Dear Construction Workers,
I wish I could say it’s been a lovely evening.
It had potential.The temperature is warm for January, and I can see the stars.Yet I’m miserable. It’s 9:48 p.m. and I’m sitting on my couch, listening to you drill—possibly through metal—while floodlights pour into my apartment. I know from experience that this will likely continue until 2:30 a.m.
I don’t like this one bit.
It’s not that I don’t understand that the school, Greenpoint’s P.S. 110, needs a new elevator. And I realize it’s just bad luck that my bedroom window overlooks the school’s playground, now your construction site. But what amazes me is that after a full 10 months of work, the elevator is not yet finished. I’ve seen whole buildings go up in less time.
This must be some pretty amazing elevator.
I’m sure constructing an elevator is complicated. I know I can barely put together IKEA furniture. But taking into account your frequent laughter and those times I’ve seen you at the local bodega, it’s tempting to make jokes about hourly workers.The thing is, I understand. I’ve worked hourly jobs too, counting my pennies and dawdling while looking at the clock. I don’t want to judge too harshly. It’s when you started working until 2:30 a.m. that I started judging.
Of course, we had problems before this. Remember those times last summer you began working before 6 a.m.? And how you enjoyed blasting dance music from your portable radio before you started working?
It was only after kids returned to school in September that you began your late-night rendezvous, and I began losing my mind. Sleep became impossible. Even if I drifted off, an ear-splitting sawing sound would, inevitably, jerk me awake.
I tried to cope. I now have a stack of earplugs on the dresser near my bed. But earplugs don’t dull the crash of heavy machinery hitting concrete. They don’t even block the sound of your shouts. Speaking of which, have you guys ever seen those walkie-talkie phones? Feel free to invest in a few.
Now, I’m no pacifist—I was for invading Afghanistan, although against attacking Iraq— and I don’t usually have violent thoughts. But this changed when it came to you. I’ve had my fantasies. One particularly desperate night (with a job interview the next morning) I seriously considered throwing Chinese firecrackers into your construction site.
Yes, it’s been a long 10 months for all of us. By all of us, I mean myself, my neighbors and the folks at 311. I spent so much time calling 311 that they gave me the direct number of someone at a government agency overlooking school construction. I thought I hit the jackpot. At last! Oversight! Regulation! I started making frequent nighttime phone calls to the Regulatory Woman. So did my neighbors. But alas, much as the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn’t successfully regulate Wall Street, so was the Regulatory Woman unable to regulate you.Your hammering through my sleepless nights persisted.
One night, after a few drinks, I walked by the school. It was about 11 p.m. and two of you were hanging out by a pile of rubble in front of the site. I recognized you by your yellow hard hats and orange vests.You were complaining about how the rich man always has it in for the workers. To a certain extent, I agreed, and it created a small pocket of goodwill for you inside my chest. I decided to talk to you. It did not go well.
At first we amicably chit-chatted, but after I asked you when the elevator would be finished, you drew yourself up to your full height, squared your shoulders and narrowed your eyes. “Why? You got a problem with this?” I smiled sweetly, answering “Well, it’s not my favorite when you work past 2 a.m.”
The conversation went downhill, and any inkling of goodwill died.That night, I left another message for the Regulatory Woman.
This was war. I wrote my local councilman. I hunted down contact info for the school’s principal and NY’s education chancellor. Figuring you weren’t union, I ratted you out to the local chapter of the elevator construction union. I prayed for rain and high winds.
I hadn’t slept properly in months. My work suffered. I stayed in weekend nights, the only evenings you didn’t work, relishing the silence and my feeling of freedom.
Sadly, around December I started getting used to the noise. But you were back in true form come January. Only last week, at 1:01 a.m., I heard one of you shout, “Hey, should I chop up some more bricks?”
Judging by the window-rattling sounds that followed, the answer was yes.
I blame you for my misery, but I also blame Brooklyn for tolerating your behavior. Brooklyn, a borough where rent is paid in cash, where neighbors whisper about the butcher’s connection to organized crime. Brooklyn, with its own system of unwritten laws. That said, Brooklyn still considers itself part of America. I know this because of the two American flags you fly on the construction site. When I look out my bedroom window and see those flags, I think of America, land of the free. A land where we have the right to pursue happiness.
That is, unless you live in Greenpoint and your perceived feelings of freedom interfere with the never-ending construction.
But I keep my hopes up. I know that, at some point, you’re bound to finish. And hopefully you’ll loose a finger or two to frostbite before then. C
Amy Braunschweiger likes cabbies more than construction workers. Offering further proof of this, her book, A Checkered Past: True Stories of New York City Taxicab Drivers and Passengers, comes out this June.
anonymous
