Rivethead - Ben Hamper [30]
For instance, one night Jack arrived to send me on break. Before doing so, he raced around the corner to buy a pack of smokes. A moment later, he reappeared screechin’ his lungs out. Apparently, the cigarette machine had eaten his money. An unfortunate break? Not the way Jack saw it. This was just another GM conspiracy designed to crank up the animosity level. The war was on. Jack reached into my workbench and grabbed my sledgehammer. I had a very uneasy feeling about the look on his face.
Moments after Jack charged off with my sledgehammer, I heard the sound of glass being shattered. The pounding continued. He was obviously destroying the vending machine. GM had absolutely nothing to do with these machines. They were serviced by private vendors. Still, Jack bashed away at the machine as if he were poundin’ the very last breath out of Roger Smith himself.
Finally, Jack returned. He had about two dozen packs of cigarettes bunched to his chest. Blood trickled from his forearms. His smile was one demented line stretching from ear to ear. The war had been won. From that day on, Jack always referred to my sledgehammer as the Better Business Bureau. He was convinced that he had delivered a furious blow against the infernal GM empire. All he really did was deprive the department of access to cigarettes for the next several months.
Whenever I asked Jack why he just didn't quit and move on to something that was less aggravating, he would jump all over me. “Goddamnit, that's precisely what they're banking on. That I'll weaken and bow to their endless tyranny. NO WAY! They'll have to drag me out of here.”
Besides the crazies, there was also the occasional violent type. We had one guy up in the Jungle, a black dude named Franklin, who kept our department on constant edge. He was forever picking fights with co-workers. It wasn't any kind of racial thing, Franklin had it in for everyone. When something set him off, he just went to whalin’ on people.
One night, he got Henry, our Quality man. Henry had refused to give Franklin an extra pair of work gloves. Franklin became enraged. Later in the shift, he snuck up on Henry and smashed him over the head with a door latch. Henry received a dozen stitches in the back of his skull and Franklin got thirty days on the street.
Franklin worked as a utility man, floating daily from job to job depending on where he was needed. At the beginning of every shift you could hear him throwin’ his customary shitfit about what job the foreman had assigned him to cover. It didn't matter what type of job it was, easy or difficult. He'd scream and holler and demand to see his union rep.
I felt a certain amount of pity for our boss. No matter how he tried to soothe the situation, it only made it worse. For example, I firmly believe that if our foreman were to have come up to Franklin one sunny afternoon and told him his only duty for the shift would be to fornicate with Miss America on some sandy beach with a dozen bottles of chilled Dom Perignon at hand, he would have thrown himself into a blind rage and accused the boss of denying him the right to sweat it out all night on the door hang job.
Franklin didn't pull any of his crap with the veterans or guys who outbulked him. He preyed mainly on the timid, the brittle and the rookies. The rookies were at a severe disadvantage. Without having served the first ninety days of their probation period, there was no way they could risk swinging at anybody. To do so would mean instant termination. GM didn't have time to sort out who was to blame in these skirmishes. You could get sucker-punched while saying a rosary and still receive the same punishment as your attacker. It was professional