Awhile back (sometime last summer), I took a job at a carwash up on East Pflaum. Basically, the job entails sitting on a stool and watching the security camera mostly, but it also includes hosing down the wash bays, glaring at the clock until it reads four p.m., and wearing a white t-shirt with a overly-optimistic smiling red car and the words "Magic Car Wash Pit Crew." There must be some confusion on the definition of the word "Crew" because me, another part-time employee, and the owner are the only members of the "Pit Crew," and only one of us is there at a time.
Working at Magic Car Wash also involves taking out the trash. In any season other than late summer, this is a brainlessly menial task, but when August and September roll around, this duty requires some creativity. During this time of year, flipping open the lids to the trash bins is like taking a baseball bat to a hornets nest, so you have to become inventive. Sometimes laying out a half-full cola can can provide a distraction for you to pull out the garbage can and take it to the dumpster. Yet sometimes strategies like these backfire. It's happened where I reached in for a soda can for a distraction and found it filled with bees. To anyone washing their car who happened to glance over, I must have looked like some kind of idiot doing a raindance.
These hornets are smarter than they look. If you become careless in picking up their trash can, they'll follow you--quite the traumatic experience. In this instance, you keep looking over your shoulder and seeing that one stubborn hornet is still persuing. You curse him under your breath. Sometimes you have to break out into a jog, making you feel like even more of an idiot. That's the hornet's most frightening quality: they make men feel like little children. They're demoralizing.
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