The Transporter Couch

I’ve posted about this before and there’s no sense in belaboring the mechanics of working in a tortilla factory.  However, there is great, great sense in describing how good it has made me feel not just to go back to work but to work in that particular environment.

 First, I just think it’s good to work.  Even if you don’t have to, you must.  Or you get fat and lazy and watch All My Children.  One of the joys I have found in working at this tortilla factory is that the other people there are kind of *surprised* at how hard I work.  For the longest time, specifically times when I didn’t really work there, they just thought I was “the white guy who goes shopping with Hilda.”  Or, well, I suppose that’s what they thought.  But I was treated with a sort of polite deference that bordered on disdain.  Fair enough, for I was indeed the white guy who went shopping with Hilda.  But after working there, and working not tirelessly but always trying to be of assistance to anyone who needed assistance, I gained respect, and camaraderie ensued.  Hilda’s husband, Pedro, who for a long while was skeptical about my relationship to the business (and maybe to his wife), has embraced me as a friend.  Last night he and I and Hilda’s brother (one of serveral) actually had a lengthy philosophical question about religion and marriage. 

So, it’s a joyful thing to know that people like me.   And to know that I work to the satisfaction of others.  And if possible, that my work is, if not an inspiration, at least an example.  I mean, I worked at the counter, took out trash, poured salsas, cooked (sometimes), cleaned, took phone calls, MADE phone calls, added up deposits.  Short of roasting the peppers for the chiles rellenos, I did a little bit of everything.  But most of all, and best of all, I worked the counter and with my honest, engaging smile and my incomprehensibly pretty eyes, I could sell sand to an Arab. 

 Also, I brought fresh fruit every day.  Grapes for sure.  Two or three bags of them, sometimes a mixture.  And pineapple, and strawberries.  And whatever else looked good.  Melons.  Watermelon.  Cantaloupe, honeydew…  At first this was regarded with its own brand of …. again, skepticism.  What?  We nosh on chips and salsa all day long.  We have burritos at will.  Tortillas abound!  OK, I said, but look…. next time you want to snag a chip, have a handful of grapes.  The grapes are a HUGE attraction now.  The melons, well someone has to cut all that up.  But once it’s cut up, people EAT it.  I’ve initiated a trend!  All the fat people at Hilda’s are about a month away from serious good health.  And I came in yesterday and they had taken the watermelon and not cut it up to eat but rather had made this sort of punch out of it!  Yum!  Strawberries are a huge attraction, too, but they go fast, so the grapes are the mainstay.  One day we ate a ton of pineapple and there again, no one wanted to cut it up but once it was done it just disappeared.  Maybe they think it’s a luxury to eat fruit.  I couldn’t say.  I don’t think so.  I think it’s the best thing you can do.

 Not that I don’t eat real food, but having lost a lot of weight, I intend to keep it at bay.  I just hope that Hilda will continue my tradition.  Or maybe I’ll get lonely and start coming to prepare fruit salads for the employees every day!

B