By Ben Knuesel
Story of men and trees and the battle that they go through every day
Though there have many bosses in my lifetime, none has been worse than Jerry Setter. Setter owns his own tree cutting service and I was between a rock and a hard place when it came to my financial situation so I was left with no choice but to go to the lowest of the lows.
My first day on the job he yelled out to me through his large cotton-like mustache, “Are you the new shit?” Then he yelled to Steve, his foreman, "How long do you think this pip-squeak will last?” Steve was an experienced man to say the least. He had been Jerry’s foreman for 18 years and hated him more than anyone. Our job was cutting down trees. We worked from when the sun came up till we could barely walk or even grab a simple leaf off the ground.
The one motivating factor that any of us had was that glorious piece of paper at the end of each week with our name and a small number on it. Though I was getting paid less than minimum wage, it was at least something. The days were often in excess of 100 degrees and we had little time for breaks. The sweat would pour from my hard hat, down my back, and drench my blue jeans. Our lunch break was unpaid time and was very short. More times than not, our lunches were squashed, cracked, flattened, and all of the above on the way to the site.
When that precious break time came around, the moment was lost when my peanut butter and jelly sandwich had turned into a tortilla. Water went along with it, but it never seemed I got as much water as I needed. Every morning, we wouldn’t have a clue where we the jobsite was so we would get taken out to anywhere in the southern part of Minnesota and sometimes in Wisconsin. Hours could go by until we would finally arrive. When we got there, we took care of business as long as we could until the time ran out. Once done, we then had to drive back home after hours and would not get paid for the driving time, no matter how long it was. The rest of the day the smell of freshly cut wood would be caught in your nose, and sawdust could be found in all of your clothes, and all over your body.
Once at the work site, Jerry would put on a show with the client on how nice he is and how we will do the best work they have ever seen, but once they were gone, Jerry would come over with sweat on his glasses and his bald head looking like the monopoly man and start ranting and raving about what needed to be done. It didn’t matter what kind of tree it was, we did them all: Maples, Crab Apple, Pine, Poppler, Elm, etc. When starting with a tree, we would start at the top. Steve, a man who had all of his hair, but the hair was completely white, would get into the cherry picker with a chainsaw and start cutting limbs from the top. He would drop the limbs down and my job was to drag these limbs and throw them into a chipper that pulled more than one of my gloves away from me never to be seen again. When Steve needed something, he would yell through his five remaining teeth left whatever he needed with curse words between nearly every word.
Much of the time, the limbs were to big to throw right into the chipper that was about the size of a Ford F-150, so I had to pick up a chainsaw and trim them up. I had never worked a chainsaw before this, but the second day they gave it to me, told me how to start it, and expected me to know the rest. Luckily I never cut any human limbs off. At the end of the day, we would have the tree we were cutting down, down to the stump and all of the excess raked up and looking pretty. It was hot and exhausting. At the end of the day I was ready to collapse, and operating under such dangerous conditions was ominous. I cannot believe I never got seriously hurt, other than a few bumps on the head and scrapes all over my body.
When it came to the fellow workers, I can say with certainty that jail was no stranger to them. On my first day, one of them started a conversation with me by asking, “You been to jail yet?” Now I’m not exactly sure what he meant by “yet”, but I think he may have been implying that if I hadn’t yet, I will be on my way if I’m working at this dead-end job. I said as little as I could and just tried to stay out of the way. I answered with a simple “yes” or “no” to every question and kept as low a profile as possible.
Most people try to learn to trust at least one co-worker. A job such as a tree cutter might involve a little more trust than some other jobs since they are dealing with dangerous tools, and unpredictable trees and falling limbs, but there was little to none here. I was told to keep my mouth shut, my head down, and to stay the hell out of the way. If a limb was falling from the sky through the whirlwind of sawdust and leaves, there was no communication; it was up to me to save my own neck. While I worked there, three new workers came on, none of whom last more than three days I stuck it out for a whole summer until I found a better job the next year.
If nothing else, this job gave me character. I learned new traits, new skills, and mostly how to deal with difficult people. I will never forget Jerry Stetter that is for sure. Hopefully that will be the last of the bad bosses I will have to deal with, but I don’t see that happening. I feel like I’ve got a lot of job left in me, but I’m done being a lumberjack for now.
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