Working the graveyard with the folks who don’t sleep.

*^*The Immigrant

It’s almost 3:30am, and my mind is succumbing to delusions. Or maybe it’s just that a visit to the Seaside’s Walgreen store this late at night is so surreal. The drugstore’s fluorescent lights make the place feel like a gigantic tanning booth, while vents in the ceiling suck air like an asthmatic huffing on an inhaler. This evening, slick pop music plays over the store’s sound system as one female shopper fills a cart with toilet paper and cleaning products.

When I see an elf stocking the store’s toy section, I know the late hour is starting to get to me. The individual is actually Adam Jones, a short, lively service clerk with bushy eyebrows and dyed blond hair combed to one side.

Within just seconds of meeting me, Jones starts excitedly talking about 2003. That year, Jones, a Polish immigrant, made $40,000 with three minimum wage jobs at K Mart, Target and a Fremont gas station. “For that, I should receive ‘Employee of the Year,’” he says. “To reach that on minimum wage is very hard. Forty thousand dollars a year? Who would do that? On minimum wage?”

Jones admits that he is able to stay awake for the shift by simply immersing himself in work. “Everyone has own,” he says as he snaps his fingers trying to find the right words. “Has own skills to do.”

Before heading off on his 3:30am lunch break, Jones says that he can work the 11:45pm to 8:15am Walgreen’s shift because he only needs four or five hours of sleep an evening. It also gives him most of the day to hang out with his two young children and ride his bike.