Getting off welfare

This summer on Wednesdays, Ive been working at our Location P packaging printer cartridges. This location is our main production site for the four-store franchise. They have the work there and need some help to package. I’m sure I am sent there to help mainly to make sure I get my hours (Which will be decreasing here soon). But sometimes it is frustrating because as I am there packaging, one of the main guys working there is either playing around on his laptop or is doing his drawing homework. He’s a good man. Hard working and takes care of his girlfriend and their son while going to school.

there is an old man that works for the company. He started out at the Location P store working part time. He is now at our Location T store, mainly because he can’t keep his mouth shut. He is openly racist. He said it was because once when he lived in Cleveland, he helped a black man get directions. While he was talking with the guy (old man was in his car) another black man came up on the car on the passenger side to try to rob him. Old Man rolled his window up on the first guy and got the man’s hand stuck in the window and proceeded to drag the guy down the street. The first guy who was trying to distract Old Man turned and sued (and won) Old Man for what he had done. I can understand where the Old Man is coming from, being angry at the two men who tried to rob him. But he has taken it out on black people as a whole. This has created tention in the Location P store with some of the employees.

Old Man is even known to have openly made off color remarks, tell off color jokes, etc in the work place. One time my wife was filling in for the then manager of the store while he was out on vacation. Old Man walked into the Location P store with some deliveries from the Location T. My wife saw him and didn’t know that he comes in from time to time to drop things off. She said " Hey [Old Man] what are you doing?" "Anything that moves. Wanna be next?"

At that point, my wife laughed it off, but talked with the GM about it. Old Man was told to keep his mouth shut. At the Location T store, he blasts talk radio through the store and drives the other employee there nuts. I’m a conservative. I’m not afraid to admit that, but in the work place, it isn’t the time or the place to harass others about your political views. And Old Man is a nut anyway. He claims to have a book on Nostredamus and how he had predicted the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001.

One time when I was at the Plymouth store, he came in to drop some stuff off, he also had to pick up some black ink for his store. As he was walking up front, he said maybe he should drink the black ink so he could be elected as President. or maybe be dark enough to be nominated to the Supreme Court. That really made the one guy pissed off. This is the same guy i mentioned in the first paragraph. He kept muttering "I have too much going on. I have a woman and a child to take care of. But oh do I want to take Old Man out." I questioned Old Man on what he was implying. He just kept digging himself in a hole. The manager of that store called the GM and GM had a talk with the Old Man. One more time, he’s gone.

He even prefaced that statement with "Sorry if this offends you" COME ON MAN if you know you have to say that before hand, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!!

But he still does the weirdest things. His humor is not really that funny. Oh I was going to mention this two that he has openly said he didn’t like the guy who has a child outside of wedlock. Its because he’s not married and has a kid. And that he is black. He should have gotten married first. . . and the fact that it is an interracial relationship. She’s white. But the thing is, this guy is a good hard working man. He takes care of his girlfriend and their son. He is going to school and doing quite well. He does even better than a lot of married men who end up being the absentee husband and father.

Yesterday, while I was working at Location P, Old Man came in. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He only works two days a week now. He hasn’t been to Ply in a couple of months, since that incident about drinking ink. But he comes up to me and says "So you decided to get off of welfare and come back to work!"

I’m sure he meant it to be funny, but with his previous encounters with people there, I was pissed. "What the hell man! What the Hell! Why don’t you just go home and collect what you can of social security. You only have two years left before they run out of money."

I WORK too damn HARD to be called lazy. I work 80+ hours a week. I am finally getting it into a routine so I am not overly tired as much anymore. and to hear him talk like that? If I had already a good working relationship with someone, or from a good friend, I would have taken it all in stride. But this was just wrong.

I was talking to the guy from paragraph one. He was saying to just "let it roll off, man. Let it roll off. It’s only gonna make you stronger." He’s right. I really have a lot of respect for this guy.
 

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