FORMER SECURITY GUY ANDY GETS A CONSTRUCTION JOB
Ends up on state-funded permanent disability first week

In case everyone is wondering what all that hammering and sawing is about over there in the field next door, it's a house. Skip's twin brother Chuck owns that field, and he's building a house there. Chuck is even having a extra bedroom built on it for Skip, so Skip don't have to live in that rathole trailer down in space #76 no more.

Chuck can't build a whole house all by hisself, so he went and hired a bunch of professional contractors with their own heavy equipment, and some gophers to help carry tools and clean up the lot and whatnot. Andy our ex-security guy got hired to be one of them construction gophers, right along with about half of us here in the trailer park.

Andy did all right his first day. He hauled stuff around and helped mark off a great big square in the dirt. That first day, the only actual contractor on the site was the one telling all the gophers how to mark a giant square in the dirt and have all the sides come out the same length. Andy worked real hard and went home all sweaty and grimy and happy.

Andy kept doing a good job on his second day, right up until lunch. That's when the heavy equipment showed up. It was all everyone could do to keep Andy off that shit. The first time Andy hopped onto a piece of equipment, it caught all them contractors and us gophers by surprise.

Everyone was sitting around, finishing lunch, when all of a sudden we all heared a big machine starting up and rolling. Next thing we knew, this huge excavator bucket came down and smashed a rolloff dumpster not 15 feet from where we was all eating. We all looked up, and there was Andy in the cab, hair all wild, head thrown back, hands on all the levers, and laughing like a fucking maniac.

Chuck's the owner of the property, so that makes him the big boss, and the only guy who can hire and fire anyone. Chuck wasn't around for the excavator incident, so Andy didn't get shitcanned on the spot. We all gave Andy glaring death-looks for the rest of the day. Andy behaved hisself and there were no more incidents until the next day.

The first incident that day didn't end in disaster. All that happened then was Andy got into the excavator again, only instead of fucking with his coworkers in it, Andy decided to fuck with his neighbors in the trailer park instead. We caught Andy in the excavator about halfway down the driveway in the trailer park, with the bucket part lifted straight up over the cab. Andy said he lifted the bucket like that so he could see to drive. The actual excavator operator said the cab swivels around with the bucket hanging behind, so you can see out the front if you have to drive a
excavator someplace. Andy didn't know that, though, because he never had no formal training on heavy mobile equipment.

Anyways, it don't look like Edgar the maintenance guy is gonna hafta do much tree-trimming down the driveway for a while, thanks to that excavator bucket knocking off some great big branches on the way through the trailer park.

We all finally cornered Andy at the duckpond and dragged his ass out of the cab of the excavator. Then the excavator operator got into the cab and lowered the bucket and swiveled the cab around and drove it back over next door to the construction site.

Andy probably should have been fired right then, but Chuck was gone off-site when the excavator incident occurred at lunchtime the previous day. After giving Andy a stern safety lecture, Chuck gave Andy another chance.

We all made it crystal clear to Andy that he was not to attempt to drive or operate any of the heavy equipment under any circumstances. What we should have done was told him not to TOUCH the heavy equipment, because Andy's next stunt was to play heavy-equipment mechanic.

Around 2:00 in the afternoon, we all heared some clanging and banging going on over by the bulldozer. Everyone just figured it was one of the maintenance mechanics working. It turns out both of the maintenance mechanics went up the highway to the yard for parts, and left the heavy equipment unguarded. All that banging and clanging was Andy farting around with a big rolling toolbox underneath the bulldozer.

Andy had his head up under a wheel well and was making a bunch of racket in there. Nobody recognized him because we could only see him from the shoulders down, he had his back to us, and he was wearing the exact same thing as the rest of us--hardhat, flannel shirt, grimy Levis, and work boots.

We heared this rattle-rattle-rattle CLANG-CLANG-CLANG squeak-squeak screeeeee PWANG thunk-thunk-thunk and then all of a sudden there was this huge BOING when the brake actuator thingie let loose and wrapped Andy up real tight in a gigantic spring.

Now, a person's spine ain't meant to be spinning 360s like that. Andy is currently laid up in the county hospital wearing nothing but a body cast and band-aids because of what that great-big spring done to him. It took a whole team of doctors the whole rest of the day and all night in that operating room to get Andy and that spring unwound from each other.

The doc says Andy ain't never gonna be able to work another day in his life. We didn't figure he'd work another day in his life after being shitcanned from his trailerpark security job last year anyways. Andy will be receiving a big, fat, three-digit check from the state every month from now on until Earth quits spinning on its axis, forever and ever, amen.

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