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"They didn't really look alike, they're kind of albino-ish. Albino with lots of moles. And he had way too many teeth for his mouth and it kind of affected his speech. It's not funny. But it is. But he could muscle anything, and I thought, 'No way am I going to let this kid outdo me.'"

Crazy Brian: "Crazy Brian was on the night crew. He was totally insane. They always make him do the most dangerous shit, because he's kinda crazy and he'll do it, just for kicks.

"They had a refrigerator, and Brian ate everybody's food. You'd get the hard-core company men going in there looking for their Stouffers dinner, and it's gone. 'I just saw it two hours ago! Where the hell is it?' And Brian's just sitting there going, 'I don't know, man.'

"Brian would get bored; he'd grab a fire extinguisher and run around spraying it, and this fine dust would settle on stuff. And then Missouri, he didn't know what was going on, he'd grab a manager, and they couldn't figure it out. They go and get everybody who's in charge, you've got all these guys out there debating whether the ceiling's falling in, or is it construction from somewhere else, thinking they better sell the place because it's falling apart. Two weeks later, Brian does the same thing again, and they still don't get it. They couldn't figure out this mystery dust.

"Brian was everybody's hero. The supervisors are supposedly not allowed to help us work, so they get bored and tell us to do busy work. They have to justify their position. So, right in front of them, Brian would drive a cart around and nick furniture. Backing into stuff. They'd scream at him, and he'd say, 'Why didn't you tell me that couch was back there?' That stuff would drive warehouse morale through the roof, sticking it to the man."

The managers: "One guy got fired. . . . he was always yelling and screaming at everybody, chain-smoking, two heart attacks, a total dick. Also, he ordered these really crappy teddy bears from Indonesia, and they'd sell them for like $300. He ordered hundreds of them, so the store was littered with teddy bears.

"There was also this young kid. He had one of those just-got-out-of-the-Army mustaches, and wore incredibly tight Wranglers and chewed tobacco. He was a pretty decent manager. Then the second-in-command manager was this huge bodybuilder guy, older, divorced, with a big giant mustache. Carried a .45 with him at all times."

XYY: "We only had two religious zealots there, but they were pretty drastic. The first one was XYY. People would tell me their whole life story, and this guy starts telling me he's got this violent temper and anything can make him mad. Once he goes crazy, there's no stopping him . . .

"So it turns out he's got an extra male chromosome, so he's extra aggressive. He was also an extreme Catholic; he took his religion very seriously, and he'd talk about Catholicism on and on and on.

"I mean, nobody there believed in God. It was like, 'If there was a God, I wouldn't be here.' One time, I got a little nervous, we were riding on the same lift and he starts talking about sex. I hate getting into sex conversations with anybody, but they all want to tell you, anyway.

"He starts talking about oral sex, and how that's okay, intercourse is the only sin. You can do anything else. I'm like, 'Who in the hell told you that?'

"'My priest.'
"'You must really have some screwed-up priest.' He started shaking, he was getting really pissed. I said, 'As far as I know, it's all bad. Especially if you're Catholic.' Eventually, he got into a fight and got fired."

The Karate Kid: "After XYY, this Mormon kid came on, he was a karate buff; you'd always see him on his break, doing his moves, but he was completely uncoordinated, and it was completely sad.

"He almost got himself killed in the trash compactor one time. He kept jumping in and doing this karate kick to smash the trash in, and he jumps in and gets his foot stuck. He tried to get out, and he grabbed the bay door and ended up just pulling it shut on himself. But he did manage to get himself free before he died. He ended up quitting because the language was too offensive for him."

So, those are the men of the warehouse.

In between humping all those luxury items around, these foot soldiers in the furniture-and-appliance-sales army found time to, well, do things to each other. I ask Dirk if he would qualify it as violence.

"I guess so," he says thoughtfully. "Basically, it was a lot of male-driven crap. Not really violence, but stuff you'd think 10-year-olds would do. You know, 'I can kick your ass; I can pick you up; I can throw a rock; whatever.'"

Male-driven crap: "I was unloading a truck with two guys, and they were talking. Someone had called and said a semi was going to get there in one or two days from North Carolina. I said, 'That's impossible. No way.' One guy said, 'That's totally possible.' I egged it on for a bit and backed off, shut up and let them go at each other.