Merry Meat Christmas!

“So, what are you doing for the holidays?”

People who've never worked in retail at any level simply do not realize the horror and depression this innocent question invokes in members of my trade. I have worked as a supermarket meat-cutter for 32 years—that's 32 Christmases, and I can tell you honestly I have not had a peaceful, relaxing, fun holiday since 1984. Christmas is go, go, go time. It's massive over time. It's get your head straight and focus time. It's going to work in the dark. And coming home in the dark. Its dealing with a non-stop barrage of questions, requests, orders complaints, and phone calls. Oh my god, the phone calls. All the while trying to increase your production 100 percent or more.

Everybody thinks I exaggerate. I promise you that I, personally, don't. Now, some out-going, gregarious people-persons can handle all of this a little easier than me: though, I can assure you, even the most out-going, friendly people in the world are starting to twitch by the time January 2^nd rolls around. But myself, being naturally quiet, reserved and introverted, the constant customer interaction takes an even heavier toll. Add to the equation a seasonal attitude depression (I hate the dark and cold) and the extreme physical punishment and it's an introvert's worst nightmare scenario.

Of course some years are worse than others. One of the first holidays I worked we had a 25 cent a pound turkey sale that caused a community feeding frenzy. We ended up running out (the guy who went to flag to pick up another truckload lost his brakes on the grade back down and crashed) and I was the low man on the totem pole. I was sent out front to explain to livid customers that we had no turkeys... Cannon fodder, they called me. That was a fun holiday. Then there was the year I was an inexperienced cutter and they sent me to the busiest store in Phoenix the week before Christmas to help out. And I had the flu. And there was a snowstorm coming home on Christmas Eve. And did I mention I had a new baby having his first Christmas? Good times!

Yes, I've had some rough holidays. Nothing, however, can quite compare to this year. It all started in September when meat manager (who has a background in refrigeration) finally received the transfer to HVAC he'd been fighting for. Brain was an old friend, the only reason I transferred back to the Sedona store, and I think he felt bad about leaving me. A little bad, but he still had a skip in his step when he walked out the door. With all my years of experience I was expected to take over, but if I've learned one thing, I know myself. I am not a type A, take command Alpha male. I hate being in charge. I hate disciplining people. I hate problem-solving other people's personal shit. I knew the job would make me miserable so I turned it down repeatedly and emphatically.

Naturally the job of retail meat manager is so attractive and appealing that no one applied for the job. The job had been posted for months and the only two people that had applied for the position were our two clean-up/meat helpers. By default one of them got the job. The store director made one last appeal to me. “Don't come complain to me when the place starts falling apart.” The comment kind of made me angry. First, I never, ever complain (maybe I grumble a little) but I take whatever they throw at me and deal with it. As lead meat cutter I have to run the shop when the manger's off, sick, on vacation, in a meeting, or otherwise indisposed and I don't get paid one cent extra. And I hate being in charge, But I shut my mouth and do it. And second, isn't it the store director's job to find someone qualified to run his store? Why is it on me?

Anyway, having a complete rookie as my boss was just the beginning. The long time wrapper got an opportunity for a promotion to cutter by transferring to another store. So he left. Our long time counter person (excuse me—service case manager) transferred to another store to be closer to her boyfriend. Suddenly I was the only person in the shop who could cut or wrap. Now, to be fair, the new manager was trying to play catch-up. He was learning to cut and learning to wrap but in the old days he would barely be considered an apprentice in either craft. And as hard as it was on me on the days he was off, I can only imagine how hard it was him to do everything when I was off. He was trying. I was trying----working my ass off-- but the shop was quite understandably beginning to go downhill.

But don't worry. We have a team of top flight supervisors who were incredibly helpful and understanding. They worked tirelessly to get us the experienced and competent help we desperately needed. And if you believe that, I got some beachfront property to sell you in Arizona. No, they came in on their increasing visits and ripped us a new one continually. “The meat department is a train wreck,” they said the day after senior discount day. “The department lacks readiness by 9 am.” No mention was ever made of the under-staffing other than we should get some more people in there and “train them up.”

But they did manage to hire another counter person (67 years old going on 77) and, even better, an experienced meat-cutter. Having another cutter in the shop helped. Suddenly I could get some other stuff done, little details that needed doing. Of course that lasted exactly four weeks. The week before Thanksgiving, one of the supervisors came up for a couple days to “work with us.” I don't remember him doing a lot of work, but he sure had a lot of criticisms. The new meat-cutter put up with it for half a day then took off his name badge and walked out.

Back to square one. We hired another counter person. A 70-year old. And somehow we managed to make it through Thanksgiving which is actually one the easier holidays. Just a lot of heavy lifting, throwing turkeys around, keeping it all stacked and sorted, and keeping the fresh turkey orders straight. The new manager did an excellent job of ordering and we came through the holiday with a very good gross and a clean inventory.

Then came Christmas. The Christmas ad broke: $4.77 for standing rib, trimmed, boned and tied—more than a dollar cheaper than our nearest competitor who was selling them whole, untrimmed in the bag. And the warehouse plussed us out three pallets of ribs that were frozen solid. What a nightmare. Every case of ribs had to be unpacked, racked and placed in the warmer cutting room to thaw, then rotated back into the cooler while the next batch of frozen ribs was brought out. Meanwhile they are leaking everywhere. Everything is covered in wet bloody water. And we have one person in the whole shop that was proficient at cutting and tying whole ribs. Yours truly. It was horrible. The new manager had his hands full just trying to keep the case semi-full, the phone answered and the supervisors off our back.

It was a community feeding frenzy all over again. I cut like a mad man. I have no idea how many ribs I cut and tied in the ten days before Christmas but it ran into the hundreds. Besides all the other cutting. Meanwhile the shop is full of inexperienced people and strangers. People I've only worked with for a couple weeks. With a brand new manager, we had very little training going on and no system in place. Everybody was running around like chickens doing their own thing the best they could. Orders were coming in and were all over the shop written on wax paper, soaker pads, scraps of paper, Styrofoam trays. The walls were covered with orders, they were taped to the pillars, they covered the managers desk. The phone rang continually with yet more orders, more special requests, and more questions. So, so many questions. “So tell me about your standing rib roasts,” a typical call would begin,” Is that at all like prime rib?”

I like hard work. I do. I discovered early on, there is a purity-- a zen-- to hard physical work. It gets you out of your head. It keeps you focused. But there comes a point when it's too much. And I am not as young as I used to be. I could feel my body quickly wearing down. And physical exhaustion is one thing (its okay to go home at the end of a long day tired) but the mental stress was taking an even larger toll. Just being constantly behind, being pulled in multiple directions at all time, being criticized, being asked to answer questions above and beyond your areas of expertise. Working in a constant atmosphere of chaos and panic was nothing less than miserable..

I think the manager realized I was beginning to lose it. He scheduled me off two days in a row to begin Christmas week. It was really nice of him—except I walked into the shop after my two days off (his day off) and the place was completely destroyed. He'd hired a new cutter, it was his second day on the job, my first time meeting him, and we had an entire department to put back together. And it was busy. I cut as fast as I could cut while trying to break in the new guy but we couldn't keep up. The new guy was keeping up the wrapping, but we still couldn't get the case full. It was the kind of day when you're just forced to work too hard and too fast. The kind of day that accidents happen. Hands get sliced. Fingers get taken off and people slip and fall. In my case it was my @#$%ing back. Wrestling with one of those cases of frozen ribs off the bottom of the stack, I felt that terrible jolt of electricity go up my spine. I knew immediately I'd @#$%ed up. It was a thoracic back sprain (I knew cause I've injured the same muscle at least a half dozen times before) and suddenly I could no longer or lift anything. The slightest deviation from a perfectly upright posture send jolts of pain down my entire back.

I should've went to urgent care and called it, right? No, I borrowed a pain killer from one of the crew and soldiered on. As bad as it was, I couldn't bring myself to leave the shop. Not during Christmas week. Not in the heat of battle. Not that anyone was encouraging me to do so. The store director suggested I take some ibuprofen and if I needed to lift anything heavy to call him on the intercom.

Happier holidays when we had more than one cutter on the block.

I'll spare the gory details and the whining (which you're probably already sick of) but the rest of of the week was some kind of nightmare. My back hurt worse every day. Business increased exponentially everyday. The Friday before Christmas we did $14,000 (our average day was 4,000). The crew was beginning to fray, eyes were turning glassy. We were starting to snap at each other. On Christmas Eve the rookie manager scheduled one counter person (the 70 year old woman) him, me and a one legged clean-up. It began to snow. Everybody knows a Christmas Eve snow is magical, right? Well I can tell you, it magically drove people to jump in their SUVs and go shopping...

It was a blood bath. Several times the jolts of pain to my back drove me to my knees. And just when we thought the snow was going to slow things down, another wave of customers would rush in. By the time I got home, I wanted to crawl into a corner and weep. But I couldn't curl anything. My back was so trashed I couldn't take off my shoes. Christmas Eve I slept on the floor of the bedroom. I spent X-mas lying on the floor next to the tree, alternately staring at the ceiling and dozing. In other words, it wasn't a whole lot different than any another Christmas.

Oh, and before I left work Christmas Eve, I looked at next week's schedule. We have a super hot three day ad scheduled for New Year's Eve weekend. And the new manger is taking it off...

Happy New Years to me.

Why I Love Fishing

Dawn. I am alone on the boat ramp as I push my kayak into the water. I glide away with barely a sound and onto the lake that is like a mirror laid down in the middle of the Sonoran desert. Around me huge saguaro loom right above the water's edge and their image lies below me as I stroke quietly away from the last of civilization. Only the sound of the small birds singing in the cactus thorns and the slight splash of my paddles reach my ear this early in the morning. I am completely alone in this desert paradise...

I'd studied the lake from Google Earth the night before so I know the best fishing bet is a series of coves and inlets located on the other side of the lake. I waste no time digging in and paddling hard for the other shore. It's a good workout and a fine way to start the day and get the blood pumping before the action of actually catching fish. I push into the paddling and within 20 minutes I am clear across the lake and sliding into a small cove. I put up the paddle and drift silently as I ready my rod and reel, pour myself a cup of coffee from the thermos, and made my first cast into the glassy waters--

And my first snag of the day. I yank and tug on the snag and finally have to put my rod away and paddle back towards the snag,. The water is crystal clear and I can see a shallow ridge below me and, yes, an old tire that my lure is hung up on. I drift by the snag, get my rod back out of the holster and tug and pull some more.

Snap.

My line breaks. @#$%! That was an $8 dollar lure! Not a good beginning--- no wait. There it is. Free of the line, it has floated back to the surface. This is good. A much better omen. I paddle over to scoop up my lure, still holding my rod—and it separates. The two halves come apart when I bend over to pick up the lure and the top half of the rod slides into the water. And sinks. With no lure on the end of the end, there is nothing to hold it and it slowly drifts to the bottom of the lake. @#$%! That is my favorite, most expensive rod! You've got to be kidding me!

I look down. The water there is crystal clear and I can see my rod lying on the bottom about six feet down. I briefly contemplate diving in but the combination of the cool water temp, my current attire of flannel shirt and denim shorts and the actual effort of exiting and entering a loaded kayak quickly rules out that option. But, maybe if I can reach it with end of my paddle and coax it further up the ridge where it is shallow... I get my paddle in a upright position, spilling my coffee in the process, and find I can barely reach the rod with the end of my paddle. Trying to see through six feet of water and aim the paddle accurately proves difficult, however. I barely manage to touch it once and maybe move the end of the rod an inch before I drift out of range. I try to alternate between paddling and probing while spinning around in circles. My vision is starting to play tricks on me and the whole thing is becoming very trippy. I am getting dizzy and a little seasick.

Finally I spin away and lose sight of the rod completely. I circle around in the kayak looking for it, staring into the water until I'm dizzy again until... There it is. The rod is still lying on the bottom. I start the process all over again only this time manage to kick up enough muck on the bottom to obscure everything. Again, I eventually drift away and lose sight of my rod. Okay, only about 45 minutes of wasted prime fishing time. On to Plan B. Time to break out the spare rod...

Which is in the truck on the other side of the lake.

Oh well, time for another workout. I lean into the paddle and in another 25 minutes am back to the boat ramp. The ramp is now starting to get busy as the bass boats are backing in left and right. So much for my early start and fishing advantage. I leap out of the kayak, run up the boat ramp, jog down the parking lot to my truck and suddenly remember that my keys are in the dry bag still in the kayak. I jog back out of the parking lot, back down the boat ramp and fish the dry bag out of the bow of my kayak and return to the truck. I get my spare rod and return back to the kayak.

Back across the lake. A stiff breeze is now blowing against me so it takes another 35 minutes to take it back to the area I was at before. Bad luck area, I decide so I paddle on to the next cove. After 10 more minutes paddling, I find another beautiful little cove--crystal clear water and a nice shelter from the breeze. Yeah, perfect. I pour another cup of coffee. I fix a new lure to my new rod, reach back to make a cast and...

Apparently while a-fixing the reel to the new rod I'd accidentally flicked the reverse lever. The result was a flying tangle of backlash line that spaghetti-s into my lap and hooks the lure into the tow strap on the front of the kayak. @#$%!!! I reach for my knife, knocking over my coffee again and hack away at the line. Stringing a fishing rod is a pretty straight forward process on dry land. It's even fairly easy standing on a boat. In a kayak, in a sitting position where you cannot reach the end of the rod, and with waves rocking you back and forth, however, it's a bit of a... process. Finally after three or four attempts, I manage to string the rod. I decide to ignore the lure embedded in my bow (I'll extract it later) and put a new one on. Except... I don't have any more swivels. The only one I brought is attached to the lure in the bow handle. Nothing to do but paddle ashore, get out, tug and pull my lure from the strap, get back in and shove off once again.

Okay, time to get serious. Now I am ready to do some real fishing. I paddle out to a promising point, and with a brief prayer to the fish gods, give another cast. And another and another. I fish for another ten minutes with nothing happening and then... FISH ON! I set the hook hard and begin reeling furiously, only to realize after two or three minutes that the fish isn't moving. @#$% ! Another snag. Swearing like a sailor, I reel myself angrily toward the snag not bothering with paddles. I get over the snag and yank angrily at the the obstruction whatever it is. Finally out of sheer brute strangth, it breaks free and I reel in. I decide I need a different, more snag friendly, lure. As I go to swap them out, however, I notice that I have managed to mangle my one good swivel. The little catch that holds the pin in place has come loose and is sliding up and down--effectively making it unfasten-able. @#$% piece of Chinese shit!

I could go without a swivel but that would severely limit my lure choice. Many of the lures I've brought just don't have the same action without a swivel. So I get out a pair of needle nose pliers and attempt an on-board repair. If attempting to string a fishing rod on a rocking kayak is a challenge—try bending a hair-sized strand of wire to a piece of metal the size of a dime. Of course in the process I manage to pinch the lip of skin between my thumb and forefinger which begins to bleed copiously. Now the bottom of the kayak is covered in dirty water, coffee, about 10 yards of twisted mono filament--and blood. No problem. I have duct tape. I am busy bandaging my hand so I don't notice the wind beginning to pick up and starting to generate some larger waves that are pushing me towards shore. Until, of course, the moment when a wave knocks me into a large rock and almost throws me over. Only through quick reflexes and a keen sense of balance do I manage to stay upright. My tackle box, which was open on the dashboard in front of me, however, was not so fortunate. It goes over the side spilling the entire contents into the water. @#$%!!!

I leap out into knee deep water and attempt to pick as many of my lures, hooks, sinkers and jigs as I can out of the water. Meanwhile the waves are still pushing the kayak slamming it repeatedly into my shins while I frantically salvage expensive @#$% fishing gear. Of course while I'm plucking my shit out of the drink, my rod and reel slips in. While I'm retrieving my rod and reel, my paddle falls in and,

somehow defying the laws of physics, it drifts away from shore. I have to stop what I'm doing and half wade, half swim to get my paddle back. Meanwhile the waves have flipped my kayak over and it is filling with water. Disgusted, pissed, still swearing like mad, I drag everything ashore. Turn the kayak over. Empty the water filled tackle box. Line the lures I could recover on a rock to let them dry. Wring out my flannel shirt. Take a deep breath. Try to get myself together.

Okay. I'm better now. While everything’s drying out, I've got some time to kill. Might as well do a little shore fishing. Way less complicated than trying to do it from the cockpit of a kayak anyhow. It'll relax me, get me back in the zone... I set everything up again (forgoing the swivel) and put on my lucky lure. I make a couple casts from shore and---

Sure enough I snag out, break the line and lose my lucky lure.

I drop the rod and reel. Pick up the coffee thermos and shake it to determine it's empty. I look at my watch. 8:35 am. I walk to my cooler and open a beer.

I'm sure the fishing will be better this afternoon anyway.

Oh! Christmas tree!

My cramping hand clutched desperately for the flimsy limb in the top of a forty-foot pine tree, swaying in the first winter gusts of the year. Hanging on for dear life, I uttered a silent prayer that I would survive—preferably with all limbs and head intact. Of course I already had doubts about my head. After all, what in the hell was an out-of-shape, overweight forty-five-year-old man doing in the top of a giant pine tree anyway?Bear attack? Wilderness panic? No, my friends, it was something much more insidious and frightening. Christmas spirit.

           Those of you who know me are probably already shaking your heads. My reputation as a devoted Scrooge is long and well deserved. People I don’t even know stop me in the store in the middle of August. “Only five more months ‘til Christmas,” they chuckle merrily as my eyes bug out of my head. Everybody knows I hate the holidays. But as I getter older, I also seem to get a little wiser. All this hating is not good for the soul. Hating things you can’t change is pointless and self-destructive. Instead of hating Christmas, maybe like old Ebenezer and the Grinch, I could learn to love it. So after the Great Thanksgiving/Smoked Turkey/ Home Inferno (see earlier blog) I decided I’d actually put up some lights this year.

It had literally been years since I had bothered to put any up lights. I had no idea what worked and what didn’t and the whole mess looked like an octopus eating spaghetti in a string factory. Naturally the few that were easy to untangle where the ones that didn’t work. The ones that worked I managed to drop and shatter many of the bulbs. Hours went by. Finally, through persistence, cannibalism and redneck technology, I was able to cobble together several working strings of lights.

Where to put them? I could decorate the front of the house but we never go out there in the evening. Who was I trying to cheer up? The neighbors? Hell no. Those people wouldn’t even help a guy fight a fire at one in the morning. No I was trying to cheer myself up so I strung them around our back patio. The end result was kind of nice, but a little lacking… Then I started to eye the giant pine tree that dominates our backyard. The previous owners had bought a live Christmas tree one year and, when they were done, planted it in the middle of the yard. The thing is now a Sequoia. It’s home to all sorts of critters and birds. I’ve seen whole flocks of birds fly out of it. Rodents, rabbits, stray cats and, I think, a couple spotted owls live in there. We once lost a dog for a week in this tree. El Chupacabra and Bigfoot party in there once and while.

So anyway there I am standing on my back patio holding a string of Christmas lights and eyeing the tallest pine tree in Arizona. The rest I guess is predictable.

I strung together all the remaining lights that still worked, climbed atop the roof of my house and tied a rock to the end of the lights. Thus I made a giant rope of lights and proceeded to attempt to lasso the pine tree. Surprisingly my plan worked. On my second or third toss I managed to snag an upper limb. All that remained was to climb down and carefully wrap the string of lights around and around the tree. Of course this proved more difficult than it seemed. The string of lights kept snagging on lower branches and required careful looping and swinging of the lights to lay them in place. Imagine a giant jump rope. My wife and son came out and helped me for a while—even though I’m quite sure they thought I was absolutely nuts. That’s the kind of sport they are. When someone in your family is borderline deranged, you learn to humor them.

Things were pretty much under control when she went back into the house. I was making progress. Just one remaining snag… I stood on the top of a stepladder to get a better angle, started swinging my jump rope string of lights and made another beautiful loop up into the tree exactly where I wanted. It landed on a large nest in a branch directly above me. It was perfect shot—except the nest it smacked turned out not to be a nest. More of a hive really. A giant beehive. Suddenly there are about four million bees zooming towards my head. Something told me there weren’t going to sing me Christmas carols.

Those who believe that man was never meant to fly has never stood atop a step ladder while being attacked by a swarm of bees. I don’t actually remember jumping from the ladder, but suddenly I was halfway across the yard and I still hadn’t touched the ground. I can honestly say I have never moved faster in my life. I would’ve won Olympic Gold if beehive sprinting were an event. I was halfway down the block before I even slowed down.

Carefully, I slowly crept back into the yard and snuck into the house when the bees weren’t looking. There I waited them out. Then, just before dark, I went back outside and finished the job. With the satisfaction of a job well done, I plugged the lights in and stepped back to view my masterpiece.

The top of tree did not light up.

Unbelievingly, I carefully looked to see if the top string got unplugged. Nope. It was plugged. They just didn’t light up. I couldn’t believe it. After all that work… It was incredibly depressing. I couldn’t go to sleep that night. Then, when I did, I dreamed of exploding lights and laughing bees. The next day I got up and went to work. But all I thought about where those lights. On the way home that night, I bought two more strings of lights, drove directly home and started unwrapping the tree. I pulled down every strand of lights off that @*&%#$ tree and climbed back on the roof with a new lasso.

The problem was, after a day of meat-cutting, my arm sucked. The first toss missed the tree entirely. The lights sailed past and flew to the ground with giant crash. An entire string of lights was smashed. Undaunted I hooked up a new set and tossed it again. Another bad toss. This one went left and low. Way too low. Unfortunately it hooked on the tree good and when I tried to retrieve it, I ended up snapping a string in half. Now I’m angry. In a matter of minutes, not only have completely undid all my work, but I’ve wrecked two strings of lights in the process. I was so mad I briefly considered picking a fight with bees. Instead I went in the house and yelled at the dog.

I brooded on those damn lights until my next day off. It happened to be Arizona’s coldest day in five years but I didn’t care. I went to the dollar store and bought ten more strings of lights. The tree was getting decorated—whether I lived to see it or not. This time, however, I knew I had to throw caution to the wind. This time I was going to climb to the top of the tree myself.

I don’t know what kind of pine tree it is exactly, but the thing is thick. I got out my aluminum extension ladder and found that, fully extended the ladder barely reached from the outside of the tree to the tree trunk—about five feet off the ground. Oh well, that gave me an avenue into the tree. From there I began to climb. There were so many tree branches, however, I had to worm and contort myself upwards. There were massive piles of dry pine needles everywhere—and they infested my hair, my ears, my clothes and even my eyes. Pine sap soon covered my hands and clothes. As I got towards the top of the tree, a cold wind began blowing. My hands started cramping from clutching the branches. The tree began to tilt backwards from my weight.

Actually, it was kind of fun.

Then another gust of wind blew me back further. A bee buzzed around my head. I knew it was time to get the job done and get the hell out of there. Clutching the tree trunk with one hand, I attempted to tie the end of the string of lights around a branch as high as I could reach. Easier said than done. The wind started blowing the top of tree back and forth. I started to get seasick. Three bees buzzed around my head.

Finally I just wrapped the string around a branch three times, knowing full well it wouldn’t hold and shinnied, fell, tumbled down the tree and hacked my way out. Finished, I didn’t even bother turning the damn things on to see if they worked. I just plugged them into the timer and walked away.

Later that night, after the dinner table was cleared and the family was settling down in the living room, I asked my wife to take a little walk with me. It’s freezing out, she said. “Come on just out to the street and back.” We walked out into our cold, dark neighborhood and walked out to the street. “Wow.” The tree was lit up from top to bottom. We stood and admired it for a long time.

“It’s beautiful, “ she said and then turned and uttered the words that sent shivers down my spine. “But it makes the rest of the yard look dark. Maybe you should…”

All across the neighborhood, a terrible scream echoed through the night.

--December 2006