Must Be The Shoes

Circa 1974

Worm, Shnabs, Nicky, Skull and Dukey got summer jobs at Tom Mccann’s Distribution Center in Auburn, Massachusetts. Worm got fired the first day for throwing a pair of sneakers out the window and trying to put them in his car after work. The rest of the gang pretended they did not know him. The job entailed either stocking the shelves or filling orders for stores by running around and grabbing different kinds and quantities of shoes. Dukey mostly stocked shelves because no one monitored how hard he was working on that particular part of the job. Dukey was a natural for climbing, hiding and napping. He climbed the highly structured shelves which went up about 40 feet. He could hide on the shelves that were about two feet apart and three feet deep with shoes around him. He could nap pretty much all day. Shnabs was on the first floor below. Picture the size of this massive warehouse with all the shelving, fork lifts, boxes, crates, order carts and a mass of humanity running around. There were phones which allowed the whole place to hear you, so in between naps Shnabs and Dukey did ten-second noises and stupid stuff on the intercom. Everybody in the place could hear them. Nobody figured out who the morons were doing all this stupid stuff, but they tried. Management made an announcement demanding the perpetrators to stop. Ya! Instead, the offending pair sharpened their techniques and made up crazier stuff. Then came another announcement: If the guilty ones were caught, they would be fired. Ya! Like that was going to stop the perpetrators. Management and security heightened the search, but they never caught the pair. The elusive offenders became bored with the game and gradually phased out the prank calls. Sometimes massive shipments would come in making a mountain of boxes. Dukey figured out a way to move some cartons around and box himself in so he could tunnel to a “cave” deep in the pile to nap and hang out. One day he was sleeping and awoke when he heard a forklift get closer and closer until it pulled the pile of boxes in front of him back and there was his manager standing with folded arms. Neither the manager nor Dukey could believe how deep the guilty one was in the mass of boxes. The manager really liked Dukey and both of them got a kick out of what the indolent employee had done. The manager wondered how long it took to “build” the tunnel. The very next day was Dukey’s last before returning to college, so the manager let him work the last day without firing him. Dukey suspected the manager guessed who was behind the intercom messages, too, but didn't mention it.

Back to Northeastern University to skip classes and nap some more.