C.J. Johnson and his co-workers at We-Go Greenhouse in West Chicago have an unusual way to cope with the blistering heat. They duck outside to cool off.
”Yeah, it`s pretty hot,” said Johnson Tuesday when, despite efforts to cool the greenhouse with tarps and open windows, temperatures inside were hitting a seriously steamy 115 degrees. ”So you work for a while, then you go outside for a while. This time of year, it`s not good to be inside for too long.”
In a summer when sweltering workers have filed union grievances over a lack of Gatorade, those blessed with air-conditioned office jobs should coolly count their blessings. For Johnson and his compatriots in thousands of hot jobs across the city and suburbs, to work is to sweat.
More Top Picks Best Circular Saws For Cutting Metal
Roofers, pavers, firefighters, bakers, short-order cooks, dry cleaners and coke oven operators have been steamed through their hot jobs as the mercury soared into the mid-90s this week. Some relief was expected Wednesday, when temperatures were forecast to top out in the mid-80s.
But hot or not, those who perspire for a living will be ready, fortified by iced water, a decent paycheck and a sense of humor adapted to miserable conditions.
”It`s like living in hell,” said Tom Caputo, a Chicago Heights roofer who spends his summer days pounding nails into black roofs and watching the heat waves shimmer off.
”There`s no shade on the roof, no place to hide,” he said. ”At about 2 p.m., when it`s this hot out, you start hallucinating. And you lose quite a bit of weight. Five or seven guys will run through 15 gallons of water a day, easy.”
Caputo is hardly alone in his misery. Consider the poor paver.
”It`s rough,” said Joe Pacyga, an asphalt crew paving foreman from East Hazel Crest who arguably has the worst job this summer: laying 700 tons of 300-degree asphalt 12 hours a day.
”This is as hot as you`re going to get,” he said Tuesday, as his crew sweated its way up 207th Street in Matteson, evenly baked on all sides by the steaming asphalt underfoot and the unrelenting sun overhead.
Still, they didn`t think they had it so tough.
”Those patch crews, where they have to shovel all day, they have it worse,” Pacyga said, perspiring through his tanktop. ”Or the roofers. They have it bad.”
But Caputo the roofer pities the steelworkers, and Don Jones, of United Steelworkers Union Local 1010 in East Chicago, Ind., was inclined to agree.
”You`re talking 130 or 140 degrees around the standpipes,” said Jones, a coke oven maintenance man at the city`s Inland Steel plant. He said frequent breaks in air-conditioned rooms and a healthy supply of nutrient-laden liquids-not just water-are the keys to survival.
Doctors concurred, adding that staying away from alcohol-which promotes fluid loss and impairs the body`s heat-regulating mechanisms-also is vital.
Don Lutes, the union secretary, said he knows of clashes this summer between company officials who wanted to supply just water and workers who were demanding Gatorade.
”It`s bad right now,” Lutes said. ”The guys working on cranes in the top of buildings claim it`s just unbearable.”
Dorothy Pfeiffer, assistant manager at Reichardt Cleaners in Rolling Meadows, said she feels the same way, with temperatures at least 10 to 15 degrees higher inside than outside her store.
”If nothing else, we should have good complexions” from all the pore-clearing sweat, she said, standing near an open front door in an effort to cool off.
Others, like Hisham Khalifeh, owner of the Middle East Bakery on Foster Avenue in Chicago, has learned to adapt. His pita bread oven, ”just clay and fire,” he says, is vented onto the street and bakers take turns standing next to the oven.
John Mavraganis, a flush-faced short-order cook at Heffy`s Hot Dogs in Prospect Heights, said he could stand the heat and would stay in the kitchen. ”Sweating (doesn`t) bother me, particularly when you think of the money you make,” he said.