Today I got to the remote lot and a bunch of people were waiting for the shuttle. The way the shuttle line works is the first person stands close to the garbage can by the lot entrance, and people line up to the left.

The woman whose nephew got his girlfriend pregnant (who I found out is named Cheryl) and the woman with the big ones were at the end of the line. I was kind of sweating standing next to them, but then Reynaldo came out of his car and lined up before me.

When I got there, Cheryl and the one with the big ones stopped talking for a moment.

Reynaldo and I talked for a bit. I started complaining about having to lug around our binders all the time and Reynaldo said it was good for arm strength. Then started talking about how this job doesn't give him the free time he needs to train.

Reynaldo isn't shaped like someone who's trained for much of anything. His binders were piled up on the ground.

When the shuttle came, I got stuck sitting next to the driver again. He told me he thinks the black guy across the street is the one who cracked up his car.

He kept using the word "black" in all his sentences.

"When he first moved in, I thought that black guy was pretty cool..."
"That black guy drives a Monte Carlo..."
"You don't see many black guys driving Pontiacs."

By the time we got to the office, he must have used the word "black" at least 30 times. I was just glad he didn't use the term in plural.

I was really hoping Cheryl didn't have any black friends she'd be eating with today.

When we got to the classroom, Gerald was the only one there. Paige decided to sit us at the same table. She keeps calling us "the Geralds".

I remarked how he was here early, and Gerald said he's been parking in the office lot so far. I guess he got up late yesterday and he would have been late if he had gone to the remote lot, so he parked towards the back and hoped no one would notice.

He said no one said anything and there weren't any tickets on his car, so he figured he'd be OK.

At nine, someone from human resources came in to give us our benefits paperwork, and gave us a bunch of books to go with it. I don't know what the books were for, but I figured it would be one more thing I'd be lugging around for the next week or so.

Later we started to learn a bit about the different investments we'd be working with. I was struggling really hard to pay attention, and then Paige said we didn't have to worry if we didn't have everything memorized by the time we got on the phone, as there was a page on our intranet we could refer to.

I zoned out after that.

Around 11 Gerald excused himself and left the room. I looked out the window a minute later and saw him in the parking lot talking with a tow truck driver who was in the process of hitching up a car.

Gerald started waving his hands a bit, and the driver just kept doing what he was doing.

Paige caught sight of it as the truck driver was getting in his car. Everyone looked out the window just in time to see Gerald watch the truck drive away with his car in tow.

She said she forgot to remind us that they do tow from the lot periodically.

I ended up giving Gerald a ride to the impound lot after work. He told me he'd probably still park in the office lot anyway.