The Local Bar An Office Option for the Adjunct

by Matthew Henry Hall

Beyond having to pay for drinks, the biggest problem with doing one’s grading at a bar is maintaining proper focus. At a lively bar, overly-libated patrons bustle and bluster about, bumping
into you, or worse, wanting to strike up a conversation. “I used to write poetry!” His collar looks like a mobius strip. He hovers too close, swaying, trying to read over your shoulder. “Keats! I freakin’ love Keats!” Disengage quickly, or he’ll spill his noxious beverage all over your grade-book.

Choose then a not-so-lively bar—one where the patrons come to sit and slump like depressed plush toys over their drinks. Find a quiet table in a corner. (Quiet is a relative term. Even so the oceanic rumble of a jukebox and/or tv will make a nice white noise.) Order your favorite alcoholic beverage. You’re now all set to dig into that pile of papers you’ve been avoiding for weeks. But beware, a larger danger still lurks, the danger of drinking and grading, or to be more precise, to drink too much and to continue to grade. One beer or one glass of wine in your quiet corner might take the edge off the disgust and fear of grading a stack of lousy, near-illiterate student prose. But three or five or who’s-counting glasses may very well spell disaster. And disaster is exactly what happened to my former colleague, Bertrand B. Pickles.

Bert Pickles, myself, and about seven other adjuncts all shared an office at Goose-Egg University. Because of our numbers and overlapping schedules, we often found ourselves crammed into that tiny space, trying to share four tinier desks. We all found other “offices.” Some opted to work and meet students in the commons. Others, worked in their cars in the parking lot. I did my work on the bus, meeting occasionally with students who also rode the crosstown, Number 6. All of us visited the “real” office from time to time to check our phone messages, to say hello, and to about our inadequate work space. But Bert Pickles, he never complained.

One day, I went into the office and was surprised to find only Bert there, feet up on the desk, talking on the phone. I nodded to Bert as he covered the receiver, and said with a huge smile,
“You just missed the herd.” I felt a little irritated. Odd since I usually appreciated Bert’s good-natured cheer. But it really wasn’t Bert. I’d had a bad bus ride. I pulled out my folder of student work and looked at the essay on top. A huge red gash, ran from the bottom right corner to the upper left. I’d been writing a comment when the bus driver went over a curb. I accidentally impaled a rare, well-written essay—my brightest and most sensitive student’s moving piece
about his grandmother’s bout with cancer titled, “I Can Still Feel Your Hand.” Well, he’ll be able to feel my hand, I thought, right through every page. Alfredo, who’d wept openly in class on several occasions might, when he saw what I’d done, faint dead away. I’d have to take the time to write a note of explanation. It’d take a long chat after class. Perhaps another note after that.

“Crap,” I muttered, pulling out some paper. “What’s wrong?” asked Bert. I showed him the paper,
told my story. When I finished, Bert said, “You should do your grading at Hernando’s.”

“Hernando’s?”

“Hernando’s. The Pink Lady. The Sozzler. Wherever you like to go to get sauced,” Bert said with glee. “My girlfriend bar tends at Hernando’s. I get free scotch, beer, whatever I freakin’ want and work my way through my stack of stinky student papers!”

Bert didn’t actually use the word, “stinky,” or “freakin’” for that matter. He used expletives. Lots of them. I’ve been leaving them out (or rather their placeholders) until now.

“The more I drink,” said Bert, “the more blanketty-blank As and Bs I give out.”

Over the next few months, I considered trying Bert’s method, but I didn’t have the money to throw at drinks. I stuck with my office-on-the-bus. But whenever I saw Bert, he’d ask with a big smile, “Try my system yet? As the blankin’ whistle gets blankin’ wetter, the blankin’ essays get blankin’ better.”

But apparently, that wasn’t always true.

One day towards the end of the semester, I met a bloodshot Bert in the hallway near our office. With his breath and pores spilling out the dank stench of a brewery, he looked at me in wide-eyed terror. “You got a second?” Bert asked. Not waiting for an answer, he pulled me to a quiet side corner of the building. “I graded some blanketty-blank papers at Hernando’s last night. Chloe ran out of my favorite blankin’ Scotch halfway through my blanketty-blank stack, so I started drinking blankin’ beer. I must’ve fallen asleep at the blankin’ bar. When I woke up, I looked and saw my whole blankin’ stack’s graded. I didn’t remember grading a blankin’ one. A blanketty-blank gift from god, I think.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

“Today, I hand back the papers. My head’s blanketty-blank pounding. I get ‘em to free-write and peer edit the whole period. When class ends, this one kid waits till everyone leaves. Then he blankin’ hands me his blankin’ essay and says, ‘I can’t believe what you wrote on my paper.’ I flip through it until I see on the last page, written in my very own blankin’ handwriting, ‘Why are you blanketty-blank blankin’ all over this blankin’ paper?’”

“You did?” I said, shocked.

“Oh yeah. I’m blankin’ sweating blanketty-blank bullets. But then a voice in my head says, ‘Well, what the blank do you have to lose?’ So I say to this little blank, ‘Why are you blanketty-blank blankin’ all over this blankin’ paper?’ The kid kinda stumbles backwards. ‘You heard me,’ I said. ‘You can do better than this, and you know it.’”

“Did he buy it?” I asked.

“Hook, line, and blanketty-blank sinker.”

Bert still looked terrified. Confused, I asked, “Then what’s the trouble?”

“Some other students got the same blankin’ comment on their blankin’ papers. I just got a call from the blankin’ dean. I’m on my way to her blanketty-blank office. I’m blankin’ screwed.”

Bert certainly was. He literally disappeared from campus after that day. I hadn’t seen him for over a year when I bumped into him again on the street. Bert never looked happier. He and Chloe, the bartendress, were engaged. He’d been working at Hernando’s ever since being fired from Goose-Egg U. Hernando’s owner, who’d apparently really loved both Bert and Chloe, willed Hernando’s to them when he died. “I feel like I’ve blankin’ died and gone to blanketty-blank heaven too,” said Bert. I congratulated Bert, and we talked a little about Goose-Egg U. All too soon, Bert said, “Gotta blankin’ run. Almost happy hour.”

I watched, amazed as Bert literally skipped down the sidewalk. I’d been thinking the lesson to be learned from Bert was “Don’t Drink and Grade.’” But if you don’t like being an adjunct, maybe it’s “By All Means. Blanketty-Blank Do.”