What’s Invisible And Smells Like Carrots?

You’re not going to know anything about my new job unless I tell you, so let’s go ahead and get this out of the way. First you need to know that I’m keen to avoid causing Google searches about my company to lead people here, so if I seem vague, I’m not just being myself.

My new title is something like Touring Serviceman, without the 1940s flair, and I work for a company named after exactly what it is, a nationwide provider of various commercial filters. The initials of this company are on my company van, hat and shirt, but they are not on my pants, because they are not company pants, they are just pants. This makes sense from the company’s perspective because what they’re doing is paying me to drive on a two-weeks-solid, roughly 2,000-mile solo route changing HVAC filters on the roofs of commercial buildings, with only $60 a day for food and lodging (technically only for lodging, but… for food and lodging), and this promotes a lifestyle that naturally involves a steady diet of AM/PM hot dogs, Big Gulps, and El Pollo Loco, and a lot of high-elevation alone time, so it’s the pants, in this equation, that really take the brunt of the action. Yeah, that’s a fart joke. So is the title. Fart jokes happen, so deal with it. Just be glad you can laugh about it. Be glad you aren’t pants.

Sorry, I do this thing sometimes where I get mad at someone for being mad, and really it’s just an excuse to be mad. And most of the time the other person isn’t even mad. It’s just me that’s mad. And most of the time there isn’t even another person, it’s just me in a van on a lonely stretch of road someplace between Sacramento and Portland, or on a roof changing HVAC filters, and I’m not even mad, I’m in a great mood actually, and they’re my own damn pants I bought with my own money so there’s nothing to worry about and we can go on to talking about something else now. Sorry.

And I’m sorry but if you think I’m going to apologize—alright that’s all. I just wanted to write that. I’m going to move on now for real. Wouldn't want to beat a dead horse. Because, you know, if a horse isn’t alive then you’re wasting your time beating it. Get yourself a live horse, is what I say. I don’t say that. I don’t endorse beating horses in any stage of the horse life cycle, let alone the shorter, less smelly, “living” stage. Why are we talking about horses?

Anyway it works out because, besides smelling, you’d think touring servicemen would have something else in common with dead horses—that they wouldn’t eat a lot of carrots. But you’d be wrong. Good thing you’re here.