Bread at the End of the World, Part 2

Hey all. Checking back in with another serious piece for the paid subscribers. A while back, I posted an article about working a blue collar job through the pandemic. It was a reconstruction from my journals from that time, with a little artistic license to smooth the details into reading form. You can read it here. This is part two. I don’t know what this project will become, but I’d love to hear feedback.

Regular ETL-voice articles will continue on the free side. Thanks for reading! —M

---

2020

The signs were a joke. The kind of joke that hurt.

The Cowboy leaned back in his swivel chair and picked up his Magic 8 Ball. He shook the toy, waited for an answer to bubble up, and laughed to himself when he saw the reply.

The Kid stood there with his hands in his pockets, eyes bugging out. Fresh polo tucked into belted cargo shorts. New baseball cap. He looked like Smalls from The Sandlot, if Smalls was 6’3” and a freshly minted homeschool graduate. The Kid doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll get COVID in two weeks. Maybe he has it now.

The four of us stared at the papers on the warehouse wall. Stay home if you have COVID-19. Don’t come to work. One of the corporate guys must have come in, taped up the signs, and immediately left. The corporate guys never stayed too long in the warehouse.

They put these signs up because they had to. It’s not like the company was offering sick days. In that moment, it felt like we were alone at the end of the world.

“No one’s coming to help us,” Wes said finally, and we went back to work.

---

You can find desperate men just about anywhere. But to get them to stay, sometimes you have to trick them.

The company puts a number on a piece of paper and waves it in your face. Sometimes the number goes up or down, but it is always More. More than you, a desperate man, could hope to make anywhere else.

Come to work for us. You can be your own boss. Run your own small business. Of course, to start this business, you will need to buy a territory from us. Your territory. We will help you finance it, and then we will help you finance a box truck, and we’ll take out payments from your paycheck, like a mortgage. You buy the bread from us, and distribute it to your territory. You are an independent distributor. You earn a commission, so you can work quickly, or at your own pace. Either way, you will make More, every week.