The Man in the Uniform - by Elissa Ely

The Man in the Uniform
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Elissa Ely
(The Boston Globe, 07/01/2010)

YOU DON’T want medications, although you’re depressed. You don’t want the cloudy, emasculating service that the clinic calls supportive psychotherapy. You don’t want to apply for a check from the government. You want one pair of size 15 extra wide regulation black work boots. They cost about $100.

You have a week to find them. If you do, a security firm will hire you. The interviewer likes you, and he doesn’t know you have been sleeping on a mat in a church shelter, homeless since your last company folded and you lost your apartment. They will supply your uniform. The boots are the sticking point.

There are clothing rooms in the Day Shelter, filled with coats, socks, dresses, even suits. There are shoes, too, and some are probably black, but none are size 15 extra wide work boots. An APB goes out to other Boston shelters. Someone appropriates $29.99 from an emergency slush fund, and you buy a pair of Payless black sneakers, tight around the toes, but workable.

Things look up. You begin the job training. It’s tiring, because you sleep badly in the shelter, where some of the neighbors are intoxicated, and others are threatening. You wait until everyone is asleep before you can relax, and then, you spring awake four or five hours later. But fatigue is secondary. This job will purchase an apartment’s first and last months’ rent. When that happens you will sleep better.

Every day, you wear the uniform. It’s pressed and professional. But in the shelter there is no closet to hang it in at night. (There is also no shower, though you finesse this by using rubbing alcohol from the Dollar Store, two for $.99, which someone said will clean pores.)

After about a week, the uniform starts to wrinkle, and the supervisor takes you aside. He likes your work and wants you to stay. All you have to do is keep the uniform clean. The uniform is the face of the company. He doesn’t understand why this is hard.

You don’t want him to know you are homeless, having already discovered that it tends to create an unattractive impression. You need the job in order to free yourself. You could point out that you have clean pores, through effort and ingenuity, which can represent the company.

This should not be a problem. But you have no closet. You have no regulation boots. And therefore, it turns out, you have no solution.

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Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.