Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [79]
You don’t like the way we run things around here? You don’t like the people you work with? You aren’t happy with your paycheck or the fact that you don’t have a laundry list of benefits? Fine! Get the hell outta here! I’ll run one truck if I have to!
Jed was passionate about one thing: getting paid. Which was respectable. So what if he made our salaries several times over despite never having to lift a single piece of furniture? He had earned it! With a college education and smart decision-making, he had earned the position that he had attained in life. Good for him. But at the same time, it seemed like he had little or no compassion for what we were going through.
“Shit, that mother ain’t never lifted a piece of furniture in his life,” one of the guys told me later. “He don’t know what it’s like for us out there.”
And he was right. It wasn’t easy for us out there. Moving was hard work, stressful as hell. Carry the buffet out to the truck and come back in for the two-piece China hutch. And then come back for the dining room table and chairs. And then, and then, and then—it seemed endless at times. Ninety-five percent of our moves were local, so it wasn’t like we were taking these moves cross-country where we could work hard for four hours and then drive for three days. We worked hard for four hours, drove fifteen minutes, and then worked hard for another three.
If nothing else, Jed’s outrage made us tighten up a little bit, but at the same time, it wasn’t like Michie’s crew was messing up on purpose, and Grundy certainly hadn’t meant to damage the roof of the truck. “Hey, look. A tree branch. Think I can knock it down?” It wasn’t like that at all. Mistakes were happening—probably more than normal—and Jed simply meant for us to start focusing a little more.
But few cared about what Jed had to say. While we new guys, who were hearing his quarterly speech for the first time, were totally captivated by his words, the guys that had been at Fast Company for any extended period of time could be seen giggling in the corner or staring into space. They’d heard Jed’s rant a half-dozen times, and they knew enough by then that things would change for a while and then go back to the way they were. New rule changes (“Be at work by eight o’clock or else!”) might last a week, but then guys would resort back to strolling into the shop at 8:30, and no disciplinary action would be taken. Be at work by 8:00 or else what, Jed?
Why, though? Why no respect? Because things weren’t like they used to be, like they were when Sherman (Jed’s dad) ran the shop.
“It was so different back then, man, when Sherman was here,” Victor, a six-year Fast Company employee, told me. “We were a family.”
Life with Sherman was more tolerable. He made the guys want to get up in the morning and go to work. There is stress in every profession, but in moving, as you can imagine, the stress is multiplied. Every day, we would roll out of bed thinking, “Man, another day of wrapping and lifting and climbing. Damn.” That’s what we did, six days a week, and it wasn’t fun. Some of us did what we could to make it fun, but at the same time, there was nothing easy about what we were doing. Sherman’s Fast Company, the Fast Company of yesterday, eased that stress. Jed’s Fast Company, today’s Fast Company, only added to it.
“Sherman was there for ‘his boys,’” Victor told me. “If we came back to the shop having been stiffed on the tip, he would slip us twenty or thirty bucks under the table. We were shooting hoops and putting steaks on the grill in the afternoon.”
But when Sherman died of cancer