“I Got Barkevioused in the Mingo.”
San Francisco 49er, Jonathan Martin, the victim of the Miami
Dolphin bullying scandal, knocked out a shoplifter in an L.A. mall. The shoplifter then proceeded to file bullying charges against Martin.
In India, a government engineer was fired after failing to show
up for work for 24 years. Although his attendance record was not exemplary,
there were zero complaints filed against him.
Which reminds me.
One of my first full-time jobs, the summer after my freshman
year in college, was working for the Winnetka Park District. We were the
maintenance crew for the parks and beaches. It didn’t pay well, but it was
outside and one of my good friends was working there too.
There were two types of employees working there: young, eager
and energetic college kids like us, and our bosses, who were broken-down, pudgy
middle-aged alcoholics whose lives had been clearly and utterly wasted. Picture Bill Murray's older brother, Brian Doyle Murray, the caddy master in "Caddy Shack." He of the "Pick up that tissue" line.
The first day, as the newbie, I was assigned what was thought of
as the worst job of the day. Someone had cut down a bunch of giant-huge oak
trees. After the trunks were chopped for fire wood and carted off, there was over
200 yards of loose and scattered branches to be collected and put in a neat
pile for pick up. After being instructed what to do, my then-boss said he would
come back in a hour to check on me.
When I started the job, my idea was to use it as a form of exercise
and cross training. And I was eager to start off well and make a good
impression. So I went after collecting the branches like a crazed banshee.
In five minutes I had worked up a great sweat on this muggy mid-June
morning. The pile was growing so fast and so high, by the end I had to run and
jump up to throw the branches on the top, it was so far above my head.
An hour later, when my boss came back to check up on me, I had just finished.
There was not a twig left on the ground. I could not have been prouder. He, on
the other hand, could not have been more upset:
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I piled the branches up like you told me to.”
“Yeah, but this job was supposed to take all day. Now what the
hell are you going to do? The damn truck isn’t coming to collect this crap
until Four.”
My boss stood there visibly worried, exasperated and upset.
Finally he said;
“OK, take the pile down, spread the branches all around and then
pile them back up again.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“As a heart attack. And take your time about it.”
This was my introduction to the attitude and aptitude of a
government job.
By the end of the summer, I was so good at killing time, I
almost got fired from a job that you could not get fired. We would wander into
town and take two hours for breakfast at the diner. This is where I was
introduced to eggs over medium with jelly-on-toast and hash browns and crispy
bacon. With fresh OJ and coffee.
One particular hot and humid day, after a late night at the
Highwood bars, I was assigned to clean up a park after a concert the night
before. When you’re tired and hung-over, the last thing you want to do is pick
up half-empty beer cans and cigarette butts. After about the fourth time I
wretched, I had had it.
So I decided simply to walk home to my air-conditioned red brick Elm Street house and take a nap. Right when I got to my front steps, I heard a loud and
repeating truck horn. It was my boss driving bye, honking, waving and laughing his ass off.
Later that day, my boss asked;
“What the hell were you doing? You can’t just walk off a job and
go home.”
With a straight face, I said;
“I needed to take a nap.”
This cracked him up to no end. He said;
“Well good for you for not lying about it.”
Did I get fired? No, they promoted me to the public golf course
crew.
Whereupon we made the characters in "Caddy Shack" look like Fulbright scholars.
"Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher-guts."
