Taking a second job can ease the worry

Geoff Edgers hustles to keep up with UPS deliveries on Boylston Street. (Globe Staff Photo / Mark Wilson)

In this downturn, we're not just losing jobs. We're working longer hours for the same money, having our wages frozen, or, most frustrating of all, taking pay cuts for the "greater good" of the company.

In this crunch, sometimes the only way to balance the budget is by taking on a second job.

And technically, I could use one to help pay our bills. But a night shift isn't feasible. My wife works full time and we have a child and needy dog. We're also not actually in crisis. We both work, our mortgage is reasonable, and we drive old cars.

Of course, I could play the role of part-time worker for a few days, as sort of a labor experiment. But let's be straight. Pretending to moonlight is nothing like what Beth Goncalo goes through. The Fall River mother starts her day at a hospital at 5:30 a.m. and gets off work at 4 p.m. That's a full day (and then some) for most. But then she works her shift at Blount Fine Foods, known for its soups and clam chowder. She works most Saturdays and Sundays to help her son afford tuition at Westfield State College.

"I am exhausted," says Goncalo, who is 43. "But you have to do what you have to do. I would work three jobs if I had no choice."

For myself, being a reporter pretending to take on a part-time job did give me one distinct advantage. I could get a job pretty easily once I explained myself. As job cuts pile up, others won't be so lucky.

"I've got so many resumes on file, I haven't even looked at them yet," said Gary Carlow, director of operations for the Boston's Preferred Temporaries Inc.

Seasonal jobs may be one exception. They depend on an influx of outsiders for a few weeks every year. That's why I decided on United Parcel Service for my first experiment, since it hires "helpers" in the weeks before Christmas. The idea is to help a veteran blow through the holiday gift boom.

Before throwing me out there, UPS made me take a training session, which included safety tips, and a series of quizzes on package delivery. (Tip: Don't leave a giant box out front of a busy street where it can be clipped easily.)

Just after 8 a.m. on a Thursday, I showed up for work at the Watertown UPS headquarters. I'd been issued brown pants and a matching jacket and told not to wear it out socially. (Apparently UPS doesn't want its workers clubbing in its easily-identifiable threads.)

My driver, Chris Bailey, 42, has been delivering the same route - a loop centered around Newbury and Boylston streets - for six years. And every year, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, he gets a helper.

"You can pretty much tell right away whether you're in trouble," he tells me about his past helpers.

The pressure was on. Bailey's route is tricky. Scant parking forces us to search for open corners or double park. And UPS is a private company, so police don't hesitate to issue tickets. The route's other challenge is the walking. Bailey estimates there are only a handful of elevators. One neighborhood's charm is a package deliverer's Stairmaster. "Newbury Street is like eight blocks of an open market," he says.

Picking up part-time work can be psychologically jarring. I've spent the last 16 years doing one thing professionally - writing. That may seem complicated to some, cushy to others. But it's what I know.

I don't know how to be a UPS helper. I realized that when Bailey handed me the scanning device I need to carry around for each delivery. It charts my progress, collects signatures, and lets my managers back in Watertown know I'm actually working.

The newness of everything created a strange feeling of insecurity. I wondered how quickly I'd get up to speed or whether I'd slow Bailey down.

By the end of our 10-hour day, much of it spent in a freezing drizzle, we headed back to Watertown.

I'm a runner, but I still felt soreness in my muscles. I also felt a sense of accomplishment. There's something nice about starting with a full truck and almost emptying it entirely.

"Good work ethic," Bailey told me. "If you noticed, I pretty much threw you into the fire. But you came back. Some helpers might disappear for 20 minutes."

My second job required less walking, more counting. The b. good restaurant is a burger joint with a twist. Fries aren't fried, they're baked. The meat is ground on site; the chicken breaded upstairs. Co-owner Jon Olino was smart not to have me work the grill at his Harvard Square location. He issued me a b. good T-shirt for a Saturday shift and stuck me on the register with a kindhearted manager named Catherine.

How did it feel to work a second job on a Saturday, when I'd normally be running, playing with my kid, or doing something with my wife? Antsy, particularly since I had cut my weekend in half. I wanted my family to come have lunch, if just to share some of my day. But at $9 an hour, buying them lunch wouldn't exactly have been cost-effective.

Working the register also felt strange. I was a cashier at Stop & Shop as a teenager, but I was too young to grasp or care about the master-servant mentality of customer service. Here, I felt uncomfortable. I knew what these Harvard kids were thinking: I'm studying searches and seizures with Lawrence Tribe and this dude is pressing a button to add cheese to my burger.

Even still, after a couple hours I started to feel like part of the b. good family. Mike, another worker, shook my hand, told me I was doing OK, and even freed me for lunch, when I would never have asked. Nobody questioned why I was working there or where I'd come from. Apparently, in this economy, they understood why a seemingly fast-thinking, clean-cut adult might want to sign on for a $9 an hour burger job. Probably for the same reason they were there: the paycheck.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com