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Seventeenth Job of Bob - Farm, Hardware, Retail, Auto Service - Part IV - Payroll vigilante, enter cell phones
This entry was posted on 7/3/2008 4:58 PM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
As I was walking into the farm store one morning to punch in, I noticed a heavyset guy from the early morning shift out by the building on his break. It struck me as odd he was talking into his hand while standing by the building by himself. Now understand I had seen mobile phones before. A friend of Heide's had one of those phones attached to a box in the car; and, we all watched Crocket (Don Johnson) talk on one in his sports car on the Miami Vice TV show during the 1980s. But, this was the first time it struck me as something unique, yet now available to the average guy. It was 1994. I tucked the memory away for a rainy day.
Us mechanics worked long hours. It was relatively more money than I had been getting in the store clerk rolls. But, it was the start of the era where businesses would work the few employees they had to death and pay them overtime, rather than hiring a bunch more part-timers. Their prices were competitive and the joint was always busy. Every day the assistant manager would ask us to stay into the next shift. The place tried to stay open from 5:00 a.m. 'til 11:00 p.m. But, what this did was rack up some 15 hour days for us mechanics. We would often just eat lunch as we worked. I was notorious for doing just that.
One day the little lady from the payroll office marched into the shop. She rarely came out of her cubbyhole in the office up front. The shop seemed like it was a quarter mile from the office - it wasn't really. Although the shop and store were attached (this caused dust to infiltrate into the store - note most retailers disconnect mechanic shops from their retail areas), it seemed like two worlds away. To the front desk people, the shop was like some region of a science fiction movie in the nether regions of space with odd creatures like crazy Tiny Tim and Pat the rube. Bug-eyes would sometimes beam in and holler at us all and then vanish, not returning to our world again for days.
Anyway, the little lady marched into our world. She was way past retirement. It must have been a job no one wanted. Perhaps if she actually retired the next payroll clerk would discover some oddity like perhaps the place should have gone bankrupt in the 1960s had anyone been checking. Non-the-less, the little lady marched through our dirty shop. She looked so out of place - her hair gray and perfectly permed - her age near 75, her glasses on her nose, her cloths pressed and perfect. She passed Ned as he mumbled to himself in a tourettes' episode, she ignored Tiny Tim as he swore at Pat, she brushed past giant Doug as he muscled a truck tire like it was an apple. The shop came to a halt and loud high pressure air tools became silent as she began to draw attention to herself by her unusual neat profile amongst our grease and grime. An odd silence befell the shop. She stomped toward my end of the shop, everyone looked then - what was her purpose? In typical Bob-esque fashion I just assumed it was another anomaly of working blue-collar. But, it readily became evident she was stomping toward me.
The shop held its collective breath. She stood before me, I towered over her tiny frame. We must have cut quite a contrast. Then she pointed at me.
"You have to punch out at least a half hour a day," she said. "You and your band of characters in here are fuck'n up my payroll - it is the rules." And then she added one last caveat, "Forget to take lunch again, and your ass is mine."
She turned on her heals and marched out whence she came. There was one more moment of deafening silence in the shop. A couple eyebrows raised. In a second or two the usual din of noise and commotion returned.
Wisconsin military service person of the week
Private First Class Nichole M. Frye, 19 of Lena, Oconto County was killed when a roadside bomb struck her convoy in Baquba, Iraq, on Monday, February 16, 2004. Private First Class Frye was with Company A, 415th Civil Affairs Battalion, U.S. Army Reserve. Four other soldiers in the Michigan-based unit were wounded in the attack. Nichole had been deployed to Iraq just one month before her death. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Frye, had worked as a waitress. She was the second woman from Wisconsin and the third reservist from the state to die in Iraq. The Journal Sentinel also noted Frye joined the Army a couple months before high school graduation in the spring of 2002. She originally joined a nearby Green Bay-based civil affairs battalion but was transferred to the Michigan unit prior to heading for Iraq in January 2004. According to the Associated press via the Journal Sentinel she was delivering supplies like water and food to various assignments and books to children. The Journal Sentinel mentioned that Civil affairs Reserve units are loaded with soldiers who have white-collar experience. Their jobs can involve anything from rebuilding sewer systems to helping with elections. Nichole is survived by her mom and dad and a younger brother and sister. Private First Class Nichole M. Frye was the 10th Wisconsin military service person to have died while serving in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
85,325 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,406 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,113 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
533 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
313 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
331 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,275 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
2,134 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
90 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
10 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
129 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
15 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.
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