As I wrote about previously, I suddenly found myself the manager of a bunch of Teamsters I used to work with on a loading dock when I first arrived in Arizona.
Which would have been great except I didn’t factor in that Teamsters don’t like managers much.
They hate them, in fact. Not good.
My former friends started sabotaging my work. Basically, they put goods on trucks that were bound for the wrong city, that kind of thing. The kind of stuff that would get me fired.
I had to work triple hard just to keep my job and it wore me down. Over the next eight months, I would go to the bathroom and cry. I was truly that stressed.
One Friday night, this big guy I’ll call Gary cornered me, jabbing his finger into my chest. He told me he had a big problem with me. Which might have been something to ignore except that Gary had done time for manslaughter. Gary was dangerous.
But I couldn’t let him push me around.
I pushed Gary over and started whaling on him. He got the hint pretty fast. It’s not that I damaged him or anything like that. I think it was more like he didn’t expect that. But I was stressed, like I said. And I snapped.
Once I’d calmed down, I realized that Gary was going to kill me.
At 7 am when the shift let off, I walked out to the parking lot to get to my car. All the guys were there drinking beer, which they always did when they got off shift. Gary saw me coming. He got up and approached.
I thought I was a dead man. I got ready to fight. But Gary put his hand out and said, “You’re good with me now.”
I was so tired, so stressed, I said, “I’m good with you? No, Gary. You’re good with me now.”
Everybody started laughing and that was that. Case closed. I was back in the fold and nobody picked on me after that.