By Joshua Ryan
Needless to say, I was exhausted. I was glad that the next thing they did was to lock us back in our boxes and feed us another workie bar. I gobbled the awful thing down and fell asleep on my awful, horrible bunk.
But just because I was calling it a day didn’t mean that Boss Drum was. I don’t know when, because without any clocks or cell phones to look at I was losing track of time, but at some moment that was way too soon there was a bang on the door and a key turning in the lock, and I had to STEP OUT and LINE UP and STAND AT ATTENTION while Boss Drum introduced us to yet another workie who was appointed to order us around. This one was a young black guy, very precise in the way he talked, and he was there to “start you workies off on your on-the-job training for your future positions in life.” The name on his shirt was Grig, and our first on-the-job training was washing floors. “And I’m gonna go ahead right now and tell you about how to do that.”