Mike turned to Miles, “We should consider making a movie.  What actor would play the day worker?”

“Maaatt Daaamon,” Miles unhurriedly droned like the marionette character of Matt Damon in Team America.

At this point, I lost it.  I never really understood why that movie poked fun at Matt.  But I was laughing so hard that I could no longer carry on sanding.  I think I was laughing so hard because I completely empathized with these guys; I had been a day worker in Mallorca for two months.  Two months seemed like an eternity to me but Mike and Miles were pushing six months.  Day work is never consistent—you might work three days one week, have no work the next, and then work ten days straight the following week.  After a job is finished you spend all of your hard earned day working money at the bar and start to drunkenly fret wondering when you might land the next gig.  And then you curse yourself for spending all of your money at the bar.  None of us unemployed yachties looking for work have savings to survive on so it’s absolutely necessary to get day work.  I had first meet Miles when I arrived in Palma and we were in the same position; unemployed yachties looking for stable employment.  I felt like somewhat of a jerk listening to Miles and Mike because it was just recently that I found a permanent position on a boat and now the guys were almost working for me.  I always felt like I was part of the Untouchables as a day worker; they are the lowest of the totem pole in the Indian class system; similar to the hierarchy in the yachting industry from the owner to the day worker.

“Hey dude, what about Bruce Lee?”  Miles continued his monologue in a broken Asian accent.  “Need cwu?  Got day wok?”  He chuckled, “I can totally see Bruce Lee as the day worker.  Imagine how quickly he could scale the scaffolding.  A boat would have to hire him as crew after his amazing work ethic.”

And ultimately, Miles was right.  Not about Bruce Lee or Matt Damon, because I’m sure that movie will never come to fruition, but in hopes that as a day worker you might impress a boat so much by your skills that they would absolutely have to hire you.  The majority of the time, however, the boat typically already has a fully stocked crew.

My first mate picks day workers by their dire situations.  Once, she mentioned, that a day worker pleaded with her for work because he couldn’t fathom eating canned tuna for dinner again.  She chose Mike because he was carrying around a sleeping bag suggesting the obvious.  We try to refer to the day workers by their first names, not just “the day workers.”  Mike was so elated one day that I called him by his name and thanked me profusely for not calling him “just a day worker.”  And if my first mate couldn’t offer them work she always offered them a cigarette.

Let me break down the life of a day worker, because really, it is quite humiliating.  We all know that we shouldn’t head straight to the bar after our daily pays but we do because we are either raging alcoholics or just need a couple of drinks because we are so completely bummed out from not finding something permanent.  We also know that we shouldn’t drink because the next morning the early bird gets the worm and a hangover inevitably prevents that.  I’ve never day worked anywhere else but Mallorca and here you have to sneak into the locked docks just to be able to approach the boats.  Club de Mar was like Fort Knox—I was never able to persuade myself through those pearly gates.  I also didn’t realize how long the overall dock was here; I discovered it the hard way on my first day of day walking in perhaps the most impractical shoes imaginable.  Afterwards, the montage of blisters left me out of dock walking commission for a week.

Then I tried the agencies.  At this point my boyfriend Dean had arrived, completely experienced as a sailor and engineer having grown up and working on boats his entire life, but lacking the proper tickets.  A couple trying to find work together is hard enough but couples without tickets trying to find work together is almost impossible.  We stopped going to agencies because I couldn’t listen to the same statement over and over again.  “Dean, you really need your tickets.”  Didn’t they know we knew this?  We either had the time and no money or the money and no time.  I could, however, never bring myself to make a business card to pass out to boats when asking for work; I felt a resume was best.  A person has a business card when they actually have a job and I just didn’t understand why an unemployed and broke yachtie would make that expensive and contradictory endeavor.

One day, after sleeping in way too late due to melancholy or a hangover or possibly both we draped ourselves over our balcony in our apartment in Plaza Drassana watching the forlorn yachties make their way to the bars.  Dean turned to me and justified our slothfulness, “Why bother looking for work when we see that all of these yachties who have been dock walking all day return with nothing?”  At that point we were just going on word of mouth by employed day working friends who would tell us that so-and-so was looking for day workers.  We couldn’t be bothered in our state of misery to walk two miles of docks everyday.

Shortly after Dean’s rationalization we sat on our balcony again smoking cigarettes when Miles appeared.  “Hey guys,” he shouted up to us.  “Keep in contact with that boat I got you day work for last week.  They’re looking for a couple and they really liked how you guys worked.”

And so, I worked side by side with Miles and Mike feeling like a jerk because Miles had so graciously led us in to a permanent position on a boat.  Now, whenever a day worker approaches our boat and we have no work for them I wish them good luck and ask them if they need a cigarette because I too was once just a day worker.