BRRRRRINNINNNNNNG! The alarm felt like a kick to the head. He rolled up and turned it off. It was 4:30AM. Skipping the shower, he pulled his stiff and faded Carhardts on and stood up. He stumbled across the room and hit the light switch, the dim florescent bulb flickered to life and began to buzz. Stooping down he grabbed the shirts he had peeled off only a few hours earlier and pulled them over his head. The base layer was a yellowed synthetic long sleeve, over which was a faded blue t-shirt with two horizontal reflective bars on front and back. He looked around the small room, at the crumpled bedding on a camping cot, at the broken AC unit sitting in the corner, at the tattered Backstreet Boys poster hanging on the wall. Leaving the light on, he walked through the dark kitchen and out into the warm spring air. The 6 month old Ford Super Duty spun to life, and before putting it in gear, he stuffed a large wad of dip between his bottom teeth and lip. Roaring into the local gas station he left the truck running as he walked inside. Two minutes later he was back outside with a Cliff bar, two 16oz Rockstar energy drinks, and a fresh can of dip. The sticker on the back window of the Ford said “Gamakatsu”. He spun the truck out onto the highway for the hour drive into work. As the miles poured under the new tires, he thought about the night before, the week before, the years before. There wasn’t much to mark the time. Work had been steady, and he never turned down an overtime hour in his life. In fact, the last year he had averaged 55 hours a week. This Saturday was just like any other, another day on the job. As the city came into view, the rising sun passed behind the looming structure on which he had spent most of his waking hours for the past two years. The cranes and concrete forms 300 feet in the air gave it the look of an offshore oil platform, thick and wide at the top, stark and unmoving against the orange to yellow to blue sky. He didn’t see any of this however; he pulled the truck into the empty parking garage, taking the same spot he took every day. Taking the last few swigs of one of the Rockstar’s he threw the can into the bed of the truck, stuffed the full can into the jacket he pulled off the passenger seat, and turned toward the jobsite, joining the trickle of others just like himself, just like any other day, just like any other year. It was 5:45AM, and he took a second dip out of the fresh can.