Overnight with Romanians

In preparation for some big howdy-do even at the Yorkdale mall (I assume) the Michael Kors was doing some construction at the place overnight. For whatever reason, the regular guy was sick or couldn't make it, or whatever, so I got the call at 2 in the afternoon to go do this.

In theory I could have said no, but I could really use the dough. So.

I packed up some essentials, a big bag of jelly beans for one (just thinking about them makes me want more... which is funny, because I was plenty sick of them by the end of the night.) and headed over. For my reports sake I asked the name of the Guard who was there beforehand.

"You don't remember my name? Aww.."

Ah, I see what's going on here. You think I'm my brother Jordan (who works at this store, and I USED to work at this store). No, we've never met.

"Oh, well, good to meet you man. I'm Darryl."

"Oh, you're working overnight now?" One of the Michael Kors girls... thinks I'm Jordan too.

No, I'm not my brother.

So, not entirely surprising, everyone seems to have assumed a continuity of guards. I was naturally offended by the lack of interest in whether or not they know who it is standing in front of their store all day.

When the girls were leaving I told one of them to be nice to my brother. She said "we'll treat him as if he was you!"

I replied "treat him better than that." Hopefully my disapproval was registered.

Of the four construction guys that showed up, one was this affable, slightly chunky guy (he really wasn't that bad, but he self described himself as a 'fat kid', so I'll.. give it to him?), an older, almost surfer, dude, and the two eponymous romanian guys.

The first two did next to nothing that night, partially fair enough as they couldn't do their thing while the romanian dudes worked on cleaning the tiles on the floor. The first two left for several hours, this night was St. Patricks Eve, or Eve's Eve. Regardless, when the two returned the surfer guy was... he seemed drunk. In a related story, I have a souvenir of that night, a Steam Whistle brewery glass (pint glass?) shaped like a boot. I didn't necessarily want it, but it's something for the trophy room commemorating my adventure of the night spent at Michael Kors!

Anyways, I felt embarrassed to not only be standing around with the insulting job of making sure these guys don't steal anything, but to be in anyway culturally affiliated with the first two construction guys. The Romanian duo put in their time and effort, they worked hard all night.

The younger of the two, Danny, was 21 and engaged to be married. I correctly assumed his fiancee wasn't from Canada. No, she was from Romania as well. I pointed out that girls here are different from Europe (seemed a pretty fair assumption as well) and they agreed. They counseled my to head over to Europe for a wife. I'll, uh, take it under advisement.

The second one, I forget his name, but he was slightly older and already married. He's got a kid, coincidentally named 'Isaac', which I think was a good call on his part, with another on the way.

Actually, this guy was pretty ripped bicep-wise, which made it (sorry) kind of funny when he had trouble lifting this one thing that should have been a cakewalk. Seems clear to me that the guy was at the gym earlier that day, hence the especially bulging aspect of his bicep and relative weakness. I didn't ask him to confirm my guess, but I'm pretty confident.

They asked me if I'd ever get into contruction, and I replied that though I have a ton of respect for the act of concretely (heh pun) contributing to society, a) it's not really my skill set, and b) how do you even get in to construction? It seems to be the case that everyone in construction knows somebody in the business, and that's how you get in.

So, how did you guys get in construction?

"Everybody's in contruction in Romania."

Ah, well in that case, you definitely did know somebody. Like, anybody.

As we were talking about travel, and with my experiences limited to Canada and the U.S., I naturally expressed my opinion of "boo America" (it's a technical term). The married guy, his wife I guess has dual citizenship with the U.S. and Romania, so he has closer ties with the country, and it was funny to watch the younger guy, Danny, needle the elder with the slightly accented cry of "Yeah, America SUCKS" a good humoured smile spread across his face.

It's funny. In many ways, these two have lived a life far beyond my purview, with an enviable certainty of "the next step". Get married. Have a big mess o' kids. Keep at the construction thing. They're part of a tradition stretching back generations. The absurdities of life, to them, are just "the way it is". They are cogs in the machine, and I mean that with absolutely no disrespect. To contrast, I'm more like a cog laying outside the machine. A hunk of metal, but not really doing much.

At least I'm a hunk *wink*

The two were done their stuff by 4:30am, but I was stuck there until 9am or the management showed up and let me loose, whichever came first. After an interminable period of head buzzing, teeth rotting (jelly beans) every-10-minutes-phone-alarm-sounding time the management arrived around 8:30am. They were shocked to find all the furniture still shoved together, and I explained that, ah, Shawn was his name, the older surfer drunk guy, had said "aw, you guys can leave everything as is, they've got morning guys that can take care of this."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

"Really?!?"

"Yes."

So there really is no one to blame other than that Shawn guy. He was in charge and the others asked him several times for clarification, but there it is.

I agreed to help the two girls move everything into place, and they said they didn't know what they'd do without me. Other than call the mall security guys to help. So there's that.

But still, it was pretty gratifying to see how much stronger I was than they were. Not that I had to do anything particularly special to achieve that other than have a male physiology and be a foot taller (square/cube law has been my catch phrase lately). But MAYBE my years of exercise helped? Maybe?

Come on. Let me have this one.

Thank you.