fernando
photo posted from my iPhone
I’m starting to understand the necessity of day labor. I don’t have that many friends willing to work for $12, or even $25 an hour, that know how to do cement work. Not that mixing cement with a shovel in a wheelbarrow is something that takes more than 20 minutes to learn, but people are busy meeting friends for drinks in Dolores Park at 12:30 in the afternoon. Or they have a job that requires them to be there for whole uninterrupted blocks of time and they can’t say, “Hey boss, I’ll serve these diners after we build that form over on 19th Street and Jon gets rolling.”
Some of my friends even suggest I hire someone to do the work when I tell them what needs to be done. Which is basically what happens when I go to Cesar Chavez. That’s the street day laborers hang out at. This guy Fernando had a nicer truck than mine. He didn’t want to ride with me when I pulled up the curb, he has his pride. The Hard Worker was too dusty. So he follows me to the site and pulls out his cordless Makita set and brand new Skillsaw. Even his extension cord was clean. And he gets paid less than half of me?
“Some people do amazing things with money,” Marika says. Well, spending it on tools and trucks is an investment, but he’d have to be working more hours than there are days to have this stuff and I picked him up at noon sitting in the shade. But I’m not casting stones or implying he imports cocaine or exports pallets off of trucks, I’m just saying that this guy was until recently doing better than me, and now due to the English language food chain around here, he is working for me.
“The Irish boys went back to their country,” he tells me later. He was working all the time for them, things were very good he tells me. Then the Irish get fired and a Mexican loses his job. It’s like the butterfly affect. Now he has to work for a pinche guerro. Which I heard him say about ten times. Perhaps it’s time for a wise latina woman to start making some decisions around here. Things aren’t exactly operating on merit.
It’s not the mixing that takes skill, bud. It’s the manipulation. Just like anything. That’s why the money’s in sales. Who you know, who you stroke right. The numbers game. The more you stroke, the more you poke. Know what I mean?
Comment by Donno Londo — July 18, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
i don’t know how Fern got his things. what you’re saying is probably very true, he was doing well until recently. he might have been sitting there at noon because he started at 5 or 6 and was back for a second job. did he say? whatever the case. i love that all of his stuff is clean. that’s old-school style. that one’s economic station need not be a dictation of the way they present themselves. it’s lost on a lot of people, the subtlety of clean. all that said, his shirt looks like he’s been working and also kind of full – not shy to a spoon or fork.
Comment by n.d.p. — July 18, 2009 @ 12:56 pm