Preface
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| Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay Steve, lower right-hand corner, "catching up" on a Saturday morning (warehouse closed) |
This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.
"By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day." -Robert Frost
I once saw a hard-working department manager of a SmartMart warehouse, Steve, a man with a handful of assistants and a bunch of employees, carrying a copy of Managing for Dummies while walking through the building's lobby on his way to his important department.
Seriously.
Nearly everyone who worked at the warehouse, from the general manager to the dude in charge of a crew of employees associates of an outside contractor hired to keep the joint clean, me, passed through that lobby when entering or exiting the building.
When entering, if you turned right, assuming you weren't hung up at the metal detectors, you would enter the administrative offices. If you turned left, as most people did, you passed through the building's cafeteria, the primary portal to "the floor" where merchandise from all over the world, but primarily from China, was processed on its way to SmartMarts all over the region.
This meant there were anywhere from a few people to a lot of people (shift change) coming and going, day and night.
It also meant that there were anywhere from a few associates (formerly known as employees) to crowds of associates "on break" in the cafeteria. I should probably mention that the overall attitude of nearly everyone who worked at the facility ranged, on a sliding scale, from cynical to openly hostile and that there was no love lost between management and labor.
There was a security guard on duty 24x7x365 in that lobby sitting behind the "Command Center," a structure considerably less imposing than its title suggests by the way.
The poorly paid, ever-changing associates of the Security Team, who worked for a different outside contractor than me (who also didn't think that providing benefits of any sort was either an economic or moral imperative) continuously interacted with management and labor could be relied on to keep the company grapevine healthy.
As to why Steve, who was not a stupid man, arrived for work that morning with a copy of Managing for Dummies (bright yellow and black cover designed to stand out from its competitors in bookstores) on top of a pile of stuff he was carrying, I've no idea.
Why he didn't notice this when he set his stuff on the narrow table between the incoming and outgoing metal detectors that was for emptying your pockets of metal this and thats, and executing a quick reshuffle before anyone noticed, I haven't a clue.
I was sitting in one of the cheap, uncomfortable chairs in the lobby provided for would-be employees waiting for an interview and supplicants waiting or hoping to speak to King John II. I was waiting to greet my boss, who had alerted me that he was on his way and had requested I meet him in the lobby.
Officially, this roughly once-a-month visit was supposed to happen weekly. This was an important, profitable account, as I was regularly reminded, one of my employer's larger ones. My boss's boss wanted him to keep a close eye on me and suck up to King John as much as possible.
Fortunately for me, all that King John wanted was for my company to keep his warehouse and offices clean and not involve him any more than absolutely necessary as he had no shortage of other, more important things to deal with.
My boss's boss, the owner of the company, who spent a lot of time out of town "on business," just wanted the checks to keep coming.
My wildly overworked boss just wanted no customer complaints, as he was constantly putting out fires elsewhere.
None of us wanted to interact with each other any more than absolutely necessary so I did my damnedest to make sure all the various and sundry powers that be that I served were happy, for which I was fairly compensated and rarely overworked.
My boss was, as usual, running late, in a hurry, and didn't want to wait for me to be paged over the P.A. system by the guard on duty, my subsequent response (assuming I was somewhere I could hear it), and then make my way to the lobby from wherever I was in the ginormous warehouse or outside doing something in one of the multiple parking lots.
This was the nineties. There was a battered phone/fax/answering machine combo in my tiny office, relatively primitive cell phones had only begun taking over the world, and the warehouse was more dead zones than not.
Supervisor Steve was, I assume still is, a jumpy, high-strung soul. He was frequently seen working his mouth in such a way as to look like he was trying to free a morsel of food that had become permanently lodged in his teeth.
I was awakened from the daydream I was having by a minor commotion caused by the fact he was dancing in and out of the metal detector archway and rooting through his pockets in search of whatever it was that kept setting it off. Bleary-eyed (first shift) associates, who had started backing up in line behind him were heaving exaggerated heavy sighs and mumbled "man-o'-mans" to rattle him.
Some unkind member of the rank and file called out, "Hey, cousin Eddie, I thought they replaced the metal plate in your head with a plastic one?"
People started laughing and Steve turned red with embarrassment... and anger I should think. He was a decent man, if not the most competent manager in the place, and he had given a break to more than one of the men standing behind him over the years.
Yes, I said men, forgive me if I've triggered anyone. There were very few women working on the floor for some mysterious reason as there was no rule, written or even unwritten, against it. However, they overwhelmingly dominated the administrative side of things. For example, I don't think there was ever a man working in the HR department in the decade or so I worked there.
The guard on duty caught my eye, glanced down at the shiny bright black and gold copy of Managing for Dummies sitting on top of Steve's pile of stuff and as hard to miss as a bright red maraschino cherry on top of an old-fashioned sundae, and then glanced back up and gave me a grin.
While this was going on my boss entered the lobby and slipped through the outgoing metal detector, setting it off. He raised his index finger to the guard — who was regarding him with a, oh great, this dick is back again look — to indicate he'd retrace his steps in a minute while simultaneously dashing over to me.
He bent forward and said, conspiratorially, "Hey, have you been finding an excuse to just happen to walk by John's office and smiling and saying hi, if he's in there I mean, and the door is open, and saying something like, how's it going Mr. Johnson?, you know, like I asked you?"
Steve was disappeared not long after the event in question. I can't prove it, and when I asked him he denied all knowledge, but I believe this long-gone long-forgotten security guard likely served as the occupational equivalent of one of those Japanese butterflies that cause tornados in America by flapping their wings on the other side of the world.
I heard that Steve is divorced now and attends AA meetings religiously — lots of grapevines out there. Also, he no longer looks like he's trying to eat his own mouth. I know that because a few years later we crossed paths in a Walmart. He was wearing a badge that identified him as a manager trainee.
We pretended not to notice each other.
(Stay tuned, new chapterettes will be posted regularly)
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
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