Work Hazards

There were few things Jules McGarioch considered laborious about his job in Terminal 2. Being entitled to taste whisky without judgment – at hours generally deemed by society to be inappropriately early – was not one of these.

He reached underneath the World of Whiskies Duty-Free cabinet to extricate a rare bottle of Highland single malt. Jules considered how capricious it was that just because there stood before him a traveler who’d cleared security and had time to kill in the Queen’s Terminal before her 7 am flight, it was suddenly – and arbitrarily – OK to drink whisky at 6 am.

Just because this particular traveler happened to take an interest in tasting whisky over sampling Lancôme hand creams – or Pimm’s, he thought, observing his Duty Free colleagues parading around garden-party style trays of England’s cool summer drink – yes, largely because this aforementioned traveler was increasingly likely to shell out anything upwards of a score and three fivers the more Jules brought out onto the sampling table – for this alone it was suddenly – and arbitrarily – OK to drink whisky at 6 am.

And this particular traveler – who turned out to be a coffee taster on business, warming up her palate on Scotland’s finest – seemed to have an insatiable curiosity and matched stamina that greatly tempted Jules to join in on the tasting. But his shift at World of Whiskies had only just begun and a good stretch of working hours remained ahead of him yet. Nevertheless, with the barrage of questions and tasting notes coming at him from across the sampling table, he caved – with a smile – and joined the coffee traveler in a glass of the Dalmore King Alexander III. The one with the complexity of a 5-course meal.

As the traveler gathered her bags and headed off to her gate, Jules – with a honeyed lather left lingering and tingling across his whiskied tongue – thought, yes, this – if any – was perhaps a work hazard at World of Whiskies Duty-Free. This he would tell the children of Elroy Hodgeson’s Primary School when he stood before Michaela and her peers that afternoon. He was quite sure the other parents’ jobs held far worse work hazards than his, but really it would have to do. He couldn’t think of any others.

Michaela sat – very stoically – with her back straight and hands folded and resting neatly in front of her on the school desk. She was an undercover daydreamer.

The precocious 8-year-old had long ago learned that looking like you were daydreaming – with elbows on desk and head propped up on fists with nothing left to prop up the mouth that hung vaguely open – a pose as recognizable and attributable to daydreaming as Rodin’s The Thinker was to, well, to thinkers – yes, such a pose always led to interrupted daydreaming. Far better – the young creative learned – to simply mimic the obedient, attentive kids and there – in that pose – just let the mind run away – undisturbed.

And that’s how she sat all afternoon as parent after parent took the stage before the Year 2s on this Career Day.

Written up on the blackboard behind her father’s head, Michaela could see the letters neatly forming the words ‘Career Day – I could be a…’. She tried very hard to listen to the whole story but every time she caught sight of the words ‘I could be a…’ her imagination seemed to run off with something the speaker had just said.

Leonard’s dad was a pilot – which meant he got to fly planes all day. Because her father worked at Heathrow, Michaela had been invited once to visit the cockpit during a flight they took to Washington D.C. From her visit, she knew that flying was safer than driving – and this made sense – she thought – because there were far fewer planes to crash into in the sky next to you than there were cars on the M25.

Being a pilot also had the advantage that if you pressed the correct button – of all the many that covered the walls of the cockpit – then an air steward or stewardess would come and bring you tea or coffee or anything else you desired from the food and beverage trolley. Except for whisky – her dad had hastened to clarify. Yes, thought Michaela – having a whisky from the trolley would probably not be a good idea if you were simultaneously trying to pilot the airplane. But other than that, she could think of no work hazards for pilots.

The young student watched the teacher at his desk at the front of the classroom. Mr. Nolan sat with model posture and attentiveness while Gracie’s dad droned on about life as a CNC Machinist. Mr. Nolan sat there looking like he knew exactly what that was – which nobody did – even after fifteen minutes of Mr. Hargraves’ monologue on the subject.

Michaela watched Mr. Nolan and wondered about the work hazards of a teacher.

One time, Peter Crosswhite had thrown a dictionary and a calculator across the classroom and hit Mr. Nolan clear on back of the head with both. Michaela still marveled at how his aim had been doubly accurate – and still wondered why he’d been working with both a dictionary and a calculator at the same time. But Mr. Nolan had been fine – it was definitely Peter who wound up suffering the most pain from that incident.

As the daydreamer sat there – poised – imagining the possible work hazards of a teacher – what she wasn’t aware of was that at that precise moment – or moments, for indeed, Gracie’s father was still somehow finding something to add to his already epic and dreary monologue on being a CNC Machinist – yes, somewhere along the narrative’s cumbersome trajectory, Mr. Nolan too had begun to drift off in thought.

His poised posture and attentive regard masked the otherwise distant landscape of his thoughts. He too sat pondering the work hazards of a teacher. He too recalled the memory of Peter Crosswhite’s impeccable aim – but then reconsidered truly classifying that as a work hazard. Far worse – thought Mr. Nolan – was the risk of deathly boredom brought on by a job like Graham Hargraves’. He looked out at the 26 glazed over faces of his Year 2s. He was quite sure they agreed and would do what they could to avoid this particular career calling.

The airplane touched down onto the Dulles tarmac – hitting the runway in a manner so ungraceful that it had her wondering if she had not been the only one tasting whiskies at 6 am before they’d left Heathrow.

She’d spent most of the flight sprawled across an empty row of seats in the near empty plane – catching up on the sleep she’d lacked in her 20-hour turn-around between the Cameroon and D.C. trips. Somewhere in between trips, she switched gears from French to English and from farmer to roaster. She pulled together her various notes and papers – getting ready for the tasks that lay ahead of her on the East Coast.

The Dalmore Alexander still lingered on her palate – and as the airplane taxied toward its gate and her body gently awoke to the new time zone she’d just touched down in, she gazed – lost in thought – out the window at the capital’s morning late spring sky.

By this time next week, she would be back in Europe on the next project – the hot Italian sun would be heralding the arrival of summer to the more northern countries. Eventually, she would find her way back to a cooler London – where she would ready her cupping spoon for the Coffee Masterclass they were about to launch for all the bored or curious.

She looked down at her cupping spoon, protruding from the laptop bag in between pens and USB keys. ‘I get to do this,’ she thought – and the joy of getting to work in one’s passion drowned out the hazards that accompanied the lifestyle.

© 2014, Kerstin Lambert