The Work Situation

I have the same job that my father had when he was at BYU 17 years ago. I work at the BYU paint shop. All repairs to the walls of BYU are as a result of the paint shop. I have worked on the floor of the Marriot Center, the halls of the MTC, the walls of the Museum of Art, and most of BYU campus.

The work schedule goes like this:
5:00- Alarm goes off. I wake up and stare at the ceiling
5:05- Alarm becomes so annoying I make Bruce turn it off
5:10- My body is now out of bed and en route to the shower
5:11- Shower
5:20- Put on whatever work clothes I can find.(I'll talk about this later)
5:25- Eat and pack lunch
5:45- Leave for work
6:00- Work begins
10:00- 30 min. break. (More on this later)
12:00- 30 min. lunch break
2:30- Work ends.

The workers are separated by full-time and part-time workers. Students are only part-time workers.

My fellow employees include: (names altered for security reasons)
Robby: Boss of the whole paintshop. Age: 40's
Matthais: Lead of my paint crew. Bishop of his home ward. Age 50's
Bob: Full-time worker. Elder's Quorum President of home ward. Age 40's.
Chan: Full-time worker. High Councilman of home ward. Age 40's
Philly: Full-time worker. Has a mustache. Age 60's.
Gareth: Full-time worker. Constantly telling jokes. Age 50's.
Deverral: Full time worker. Taught my father how to paint. Age 60's.
Tyler: Part-time worker. BYU Cross-Country runner. Age 20's
Brucito: Part-time worker. My roommate. Age teens.

Considering the assemblage of pious and aged individuals you might expect a certain maturity. Nope. Kendall Orton might define us as raucous roustabouts. Immaturity reigns abundantly. We are generally found goofing around. We are occasionally serious, for example when staining a $20,000 table. Seriously a $20,000 table for the Eyring Science Center! They just have that kind of money?!?

But I regress.

Philly speaks Navajo and will often mutter to himself in Navajo. I have occasionally come across him drumming on a 5-gallon paint bucket and chanting in Navajo. He also used the roller extensions to have a sword-fight with Gareth. They will then come tell Brucito and I jokes as we are trying to work.
Brucito and I watched Can't Touch This and other video's on Chan's iphone whilst in the MTC.
Matthais made Bruce run up and down the halls of the MTC holding streamers and yelling HAPPY CHINESE CHRISTMAS
Tyler began a game of baseball using a tube of caulk and a ball made of paint.
Deverral will sporadically disappear only to be found later in his corner carving horses.
Robby will show up with cinnamon rolls and we will stop working to hang out and talk about weirdos that used to work in the paint shop.

You get the picture.

What most people don't realize about painting is that most of the work doesn't actually involve painting. In order to paint one must mud, sand, caulk, spackle, prime, re-sand, clean, and texture. Did I mention sanding. The most used tools for painting would be a putty knife and sanding blocks. As most of this work is undesirable the least fun work will be past to the lowest ranking individual. The totem pole goes as follows.

Grunt: Basic work. Sands the most.
Patchboy: Extension of grunt. Includes more spackling.
Gopher: Has to go for supplies. Drives Stella, the van, to grab supplies.
Semi-Competent: Begins the more technical things under supervision.
Competent: Can take care of almost anything by himself.

As a painter ascends the ranks he still maintains the duties of his previous title. Even a competent must sand occasionally. It's also important to note the even among the ranks are different classifications. They include Shabby and Not-too-Shabby.

A goal for the paint shop is to get t-shirts that state "Not-too-Shabby" on the back of them. Nothing could build more confidence in our work than "Not-too-Shabby" While on the subject of clothing it is important to know that Jones Paint and Glass is the sole supplier of the BYU paintshop. As such, trips will often be taken to Jones to pick up supplies. Jones will also provide the painters with doughnuts and free apparel. Between Bruce and I  we have around 10 free t-shirts, 1 free hoodie, 2 free hats, and 1 long sleeve t-shirt. This is enough to make many of the unnamed student workers quite envious.

Another tendency we have is to go every day to the breadstore. Great Harvest Bread Company that is. Bob has gone there every day for 10:00 break without fail. He will buy a slice of bread. As Bob is a regular he has become acquainted with all of the workers at Great Harvest. They recognize him and give a slice of bread approximately 1/4 of a loaf for the same price of 75 cents.

Now on to a story.

One day Brucito, Matthais, Tyler, and I had to take painters scaffolding down to Springville for storage. As much scaffolding had to be moved, and as it was snowing, we enlisted the Moving Shop at BYU. The Moving Shop is primarily Polynesian and they have a giant trailer on which to load all of our scaffolding. As the scaffolding got loaded it was taken out of a shelving unit and moved to the trailer. I didn't think too much about the shelving unit at the time. We moved all the scaffolding down to Springville in a peaceful relaxing drive. I took a nap on the backseat of Stella completely unaware of the impending dilemma. The scaffolding was unloaded in Springville, after we set the alarm off, and we broke for lunch.

After lunch Matthais took us back to the location of the shelving unit and told us to disassemble the thing and load it in the back of the van. This would take over an hour and we only had 1 half-dead drill to do the whole thing with. Stella has a rack on top where we stick ladders as we drive. Tyler suggested that the whole huge unit just be stuck on top of the van as we drive to Springville.  Being sensible and cautious individuals we immediately took him seriously and, through no small effort, hoisted the huge shelf on top of Stella.

In order to get it to stay up top I quickly took a role of duct tape, and I taped it to the top of the rack. Not-too-Shabby.

We then hit the road.

The second we were about to enter the major road. We saw three police cars lights flashing only 30 feet away from us. They were on the scene of a car accident and we waited next to these police cars for several minutes until finally we could merge onto the major road. All the while we were laughing so hard that we all almost threw up. Luckily for us none of the police spotted us. How on earth? After we passed that obstacle we took our 15 minute drive traveling at 45 mph with a shelving  unit duct taped to the top of Stella. Believe it or not we made it to Springville without a problem. We unloaded the unit and brought it inside only to realize that it was a horrible shelving unit. Being the quality individuals that we are we proceeded to dismantle the shelving unit regardless of our effort to save it.

That is work for you.

That is why I can honestly say that I really enjoy waking up at 5 in the morning to go to work for 8 and a half hours.