(2:07 pm)  I have been forced by circumstances to work the past two summers as a “seasonal associate” at a warehouse and distribution center the size of three football fields. A seasonal worker is nothing more than a polite corporate euphemism for “grunt” and allows management to hire college kids, desperate locals and displaced professional workers like myself during their busy summer season, at miserly wages and without benefits or even a shred of job security.  When the busy season ends, they drop us like hot rocks, letting us go without fanfare.  I have been working the 2^nd shift from 3:00 pm until 11:00 pm, although for most of the summer the shift has started at 2:00 pm, expanded to nine hours a day, six days a week.   We are never asked to work the extra hours, only told.

It is a huge, loud, bustling complex of rapidly darting forklifts and stock pickers, conveyor belts moving thousands of packages and the ever-present white noise din of gears, pulleys and well-oiled machines.  People hustle about like ants.  It is noisy, hot and fast-paced.  For all of the seeming chaos, it is remarkably, amazingly efficient.  Literally millions of pieces move in constant motion at efficiency rates in excess of 95%.

But finally, it’s almost over.  After a long and very hot summer, tonight is my very last shift.  I have one goal this evening and one goal only: 11:00pm.  I can see it ahead of me, nine hours away.  I’m not looking left, I’m not looking right.  I’m not looking up or down.  I’m looking straight ahead at 11:00 pm.  In my mind’s eye I can feel the time card in my hand.  I can hear the punch clock go “kerchunk”,  and I can imagine the cool metal and glass of the door in my hand as I push it open. I can taste the bracing night air of 11:00 pm rushing past my cheek as I slip into the quiet of the night that lies beyond.  I will be out.  It will be 11:00pm.  I will be done.  But first I must endure nine more hours.

(2:43 pm)  The thermometer on the wall reads 91^o.   The air is thick, pungent, merciless.  Here and there, huge industrial fans blow hot air… but at least it is moving, at least it cools the skin.  I am a zombie here… the walking dead.  I can barely pick up my feet, no less the 70 lbs. boxes of paper that I’m supposed to be stacking.  I am on the top level of the “tower”, an imposing maze of girders, belts and machinery that serves as the delivery point for the product.  Because we are working overtime and because the shifts overlap, I have been exiled here until 4:00 pm when my usual equipment will become available.  It is the industrial equivalent of Siberia. 

(4:28 pm)  Time is so very cruel and unreasonable here.  I look at the clock and it reads “4:26”, I work for 30 minutes and look again.  It reads “4:31”.  I shrug and work for another 20 minutes… it reads “4:39”.  Time is so ruthlessly, incredibly, inescapably linear.  As much as I long for 11:00 pm, I know that there is no route to it other than directly through 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 9:00, etc.   In other work environments you can, let’s say, prepare for your 1:00 pm meeting at 9:00 am, or do tomorrow’s work today (or yesterday’s).  But here, you are paid only for your linear, successive moments.  There’s one.  There’s another… and another.  I’m getting richer by the minute.

But for as cruel and deceptive and unreasonable as time may seem, time IS what it is.  As unfair as I may perceive it to be from my own tiny, selfish perspective, time is one of the fairest and most reliable constructions of humankind.  It is as reliable as, well, clockwork. 11:00 WILL come I keep telling myself.  I know it, but I don’t really believe it.

Every day for the past two summers I have walked through the front door in the afternoon and shriveled at the impossibility of surviving until 11:00 pm.  It seems an impossibility.  And every day I have watched the clock move so slowly that it doesn’t appear to move at all.  Yet, at some point in every one of those days, EVERY SINGLE ONE, 11:00 pm has eventually rolled around and I have found myself suddenly standing in the clarity of the parking lot, gulping down fresh night air and wondering what all the fuss was about.

(7:00 pm)  It is “lunch” time for swing shift.  I grab my lunch box and run to the sanctity of the parking lot where I pull an old lawn chair from the back of my car and eat my sandwich as I read the newspaper or another chapter from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.  The bitter hot day has now cooled to pleasantness.  I am half-way there.  As impossible as it seemed when I got here, I have completed as much as what lies ahead of me.  It is no longer an impossibility… only a very long haul.

(9:00 pm)  Nine o’clock has always been a milestone.  Only two hours left.  Up until nine it just always seems impossible – 11:00 pm will never get here.  But at 9:00 pm suddenly there are only two hours left: once around the clock and then once more again.  I am rejuvenated with hope and possibility.  I just may be able to do this!

(10:17 pm)  This is the hardest part of the shift.  There is less than an hour to go but I am done.  I am exhausted.  I’m only going through the motions, trying to look busy.  I busy myself for twenty minutes and look at the clock: it is 10:21pm.  I move empty boxes from one pallet to another and then back again.  It is 10:26 pm.  I finally just start walking aimlessly back and forth, up and down aisles, avoiding eye contact with the “bosses” - trying to look busy.  Slowly, torturously, like pulling out toe nails with a pair of pliers, the minutes tick by one-by-one-by-one.  

(10:59 pm)  Time may seem cruel and arbitrary, but even Time can’t come to a complete halt.  It has finally come down to this.  We are lined up behind the time clock, filing past in single file like a viewing at a funeral.  The energy of workers, so exhausted just minutes ago, has magically been elevated as people discuss their plans for the evening.  Ahead, I can see the door.  (Here it comes!) I can feel the flat plastic time card in my hand.  It is smooth and featureless, save for a bar code and my signature.  I swipe the electronic card and the machine goes “kerchunk”. 

A message tells me to have a good evening. 

I tell it to go to hell. 

I reach for the door (Here it comes!), it is cool to the touch.  I push the door open and the full blast of night air rushes in to fill the void that the exhaust fans along the ceiling have created.  And there it is.  The heady, chilling vibrancy of 11:00 pm envelopes me, the door closes and the white noise din of moving belts and radios played much-too-loudly is silenced.  11:00pm!   It is all mine.  It was there all along.  Just like I knew it would be.

I chat with a couple of friends, shake hands and say my good-byes.  I walk to my car, toss in my lunch box, start the engine and slowly drive away.  I glance at the clock on my dashboard.  It is already 11:17 pm.  If I was still inside it would only be 11:02.

Time is cruel that way.