12 June 2023

Today was a Monday. In the past, Mondays have been good for job postings; today was not. When I find my weekdays empty, I’ve taken to using my Ventra card to visit Chicago‘s suburbs and walk around near PACE bus stops. Normally I can find a place or two that are hiring but haven’t posted anything online.

I’ve received my only firm job offer this way. On my first day I worked 2.5 hours. Despite not being on the schedule, I was called in for my second day of work. Due to work on The L, it took me about 90 minutes to get from the South Side of Chicago to Schaumburg. I was promptly fired upon my arrival; I made about $30 out of the endeavor.

Today, though, I was able to able to apply to a laundromat and a pizzeria. I am actively hoping not to get called by the pizzeria; the managers were complete tools. One of them said they, “don’t really like to hire adults.” I understood this to mean that they preferred to have teenagers and people in their early 20s.

The laundromat seemed slow of business and over-staffed. I felt compelled to ask whether they were still hiring or had just accidentally left the sign up. I filled out an application, talked with the manager, and was invited back next week for an interview with the owner. I figured: worst case scenario, it’s a front and I get paid to stand around all day; best case scenario, it’s a front, they know I know it’s a front, and pay me slightly more to stand around all day.

I’ve begun to give up on getting placement into a shelter; even the hostel style shelter has bumped-up several people ahead of me on the waitlist. There has been a crackdown against (homeless) people sleeping in O’Hare. So, I was intrigued when Allen offered to show me how to sleep there tonight.

He had me put on khakis and a button up shirt. (I would like to extend a thank to the donors at the GoFundMe, having just left rehab, I only had a pair of blue jeans, a polo shirt, and some active wear. So while I haven’t secured a stable job with the interview clothes you bought just yet, you did help me fool the police a find a place to sleep for the night.) He gave me two garish but matching luggage tags and put two similar tags on his own bags. Our cover was that we were two missionaries waiting for the rest of our party before going through security. We even had fake boarding passes that looked real enough, so long as no one scanned them to check their veracity.

We arrived at O’Hare among a bevy of travelers. So thronging and ever-moving was the crowd that individuals seemed to stop existing: you would notice a few people who stood out for whatever reason, turn your head for but a moment , and, upon looking back, there would be an entirely different group of faces seemingly generated at random for your sole benefit. The crowd had two factions: a weary faction with mussed hair and wrinkled clothes, and angry faction realizing that this was but the first of their day’s many labors. Mediating the factions was a line of turnstiles. There was no consensus as to which turnstiles went which direction.

Beyond the crowd was the police and security services who stood in islands along the periphery. Occasionally you would see one of them point to a person or group of people—presumably they pointed to those they thought did not belong. They were for the most part shabbily or under dressed, a few carried worn and torn backpacks as their only luggage. As they moved beyond the crowd, they were stopped and questioned: some showed their phones, others showed paper passes; those who could show nothing were escorted back to the trains by two or three personnel.

Allen and I made it through the crowd, the turnstiles, and cops unscathed. We decided to sleep in shifts with awake person running interference for the sleeper. My waking shifts were both uneventful. In the early morning I heard Allen tell a cop that we were on our way, “to Utah, to save some heathen Mormons from certain hellfire.” He sounded oddly believable, not like a parody of Southern preacher; he was sober and sincere, not bombastic and rehearsed.

Between 4 and 5 in the morning several flights landed in rapid succession; we decided not to press our luck further and left among this new crowd. We were the well rested among the tired travelers; our clothes, having been slept in, were wrinkled and both us could have used a comb, but we didn’t stand out enough to get caught.