Dunkirk NY – In late September, once I had completed all my various travels, I decided to look for work as a driver. I love driving, and always thought that on retirement I’d do some part-time driving, not so much for the money, but for the love and, hopefully, the fun of it. I consider a day driving through the countryside to be relaxing and filled with the promise of seeing things I wouldn’t otherwise see if I stayed at home. Consequently, I checked out the car dealerships in the area, as well as the local Enterprise car rental branch. It turned out that Enterprise hired me first, and so I have been working for Enterprise since the end of September.
It’s a fun job – sort of. I do enjoy the driving part. Driving all around the western NY region during the fall leaf season allowed me to enjoy all the fall foliage, which went a little longer than usual. Right now, the job is not so hot, as the temperatures have fallen into the teens, and there is a good deal of snow cover on the ground, with more to come this weekend. I work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and have a long four-day weekend. I’m actually pretty tired at the end of the three days, even though most of the day is spent driving from one place to another, either as a passenger or a driver. The usual routine is that the team (4 guys) go out to a branch office in one car, and then each guy gets a car to drive somewhere else, where the “chase” car picks you up. Some drives are long, some short. The pay is minimum wage in New York State, which is another slight downside. I could make more money working the McDonald’s counter.
I’ve also driven a lot of different types of vehicles, from Hyundai Accents to county sheriff patrol cars (complete with sirens and lights!), from Mitsubishi Mirages to Nissan Armandas. The range of vehicles is actually a bit limited, as Enterprise does not do business with every car manufacturer, but there is a great deal of variation from compact cars to SUVs to pickup trucks to cargo vans to full-size vehicles like Suburbans and Expeditions. Next time I buy a car, I won’t need to test drive any of these vehicles.
All the drivers but one are retired males, and almost all of them come from blue-collar backgrounds, which puts me in an interesting social position. Also, the majority of them are military veterans as well, as Enterprise promotes itself as a vet-friendly business (the founder was in the Navy and served on the USS Enterprise in WW2, which accounts for the company’s name). So they are all a little baffled as to why I’m working at this job, as a retired college professor doesn’t exactly fit the average profile of a part-time driver.
The more I thought about it, the more I think I’ve come to realize that I’m a white-collar worker with blue-collar tastes in life. For all my education, I really don’t go in for the “finer” things in life. I don’t do dinner parties, I don’t have a very fancy home, I don’t attend a lot of cultural events, I don’t have very fancy clothes. I think my attraction to the theatre is that it’s the most blue-collar art form of all, especially when considering the technical side. My idea of good food is a good diner, and I like dive bars better than fancy martini watering holes.
The contradiction is that I don’t share most of their blue-collar political views. I have found that these are all pretty good men, who have worked hard throughout their lives as truckers, dispatchers, loading dock workers, postmen, utility workers, construction workers, and the like. They vote Republican, but I have noticed there is not universal support for Donald Trump. In fact, there seems to be a sense of great disappointment about him that is largely unspoken. They are hunters and 2nd Amendment believers, they are by and large not college-educated, and they do not understand the value of diversity. They are not overtly racist, but they do believe that people should not be getting a “free ride” from government.
For me it’s an entry into a world with which I have little personal experience. We talk a lot about echo chambers and bubbles, and for me this is an opportunity to mix and work with people who are not in my echo chamber. It has been interesting so far, and I hope to make some further observations about this new job and experience in future posts.