Today I was thrilled to hear that the girl who worked the day shift at my job broke a forklift! Finally someone else screwed up. Sure, she only ripped one rear tire off of the machine and I was able to get both off, but who's keeping score? The part of it all that made me most happy was that our replacement forklift was Pinky and she awaited me on the charge floor when I arrived. Maybe I should backtrack a bit for those who aren't aware of my devotion to Pinky.
Almost 4 months ago when I started working at Teck, there were 2 forklifts for us to train on and one of them was a pink forklift which I affectionately named Pinky. Pinky has a bit of a history. Many years ago when she was still yellow like the rest of the forklifts around here, she was mostly driven by one of the few women who works up here. One day the woman got completely fed up with the guys stealing her machine when her back was turned so she took it upon herself to grab a can of spray paint and paint it bright pink. It was a brilliant idea because men like to be overly macho most of the time and would never be caught dead riding a pink forklift. Heaven forbid! Normally this forklift is not allowed on the charge floor (where I work) because it has unauthorized tires on it, but they needed an extra machine to train all of the new students wandering around the place.
For some reason I instantly took to this old pink thing. Everyone else hates driving it because it's old, creaky and not as fast as the new ones. I think it may have something to do with my love of ratty old cars, but I favoured driving it over all other ones. I was sad when after about a week they took Pinky away and told me to drive the usual charge floor forklifts. But today she returned to me!
The guy who was to relieve me for my breaks today is a big muscly young guy. When he made his way up to take over, I hopped off the forklift and said, "I ordered the most manly forklift they could get for me." He laughed and shook his head at the ridiculous machine that he was going to be forced to drive. He made a comment about how he didn't think he could handle driving a pink forklift and hesitated before climbing on. Is it really that big of a deal? Really? Yeah, it actually was! When I came up from my break I was devastated to see that he had painted Pinky red! RED?!?!? How could he do such a thing? I'm quite certain that my jaw must have hit the ground hard. All I could say was, "I can't believe you did that!" He was all proud of himself for maiming the poor thing.
So I sulked for about 5 minutes when one of the guys from the electrolytic side came over to me and said, "What happened? It's red!" I nodded in sadness. Then he added, "Why don't you go down to the paint shop and get some pink paint and turn her back?" My heart quickened and my lips smiled wide. Why hadn't I thought of that?? I guess I didn't think that they would have an ample supply of pink paint hanging around. But I found a full can of it, hid it up my sleeve so my nemesis red painter would not see me carrying it when I walked by him and made my way back up to make sure that Pinky would not die this day. Sometimes you have to fight for your right to be pink.
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