Another person who got short with me...

...was Little Bit. Lil' Bit for short. She claimed to be 5'2" but just about everything she has ever said was a lie so, maybe 5 foot? Every inch counts at that level so, fudging a little bit... happens a lot.

She worked under me (waaaay under me) at a different company in Memphis. This was another job I absolutely killed. I came on the job with it already in the hole from the framing, hanging and drywall finishing. I remember walking the job with the boss and being told I would be doing the work with only Lil' Bit and Marcus. Oh- and he wanted me to fire both of them, by the way.

Well, OK... Who would I get to replace them?

No one. The church job was a disaster and all useless hands were on deck there. No one was available. I wasn't actually going to be firing anyone, now was I? I liked Marcus. A 6'5'' ex-Marine, self-proclaimed "ghetto fabulous", black man who could really bring it on a job and was a pretty good painter. He had some issues though. The last job he and I had kicked ass on, he disappeared the next day, winding up in jail in Kentucky. He had gotten a little too mouthy with a cop and this caused the cop to dig a little deeper into the warrant book and discovered that Kentucky requested his company. I never knew what the charge was. I've got a don't ask if you're not going to tell policy about that stuff. Being locked up for two months cost him a lot of money. He was one very angry, in debt black man. I liked him though and frankly, there was no good reason to fire him beyond the boss and others being rednecks who were terrified of him wanting him gone so, I wasn't gonna be any body's hatchet man regardless.

Lil' Bit could have been a different story and perhaps should have been. She was a lesbian which should neither be here nor there but, being a lesbian was pretty important to her and is an integral part of this story. I called our crew "The Mod Squad" after the TV show as well as "Two And A Half Men". She enjoyed being mistaken for a man and often was. We'd walk the job and someone would say, "Good morning, fellas." And they weren't being funny. Hair short and swept back, breasts tied down, no make-up and a masculine walk- she was almost what she tried to portray herself to be. She told me that some in her community even stuffed their pants when they were on the prowl. Just like real men!

She wasn't a bad painter herself but she was nowhere near as good as she professed. Just as no man who brags is as good as he claims (except Michael Jordan) no man impersonators are either. I knew she was going to be trouble. She had more time in the company than me but, I had been hired to run work. She had not. Tested in the past, she had failed.

I took her under my wing in that Godfather-like admonishment that advises to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I should mention that this never works! They are enemies for a reason. Being nice just makes them mean. Now I tell me....

Anyway, I got to know her. Not better mind you but, I got to know her as she portrayed herself. She was as phony as the dildo she kept under her bed. Her story about being a "mother of two" turned out to be her (very pretty) girlfriend getting pregnant when she wasn't being a lesbian and the second child was her brother's kid. Brother was in jail, baby mama was a crackhead. So, actually, she was an aunt and a sort of step-father. The baby, she told me, was born with some weird birth defect that caused her to periodically have her head opened up to allow for brain development. I am NOT making this up. Lil' Bit was though. She had already shown me photos of the little darling with absolutely NO surgical scars. Yep, she was a lil' bit of a pathological liar...

That's one thing on the internet, quite another IRL where stories can be checked quite easily. She had also told me that she was a former gang-banger and had shot (but not killed a guy) in a gang fight. I wasn't buying this either but I did check with my cop neighbor who worked the part of town where she claimed the incident happened to see if anything resembling that had happened at all. You see, her story hadn't ended with jail time as those stories usually do.

She was a little, pretend man who, like a lot of little, actual men do, tried to present herself as ten feet tall and bullet proof. If I spent time calling her or anyone else out on their lies, nothing would ever get done. When I'm sitting three feet away from her and I clearly hear she's arguing with a woman on the phone and she hangs up and tells me she was fighting with her ex-husband, I don't need to call her a liar and tell her that her *husband* talks like a girl. I just say, Well, love's a bitch...

Her worst two lies though really pissed me off. Recall that I killed this job. My boss and his boss told me so. They don't generally admit these things. Part of Management 101 is NEVER telling your people they are doing ANYTHING but costing you MONEY!!!! The idea is to keep them from asking for more money. How can you ask for more money when you are fucking everything up?! Please read a newspaper or watch Fox news for further explanation of this. It's exactly why corporations need Scott Walkers and Mitt Romney's keeping labor at bay.

My boss told me later that Lil' Bit was often calling him up and telling him he needed to get out to the job because that Ferrerman guy was fucking the whole thing up!

Interesting. He'd come out to the job, sometimes at her request, and every time find that I had the situation well in hand. I did. Billy, the General on the job, loved me. He was the toughest and best GC Superintendent in town. If he had a problem with me, he'd run me off himself or make a phone call. I think my boss was invoking his own don't ask/don't tell to keep things on an even keel on the job. I would have handled a heads up about her bullshit but, how could he be sure?

Incredibly, it also turned out she was telling other trades on the job that she was the foreman. Any job is like a little community. On a regular basis, I had to coordinate with every trades foreman to negotiate when he could have a space or when I could get into one. I was the go to guy. This was pretty clear. I don't know how she pulled this off or if she really did. Most other foreman were probably like my paint counterpart who ran a crew for the company who was doing the core (bathrooms, stairwells, etc) of the building. He said: "Ferrer, I just listened to her and came and got with you. I didn't want any trouble."

This reminds me of Sambilly, my Topix stalker. If they are indeed two separate people, Sam and Billy spend a ton of time on Topix acting as if they are the Who's Who Directory of Topix. This is a nice way of saying these two are bitches who troll people under various names and then *definitively* state that "Ferrerman did it..." Really. They say the definition of insanity is being so fucking crazy that you tell FERRERMAN that he is someone else. I'll add to that that it's insane to believe that shit too. Stupid is as stupid does.

But, I digress. For all the foolishness, I enjoyed the job. Every trade was under the gun to finish two months early. I had no problem keeping up. AND the powers that be knew who had made it happen.

I understand that Lil' Bit was a pathological liar. There were dozens of stories that didn't add up and, like most liars, she couldn't keep her own stories straight. I felt sorry for her. I have to admit that, were she a real guy, I would have fired her at first opportunity. Most guys defer to women, even women who aren't quite womanly at all. A lot of the guys in the company wanted to fuck her. That's hard to fathom even knowing men like I do and knowing that many of my brethren will fuck anything that has a pulse. I'm totally fine with gays and lesbians. I just couldn't see a guy being attracted to her. She just looked like a little boy. She would act girly at times and use feminine wiles even. It was fascinating though to watch her work one day when some girls from a work-release program came on the job to clean up part of the lease space. Two, at least, were very attracted to her. She strutted and profiled just like a dude would. She was very predatory. Had these gals not had to go back to jail, Lil' Bit would have had herself some strange that night, after work. Strange world. You just never know how strange.

I'll always wonder what she was really like as a person. I wonder if she knows? Sadly, she'll never know who she is, just who she wants people to think she is.