The Invisible Delivery Man
by
Marilyn Skinner Lanier
When he returned home that balmy December day, James plunked a pile of clothes on their bed—a pair of used baggy blue pants and matching shirt with the FedEx logo on the right pocket.
“I’m gonna help FedEx drivers deliver packages downtown.”
She skewed up her eyes at him. “Downtown?”
“Yeah. The Financial District. Commercial deliveries.”
He can’t be serious, she thought. Downtown San Francisco is crazy congested. Streets chock-a-block with cars, taxis, bikers, tourists, business people, shoppers, and the homeless hunkered down in threadbare sleeping bags in recessed doorways. Gina shrugged her shoulders, consoling herself with the thought that it was a temporary job, bound to lift his spirit after months of spinning wheels on job applications.
“Companies are reserving their scarce jobs for younger people with longer career horizons,” she had offered up with the initial wave of rejections.
“It’ll be a good chance to lose that ten pounds,” he added. He wanted to return to 175 pounds, his fighting weight as a Masters swimmer back in the day. She pictured his six-foot-two-inch frame slimmed down a bit. His weight seemed about right for a 64-year-old man his height.
James pulled his bike out of storage to get to the Daly City BART station three miles away from their home in the Sunset District. He left before dawn each morning to begin his twelve-hour day. It was a good solution until the first Pacific winter storm blasted the City.
“Do you mind dropping me off at BART?” he asked that night. “I got drenched this morning.”
Gina jumped at the chance. Better than James navigating his bike through heavy traffic on Highway 1 in the pre-dawn on stormy winter days.
She got his panic call about six o’clock one evening. “My loaner truck is stalled in the middle of Sacramento Street. The ignition key just broke in half! I can’t pull over and traffic is backing up as far as I can see. Damn it!”
Sacramento Street is a narrow single-lane exit route going one-way from downtown during rush hour. The steep street is congested with cars and trucks, along with big city buses that tie to the overhead electrical lines, all scrambling from the Financial District over Nob Hill to points west.
After passing the truck-driving test for FedEx, James’s stories of navigating the 26-foot truck on Highway 101 into the City made her shiver. He called it a “noisy rattletrap” with a loose floor plate offering views to the ground below, passenger door stuck open while driving due to a broken side mirror, and a back door that frequently jammed.
“I can’t reach Eddy the dispatcher. Guess his phone is down. People are leaving stalled buses to walk up the hill instead. They’re threading around my truck giving me dirty looks!”
“Can’t you get roadside assistance from FedEx?”
“It’s Eddy’s truck. Doesn’t belong to FedEx. It’s his responsibility.” He paused. “Hey, I’m getting a call. Gotta hang up.”
He called her back again a few minutes later. One of Eddy’s men had come to his rescue after thirty minutes of torment.
They celebrated the day James weighed in at 175 pounds of pure muscle. Brought back sweet memories of this lanky guy whose strong arms used to engulf her.
His newly trim physique was a silver lining for a highly physical job that left him exhausted every night. He figured he was walking between five to seven miles a day and lifting or hauling over a thousand pounds of goods on average. She understood why he soon quit going to the fitness center with her.
Quite a contrast with his former life as a high-paid computer software executive who traveled first class and dined with international customers at fine restaurants around the world. She remembered the day he received notification of his million-mile award status from United.
But his new stories were riveting: vignettes about looking at stacks and stacks of boxes each morning needing to be loaded onto his truck, wondering how they could all fit; about him schlepping boxes on dollies up crowded elevators to the workspaces designed for high tech Millennials in the office towers. San Francisco was enjoying its second dot-com boom.
A glance around the Financial District mid-day revealed the new business crowd. At least fifty per cent were Millennials—a mix of hipster programmers and casually dressed high techies who create shoot-em-up war games and other entertainment video games as well as social networking applications and more. They work for companies like Pocket Gems and Tiny Company—high-energy start-ups exploding with growth.
James was the invisible man with access to whole floors unhampered by cubicles or interior walls, filled with seven-foot-wide work tables crowded with computers and coffee mugs, creatively painted exterior walls with black-and-white photographs dangling on long wires, Ping Pong and pool tables at far ends of the room, and large drink coolers filled with exotic soda drinks and micro-brews.
More often than not, hip young professionals wouldn’t stop their conversations or pull out their earbuds for a few seconds to help him find a suitable place to drop off his heavy load. But these slights didn’t bother him. What offended him was an encounter with two attorneys, former business networking acquaintances, who glanced away when they saw him. “They refused to recognize me,” he exclaimed to Gina one night. “I couldn’t believe it!”
In other places, receptionists offered him sparkling limewater, wheat germ cookies, or chunks of Ghirardelli chocolate before he departed for the next delivery. They had to act fast after James unloaded a heap of boxes in their office and obtained their signature on the scanner. Maybe they also sensed that he needed a little extra nourishment to keep his baggy FedEx pants from falling off his hips as his weight continued to drop.
“The big banks and financial companies are totally different,” he said. “Take Wells Fargo or Bank of America—a vast sea of cubicles with only occasional heads popping up. When I ask who can sign for a delivery, no one knows. They often don’t even know the name of their neighbor in the next cubicle.”
James talked a lot about Pablo, a second-generation immigrant who was studying to become an EMT and working part-time as a loader at the Terminal. His Portuguese father had returned to the Azores after his divorce from Pablo’s mother.
“Pablo’s smart, strong. A hard worker who presents himself well. He has to wake up at three in the morning to begin work at 4:30—a four-hour shift that pays a low flat daily rate with no benefits.”
He asked James how he could get “field work”—work outside the vast cavern of the FedEx Terminal where he was an entry-level loader. James promised to put in a good word for him to his supervisor.
One day James encountered Pablo at the terminal, all dressed up in FedEx clothes for his new delivery job. Fellow loaders were jokingly calling him “traitor.” It was tongue-in-cheek, an expression of their own aspirations. James began to realize his value as a mentor.
In bed late one night, James was busily keying on his laptop.
“What are you doing?” Gina asked, annoyed at the invasion of computer light and keyboard tapping.
“Making some PowerPoint slides. Eddy asked me to put together a five-minute driver safety program for tomorrow morning. ”
“How many drivers will be there?”
“Maybe twenty. Twenty-five. Eddy wants them to get more training. Especially after that terrible accident last week.”
She’d read about it in the Chronicle. James said the FedEx driver was moving slowly in one lane next to an 18-wheeler. Heavy traffic south of downtown was heading towards Market Street. A motorcyclist tried to squeeze between them. He lost his balance and was run over by the FedEx driver, who didn’t see him below. The driver was really messed up about it and ended up quitting. Eddy was determined his drivers learn how to protect themselves from this kind of tragedy.
A pattern was emerging. The franchise owner was starting to tap into James’s business know-how. Another approached James about forming a specialty lighting company. Workers were benefitting from his mentoring. These overtures came as a welcome surprise.
Just before the holiday season, James expressed concern about staying with the package delivery business. “I’m not sure I want to continue this into the New Year,” he said. “It’s causing some problems with my foot.” He’d had foot surgery for a badly pronated right foot a couple of years before.
Late at night he began to study for an insurance licensing exam—property and casualty. He passed it with a score of 95 per cent and promptly applied for the certificate. Days later, he was back at the computer studying for an additional licensing exam in life and accident/health. Once again, he passed it with good scores and applied for the next certificate.
“Why not?” he asked her. “I want to be able to sell it all.”
“Yes, why not?” she nodded, looking at this tall thin man flashing his ever-optimistic smile at her.