Inside Darren

This post was originally written on a notepad in my car this morning.

All this week, I’ve been doing my meter reading in the city of Hamilton instead of in Haldimand County, which is 90% rural. This morning, as I write this, I’m sitting in my car in downtown Hamilton, waiting for stores to open so that I can read their meters (which are mostly in their basements).

I’m bored, and a little frustrated that I have to extend my workday by just sitting in my car. However, I am presented with the opportunity to participate in one of my favourite work-related activities.

Sleeping.

Yes, one of the benefits of this job is that I work alone and free from supervision, so napping in my car can be done with impunity, as long as all of my meters are read by the end of the day. From time to time, I’ve indulged in a quick, 20-min powernap in the middle of my day, just to keep me functional and properly rested.

I have to keep in mind, however, that this is downtown Hamilton. Not that there’s any danger of being shot, but you could have to deal with the occasional homeless vagrant drooling on your window. My policy is to keep the windows up, the doors locked, and my hand near the horn, which I’ve modified to sound like someone shouting “Get away from me, weasel-face!” It’s effective while parked and on the road.

I still have a good 20 min to kill, even after having written this. Doors locked? Check! Windows up? Check! Horn functional? Check!

Nap time.

In just under a month, I’ll be moving to St. Catharines, and leaving my hometown of Hamilton Ontario, possibly forever. While I’m not necessarily upset about the move (I am, after all, moving in with a fabulously hot woman, who I’ll be married to very shortly), it does leave me in a difficult situation when it comes to employment. The difficulty of the situation is, I’ll have no job in St. Catharines.

I’ve been doing the meter reading gig for about 5 years now, both in the Hamilton area, and in Haldimand County to the south. Generally speaking, meter reading has been good to me, and part of me will miss it very much. However, the company that I work for does not have the contract to do meter reading in St. Catharines, and the company that does has no openings right now.

I only need work for June, July, and August, since I’m going to be attending full-time university in September. So, knowing that you, my readers, come from many walks of life, in multiple countries, I ask you all: What should I do for work after my wedding?

I have retail experience, but retail hours generally suck.

I have an Honours BA in Linguistics, which counts for very little in the real world.

I also have a Bible College degree, which counts for even less.

I’ve worked in the food industry, so somewhere like Tim Hortons could be an option… At least I’d get some free day-old donuts.

I can speak Italian at just-above the preschool level.

I bathe and/or shower regularly.

I have webbed toes.

If you, my loyal readership, can offer some helpful suggestions for job possibilities, or if you yourselves are in a position to offer me an opportunity for worthwhile employment, please leave a comment or send me an email. I’d hate to have to sell my Babylon 5 DVDs just to keep Larissa and I well-fed.

I know it’s been a few days since my last post. To those of you who diligently sit down at your computer every morning with a hot coffee, and perhaps a tasty Eggo waffle being warmed in the toaster, anxious to read the latest onslaught of mind-blowing insights that this website usually offers with much more regularity, I offer my abject apologies. I offer no excuses, but only a promise to deliver quality content to you with more reliability, and less non-blog-related distractions.

So, on to the insights.

Has the following situation ever happened to you? You pass a stranger on the street, making eye contact just as you reach speaking-proximity, and so you throw out a quick, casual greeting. This greeting, however, is misheard by the person you are addressing, and so they respond with an equally casual response, which has no connection to what you just said. For example:

Me: “Hey there!”

Stranger: “Good, thanks.”

This happens with almost-alarming regularity to me as I bump into people while I read meters.

The only possible interpretation of such an exchange is that, in the casual-ness of my greeting, I must have slightly mumbled my words, so that the stranger only hears two syllables which contain some vowels and an [r] sound. The stranger’s brain takes these criteria, and improperly assembles them to make my words seem to be “How’re ya?”, to which the reply “Good, thanks” is acceptable. Since the stranger and I are quickly passing by each other, and have little chance of ever having to speak again, neither of us is inclined to ask the other person what they actually said, or to correct the discrepancy. You’re just left feeling awkward.

This analysis, my friends, is what you can do with an education in Linguistics.

Reading electric meters is a unique job in many ways. There aren’t many people who do this type of work (I doubt many of you who are reading this know of any other meter readers aside from myself or those who work with me), and in my particular office, we have four people who read the meters for our entire county. I work outside. I work completely on my own, often speaking to nobody else for my entire workday. And I’m not paid by the hour, but rather by the amount and type of meters that I read on each route.

Because I’m paid by the meter, and not by how long it takes me to read them, it’s in my best interest to work as quickly as possible. I know that this route I have in front of me pays $150, so whether I finish it in 4 hours or 6 hours is up to me. I can have a long, leisurely workday, or a hurried workday with more time at home afterwards. Generally, I prefer option 2.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that people seem to get very disturbed when they see other people moving too quickly, or working at a speed that seems out of the ordinary. There have been many times when I’ve been jogging through my route, or even walking at a brisk pace, and found myself being told by people on the street to “slow down!” or “take it easy!” As if my trying to shorten my workday was intruding on their sense of comfort, somehow. I have a few ideas as to why this could be the case.

First of all, people who are running, or even just walking quickly, tend to look suspicious - like they’re running away from someone or something. And if there’s no visible person or thing chasing the person who’s running, they could be running from something imaginary, and therefore be insane. By slowing down and walking at the same pace as everyone else, one gives the illusion of sanity, even if they really are in an insane hurry. Perhaps people would like me to give off more of an “aura of sanity”, instead of the image that I seem to be projecting now.

Second, I believe that we have some sort of psychological need to “keep the pace” with those who are around us. If someone is in the midst of trying to busily accomplish a long list of jobs, while someone else in the room is lazing around on the couch watching TV, either the busy person will give up and join the lazy one, or the lazy one will get yelled at to “get up and do something!”, so that the busy person does not have to feel busy alone. Perhaps my running is making other people feel pressured to run, when they really don’t want to.

Third, people who are rushing are more likely to miss something that is going on around them, and either make a mistake in their task, or get into an accident. After all, we wouldn’t have rules against speeding in a car if people were just as skilled at driving at high speeds as they are at low speeds. Perhaps those who tell me to “slow down” are worried for my safety - that I might trip on their sprinkler and land chin-first in their petunias. Or maybe they’re afraid that, in my haste, I’ll miss-read their meter.

For the record, I have no intentions of slowing down. This is my job, and since I’ve had a few years’ practice at it, I believe that I do it well at any pace, and would appreciate other people not telling me how to do it better. After all, I don’t walk into lawyers’ offices and try to offer them suggestions on how to more accurately rip people off. I trust the professionals, and they should trust me.

For some reason, even outside of work, I’ve always been very comfortable with running from point A to point B, rather than walking - even when my speedy arrival at point B is not an issue. I just have always figured that it’s better to be somewhere, rather than being on my way somewhere. You have to drop a book off at the library? Why walk, when running gets you there twice as fast? You need to walk up 3 flights of stairs to get to your apartment? Take them two-at-a-time briskly, and you’re at the top before you know it! Plod up each stair individually, and it feels like you’ve been walking up them forever.

Some may say that I’m not taking time to “smell the roses along the way”. Well, for starters, I’m allergic to pollen, so smelling flowers is not always a pleasant experience anyway. But here’s the way I see it: Getting places quicker, (or finishing work faster) allows me to “smell the roses” in the places I want to be at, rather than smelling whatever I end up stepping in along the way.

And if there’s really something I should be taking notice of en route, I’m sure God will throw a sprinkler in my path to get my attention.

As I was reading meters today, I came across a deer leg on the ground, in front of someone’s front porch. It wasn’t rotting or anything (it’s still too cold out for that). It was just a furry length of leg, with a hoof attached to the end of it, about the length of my forearm. No blood. No sign of trauma. The only thing that was odd about it was that there was no deer attached to it. And it was lying in front of someone’s front porch.

I calmly walked past it, went around to the far side of the house where the electric meter was, read the meter, walked past the leg again on the way back to my car, and drove off. What could I do? Knock on the front door and ask them if they’ve misplaced a piece of deer? Poke around in the wooded area nearby and look for a deer that the others have been calling “Tripod”? No viable options presented themselves.

Except writing about the incident on the internet.

I bashed my head on a tree branch yesterday. I was ducking under a different tree branch, and was surprised to find another, slightly lower tree branch right behind it. I now have a dent in my forehead shaped like a chunk of middle-aged Canadian Maple.

I’m thinking of naming my dent. Something like Shervington. Or Reese.

Freakin’ heck! Just when I thought that my only addictions were Web Sudoku and getting my weekly Battlestar Galactica fix, Julie has to go and get me reading Questionable Content comics. Of course, I’m going to have to read every one of them now. Oh, I almost forgot - I’m also addicted to reading Calvin and Hobbes every time I poo. I’m working my way through the entire collection. Of Calvin and Hobbes, that is. Not of poo.

My latest snack food of choice is Vegetable Thins. I only eat the “original” type, which I’m happy to say contains zero grams of trans fat per 20g serving. They’re also “baked with real vegetables”, which I’m assuming means that there are real vegetables in the crackers themselves, and not that they are simply baked together in the same oven.

So earlier today, I was doing a meter-reading route which involved almost entirely driving, and very little walking. I spent my day navigating around potholes in long farm driveways, and trying to see how much mud I could collect on the underside of my car before rendering it undriveable.

At one point in the early afternoon, I found myself getting sleepy, so I pulled over to the side of this country road I was on, and put my seat back for a quick 20 min power-snooze. I found myself dreaming about driving on country roads, navigating around potholes, and looking for electric meters. When I woke up I thought to myself “I’ve essentially been doing in my sleep what I should be doing in real life, except that when I do it in my sleep, I don’t get paid for it, and my workday ends up being longer.” So I started my car and got back to work. It seemed like the only logical option.

At least I wasn’t having those Sudoku dreams again. Those are brutal.

For those of you who are just joining us, the following piece of information is essential to understand this post - I read electric meters for a living. Now that you’re up to speed, here’s the rant:

It seems like every month or two, I come across a customer who is upset with the fact that I have stepped on their grass while attempting to accurately take a reading of their electric meter. They seem to think that I am somehow violating the sacredness of their turf, or causing unspeakable damage to their landscaping arrangement, possibly de-valuing their property and setting them up for a major financial downfall when they try to sell their house, not to mention bringing shame and ridicule upon them from their neighbors, whose grass has been trod upon in a more delicate fashion, if at all.

Today, as I was plugging along through the small town of York (a locality that consists of maybe 35 homes and a gas station), a man opened his front door and confronted me on this issue. His first words to me were something along the lines of

“Hey, don’t you people believe in sidewalks or driveways?!”

If you want to put somebody in a defensive-stance right from the get-go, refer to them as “you people”. My mood instantly shifted from “let’s try to resolve this issue” to “What can I say to you which will feel satisfying, yet not get me fired?”. What I replied with was

“Well, there actually aren’t any sidewalks on this street.”

Which was very true. There were some sidewalks on other nearby streets, but when your town has only 35 houses, you can only afford to sidewalk-ize a few streets here and there. The customer retorted with

“Well there’s a driveway here! Why don’t you use it instead of walking on everyone’s lawns! You know, I have a dog, and if he bites you, or if you slip and fall on my lawn, don’t expect to sue me over it!”

At this moment, the only replies I could think of were the ones that fit into the “Likely to get you fired” category. I decided to go the minimalist route, and said “Alright…!” with a hint of menace and indignation. At the same time, I turned around and walked down his driveway, and typed this exact message into my meter-reading computer as a note on the customer’s account for future readers:

“Don’t walk on grass - Customer is a dink”

And I have to admit that I think “dink” is a very appropriate word. It conveys my displeasure, while containing a juvenile implication, which accurately captures my thoughts about that customer’s attitude: Juvenile and displeasing.

In defence of meter readers everywhere, and their walking habits, let me say this - We spend our days walking outdoors, exposed to the elements. Sometimes it’s wonderful, but often it can be very uncomfortable, like in the cold of winter, the sweltering heat of summer, or during a rainstorm. It is in the best interest of every meter reader to take the shortest possible route to each meter, so that exposure to the elements is minimized. We don’t walk on your lawn to insult your property. We do it so that we can finish our workday in 6 hours instead of 12.

Taking 8 to 20 steps on your grass, once per month, is not going to destroy your property. You won’t even notice. In fact, since we’re only on your property for an average of 30 seconds per month, the only way you could take notice is if you were sitting inside, staring out your window, waiting for someone to come by so that you could pick a fight with them.

Maybe the man who told me off today was a decent fellow, who just couldn’t log onto his siamese-midget-fetish website this morning, and had to take it out on me. Or maybe he’s a crazed serial-killer who eats his meals on Nazi dinnerware and keeps a collection of his victims’ eyelids in his basement. Either way, he saw it as a worthwhile enterprise to step out of his front door and tell off a complete stranger for something that was of little-to-no significance. My friends, is it really worth it?

So next time you see a meter reader walking across your lawn, say a nice prayer for them - something along the lines of “God, bless that utility-worker, and protect them from frostbite, hypothermia, sunburns, bug-bites, and the uncomfortability of rain-soaked undergarments” (as per the appropriate weather and season at the time of the prayer), instead of saying to yourself “Do I have time to find and sharpen my machete before that meter reader leaves my property?” In the end, I think it will create a better world for all of us. Amen.

My car is in a ditch, and I have to be home in time to pack for a flight to Edmonton tonight. It’s not the absolute end of the world - my boss, Jeff, is on his way with his 4x4 Tracker to pull me out - but I started work early today so that I wouldn’t miss my flight. Now I’ll be cutting it close. Real close.

It happened when I misjudged the boundries of a snow-covered country road driveway. I tried to exit the driveway onto the road, aimed about 4 feet too far to the right, and backed into the ditch instead. My front-end is effectively buried. My back-end is sticking up like a man trying to relieve himself of trapped gas.

On the plus-side… No, there is no plus-side. This means that I’ll have to work extra fast for the rest of the day, which will only increase the likelihood of another bone-headed mistake like this. And yet I feel oddly calm. We’ll see what I’m like as I race toward the boarding gate this evening, Larissa in tow, waving my boarding pass, and trying to convince security that I’m not a terrorist, but just an ethnic-looking white guy.

You know, it’s when life throws these forced waiting-periods at you that you really wish you owned a portable gaming system.

I have a hole in my work-pants. This is not unusual, since I’ve been wearing these pants every day to work for the past 4 years (with the exception of warm days, when I wear shorts). The hole is in the crotch area - Not out in front where anyone could see it, but at the very bottom where the seams all meet.

Most of my pants tend to get holes in the crotch over time. Maybe because that’s where I find that I’m the most itchy (that anti-fungal cream was supposed to clear that up last month!), and all that friction from scratching eventually wears a hole in that area. Or maybe it’s just the normal friction of walking in those pants for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 4 years, that eventually breaks down the fabric in that area and creates a hole.

No matter how it got there, the point is, it’s there.

Now, today was the first day that I had to read meters in the snow. It was cold. It was windy. And with a hole in the crotch of your pants, you are sometimes offered a little more ventilation than you would normally wish for. I thought that I had covered up every point of entry for cold air when I put on my turtleneck sweatshirt, used two neck-warmers, a winter hat, and a pair of mittens that were held taut to my skin by the elastic at the end of the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I also had a jacket, of course.

I forgot that my pants were offering an open window of opportunity for the wind to play with my more delicate bits.

Suffice to say, I was glad when the workday was done, and my gonads could drop back into their proper place. Tonight I’m going to my parents’ house for dinner, and my first order of business will be to ask my mom to patch up the crotch of my pants. I’ll also see if I can dig up my old pair of snowpants out of my parents’ front-hall closet. You know, just to get an extra layer of protection. Because man, there’s no way I’m going to survive a winter of crotch-freeze.