January 9th in Posso's Prompts

Can you think of a time at a job you worked at when you had to call for help in a situation?

You’d think with all the bar stories and writings I’ve ever had, that you all would be hearing something like that. Nope. I’m going further in the vault to a time where only older and closer friends know about. A time where I was overweight and gambling my college financial aid faster than I could get it.

One time in my life, I worked at a phone answering service; we would answer phones for companies that either had overflow lines, or wanted to pay to have their after hours contracted out to people that weren’t on site, things of that nature. It was an easy job and I got a differential and nice jump in pay if I worked the overnight 10pm to 7am shift. Being a night owl anyway, I did not mind this at all. The worst part was sitting at a cubicle in a comfy office chair, almost dozing off at 3am when everything was super quiet. The best and worst part where the rampant oddities of characters I was surrounded by on a shift to shift basis. I had a coworker who was flamboyantly gay and very overweight; The guy pushed 400 pounds and there is an infamous picture of him that circulates the internet from time to time where he is shown overflowing into the aisle of the airplane because he refused to buy two tickets on the plane because it was unfair to him.
He’d sit in his office chair and belt out musicals as loud as he could to his hearts content at 4am. He’d ask me if I was single - at the time I was seeing a coworker so I didn’t have to blatantly lie out of fear - and then want to know if I was hungry (because the McDonalds on Regent Street was directly across from work and he could shamelessly send me over with $20 and I’d come back with 4 Big Macs.) The guy was a machine. I’d see him put down a meal that could feed a family of four but then he could only have one 2 liter of Diet Coke because he was “watching his figure” for his independent plays he’d be in at the Bartell theater. I’m truly not fat shaming this guy; he was comfortable with his weight, didn’t care about what people said, and other than the fact that I couldn’t get the image of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers smothering me in bed out of my head any time the guy asked if I was interested in him, I had nothing against the guy. He meant well, was lonely, and sometimes on the overnight it would just be us. Bear in mind, if you didn’t know me at this time, I was also no skinny mini. I had to be pushing 300 pounds still; I hadn’t had been close to cancer yet and I lived on a steady diet of casino buffet lines and Pokey stix from the now defunct Gumby’s Pizza. I got to know my coworker way too well; we bonded over the fact that we both pretended to hate Rent because others loved it so much. The man was obsessed with that YouTube video called “Shoes” - look it up, under ‘shoes the full version’ by liamkylesullivan - sometimes I can hear him singing “THESE SHOES RUUULLLEEE, THESE SHOES SUCK! LETS GET SOME SHOES. STUPID BOY.”
(god I will not lie, this has brought back memories I truly forgot I had. That was a hell of a time for my work experience.)
One night, we were working together, alone; and it was quiet,dark, and I had been on a poker bender so I had not slept the two days I had off and was functioning on being awake for close to 60 straight hours (a common theme when I was gambling all the time.) I remember I was nodding off at my desk when I heard him answer our main business directory line.
“WHO THE FUCK IS CALLING THIS NUMBER RIGHT NOW” (caps do not do this guy justice when it comes to how he yelled whenever he spoke) He answered, let out a loud sigh and said, “PLEASE HOLD, I HAVE TO GET UP TO GET THE FAX.” (I knew better, the man never left his chair in a ten hour shift other than to use the bathroom, he would use his tree trunk legs to putter around on the over stressed wheels of the office chair.) Well, tonight, the office chair fought back on our good old friend. We had plastic mats down on the carpet of the office so the chairs would move easily - on the plastic - but there was a small lip between the plastic and carpet and by fuck, if this chair didn’t say ‘fuck you fatty, you beat the hell out of me for the last time!’ I didn’t get to see the action that followed, but let me describe to the best of my ability the chain of events that occurred in about 4 seconds. This call had woken me up a little, so I was glancing towards the fax machine when I saw THE FUCKING WHEEL FLY BY MY CUBICLE before I had heard the snap of the base of the wheel breaking off from the chair. As I immediately started to cover my mouth from the huge giggle that was already coming out, I heard a high pitched squeal followed by “SWEET JESUS MAMA HEEEEEELPPPP”
I bounced out of my office chair and glanced over my cubicle wall to see a very large man in a pile on the floor with a office chair broken into three separate pieces: the base had completely snapped, the arm on the left side had shattered (I imagined from when the weight fell on top of it) and seat and back pieces had compounded into one. Mind you, I still had my hand over my mouth cause I was full on laughing already. Here is a grown middle aged man, so heavy that all he could do was flop around and wail out, “I CAN’T GET UP ZACHARY, I CAAAANNNTTTTTT”
After fighting the tears of laughter away as fast as I could, I went to assess the situation and as soon as his huge meathook of a hand grabbed my arm I knew; I could not get this man off of the ground alone. He grabbed me with both arms and as I said, ‘Wait a minute Andr…’ the next thing I knew I was on top of him. I am thankful there weren’t security cameras in our office because if my friends had a photo of two beached whales rolling around on an office floor at 3am I would have been shamed into quitting the job. I slowly got up as the man was in a full out cry. “I can’t get up, I can’t get up” I remember now, the high pitched voice with hanging vowels haunted my dreams for almost the full day I slept after that. I knew I couldn’t leave the man on the ground - our relief in the first shift did not show up for at least another four hours, and I didn’t think I could find anything sturdy enough that he could use as a crutch to get himself up. The one thing I had at my disposal? Many phone lines to call non emergency police. The audio of the conversation was saved and replayed for many days until our I.T. guy found it hidden in one our intracompany notes and guilt tripped us into deleting it.
“Hello, um, uh, this isn’t really an emergency, but my coworker fell and well, hes rather large, and, I can’t get him up by myself and well, I didn’t know what to do.” that is the line I definitely remember the most. Sure as hell in about three minutes, I had the Madison ER/Fire at the scene, I ran down to the door to greet them and the first thing the fireman asked was “this is real, right.” I think the smirk on my face made it unbelievable but as I led four grown men to the office above, the look on every one of their faces is unforgettable to this day; “Holy fuck, there is literally a guy that fits the ‘help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ lifeline commercial everyone laughed at at 2am.” Was the cleanest interpretation I took from it.
The best part of the whole interaction is as the five of us worked on rolling him to his back and straightening him up, he said ‘Well, if this is how I get handsome men to touch me, I should do this more often,’ two of the guys physically cringed and we almost dropped him back to the floor.
The worst part of the whole exchange for him over, we were silent for the rest of the night. Our manager came in at 8am, my coworker bounced out of his chair and as my manager asked ‘how was the shift?’ my coworker stared at me and with no emotion in his face at all said, “it was fine, Zachary isn’t as strong as he looks though,’ and quickly scurried out the office door.

Fuck me and my weakness, right?