I completed my route in Waukesha as usual on the first day, but I started feeling a little ill afterwards. Didn’t seem to be anything terrible, though. One of the reasons I wanted to work four days instead of the usual two is because I needed the extra money. In order to save as much as possible, I went to the Meijer shopping center on Lisbon Road across from the Amazon warehouse in Sussex and bought a few cups of instant noodles. I had to go down to the Kwik Trip on Redford Road about half a mile from our office to borrow their hot water. There was a girl working who I had always thought was kind of cute, and she was very friendly about my request and told me I could take as much water as I needed.

Earlier in the day, right after I finished my deliveries, Michael, the head manager, was in the office waiting for everyone to finish their routes.

“You don’t gotta worry about locking anything up tonight. Tonya told me about what happened last time, but don’t tell her I told you that,” Michael said.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” I said

“Tonya, you said you wouldn’t tell anybody about me locking myself out of the office…” I thought to myself.

Things like that make you wonder about what is being said when you’re not there, but I didn’t put too much thought into it; however, I did start having a general feeling of distrust.

About ¾ of the way through my route on the second day, my illness started hitting me hard, VERY hard. I had a lot of apartments to deliver to, which are always more complicated than the standard delivery. First, you have multiple orders, often to multiple doors. Second, you may need to enter an access code to enter the building or have to call the customer upon delivery. Some apartment buildings can be quite large as well. And lastly, some apartments have multiple and confusing entrances. There was even a customer asking me if I knew where his box was, which I did not deliver.

Under normal circumstances, all this would be only a minor headache, but my stamina was draining fast and was almost completely gone. Every stop which normally takes between 2-5 minutes started feeling like a half hour in my mind. My heavy boots I wore for “extra challenge” weren’t helping either.

As I left the second most annoying apartment district in Waukesha, I saw the customer walking way ahead of me in the parking lot with his huge box he was asking about. I honked and he turned around and held his box up on display, and I gave him the thumbs up out the window.

By the time I finished my route, which was probably about an hour later than I could have, I felt like Mad Max at the end of Mad Max 2. I was “an empty shell of a man” with nothing left inside. When I arrived inside of the Amazon warehouse, I was greeted by one of the regular attendants who check us out in the evening. His name was Jared. He had long, black hair and a very pale complexion. He was very snappy and seemed to take offense to everything. After a while, I started giving it back to him. One day one of the other warehouse workers heard us talking and came up to me and said, “You do this to him all the time, don’t you?” with a smile on his face. Other times other drivers would be waiting in line to check out and laugh at our exchanges. But on this day, no jokes or witty retorts were being made.

I slid open the sliding door of the van and dragged myself over to Jared’s station. I must’ve looked half-dead to him.

“Do you have a mask?” I asked.

Jared looked confused.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jared asked.

“I’m ****** up,” I said.

Really there was no better way to answer the question.

“In what way? Your body? Your health?” he asked.

“Everything!” I replied.

Jared took two steps back and proceeded to check me out as usual.

After parking the van at the offsite, I was able to get back to the office to rest. Tonya was there. I had already told her about my condition during the usual call we make to dispatch before heading back, so there was no surprise. I didn’t ask for a thing, but Tonya gave me a very generous amount of money that she wouldn’t allow me to pay back because she knew I was sick and was trying to save money at the same time. To go back to astrology for a second, Leos like her often seem to do this kind of stuff. In the condition I was in, the only thing I wanted to do was sleep. Food would have to wait until I felt better, but sleeping on the office couch wasn’t going to make the situation any more comforting. Tonya was at least kind enough to bring a blanket from her home for me to use. That was honestly the worst I’ve ever felt and still worked.

During the following two days of work, I gradually began to feel better, but at a very slow pace.

“Just wait, Tonya. After I recover, you’re going to see the best version of me,” I said.

Unfortunately, Tonya didn’t get to see that, because she left for another job a few weeks later after a year and a half of being on the team.

I wasn’t lying, though. It took me about three weeks to fully recover; only a few days for my body to recover, but the rest of the time was for my mind. Back in Madison, doing the accounting work I normally do, which isn’t even one of my natural strengths anyway, was a lot more challenging because of the brain fog my thoughts were now lost in. I’ve never had this happen before. Even simple tasks now seemed difficult, and it was testing my sanity.

I wondered if it was COVID I caught just because in all my life I’ve never had symptoms like that before. But once I fully recovered, I indeed did become the best version of myself, and didn’t have to get rescued by a lead driver for at least three months when before I was getting rescued once a week or every two weeks. This, however, was only the beginning of my troubles during the summer of 2022, but that is a whole other story.

In my experience, a job is never just a job. It is a service of some kind to humanity. In my personal life, even jobs that often get overlooked have had great significance and almost seemed like they were ordained by a force much greater than myself.

For example, when I first came back from living in China in 2010, I was staying in California trying to find work there so I could be closer to my little brother. No matter what I did, I could not find a single job. Even the temp agencies were completely dry, which I had never seen before. My mother strongly suggested I go back to Wisconsin to find work. Before I headed back, I had a dream about a restaurant I used to work at, which many people know, called Pasqual’s. I dreamt that I was talking to my old manager Alex, who I worked with for a year from 2003-2004 before I traveled around the country and ended up in New Mexico.

About a month later, I returned to Madison as I planned. Pasqual’s was one of those jobs you could always leave and come back to even years later. It was actually the first job I’ve ever had. When I went into the Monroe Street location, I was greeted immediately by none other than my old manager, Alex, who hadn’t worked there in years, but just happened to be up front waiting in line on that day, just like in the dream! He and I shook hands and gave each other hugs after not seeing each other for six very long years. I got the job that day, and in the entire three years I worked at the Monroe Street location, I never saw Alex again; just on that one day at that very specific time. He didn’t even live in Madison anymore.