Each night, the planes start coming in at 11. One after another, a massive airlift of cargo, looking to see it wartime. You can see, actually, there are two runways out there. You've got one on the left and the right.
You've got the air-craft fixing to touch down on the right. You've got one coming up right behind it about 15 seconds behind it. It's fixing to land on the left. It's rush hour here at FedEx.
The planes land every 45 seconds or so for two hours. 130 jets here at the Memphis Hub of Federal Express. 1.2 million pieces of cargo are unloaded, slid down ramps and conveyor belts. Scanned and sorted and re-routed and re-scanned by 8,500 people into bites in the middle of the night.
And three hours after they start, packages are packed on planes to the destinations. The airlift out of Memphis begins. It's raining. Meanwhile, somewhere, probably sleeping.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans in one big, big hurry. To get stuff, we'll go over to them one time, in one day. In the middle of Memphis Airport, come at night. We look like one very anxious nation.
Everywhere around the Federal Express hub, there are television screens with two times on them. One is the current time. The other is the time that the sort will go down. That is the time that they hope that they will stop taking in new packages all the time.
All the time until the end, packages will go in. If everything goes perfectly, good weather, no maintenance problems, the sort goes down at 207. And for every minute they go, over 207 costs per minute. Last I heard it was over $100,000 a minute.
That's employee costs, sector flights to get packages where they'll need to go. Refunds to customers, whose packages were delayed. Business sort went late. If I could explain this to me, Ron Nichols is 31.
And he sits in the hot seat, himself. A few nights a week, he is the one who determines when the sort goes down. If a plane with 50,000 packages is going to be late, should he hold the sort? How long?
In 10 minutes. This 31-year-old can cost Federal Express $1 million. He likes the pressure. It's an Nirvana.
Almost around 145, you get an ultimate enlightenment because you see everything. You see the big picture exactly what's going on everywhere. And as the adrenaline kicks in and you have to make, especially if you're in the hot seat, you have to make that decision as to whether or not you feel that you're going to make a 207. It is a rush.
It's a rush because you're up against the wall. The clock is ticking. And if you make the wrong decision, it's going to cost. One thing that's interesting about the delivery business is that it isn't as people who are on the top of the whole operation, like this guy, who thrive on the pressure and hit this kind of euphoria.
Even at the very bottom, you meet people like this. Tabitha Tate, for example. She stands in a row of a dozen people who do what's called the secondary sort for belt, too. Say, when you wander around FedEx, you're constantly telling you things like, okay, here's the secondary sort, and here's where the matrix begins, and here's where the other matrix begins, and here's where the other matrix begins, and all the names of the buildings are like the hub, and the super hub, and the mega hub, and the ultra hub.
Anyway, so, Tabitha Tate stands there and she has memorized 700 edX destination codes. And she stands by benefactors. And she grabs one with her left hand and one with her right. And she barely glances at them.
And she pitches them into 10 different destinations for us, faster than you would think it's humanly possible. So, what do you think about while you're doing this? I don't just really think about anything. It's like a float.
Kind of like, really. You already know where you're going. You don't have to think about it in this stuff. You're not able to store more than 47 hexes per medium, which were required to store.
Not really per minute? 47. How many do you store it? 60.
And it's sort of a macho thing where you guys will, like, you know, who's faster and slower? Yeah. Really? Sometimes we try to compete with each other.
Welcome to WBE Chicago's American Life on our Glass. Today on our program, deliveries at one, speed. A few words from somebody who has cut you off in traffic and laughed. At two, who you meet?
A short story by Juno Diaz about delivering pool tables. At three, the word premiere of a new radio drama by David Sedaris. It's kind of a radio experiment we gave him a sound effects record and this challenge to create a radio play using only the effects on this one record and using all the effects on the record. We hear what he came up with at four.
Check out the package on that guy. An investigation into whether UPS men actually do have sex with the customers on their route. At five. An unhappy customer gets a phone call from the CEO of Federal Express and still keeps his personal boycott going.
Another company. Stay with us. Act one. Speed.
On the street, as delivery worker, you know, you're mostly alone. You're moving fast from place to place. And you spend a lot of time, basically, in your own head. And some people, you know, play little games on the job.
They set little challenges for themselves. And just like there's a euphoria for the people who are under so much pressure at Federal Express in the middle of the night, there's this euphoria to moving through traffic and raising the clock to get your stuff where it's supposed to go. Donnie Starbucks, different produce in San Francisco. That is used to wake up at 2.30 every morning, gets doned on the loading dock with the other drivers and head out.
Everybody had their own roots and there were, you know, sort of like expected times that you would finish your roots and. And part of the reasons why we had something accident, especially me, was because I was obsessed with doing my root faster than anybody else. And I would literally like shave. Like, I think I got it when I first started to shave like an hour off of, you know, so instead of doing it in three hours, I would do it in two hours.
But along the way, you know, I would wipe out people's cars. I wouldn't talk to the clients. I would drop off the potatoes. And they would try to get here to conversation and all I could think about is, let me just get the hell out of here and get on my way.
The way I would shave the times, I ran a lot of red lights. I would drive 65 miles an hour down a city street. It got to the point, though, where I realized that after, whatever, a year of driving, that I was getting into increments of like one minute, 30 seconds. I mean, literally I would like drive 100 miles an hour into the loading bay, slam on the brakes, and look at the clock.
I remember one day, driving one 50 miles an hour down the street. And I see, it's a two lane, one way street. And I see in the right-hand lane about two blocks ahead of me, like just your non-descript white rental car, just sort of going along, and like, can't decide if they want to go right or left. And two blocks away from them, I go, you know, if I really wanted to, I could slow down right now because I know they're going to do something really stupid.
But then there's this part of me that said, well, hell with that. I'm just, I'm on my route. I have to do what I have to do. And of course, as I got within like 20 feet of them, they decided to turn left from the right lane, right in front of me.
I completely totaled their car. And my first reaction was to get out of the car and I wanted to yell at that. It wasn't like, you know, you could have prevented this. It was like, you have now slowed me down.
You've screwed up my whole day. And really, if it wasn't for this group of key genie workers, electrical workers working on the street out there, who saw this, and somehow decided that I was in the right because I guess it was like this blue-collar bonding thing, like, he's a truck driver. There's no way these people on this rent car, you know, can be right. I think I would have really done into trouble because I obviously was speeding like a mania.
So, you know, I sort of like walked through my whole job that way, except the time I ran into the Bank of America. You're in this very surreal world. I mean, nobody else is up. You're bombing down the streets.
I think that's part of the problem when all of some people appear on the streets. You're like, look, I've been on the streets already for three hours. Like, just get out of my way. I remember one day.
You knew when the record was, like, you knew when the record was beatable because you would be halfway through your route. And let's say you'd done it in 45 minutes, and you knew that, like, if you just gave it a little extra energy that you could get through the day. But I remember one day, like, okay, halfway through my route, and there was this woman in front of me at this intersection. And the light turned yellow, and she slowed down, and she really got a gun through the light, and I could have light gone through, and it would have been perfect.
You know, I had all the lights timed, and she slowed down. And I was sitting in my truck, and I lost it. And I lost it to the point where, before the light turned green, I, like, let the truck, like, put in a neutral, I was on a slight hill, and I just sort of bumped her. And then, immediately, the minute I bumped her, it's like, you know, it's like this huge guilt washed over me.
And I'm like, okay, that was like, that was violent. Like, okay, it's one thing to be screaming and yelling at your truck, listening to, like, you know, motorhead. It's another thing to physically violate something like that. So then I realized, okay, you know, I crossed some line that, you know, I guess you just shouldn't cross.
What basically happens, the psychology, I think, of a delivery driver is that the job is so boring. I mean, and it's stressful. There's no more stressful job than driving and traffic, especially in an urban environment. And so then it all gets reduced to minutiae, it gets reduced to the sky who's in this little car heady, who, like, somehow becomes your arch enemy.
And so it just creates an environment where you get very hostile and you just, you know, everybody is an inconvenience. And all you want to do is get from point A to point B. Then there was the one part of the delivery job, which was always, you know, there you are, you're screaming, you're yelling, or you're just like, you know, you just have these helpers. And then there's a beautiful secretary walking to work with a short stir.
It would be like this, like, all the noise would stop, and you just have like this momentary, like, calm, and then all of a sudden she would disappear from view, and then you were like thrust right back into, you know, the craziness of traffic and trying to get to where you're going. That would always save the day, actually. Tony Starbucks was interviewed by Paul Tuff, and you're Dr. Dolan, in New York.
Hey, good boy. He comes each day, our paper in his hand. He throws the paper towards our door and on our porch it lands on sunny days, on rainy days. Our paper boy comes by.
He never, never misses us, cause if he did, I'd cry. Now, why don't we all try it together? Ready? One, two, three.
The paper boy comes each day or paper. That too, what do you mean? There's the game that you play in your head when you work, and there are also the worlds that your job takes you into, as you go house to house, office to office, like a spy, having little encounters with people along the way, as a delivery person. This short story is by Geno Diaz, about guys who go for gold crowns and bristles and schnelkeys, pool tables.
Winning before we start that, some of the language in this story might not be suitable for younger listeners. The first time we try to deliver the gold crown, the lights are on in the house, but no one lets us in. I bang on the front door, and Wayne hits the back, and I can hear our double drums shaking the windows. Right then, I have this feeling that somebody's inside laughing at us.
This guy better have a good excuse, Wayne, says, this is bullf***. You're telling me, I say, but Wayne's the one who takes his job too seriously. He pounced some more on the door, his face jiggling. A couple of times he wraps on the windows, tries squittin' through the curtains.
I take a more philosophical approach. I walk over to the ditch that's been cut next to the road, a drainage pipe half filled with water, and sit down. I smoke and watch a mama duck enter three ducklings scavenge the grassy bank, and then float down stream like they're on the same string. Beautiful, I say, but Wayne doesn't hear.
He's banging on the door with a staple gun. At nine, Wayne picks me up at the showroom, and by then I have a route planned out. The order form tells me everything I need to know about the customers will be dealing with that day. If someone is just getting a 52 inch car table delivered, then you know they aren't gonna give you too much hassle, but they also aren't gonna tip.
Those are your spots with cerebell and perthamboy deliveries. The pool tables go north to the rich suburbs. Livingston, Ridgewood, Bedminster. You should see our customers.
Doctors, diplomats, surgeons, presidents of universities, ladies and slacks, and silk tops who sport thin watches you can trade in for a car. Most of them prepare for us by laying down a path of yesterday's Watson and Post from the front door to the game room. I make them pick it all up. I say, got out.
What if we slip? Do you know what 200 pounds of slate can do to a floor? The threat of property damage puts the chopped chop in the step. Sometimes a customer has to jet to the store for cat food or a newspaper while we're in the middle of the job.
I'm sure you'll be all right, they say. They never sound too sure. Of course I say. Just show us where the silver is at.
The customer's ha ha and we ha ha, and then they agonize over leaving, linger by the front door, trying to memorize everything they own, as if they don't know where to find us, who we work for. Once they're gone, I don't have to worry about anyone bothering me. I put down the ratchet, crack my knuckles, and explore. Usually while Wayne is smoothing out the felt and doesn't need help.
I'd say cookies from the kitchen, raises from the bathroom cabinets. Some of these houses have 20, 30 rooms. On the right back, I try to figure out how much loot it would take to fill up all that space. I've been caught roaming around plenty of times.
But you'd be surprised how quickly someone believes you're looking for the bathroom, if you don't jump when you're discovered, if you just say hi. After the paperwork's been signed, I have a decision to make. If the customer has been good, then tipped well, we call it even and leave. If the customer has been an ass, maybe they yelled, maybe they let their kids throw golf balls at us.
I asked for the bathroom. Wayne will pretend that he hasn't seen this before. Excuse me, I'll say. I let them show me the way to the bathroom.
Usually I already know. And once the door is shut and the cramp bubble bath drops into my pockets and throw fist-sized wides of toilet paper into the toilet, I take a dump if I can and leave that for them. Most of the time, Wayne and I work well together. He's the driver and the money man, and I do the lifting and handle the ass s***s.
Tonight we're on our way to Lawrenceville, and he wants to talk to me about Charlene, one of the showroom girls. I haven't wanted to talk about women in months, not since the girlfriend. I really want to piler, he tells me. Maybe I'm one of the Madison's.
Man, I say, cutting my eyes towards him. Don't you have a wife or something? He gets quiet. Twice this year, Wayne's cheated on his wife.
And I've heard it all the before and the after. The last time his wife nearly tossed his ass out to the dogs. Neither of the women seemed worth it to me. One of them was even younger than Charlene.
Wayne can be a moody guy, and this is one of those nights. He sloshes in the driver's seat and swerves through traffic, riding other people's bumpers like I've told him not to do. I don't need a collision for a four-hour silent treatment, so I try to forget that I think his wife is good people, and ask him if Charlene's given him any signals. He slows the truck down.
Signals like you wouldn't believe, he says. The second time we bring the gold crown, the heavy curtain next to the door swings up like a Spanish fan. A woman stares at me, and Wayne's too busy knocking to see. Munjeka, I say.
She's black and unsmiling, and then the curtain drops between us, a whisper on the glass. She had on a t-shirt that said no problem, and didn't look like she owned the place. She looked more like the help, and couldn't have been older than 20, and from the thinness of her face I pictured the rest of her skinny. We stared at each other for a second at the most, not enough for me to notice the shape of her ears, where her lips were chapped.
I've fallen in love unless. Later in the truck, on the way back to the showroom, Wayne Mudders, this guy is dead. I mean it. The girlfriend calls sometimes, but not often.
She just found herself a new boyfriend, some Sangano who works at a record store. Dan is his name, and the way she says it, so painfully gringo, mixed the corner of my eyes narrow. The last time I saw her in person was in Hoboken. She was with Dan, and hadn't yet told me about him, and heard it across the street in her high clogs to avoid me and my boys.
A month before the Sangano, I went to her house, a friend visiting a friend, and her parents asked me how business was, as if I balanced the books or something. Business is outstanding, I said. That's really wonderful to hear, the father said. You betcha.
He asked me to help him mow his lawn, and while we were dribbling gas into the tank, he offered me a job. A real one that you can build on, utilities, he said, is nothing to be ashamed of. The boss nearly kicked our asses over the gold crown. The customer, an asshole named Pruitt, called up crazy, said we were delinquent.
That's how the boss put it, delinquent. We knew that's what the customer called us, because the boss doesn't use words like that. Look boss, I said, we knock like crazy. I mean, we knock like federal marshals, like Paul Bunyan.
The boss wasn't having it. He tore us for a good two minutes and then dismissed us. For most of the night, I didn't think I had a job, so I hit the bars, fantasizing that I would bump into this guy's room, but the next morning Wayne came by with the gold crown again. Both of us had hangovers.
One more time, he said, an extra delivery, no overtime. We hammered on the door for ten minutes, but no one answered. I jimmied with the window and the back door, and I could have sworn I heard her behind the patio door. I knocked hard and heard footsteps.
We called the boss and told him what was what, and the boss called the house, but no one answered. Okay, the boss said, get those car tables done. That night, as we lined up the next day's paperwork, we got a call from Pruitt, and he didn't use the word delinquent. Pruitt said he was contrite, and determined, and asked us to come again.
His maid was sure to let us in. We parked in front of Pruitt's house and bang on the door. I give Wayne a hard look when I see no car in the garage. Yes, I hear a voice inside say.
We're the delivery guys, I yell. A bolt slides, a lock turns, the door opens. She stands in our way, wearing black shorts and a gloss of red on her lips, and I'm sweating. Come in, yes?
She stands back from the door, holding it open. Sounds like Spanish, Wayne says. No **** I say, switching over. Do you remember me?
No, she says. I look over at Wayne. Can you believe this? I can believe anything, kid.
You heard us, didn't you? The other day, that was you. She shrugs and opens the door wider. You better tell her to prop that with a chair.
Wayne heads back to unlock the truck. You hold that door, I say. She stays in the kitchen while we work. I can hear her humming.
Wayne shaking his right hand like he scolded his fingertips. Yeah, she's fine. She has her back to me, her hands stirring around in a full sink when I walk in. I try to sound conciliatory.
You're from the city, Anad. We're about. Washington Heights. Dominicana, I say.
Giqueana. She nods. What street? I don't know the address, she says.
I haven't written down. My mother and my brothers live there. I'm Dominican, I say. You don't look it.
I get a glass of water. We're both staring out at the money lawn. She says, I didn't answer the door because I wanted to make him mad. Make who mad?
I want to get out of here, she says. Out of here? I'll pay you for a ride. I don't think so, I say.
Aren't you from where by your own? No. Then why did you ask the address? Why?
I have family near there. Would it be that big of a problem? I say in English that she should have her boss bring her, but she stares at me blankly. I switch over.
He's up in there, she says, suddenly angry. I put down the glass, move next to her to wash it. She's exactly my height and smells of liquid detergent and has tiny beautiful moles on her neck. Here she says, putting out her hand, but I finish it and go back to the den.
Do you know what she wants us to do, I say to Wayne? Wayne is sinking the bolts into the slate with the Makita. You can't do it, he says. Why not?
Kid. We have to finish this. I'll be back before you know it. When out.
Kid. He stands up slowly. He's nearly twice as old as me. I go to the window and look out.
New ginkos stand in rows beside the driveway. A thousand years ago when I was still in college, I learned something about them. Living fossils unchanged since their inception millions of years ago. You tagged Charlene, bitten you.
Sure did, he answers. I take the truck keys out of the toolbox. I'll be right back, I promise. We reached the Washington Bridge without saying a word.
As if the best way she asks, the bridge doesn't seem to impress her. It's the shortest way. That's what he said when I arrived last year. I wanted to see the countryside.
There was too much rain to see anything anyway. I want to ask her if she loves her boss, but I ask her instead, how do you like the states? She swings her head across with the billboards. I'm not surprised by any of it, she says.
As we cross over the bridge, I drop my hand into her lap. I leave it there, palm up, fingers slightly curled. Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won't work. She turns her head slowly, facing out beyond the bridge cables, out to Manhattan and the Hudson.
Everything in Washington Heights is Dominican. I go block without passing a Cascaya Bakery or a Cascaya Super Mercado or a hotel Cascaya. If I were to park the truck and get out, nobody would take me for a delivery man. I could be the guy who was in the corner selling Dominican flags.
I could be on my way home to my girl. When we reach her block, I ask a kid with a sag for the building, and he points out the stoop with the pinky. She gets out of the truck and straightens the front of her sweatshirt before following the line that the kid's finger has cut across the street. We that day I say.
Wayne works on the boss and a week later on back, on probation, painting the warehouse. Wayne brings me meatball sandwiches from out on the road, skinny things with a seam of cheese coming the bread. Was it worth it? He asks me.
He's watching me close. I tell him it wasn't. Did you at least get some? Hell yeah, I say.
Are you sure? Why would I lie about something like that? Homegirl was an animal. I still have the teeth marks.
Damn, he says. We're back on the road a week later. Buckingham's imperials, gold crowns, and dozens of card tables. I keep a copy of Pruitt's paperwork, and when the curiosity finally gets to me, I call.
The first time I get the machine, the next two times I'm in the Bedminster area, Pruitt picks up and says yes, but on the fourth time she answers, and the sink is running on her side of the phone, and she shuts it off when I don't say anything. Was she there, Wayne asks in the truck? Of course she was. He hands me the map, and my fingers trace our deliveries, stitching city to city.
Looks like we've gotten everything I say. Finally, eons, what's first tomorrow? We won't really know until morning when I've gotten the paperwork in order, but I take guesses anyway. One of our games, it passes the time, gives us something to look forward to.
I close my eyes and put my hand down on the map. So many towns, so many cities to choose from. Some places are sure bets, but more than once I've gone for the long shot and been right. You can't imagine how many times I've been right, but this time nothing comes.
No magic, no nothing. It could be anywhere. I open my eyes and see that Wayne is still waiting. Edison, I say, pressing my thumb down.
Edison, New Jersey. Do you know D.S.'s story, Edison, New Jersey? This one was book drowned. Coming up, David Sedaris tries something, none of us has ever heard anybody try.
The real power of the UPS uniform, and more, that's in a minute, when a program continues. It's his American life from our class. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a wide variety of writers, reporters, and performers to take a whack at that theme, with radio monologues, documentaries, short fiction, and occasionally short radio dramas. Our program today is called Deliveries, About Deliveries, and we have arrived at Act 3, World Premiere.
David Sedaris is a frequent contributor to our program, author of the New Book of Stories, called Naked, Educational Commentator, and NPR's Morning Edition, and a few weeks ago, we gave him this assignment to write a radio play using only the sound effects from one sound effects record, and he had to use every sound on the record, somewhere in the drama. We chose as our sound effects record, this volume, I hold it in my hand, it is called, Ultimate Sound Effects, over one hour, I guess that is part of the title, Volume 5 CD 8093-2, composes the label. The effects on here, so you can follow the challenge that faced the playwright in order on the CD anyway, are, of course, drunk carriage on street, swamp noises, time bomb through airport security. You see that on the CD record, and you wonder how much call is there for something like this in our radio production world?
Steam trains at station, exterior airport, construction site, bowling alley, jet takes off, Native Americans dance, busy harbor, animals at Riverside, big cats, old clock chimes, car accident, five minute war, barnyard sounds, workshop, aviary, and the sound of a beating human heart. We asked David also to keep the play short, possibly the hardest part of the assignment. When we were done, I read him the list of effects over the phone, and he took this part of the assignment, he decided to do them in exactly the order that they appear on the CD. Here is the world premiere of the radio play that he created.
I remember it was a late Sunday afternoon, and Cliff and I were taking a handsome cab through the heart of Good Times Square. That's the charm of Empire City. You hold out your hand and hail a horse-drawn carriage, just like in the days of yours. We like to drive in every weekend from Hasselbrooke to take in the sight.
I like it for the volatile crowds, and the smell of roasting pennies. And I like it for the salt, salt, and those big splashy shows on the great white way. We sure do love those shows. I remembered we'd just come from a matinee performance of Palsy, that new musical about the Medicare debates.
Oh, it was spectacular, the costumes and the dancing. A chorus line on their walkers with the Ivy Sands. God, I love that show. We bought a few dozen scolding pretzels from the passing snack cart, settled into the backseat of our horse-drawn carriage, and had just started rehashing the show when that witch appeared.
She wasn't a witch, Linda. She was a tattoo artist. A tattoo artist with a particularly offensive message etched into her forehead. The strange thing, the unusual thing, was that she knocked on the door of our carriage and handed us a simple plastic pail containing a human heart.
Now that was an eye-opener. The girl said that it had been her mother's heart, and that she desperately needed to have a delivered to Clyde'sdale where her brother was awaiting a transplant. And Clyde'sdale, that was out of state, not far from Hasselbrooke. She'd intended to deliver it herself, but then something came up.
A date. She'd been invited to a beer blast by a man with a caesar haircut. I like a caesar. Me, I thought it was some sort of scam.
I've read about things like this in the papers. A couple comes to town to take in a show, and the next thing you know, someone's handing them an organ and picking all the salt off their pretzels. It's the oldest story in the book. But then she reached into her pocket and pulled out two tickets for sublet, and what could we say?
That's the hottest show in town. Nobody gets tickets to that. So we said, sure we'll deliver your mother's heart to your sick brother in Clyde'sdale. Because it seemed like the right thing to do.
A mat in a performance with front row seats. So off we went. Our rascal was in the parking lot, ten locks away, but the traffic was an absolute tangle, and it would have taken hours to reach it. I had the carriage driver take us to the river, where we could have one of those medical waste barges carry us to the other side.
The view was remarkable. The sky, the color of a freshly minted nickel. We were in heaven, absolute heaven, until the barge driver let us off in. What do you call a place like that?
A swamp. I call it a swamp. I lost my good possum skin, evening pumps in the muck, but what did I care? I just grabbed the heart, flagging down a passing cart, and demanded a ride to the airport, even barefoot on quick on my feet.
I'll give you that. We arrived at the terminal, where we booked a commuter flight to Clyde'sdale. A quick bag of salted onion skins in the captain's lounge, and then, wouldn't you know it? A bomb.
A bomb in the airport metal detector. All flights cancelled. My mind was racing. But not as fast as mine.
Taxi, I held a cab to the nearest train station. It wasn't that far of a drive, but wouldn't you know it? The son of a bitching GD train pulled out, just as we were buying a sack of salted pork rice. You were buying the pork rice.
All right, but I got them for the both of us. And paid with a large bill, the big man, you just had to flash some money around, didn't you? It's their job to make change. It's not my fault the guy couldn't break a 50.
You were trying to impress him is what you were trying to do. We were having this exact same argument when I noticed. I noticed a crew of construction workers building a ferris wheel at the far side of the station. He noticed them only because they noticed me.
I'm an absolute magnet for cat calls. That's the cause of being an attractive woman. I approached the forklift operator, a man named Carl, and we had a little talk. Mano Tamano.
Oh, I like that, Carl. After explaining the business with the heart, he offered us the services of his brother, who worked not far away in one of the neighboring birds. So we get to this place where Carl's brother works, and it turns out that the guy polishes balls. In a bowling alley.
Pins and needles it was called because there's a main floor, and then an observation deck selling wool and sweater patterns. I like the feel of the place, and the fries were great. What wasn't so great was that Carl's brother had been laid off just ten minutes before he arrived, he'd taken his car and headed west just like that. Were we in a bind or what?
The assistant manager of the snack bar offered us a lift as far as the neighboring airfield, and I took her up on it because... A troll up is what she was. Hey, now. Enough blush on her cheeks to cover the moon, and that business about the airfield?
It wasn't an airfield, but a... military base. You saw those soldiers prancing behind that barbed wire fence. The girl dropped us off and drove away laughing because that's what whores do.
She was a prostitute. She was a troll up. Call her what you will, but if it wasn't for her, we never would have met those Indians. That's what they were.
They were Indians. Native Americans. It was like seeing a ceremonial dance upon their ancient burial ground, not far from the runway. It was like seeing a big splashy musical, except that there were no ushers or comfortable seats.
Following their little ritual, they were scheduled to perform aboard one of those gambling rafts, traipsing up the river to where else but it glidesdale. They offered us a lift if we help them pack up their tom-toms, so we made a few quick trips back and forth to the minivan, and off we went to the casino port. Once the boat got underway, I bought myself a bucket of sausage coins and took a seat on the observation deck. It was a still night, and I call me freakish, and I could feel the eyes of the river creatures watching me from the banks.
The humidity devastated my hair, so I went down below deck where they keep... Well, that's where they keep the big cats! Show cats! I stood up close to the bars where I could feel the arse-lots of breath against my face.
It was hypnotic is what it was. We were each lost in our own separate reveries when... The big clock struck, and the gambling raft pulled into Port Kimberly to stock up on poker chips. The captain said we'd be docked for an hour or more, but with his human heart, we just couldn't wait that long.
We just couldn't wait that long. We jocked ship and rented a car. Traffic was unusually heavy for a Sunday night at 3am, so I left him to do the driving. I was making decent time, until a cola tanker swerved into the opposite lane, and...
Dear God, what a mess. Those who weren't maimed or crippled, rushed from their cars with cans, and paper cups trying to scoop up as much free cola as possible. The tanker driver opened fire on the crowd, and a few people shot back. Next thing you know, all hell broke loose.
The riot police, the National Guard, two or three dozen private militias, they were all over the place. Both the rental car and fled through a pasture toward a neighboring barn. My idea, because I like barns. I'm a barn person.
And I can't stand the damn things, because I'm not a barn person. Straw makes me anxious, and I was nervous enough having dodged all that gunfire. We were all pretty shaken up, Linda, myself, and this human heart we were carrying. I put my ear to the side of the pale and...
heard nothing. I figured that after everything it had been through, the poor thing had suffered a heart attack. It was alive, but weak. I tried frightening it to get the heartbeat up.
Yeah! Yeah! Ooh! And that seemed to work.
Once he stopped screaming, I heard in the distance the sound of... Power tools. It was coming from a shed beside the farmhouse. Hello?
We're here in the barn with a human heart. It was a farmer building an... an aviary. That's a place where birds are kept.
We had these birds just roaming freely through the house, and I sat back for a moment before I thought... Birds. Birds fly. Not bad, huh?
Oh, it was brilliant, is what it was. We tied the human heart to the foot of a carrier pigeon, taped the address to its peak, and sent it on its way. Fly away, little pigeon. Fly away to Clyde's Dale Memorial Hospital.
And I guess she found her way, because two days later we received our tickets, just as promised. Run, bro, seats to the matinee performance of sublets. It's the hottest show in town! Afterwards, we tucked the playbills into my post, and just like always, we hailed a handsome cab.
No, a handsome cab. No, a handsome cab. That's it. We settled into the backseat and trotted off with our memories.
Until that bearded coop knocked on the door, carrying a lung and a saucepan. Heart of Times Square by David Sedaris, performed by Toby Wary and Penelope Boyer. Alright, let's sing about the bread man together, shall we? Good.
Here's the song about our friend, the bread man. Oh, he drives a big white wagon, when he comes. Oh, he drives a big white wagon, when he comes. He's got bread and cakes and cookies.
He's got bread and cakes and cookies. He'll bring in good things, two weeks when he comes. Oh, the bread man. Back four.
Check out the package on that guy. I'm not terribly recent article on the Wall Street Journal asserts that an inordinate number of women have fantasies about their UPS delivery men. Their continual efforts to put out calendars with names like buns of UPS. It's part of UPS's marketing campaign.
There's a UPS commercial that shows women swooning over their UPS guy. One reporter actually called five therapists, four head clients who fantasized about UPS men. So, are UPS fans? Actually, rolling tens of inequity.
Do the drivers actually get play out of this? TAL? See, that's what we call it in the office. This American Life, this American Life producer, Nancy Updike, went outside UPS to find out.
It turns out that asking UPS drivers whether they have sex on their route is pretty much like asking any other group of mostly straight men about sex. Very quickly, you find yourself talking about an elevator, a mirror, or a nymphomaniac. A girl in a coffee that was moving, obviously had the hots for this gentleman, and confronted him in the elevator, and told the gentleman. Good morning.
She would get up. She would have a blanket in front of her, but she would have one of Miradors right behind her. And you can see nothing but a ring. I mean, every time.
This gentleman that I know I'm going to not say names, but he had a building route and there was a nymphomaniac in the building and she'd come down. So, I talked to 15 men in two hours as they were leaving their UPS jobs at the end of the day. Some were funny, some were hot, some were stupid. Majority were in their late 20s or their 30s, mostly black.
And I believe I now have the empirical evidence necessary to put everyone's mind at rest here. UPS delivery guys, as a group, are not having more sex than you are. Here's how I know. When you ask them what sexual experiences they have personally had while on the job.
You instantly get into really boring territory. Before I got married, there was a situation where I had light conversation with a woman. And it was just clicking very well. And it almost happened.
I guess the vibes were there, everything was right, but nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Let's try another guy.
No, I had one close encounter where I delivered a package to a place in Dearborn Park here. And it was in the morning around 10 o'clock and a girl came down. A woman who, I don't know, she looked in her 20s. She came down in a lingerie and she answered her door.
She's in her lingerie at the door. What happens? I kind of rolled my eyes over the package. I had to go.
He had to go. How about this guy? What's our most outrageous proposition you ever had? Can I come back after work, you know, and make love to him?
Do you ever do it? No. They don't do it. Not at work.
Of 15 guys, not one, believably told me about a sexual encounter he had on the job. And they were spraying themselves for the exact same boring reasons you do. They don't want to lose their job. They're married.
We usually don't have time to, you know, as far as that goes. They just don't have time. So I'm in the rush. A few guys that they'd heard of other guys having sex on their roots.
And weirdly, the setting for these events was always the same. He invited her on a truck. She had to get in the truck with him. In the back of the package.
In the back of the truck. In the back of the truck. In the back of the truck. In the back of the truck.
And the wild thing going back there. On a shelf. On the shelf. Which brings me to a question.
Who are all these people that other people know who like having sex in these places that sounds so uncomfortable? I imagine a lot of women would like to see the inside of a baggage car. I've heard drivers say, let's just throw some envelopes down here on the floor. You know, we can.
Hey! How come what happens in the van? I've never heard people like, where the guy comes into the house. It's always the woman going into the van.
going into the van. I don't know you're not when you go into a building I do not like going into a building because you never know what situation you're gonna run into it could be a crazy old lady who says next thing you know something's missing from the apartment there could be some frustrated woman you can walk in to her apartment and she says she could say you tried making advances in her that's sexual harassment you're out of a job you don't want to be in that situation you can not do anything for you to bake you up you know if it's a I mean to climb into a vehicle that's definitely consensual. The bottom line about the whole UPS sex connection what actually happens to real people and this is gonna blow your mind is that sometimes women ask their UPS man out on a date and off hours let's have lunch let's have dinner regular kind of date just like you and me aside from that with very few exceptions I believe is all simply lies. Oh yeah it comes to you all the time it's got a shout at it had a gown you know gown on and you're gonna just open up it's happened to you.
Oh yeah you might come you might get a shout and you know sometimes you might have a towel right and you can use the package to package the towel. That has happened to you personally. Oh yeah fuck. Time was my girl.
I felt it well. I had to be strong for my woman. The girl said I loved you. I loved me.
I loved me. I loved that movie and he made love to me. He made love to me like no one little scary. I got that who's really on the beat.
He said me and makes me want to scream. Oh don't be send me. Yes he does. Don't be send me.
Yes he does. He sends me. Yes he does. Well I'll probably produce today by at least speaking on myself contributing editor Sarah Val pop top jacket and Margie Rockland special thanks today to Christina Stevens John Connors sappy Chris Legan and David Greenfield funny for this American life has been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the John D and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation and the listeners of W.B. E. Chicago. W.B.
E.C. Management Everside by Tori Malatia who cannot wait for the pledge drive so he can get on the radio and say to you. Just show us where the silver is at. I'm out of glass back next week with more stories of this American life where our motto is.
Hello we're here in the barn with a human heart.