Piss Jug Doug

A Poem

Lockdowns happen
I lose my job
Still have a wife and kids to feed
Government bucks only go so far.
I take a job flagging
Outside in minus forty
An hour out of town
Blizzard conditions
Any conditions.
This section of highway isn’t too busy
Most of the time.

Doug had already been on this job
For over a year.
The job was:
You stand on the side of the road
Hi-viz and thirty layers of clothes
If a car isn’t coming
The rock trucks
Big Tonka-looking bastards
Need to cross
Give them a thumbs-up
So they don’t have to slow.
Doug didn’t do that.
The drivers had to operate 
As if he wasn’t there at all
They’d be half-way across the highway 
Before he stuck out his thumb.

Within the first half hour on shift
He’d be at the house 
Two hundred yards 
Away from his post
Standing at their mailbox
Having a nice chat.
If Doug was at his post
He’d just stand and look around
Didn’t need to be there at all.

We’d take turns for our breaks
In the company truck 
You get fifteen minutes to warm up
Doug would fall asleep.
Management made sure 
Someone could cover his sleep schedule. 
Hard to keep anyone 
Such a shitty job.
Good for Doug.

He’d wander over to me
Try to chat about his life
“I’m goin to Edmonton”
says he. 
“Goin to see a hockey game.”
He talked a lot but said nothing
Just words, a human parrot
No substance at all
Rambling with no point to make
The world at large 
Had nothing to do 
With the thoughts of Doug.

There’s a blast scheduled
Highway needs to be shut down
Doug is not usually meant for this work
But we were short staffed.
Blasts are timed
A precise schedule
Once the go is given 
There’s no stopping it.
“Eastbound, shut down your lane”
Call your last car
Wait for a break in vehicles
Flip your sign
Confirm the vehicles on the radio
Other flagger does the same.
Not Doug.
“Shut down your lane”
Frantic on the radio
“What’s your last car, I’m still getting cars”
“Shut down your lane, Doug”
“OK,” says he.
“Shut down your lane, Doug.”
Silence.
Manager peels out to hunt him down
There he is, standing oblivious
His sign not flipped
She blocks traffic with her truck 
And her personal stop sign.
I wonder if he has the cognitive capacity 
To understand the consequences
Of his inactions.

He talked a lot about hockey
Who was playing
When the next game was
No major analysis
No player names or strategy
“I had to stop betting on games” 
says he,
“‘Cause I lost too much money
Betting on the Leafs.”
Someone made a killing.

One shift it had snowed a ton
Doug drove a minivan
No winter tires
He got stuck. 
For over an hour:
“Where the fuck is Doug?”
He had his radio
Hadn’t turned it on
He was found quite flustered.
“Why does this stuff always happen to me?”
I had some ideas.

His old job, at a hotel
Little highway township
Maybe a thousand people
Word gets around.
Someone was leaving jugs of piss in the rooms
“Everyone thinks it was me
I swear it wasn’t”
It was only your rooms, Doug.
“How does that happen?”
Fucking mysterious case of
Piss Jug Doug.

This one goes out to my husband. Big thanks. Sorry you had to freeze your ass off, screaming into the wind.