Last week, when I drove into the Home Depot parking lot to buy
Christmas presents for my sister-in-law and two nieces, one of the
day workers leaned into the street at my passing truck, with his
hand upraised, palm out, in a gesture that the Sunday School
teacher in me interpreted as,
”
Me! Pick me!
”
I did not stop, having no need of a day laborer.
Last week, when I drove into the Home Depot parking lot to buy Christmas presents for my sister-in-law and two nieces, one of the day workers leaned into the street at my passing truck, with his hand upraised, palm out, in a gesture that the Sunday School teacher in me interpreted as, “Me! Pick me!” I did not stop, having no need of a day laborer.
This was the second-closest encounter I have ever had with a day worker. The closest occurred once when I was struggling to lift a heavy box into the back of my pick up. Two men came over, hoisted it in, refused my offer of a tip, and said, “De nada. Adios.”
Usually the workers just glance at me as I drive by. I never considered them an annoyance. It surprised me to learn in last week’s Dispatch that Home Depot considers them so. To me, they are just human beings who need work more desperately than most 21st-century Californians, desperately enough that hanging out in a parking lot is their best option.
It also surprised me to learn that there had been a few complaints of cars being broken into. Stealing is a crime, but keep in mind that most of the day workers are not thieves.
Home Depot is, of course, a private business, and has every right to prohibit day workers from loitering on its property if it so desires. But I would miss them if they disappeared, because every time I see them, I think of a story about another group of day laborers. This story was set long ago and far away, but if it was told here and now, it might go something like this:
There was once a landowner, who owned a vineyard out on Hecker Pass. Early one morning he drove to Home Depot to hire some day laborers to work in his vineyard. He offered them $200 each for the day’s work: about twice the going rate. So he sent them out to his vineyard.
About nine in the morning, he had to make a quick trip to Staples for some invoices, and saw some more day laborers standing idle in the parking lot, and he said to them, “Go to my vineyards, and I will pay you what is right.” So they went.
He hired some more men at noon, and some more at three in the afternoon, and at 5pm, he found some more guys standing around, imitating highway workers, and asked them, “Why aren’t you working?”
They said, “Because no man has hired us.” (They did not add: “Duh!”)
The landowner said, “Get to work in my vineyards, and whatever is right I will pay you.”
Finally, evening came. The landowner said to his foreman, “Call the day workers, and give them their pay, from the last to the first.”
So, the first ones to be paid off were those who had started work at five o’clock. And they were each paid $200. But when the men who had worked since dawn came, they figured they should have received more, but they also received $200 each.
So they complained, saying, “Those men only worked an hour, and you gave them the same as us, though we worked all through the heat of the day. Unfair! Wait till the UFW hears about this!”
But the landowner answered them, and said, “Friend, I did you no wrong: didn’t you agree to work for $200? Take your wages and go your way. I will give to the last just what I gave you. Isn’t it legal for me to do what I want with my own money? Are you angry, just because I am generous?”
The original story is, of course, the first half of Matthew, chapter 20, in the Bible. I find it amazing that in spite of our pick up trucks and big box hardware stores, we have not really changed much in 2000 years. We still have day laborers, and vineyards, and landowners.
And for anyone who is still drawing breath, it is still not too late to start working for the Landowner.
