A Wet, Steaming Pile

4/6/06


I used to pack live fish. I've had some shitty jobs in my tremulous working life on this planet, but the two months I spent employed in the aquatic gulag that was the supplier for Pet Warehouse and Wal-Mart stores definitely ranks at the very top of the list. This was during my "dark time" in my life; my early twenties when I considered it a success if I could urinate without pissing all over my shoes. I hadn't worked for a very long time, and it was more out of desperation than anything else that I applied at this fish supply warehouse. Sadly, they hired me.

I don't know if you've ever packed live fish before, but if not let me paint you a little picture: It's winter, your shift starts at 6:30 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. so your day is a perpetual cloak of night except for the tiny snippets of sunlight you get when escaping for the half hour you have to wolf down something mildly edible while you contemplate the sweet release of death. You spend your day using tiny green nets to transfer slippery little cold-blooded animals that desperately do not wish to be caught into large plastic jugs and no matter how hard you try, by the end of the first hour you're soaked to the skin. Not only are you wet all day long, you smell like something a seal might have barfed up, which bakes off you in your car heater as you drive home attempting to stave off hypothermia. Oh, and you work with the most backwards-ass fucks on the planet, by the way; most of whom find the "less filling, tastes great" argument a dramatically engaging conversation, and still drive the 86 Firebird they had in high school; haircut to match.

I hope I've crystallized the magic for you. In short, worst environment imaginable. While chasing the occasional fish that had flopped onto the floor, I used to fantasize about the blissful life migrant workers in California must enjoy. The only upside was that I was so tremendously unhappy that I didn't talk to anyone, and the rest of the crew was sort of afraid of me. I was like that really quiet guy at work you better be nice to because you just know one of these days he's going to stroll in strapped with dynamite and wielding an Uzi, just whistling through the rows while putting large amounts of lead into coworkers. Yeah, I was that guy.

But I did glean some useful information while wandering up and down the shelves of 20 gallon tanks. I learned, for instance, that people are nuts. Oh I sort of already knew that, and I don't mean my coworkers here. I'm talking about the orders some of these stores had sent to us to fill. I get why people would want to buy cichlids (the fancy name for your run-of-the-mill tropical fish) they're pretty, lively little things. And I can understand why purchasing an Oscar fish appeals to some depraved part of the psyche which likes to feed live goldfish to a ravenous, bloated object that resembles what you might expect an STD to look like, if given corporeal shape and forced to swim around for a bit. See below.

Heinous, arent they? These balloons of nasty started out about the size of a silver dollar and grew to that of a Buick. They do come in some neat colors (blueberry is especially nice) but are aggressive little bastards that are strong beyond belief and, I swear to gods, will go for your eyes when you chase after them with that little green net. While the bigger ones are hearty, judging from the smallest replacements delivered to the warehouse by the Stock Fairy, the small ones have about a 75% chance of just drowning immediately upon immersion in water. I shudder to think at the number of freakish, bulging Oscar carcasses I pulled out of those tanks every morning. It was surely enough to feed a large mountain lion, provided that lion was blind, had no sense of smell, and was starving to death. Gross.

Some of the orders were just twenty degrees of fucked up. Take these two little wide-awake nightmares, for instance:


That first one is a Dragon Fish. Supposedly docile things, these nearly blind, ugly-as-sin creatures are a little too reminiscent of the larvae aliens from Stargate SG-1 for my taste. They like brackish water, which is great if you've decided to just turn your living room into a swamp, and can grow to a coma-inducing two feet in length. I suppose if you like the idea of horrifying your family into a stroke every once in awhile, this might be your best bet.

This second picture is a tank full of Rope Fish.

Ever wanted all the gruesome aesthetics of an enormous millipede with the convenience of having to mop out a tank full of slime and feces every few months? Good news! The Rope Fish is for you. Why anyone would want a tank full of living, writhing bungee cords is beyond my ability to fathom. These were especially precious, since they didn't fit in the nets, whipped like demons whenever you took them out, and were about as easy to pick up off the floor as a raw egg.

Perhaps now you understand why my morale was at a record low while employed there. I lasted two months and to this day am amazed that I currently own a goldfish. Goddamn that job sucked.