Alabama man, kindly yet firm, hunches to sweep the crumbs from the deck of his career, trying to keep the rats from infesting the tidy space he has created. It has to mean something, he says to himself for the four-hundredth time, if not more. It has to mean that I haven't wasted my life, he says, while the owners smoke their cigars and plot new ways to exploit him.

"The chemicals help with that."