The above video is a true story of my day labor hall "dress for success" experiences in Torrance, California.
Day labor halls are outfits like Manpower and Labor Ready who hire drunks, crack addicts and riffraff of every ilk (even unemployed movie extras!) to do menial labor for companies who want to pay bottom dollar for their crappiest tasks and the experience is sobbering.
Well, almost.
There is a day labor hall scene in "Factotum", a film based on Charles Bukowski's work, that touches on day labor. My own experiences were not so bad. I squeezed plastic bags of caramel for Starbucks as a day laborer. I unloaded truck trailers of window frames and swept construction sites.
My favorite Labor Ready assignment was driving repossessed cars at dealer-only auto auctions. Labor Ready paid top dollar ($8 an hour) for bums who still possessed a driver's license AND showed up sober to drive or push the junkers up on to the auction blocks.
Plus I got to hear what used car dealers REALLY thought of their cars and their customers. When no one who could possibly be a customer is around, car salesmen talk like drunken sailors on shore leave. There's a lot of sex talk and body parts in their frenzied pursuit of a f-buck.
Tags: day labor hall, Manpower, Labor ready, day labor, funny videos, true story, dress for success, homeless, Torrance, hire drunks, crack addicts, crackheads, alkies, wino, bum, riffraff, unemployed, movie extra, menial labor, pay bottom dollar, crappiest tasks, sobbering, showed up sobber, auction block, auto auction, car dealers, car salesman, drunken sailors on shore leave, Factotum, Starbucks, Charles Bukowski, jarvis, video blog, humor, sex talk, frenzied pursuit of a buck
No comments:
Post a Comment