My heart sank. “What’d they do, put it on the evening news?” I asked. The screaming match I had with my boss, Sheldon Woolser, PhD, the day before was still grating on my nerves. The guy’s a buffoon, stuffed with knowledge and not a lick of understanding or common sense.
The guard chuckled. “No. I got a memo from him telling me to keep a close eye on you. He wants you gone but he doesn’t want his hands dirty from firing you. This is the last step out the door. Woolser sends people here to do inventory because it’s the dullest, most mind numbing job he can think of. He wants you to quit.”
“And you know this because?” I asked.
He smiled. “Because of the eight other engineers he sent here before you.”
“How long before they get out of inventory duty and back to the main office?”
“They don’t,” he replied. “Most only last a month or two before they quit. One guy lasted for six months. That was a record, but the end result was the same. He finally quit.”
I closed my eyes and breathed out heavily. I couldn’t believe it had come to this. NASA was the dream job for top graduates from MIT. The reality was that the pay was a fraction of the amount paid in the private sector and with the internal politics at NASA; it was more of a nightmare for me. I didn’t want or apply for the job; I was assigned to it. And even inventory work was considerably better than the alternative.
“So,” the guard asked, “You want to quit now or later?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Six months, huh?”
“Yep, that’s the standing record.”
“Okay,” I said, “a new record might be worth it.”
The guard smiled and offered his hand. “Welcome aboard Mr. Palminteri.”
“Carl is fine,” I said shaking his hand.
“Mike Burton,” he replied. “Woolser wants you here no later than nine and leaving no earlier than five. Anything beyond that is casual overtime.”
“Casual overtime?” I asked.
“You only get paid for the eight hours. No overtime authorized.”
Pasadena California wasn’t on the lower end of the cost of living scale. I was just getting by with the overtime pay. This was going to hurt. “So I get punished financially too?”
“That’s the deal,” Mike said. “Still game?”
I gritted my teeth and ran a quick inventory of some of the things I would have to do without. As bad as the situation was, I was going to have to live with it. I now deeply regretted the argument with Woolser. I should have kept my mouth shut. It’s just that the truth should mean something. I still think people need to know that we aren’t alone in the universe and Woolser was sitting on the evidence. I had argued that people were ready for that level of knowledge, that they wouldn’t panic, but I wasn’t the person that was going to make that decision. Woolser was, and he wasn’t going to let the world’s power structure be shaken, even for an instant. I didn’t have a choice; I had to stick it out. “Game on,” I replied trying to look and sound a lot braver than I felt.
“Okay, let me show you around.”
The Clark Street Storage Facility was a massive warehouse, two hundred acres under one metal roof. Endless aisles lined with metal racks stacked twelve feet high, all loaded with wooden boxes stenciled with Inventory Control Numbers.
“The entire inventory from 1984 to the present is on the computer, but everything before that is on inventory ledgers,” Mike said. “Verifying the item on the ledger and entering it into the computer is your new job. Here’s your office.”
It wasn’t much. A small office nestled next to a larger room with a locked metal door. A simple desk with an outdated computer and some shelves filled with ledgers completed the room’s modest decor. It was a far cry from the main office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I worked as a programmer of the Mars Rovers for the last three years. I was going to miss the top of the line computer, the twin screens and soft padded chair as well as the view out the south windows that overlooked the Hahamongna Watershed Park. This office was extremely primitive by comparison.
“What’s behind the door?” I asked.
“The Moon Room,” Mike said. He must have seen the puzzled look on my face. “Stuff they brought back from the moon.”
“Have you seen what’s in there?” I had heard rumors about some of the strange stuff that was brought back from the moon. This might turn out to be interesting after all.
“Once,” Mike said. “Mostly just rocks and soil samples. Nothing exciting. The key’s around here somewhere. Anyway, Woolser wants an e-mail at five every day with the number of inventory items you logged into the computer. He has access to the inventory files and likes to check up on people, so make sure everything jibes.”
“Got it,” I replied.
“Oh, there’s a couple of places that deliver for lunch, so if you want anything just let me know by eleven so I can call it in.”
“Thanks, will do.” As things stood I probably wasn’t going to be ordering anything anyway.
“Well, good luck,” Mike said as he returned to his desk in the front lobby.
Yeah, I thought. It’s going to take more than good luck to get through this. A lot more, because quitting just wasn’t a viable option for me.
Each Inventory Control Number, or ICN, in the ledger is tagged with a location, specifying the aisle, rack number and shelf level where the item is stored. The system was simple enough in concept, except for the fact that it could take twenty minutes of walking to get to a location in the warehouse. Items are sorted by size, not the ICN’s, so I spent most of my time walking from one place to the next. The last victim of Woolser’s massive ego had finished with ICN 42526, so I began with ICN 42527. It was a broken hose coupling that had failed during a rocket test. The metallurgical analysis was inside the box and included the engineer’s recommendation for re-design to eliminate future part failures. Good ol’ NASA; always improving on failure.
After I finished my first day doing inventory I looked at my Gold Chevy Malibu as I left the front door to the storage facility. I’d had it for only 5 months and now I would have to put it up for sale. I wasn’t going to be able to make the payments to the credit union. I’d have to trade down to something old, small, and cheap to run. On the way home I wondered why I seem to screw up every good thing that happens to me. My choices seem to be the right thing to do at the time but it always turns to crap before it’s done. Why can’t something work out right, just once?
I tossed my keys onto the small table by the front door of my apartment and closed the door. It’s not like I had a lot of expensive stuff to sort through. The prints of French Impressionist art by Monet and Renoir were paid for, so there was no sense in selling those right now. I had one more payment on the Sony 55” flat screen Bravia TV with the Bose surround sound system, so that could stay. The deluxe sports package in my cable plan would have to go. I was going to miss that, but at least it was baseball season. Maybe I could work something out to get it back in time for football. Missing the San Diego Chargers was really going to hurt. Most of the guys at the JPL followed the Rams, but I grew up in San Diego and was still a Chargers fan.
It’s not like I have a lot of company over, either. The only people who have seen the inside of my apartment are Mrs. Hernandez and her 8 year old son, Javier. I realized there might not be enough money to pay Mrs. Hernandez who came in once a week to clean the apartment. I hate cleaning, but more importantly I felt responsible for helping Mrs. Hernandez support her family. Her kid, Javier, was a real kick. He loved playing video games on the big screen while she cleaned. Maybe I could find a way to keep from disappointing both of them.