YOU’LL LOVE YOUR ROLLIC JOB

When I was in high school and college, one of the places I worked was at a company that manufactured children’s play clothes. It had a large contract with Sears Roebuck and supplied all the Sears stores throughout the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.

I worked in both the retail and mail order devisions at the same time, in the shipping department and picked orders, packed them, labeled and routed them. I loaded and unloaded huge tracker trailers filled with heavy equipment, bales of corduroy and other materials. More often than not, I was so exhausted, I couldn’t stand on my feet at the end of the day, and would lose 5 pounds a day in sweat from the stifling heat that came through the metal and tar roof in the height of the summer heat.

None of the above stopped me from having my fun. I was a rotten guy who was always on call to perform some trick or mischief. There were targets out there that lent themselves to my amusement. One such victim was John the porter. John spoke broken English and smelled like he slept in garlic. He would wear these brown shoes that looked like he stepped into them in a hurry, with the heels of his feet outside the shoes, bending down the backs of his shoes. He was always dragging a large cardboard cylinder that contained whatever he swept up, while pushing an industrial sized broom. We (my assistants and I) would wait for him to leave the barrel in the middle of the floor, as he went off to sweep some isolated spot, where we would load his barrel with a heavy bucket of concentrated glue. We would put the whole bucket, which must have weighted about 70 lbs. into the barrel and covered it with tissue. He would pour whatever he swept into the barrel, and off he would go dragging the bucket of glue in the barrel when he would stop short, lurch back off his feet and start to swear at us in his native tongue.

Another victim was a little old lady that was the biggest witch that ever lived. Her name was Libby, who was about 4’ 6” and had a very mousey appearance and a hunched back. Out of the blue she would accuse anyone of doing something to her that no one did. Finally we got disgusted with her baseless accusations and gave her something to yell about. Libby would hang an apron she wore over her clothes on a hanger that she attached to a screen fence that separated the warehouse from her packing station. The screen fence was floor to ceiling about 20 feet high. One night while we were working late and she was home, we took her apron on the hanger and put up about 15 feet. My Father was the foreman in charge of the retail division, and was always on alert for our shenanigans. Well old Libby lets out a high pitch squeal and a yelling I have never heard before, as poor old Dad come flying out of wherever he was with my name on his lips.

There were other characters like; Joe the Barbarian, (Joe ran the cutting room where he was a slave driver) The Washwoman, (would gossip about anyone) Meester Gordon (mostly Hispanic women worked for him) a whole host of women who ran sewing machines that have felt the wrath of our humor. Let me state that I wasn’t the ringleader all the time; just most of the time and always had willing accomplices to aid and abet.

The company was named Rollic Inc., and had a theme song on the radio whenever they ran an ad that went “YOU’LL LOVE YOUR ROLLIC JOB!” Can’t say that I did.