Shift 73

Today, the drivers’ room was packed. The space filled with the wining of middle aged male voices. A sea of shabby figures stood in front of him lined up waiting for their trip sheets. He knew a few of them, others he just saw day after day or since he worked the night shift, night after night, standing in the lines before the counter where the dispatchers printed out the trip sheets. It was as he expected, like the Army, where he spent almost ten years of his adult life, a uniformed working class, except the drivers here didn’t have uniforms. Well they did, but they were sort of self-designed.
There was for example the leather jacket uniform with thick beard and rotting teeth. His first name was Jack and his last…well he couldn’t remember what it was from seeing his hack license briefly as it passed to the dispatcher. Then there was the denim and tattoo uniform with shaved head, belonging to Tim who was much better looking. Around the room, the Ethiopians and Somalis had their own uniforms, usually normal clothes with thin bodies and their own secret African languages which they spoke forming their own little language cocoons.
The chatter was endless among an assortment of men from different walks of life. Some were ex-businessmen or professionals down on their luck in the Great Recession which brought so many of them to their knees. Others were immigrants or former Casino workers fired when things went bad in 2008. Others were just guys who were on the margin all their lives and became drivers, and the income used to be good, very good. Others were senior citizens who needed the money, seemingly old enough to be in the wrong place. There were old women, and middle aged women too and even young ones who had to get a job and this was it. The turnover was high enough, the working conditions bad enough that there was always a steady stream of drivers coming and going.
He knew that. He knew that very well in fact.