Zen and the art of slack

Story time, kids. I was recently reminded of all the fun I used to have when I worked at Sears, so I thought I'd share a tale or two.

I was 17 when I worked at the Sears Auto Center. I was a stockroom clerk. I stocked tires, exhaust systems and car batteries. I worked the night shift, the shop manager was a drunk, the mechanics were drunks and loons, and my coworkers were fellow high school slackers.

One of my favorite activities at work was to pour lighter fluid down the exhaust pipes. We had a whole slew of them hanging on huge metal racks. One of my cohorts would climb the rolling ladder, dump the lighter fluid down the pipe and then step back as I held a lighter to the bottom end. The lighter fluid would ignite with a loud "whooping" sound, and shoot out 2 or 3 feet from each end. We stopped doing this one night when one of the other clerks lit the pipe too soon and the guy on the ladder got a tad singed.

Another past time was having dolly races up and down the aisles of tires. I drove smack into the shins of the shop manager one time. He stared at me, walked back into his office, and remained there for the rest of the shift.

We got pretty good at racing pallet jacks down the ramp out back. Rolling people down the same ramp after ringing them in snow tires would good for a laugh as well.

Sometimes we'd use the compression hoses to fire objects around the shop. Soda bottles, tire valves. Those valves hurt like hell when they nailed you.

When we weren't stocking shelves or fucking around, we swept out the bays at the end of the night. When the mechanic using that bay was done for the night, we'd put up the lift and clean.

One night I was leaning on the counter to the stockroom, absently watching my coworker Dana clean the bays. He was a tad slow. A really nice kid and actually quite bright. But his mind moved in low gear, and he was often not quite with us. He was holding down the lever to one of the lifts, staring off in space. He thought he was raising the lift in the bay he was standing in. He wasn't. It was for the lift next to it. Which had a car parked in it. At an angle. Not lined up on the lift.

It took a moment or two for me to register the car beginning to rise on one side. It had a fairly serious list by the time I started screaming Dana's name. By the time he looked up at me, smiled and waved, the car was about 3 feet off the ground on one side and rising fast. I started waving and pointing frantically, and other people in the shop started noticing and piping in. Dana finally turned and looked just as the car toppled over on to it's side, making a horrible crunching sound as the roof crumpled between the lifts.

True story.

There was one mechanic who did an oil change and forgot to refill the oil. The owner of the car realized his mistake about a mile or so from the garage when his engine seized. Sears was kind enough to retain this mechanic, asking only that he pay for and install a new engine for the customer.

They did, however, excuse him from work when he did it again a week later.

Another guy was filling a tire he had just changed. The tire lay flat on this machine while he used a compressor to fill it. He was having a rather animate chat with the guy in the bay next to him, leaning one arm on the tire as he talked. After a while, the tire exploded off of the machine and flew through the air fast enough to leave an imprint on the ceiling. The guy's arm was broken in 4 places.

I dressed a mannequin in one of my work uniforms and placed it in the trash compacter. As one of my coworkers held in the button to compact the trash, I let out a scream, threw some fake blood around and hid. He stopped the compacter, came running in, and screamed like a little girl.

Good times.

The best, though, was when I opted to take a work study my senior year of high school. My shift was 5-9, and they weren't going to pay me to work any more than that. I got out of school at noon, and was supposed to go to work. My manager was cool, and would fill out the time slips and sign the papers. I had to be at work, but I wasn't going to get paid.

It just so happened that the stock room for the garage abutted the stock room for hardware, appliances and sporting goods. I appropriated some cardboard stove and fridge boxes, and created a fort. From the aisle, it appeared to be a stack of appliances. In reality, there was a fairly large open space, as I had cut out the back of several of the boxes. I grabbed a sleeping bag, some cushions and a radio, and made myself a camp. I usually spent the hours between 12 and 5 napping away to some Zeppelin.

I got an A in work study that year.