Back to work!

Embarking on yet another journey from Las Cruces, I ventured back to my homeland of Albuquerque for the first time since arriving here about six weeks ago.  I was not looking forward to going back, but my bosses scheduled me to work.  Friday night I departed early in the evening, as the sun was just starting its descent.  During the drive, I decided to stop at a very popular fast food joint famous for their two golden arches.  That was a mistake.  When I walked in, shouting everywhere.  Shouting from the employees at the customers, and the customers, and shouting from the customers, a family of larger and older Hispanic individuals.  They seemed to be upset about their order either taking too long or being incorrect, I was not entirely sure.  This shouting went on for several minutes, with the young workers of the golden arches seeming to be more miserable than anyone else.  Realizing that I did not have time for this, I headed out. 

              When I arrived back in Albuquerque, I went to a highschool football game, to catch up with some friends that I had not seen in a while.  The student section was packed, and males and females between the ages of 14-18 all stood and cheered in unison, all wearing the same color, and packing as much school pride as possible.  I did not see as many people I was hoping, due to the masses that were packed in the stands.

              The next morning I had to go into work.  I will not reveal where I work, but I am a supervisor, and have a very slow work flow during the winter, giving me almost all day to sit around.  I realized due to the diversity of my coworkers, and the constant flow of people coming and going that this would be the greatest chance I got.  When I arrived, a sports team showed up for practice.  Most of the kids appeared to be of Asian descent, with the coach actually being a former Chinese Olympian.  These kids all practice as hard as they can.  They seem so goofy before and after practice, these kids, all between ages 8-16, began in complete silence, with discipline I had never seen before from kids at that age.  Their slender and athletic frames made them appear as though they moved as one.  I was truly amazed by this.

              After a few more hours, more coworkers began to appear.  At first I started to notice a trend in the ethnicity, with most of the staff being Caucasian, mostly female, and all under the age of 20.  But as time went on, more and more people began to come in, including a Middle Eastern female, a Hispanic male and female, and an African American male.  Everyone seemed at ease with each other, and the banter was as joyful as ever.  I began to notice that many of the workers were in little couples.  Being in high school this seemed inevitable.  But having not been there, I had missed out on these relationships forming, and took time to try and guess what was going on.  I noticed that most the individuals in a relationship were with someone of a similar background, height, and ethnicity, with very little diversity existing.

              The conversations that were going on also puzzled me.  The Middle Eastern girl talked for quite a while about her grades and classes at school, not seeming to talk about much else.  The Hispanic girl began to bombard me with questions about college, and was asking creepy questions, so I began to refer to her as “The creep”.  The Creep is a very unique individual I have known for years and seems to have no filter on what she says.  The creep begins to question me with questions about things such as who I was dating or interested in,  If It was possible that I had an attraction to animals (which is a typical question from her to anyone), and if I had been arrested yet for a variety of charges that she kept insisting that I had done.  I continued to deny her questions, and poked a bit of fun at her.

              When I went to actually do part of my job, I came back to about 12 of my coworkers discussing incest.  They were asking each other “If incest was okay, would you do it?”  I slightly chuckled as we had already studied that and continued working.  Every continued to deny it, until someone shouted “I’m pretty sure we all would, we just don’t want to be judged.”  I noticed that customers were coming, and made them change the subject to avoid disturbing the outside world.

              This was a very interesting trip up to Albuquerque, I noticed things that I had never noticed during my field work before.  It was a hard choice with what to write down.  Some of it was interesting, but not relevant to anything, with other things potentially revealing the identity of an individual, so I had to avoid that.