I had a scratchy throat last week, and spent the weekend gobbling Sudafed, so that I could return to work.

A tall, young black kid showed up around 7, yesterday and took command of loading the printer. I was thrilled, as the cardboard sheets were big and there were a lot of them. Fortunately, he threw it all into the printer, and all I had to do was roll up the pallets and unband them.

We did this again this morning, but something was wrong with the cardboard and it kept getting jammed. They tried everything, but ended up clearing away the mess and trying again, until it had all been processed.

They took it in stride as just a normal thing.

Easy Money, who had helped me load the printer, was now free to run the bander and palletize the new boxes. She’s done this kind of thing for years.

The kid had been working on the printer for three months and apparently knew everything there was to know about it, and so frequently looked at his cell phone, said hello to his friends, often took off for a moment and generally disregarded any time restraints.

He surrepititously ate a Slim Jim while loading the printer and waiting for it to jam. Nobody took any notice. Unless there is a safety issue, he is trained up and good to go.

I moved a lot of paper, yesterday, but not so much, today, and so I’m not nearly so tired. I’m off beer, entirely, and instead taking vitamins and eating bananas. I breakfast at 4:00 am, and enjoy a solitary trip to Greensboro. If you go to bed at 7:30, as I do, and which my sister-in-law has been doing for thirty years, it’s actually fun.

It’s a tough job at times, but somebody’s got to do it. If you can manage to have some fun, then do it.