The ninth new guy & breaking news

<<<<Mt. St. Helens

July 16th

I try to keep the same hours not working as I do working.  This means that I typically stay up all night and sleep in the mornings on my day(s) off.  Today, I walked up to the local Plaid Pantry, a 24 hr. convenience store, at 4:30-5 am, to get something and saw that only one of the stepvans we use for the Sunday papers was gone from the store where we park them.

This is very unusual, especially so because the one that was sitting there was the grey van, used by the number two driver, the ninth person who has held that job in the 2 and a half years I’ve been delivering papers; and since he is very slow, I was astounded that he would be done before the boss, who was using the white stepvan, and who is faster than I am,  and still gone.

I walked up to Plaid Pantry, said hello to the clerk, whom I see every day because it is one of the stops on my routes, and walked home in the rising dawn.  I saw Mt. St. Helens from the elevator lobby of my 8 floor apartment building, and took my tripod and camera out to the lobby and snapped a few pics,  again noticing that the white van was gone and that the grey one was parked there in the store’s lot.  wtf?

I grabbed my cellphone and text messaged the boss, asking if he was working alone, surprised that it might be so.  He called me back almost right away and said that number two had told him Saturday afternoon that he had twisted his ankle and couldn’t get out of bed, and thus could not work.

He had then found out that number two had lied to him, that he was fine but just didn’t want to work.  No twisted ankle, and he was out running around the nieghborhood.  (well, walking anyway)

The boss had been wondering if he really needed both stepvans to deliver the Sunday final edition in the time alotted, so was "pleased" to have a chance to find out, but he was very upset with Number Two, who is the ninth person we’ve tried for that number two driver position.  All of them have turned out to be liars or poor workers.  Every one of them.

(small grin- they ALL have made me look good)

I told him "well, at least I really did break my foot!" and said he should have called me.  Not that I wanted to work on my day off, but gee, if he needed me, I woulda done it.

The other guy lives in my building and the boss told me not to say anything to him regarding the lie, that he was handling it and I shouldn’t butt in.  Ok, I thinks, I won’t, but gee, I didn’t think much of the guy before and he’s lost most all of his points with me now.

I may well be (and almost certainly am) capapable of doing "more", of working a "better" job, but I give my employers- all of them- 100%.  I have never lied to any of them.  That just isn’t done.  You get paid to do a job, you do it. 

Period.

I feel a great deal of loyalty to my boss.  It may be just delivering papers and is not a highly regarded job by most other people, but it is an important, meaningful job that needs to be done, on time and accurately.

We may be looking (and actually are) for another driver for the Sunday papers.  I told the boss that me working yesterday morning on the first editon had worked out well, and since we have a shorter time frame to get the Sunday first edition out on Saturday, I can do that too if he needs me to next week.

I have taken all my jobs seriously.  That is what I’ve learned and what I’ve done my whole life, all 44 years of it.  Just because you don’t "feel like working" is no good reason not to do that job that you are paid for and expected to do.

What a fucking loser that number nine guy turns out to be.  This is the guy that the Plaid Panty told me drops two hunded dollars and more on scratch-off lottery tickets.  This is the guy whom I first met years ago here (my building is for the elderly/disabled) carrying around a teddy-bear – talking to it too- and whom I’ve seen throw fits if he doesn’t get to cook during the volunteer bar-b-ques here in the building. 

I got no respect for losers.

Any points he had with me are dust in the wind.

What a waste of a human being.

*****

 breaking news

The Oregon International air show was this weekend.  I wanted to go but am short of money.

Today, just a little bit ago, at 4:30 pm, a Hawker Hunter airplane (a 1950’s fighter restored by a California attorney) has crashed into 3 homes in Hillsboro, just west of Portland.  2 homes are in flames as I write.  One home is completely destroyed.  A fireball was seen from the site of the crash.  No info on the pilot is known- no parachute was seen.

Nobody on the ground was injured apparently.

The owner of the home destroyed is not there- reportedly she was in Portland today.  One of the homes’ owners was at a Garden show in Portland- she says if she’d come home 20 minutes earlier that she would have been home.