works, that you have to come to the classes, etc. Then they say, “Where are you located?” I tell them. “Hold on, hold on, let me grab a pen.” They still need a pen after calling 4 or 5 times.

The other day a significantly overweight woman came in the office at 7am to introduce me to her adopted son. “He needs a job,” she said. I told him about the classes. “Okay,” he said. And then, “Can I use your bathroom?” Okay. He was loud and made it smell terrible. Then he sat in front of the office for half an hour and came back in to use the bathroom again. “Where did the toilet paper go?” he asked.

“We’re all out.”

Meanwhile, his other brother who had also been sitting in front of the office for an hour came in and asked me if I would watch his suitcase for him while he went to Piggly Wiggly. I told him I was leaving and it would probably be best if he took it with him. He explained he had a bad back and was going to let me watch it anyways.

One more, if you don’t mind:

There’s a severely mentally ill man that spends lots of time wandering around the front of our office. I like him. He doesn’t bother anybody. He has a grimace on his face, looks as if he’s both praying and lecturing, and occasionally comes inside to ask me for a cigarette. When he tries to leave it’s a struggle. He pushes on the door that doesn’t open, and pulls on the door he has to push. He’s too mentally ill to sleep at the shelter.

Yesterday there was a torrential downpour and it flooded Meeting Street. He yelled at the rain, getting soaked by the splashes from the cars going by. Every time a car splashed him he seemed surprised, like he couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. At one point he yelled, “A whale’s going to come out of that water!” It was the first understandable thing I’d ever heard him say, not even his name. He seemed to me like a character you might write a book about, like Moby Dick, standing there yelling at the cars and the rain and the passing whales.

I like the guy, even though he pees and occasionally spits on our front door.

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People have been wearing on me, and there’s no doubt at times I’ve been rude.
IES, frankly, doesn’t have the time for all of this, in the sense that we’re after a niche market, the sliver of people who are down on their luck and want to change. We have NO PLANS to change people, teach them not to walk off jobs, poop in their potential employer’s office, or cure their severe mental illness. We only hope to be a tool to facilitate a change for those who are able and willing. The problem is that if we’re trying to be like Christ, we should be more, right? I don’t know that he tries to change us, but he never stops providing the opportunities, over and over again, for those who are willing, in infinite ways that me or you or IES never can.

For the time being, I understand my losses less annoyingly when I think about his. I call God at 1am and 5am in the morning, demanding things that really aren’t so urgent. I try to put on a good face, and then make his bathroom smell terrible. I, too, accept great opportunities only to several hours later walk off the job: “Find somebody else,” I tell him. When I stop taking advantage of his graces I’ll feel less offended about mine.

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The bottom line for IES, though, is this: Either a sliver of people willing and able to change exists, or they don’t. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah. Kind of.

Pete and I visited a nonprofit in Chicago that in the 80s and 90s essentially took over the market. They were putting for profit agencies out of business. They charged competitive prices and paid workers more. Laborers across Chicago threatened to walk off the job if their supervisor didn’t let them switch to Just Jobs. And if you can pay a drunk a dollar more while being charged the same amount, why wouldn’t you? But ultimately, they said, “we weren’t helping anybody.”

If there isn’t a sliver, our only other option is to do what they did in the 80’s and 90’s: Be just like other day labor agencies, engage in price wars and disconnect ourselves from our workers, only pay them more. We still can’t care who they are, where they came from, whether they are drunk or sober: Only that they are warm bodies, and warm bodies generate revenue.

This model ultimately says the niche of people worth saving does not exist.

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I had a few beers last night with one of my favorite people, my boss at Palmetto Carriage, Tommy Doyle. We talked about IES and wondered aloud if that sliver really existed or not, and if there was a market of businesses who would care that it did. Ultimately, that’s the question we’ve come this far to ask.

I think the second part of the question is easy. Are their businesses willing to pay $1 more an hour so we can do the things we really need to do: Drug test, background check, pay better workers a living wage, and in return minimize their risk of having problems with laborers while increasing their chances of productivity? I think there are.

But the harder question is frankly, “Are there any people out there worth it?” There has to be. Otherwise, we are just another labor agency. Otherwise, other guys can’t look at our guys and say, wait a minute, it seems like some of them are getting to the next step in life. The answer is yes, even though logically, at 1 and 5 am, when I’m writing an apology letter to a landscaper, when I’m feeling taken advantage of, it’s no, no, no.

The story says God saved Lot, and his daughters. After they lost their wife and mother the tally for the entire city was only three. This time around, we’re hoping for at least 13.