turnover (per diem—4)

lateral upswing

. . . continued from busted (per diem—3) . . .

	Turnover here happens so routinely that after two trainee shifts, you qualify as the new trainer. 

Educated that anything unimaginable can happen, you’re now an expert. 

Mutation isn’t succession, though, as spelled out succinctly at the interview a few weeks ago with “This is per diem. No seniority. No raises.”

	The lateral upswing is that, at any rate, you’re now the chase. 

Less junkers. Chase cars are mostly newer. Just screw on a back dealer plate, turn on the seat heater & lead the next newbie between lots in moderate comfort all day.

	Tim is a recent Dixie transplant & says to call him “Coach.”

He’s known his wife since they were eighth-graders, “forty-three years,” & began transporting as a teenager, sometimes moving whole structures—once, a lighthouse: “that one had police escorts.”

“But,” he says, “after the accident, I had to re-invent myself.”

	Coach was hauling a portable office up a dirt road to a construction site. A semi towing another semi by the back axel was ahead, uphill. The tow truck hit a bump & the towed semi detached: “I saw it comin’ right at me head-on.”

At the hospital, he fought with staff & had to be tied down: “they gave me some drug that made me call the nurses & some weird cleaning guy a bunch of things. My wife said to knock it off & we don’t have the kind of marriage where she’s allowed to talk to me like that, ya know?”

He got staph. “Almost lost my legs. My wife said that god saved me." 

	He says before the accident he coached football & thinks that “boys nowadays are being de-emasculized.”

During the months of recovery he bought a “sorta expensive” cat. He pokes at his phone & shows a picture: “Maine Coon. But now I’m lookin’ at Latvian hounds. Five grand. For huntin’.”

He scrolls to another pic: same cat, but wearing a small tricorn hat & stars-&-bars bandana: “I collect guns too.”

Ask "You mean, like old ones?"

He says "Not really," but he & his son "look for old world war two stuff. Ya know—from both sides."

	Coach says he needs work that's less stressful, but wants more hours,
so he’s also training for another new job this week: “Security guard, so we’ll see." 

	Find the next junker going to the wholesale lot. Tell Coach that driving with the dealer plate on the dashboard might get him a ticket.

He says “Nah, I know some people.”

This series continues with tags (per diem—5).