Typical Day
When his alarm goes off at 6:00AM, baggage handler Beef McBaggage rolls over onto his stomach. Lifting himself onto his forearms, Beef groans and shakes his head. "It's too early," he thinks.
But in half an hour's time, Beef has scarfed down a bowl of cold cereal, brushed his teeth, and is now standing by the front door, ready for work in his company-issued reflective orange vest. By 7:00AM, Beef arrives at St. Paul International Airport in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where he works for Disunited Airlines, a heavily discounted airline.
While he waits for the rest of his team to arrive, Beef inspects the forklift and other equipment for the day. There was a time when he didn't care much about safety. That was years ago, when he was eighteen years old, on his first job as temporary help for the airline over the winter holidays. He liked the noise—it was like being at a heavy metal concert eight hours a day.
Nearly two decades as a permanent baggage handler with Disunited has taught Beef to take special precautions—a split eardrum he endured fifteen years ago was enough to do that. He splurged on ultra-soundproof earplugs and always tries to recruit one of the other baggage handlers to help with the overweight bags that might strain his back.
Speaking of other baggage handlers, Beef looks up to see the new recruit, Cargo Handlerson, sneaking through the door at 7:10AM.
"I see you, Handlerson. You're late. Hurry up."
"Okay, okay. Thanks, pops."
Together, Beef and Handlerson go to check the crew's assignment for the day. Beef's relieved to see he's not on lav block for the day. For the uninitiated, lav is short for lavatory, which you might call a bathroom or restroom or loo. It's not exactly preferred duty (heh—duty), but someone's got to do it.
Beef just always prays it isn't him; after a horrible accident involving a wobbly drainage pipe and a whole lot of mess, he still has nightmares three years later.
Beef and Handlerson are assigned to ramp duty for the day. Not great, but not the worst either. From the window of the crew room, Beef can see that it's beginning to drizzle outside. Okay, so really not great, but still better than doody duty.
By the time Beef and Handlerson are outside at 8:00AM, it's much more than sprinkling. The first bag's a heavy one, which Beef can feel in that one achy spot in his back. Usually the bags get harder as the day goes on; Beef doesn't remember the job typically being this hard at the beginning of the day. He must be getting old.
The next bag is heavy—too heavy—for Beef, and he asks Handlerson for a hand. The work's slow-going, but they finally get the massive suitcase loaded into the airplane. Beef flags the heavy suitcase for the operations agent.
By 11:00AM, having loaded a few dozen planes carrying hundreds of passengers and their precious belongings around the world, Beef and the rest of the crew are resting in the St. Paul Airport crew room, eating lunch.
Just as he's about to take a big bite of roast beef, one of Beef's supervisors bursts into the door to enlist Beef for help tracking down a bag. No rest for the weary, apparently.
They first check with the front desk to see if the attendants remembered placing the bag on the proper cart. But with hundreds of thousands of bags per day, they certainly don't remember. The bag seems to have been checked in properly—and then it vanished.
Beef and his supervisor climb into one of the carts and search along the route the cart took earlier in the day. A couple minutes in, Beef spots something along the path that shouldn't be there.
Looking closer, he can see that it's a bag. It's been hiding under some greenery that was supposed to improve the "feng shui." Beef never thought it made much of a difference. They return the bag to the bag room, where it'll be sorted along with the rest of the luggage.
Rejoining the rest of the crew, Beef heads with them to their next assignment: a rapid turnover of a Disunited flight coming from New York and heading on to Albuquerque. When they get there, however, they hear that the flight is delayed for weather reasons from New York. Beef and the crew end up driving up and down the tarmac for an hour. So much for rapid turnover.
Finally done with the last plane at 5:00PM, Beef punches out and drives home. He can see the planes taking off and watches one as it disappears into the sky. And just like a baggage handler, he can't help but wonder whether the plane's on time and exactly how many pieces are on board that need to be unloaded when it arrives.
It doesn't matter if he's off the clock; Beef's mind is always on the job.