Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [66]
But we trudge on, and that’s what I was trying to do. Trudge right along. My finances were coming together nicely, but for whatever reason, I still felt like I was in such a rut, like I wasn’t getting anywhere. Marco was gone and Shaun was really starting to try to break me. He knew that my options were limited as far as choosing my own partner, so he knew that he could abuse me. He stopped buckling his seatbelt, and he started throwing his cans out the window again, but I knew better than to get on him. After all, I was just a toothbrush away from a brutal ass-kickin’. He would tell me about his difficult life at home, but I didn’t really care to hear it. All of us have problems to deal with.
What about my problems, Shaun? Shoot, you don’t see me coming to work bitching and complaining and ruining your day.
But I couldn’t say anything to him. I was prepared to ride it out until I felt comfortable enough to make the decision to confront Curtis about switching teammates or until I was forced to make that decision.
On Thursday, seven weeks after my induction to Charleston’s homeless, I came back to the shelter to find a message waiting for me on the tack board: Call Curtis from Fast Company. ASAP.
Terrific.
Curtis only answered the phone when one of his girlfriends was calling, and he rarely called anybody, so the fact that he was calling me at the shelter meant serious business. I didn’t have any idea what he could have been calling about, since he knew that I was going to be showing up to work by 7:30 every day.
What could be so important that it couldn’t wait until the morning?
“The money from your move yesterday is missing,” he told me when I called. “I got your clipboard and I got the receipt and I got your keys, but there is no cash.”
It had been my first cash move since I started working for Fast Company. Most of our customers paid by check or credit card, but occasionally, a smaller move would be paid for with cash. And the cash from my move was missing.
After the move, I had rolled the money up in the receipt, and I had put the money inside the clipboard. We got back to the office after the 5:00 closing time, but Curtis was still there, so I gave him everything. As I handed him the clipboard, there had been an innocent misunderstanding between the two of us, where I thought he knew the receipt and the money were inside, but he didn’t. I left, and he put the clipboard in the pile with the rest of the empty clipboards. The next day, all of the clipboards went out.
So I knew that I didn’t have the money, and I knew Curtis wasn’t the type of guy who would take the money. Jed, the owner, figured that the money went out the next day with another crew and that their Christmas bonus had come early. I had even been nice enough to gift-wrap the cash in the receipt for them. There was no way for us to find out who had it, and Jed didn’t really care. He just wanted his money. Jill, the office manager, split the blame evenly on Curtis (the truck supervisor) and me (the driver in charge of the move) and decided that we would each have to pay $143.50. It was an expensive lesson for both of us, but for me it was even more of a devastating blow, since I was really working my way into a position where I could move out of the shelter soon.
In the end, I didn’t read much into the case of the missing loot, since there wasn’t much I could do about it anyway. Worrying about it would only add to the stress that I was feeling in so many other areas of my life, so I went to the bank, withdrew the money, and paid Jill the $143.50.
Interestingly enough, the one person that was keeping my spirits up was the bus driver in the morning. No joke. Every morning when I boarded the bus, there he was with a huge smile and a “Good Morning!” At 6:45 A.M. And the bus ride would