Bark like a big dog, bitch!

I remember the day my old boss showed up on the job site with a brand new, BMW. I told him how nice the car was. I'll never forget the words of wisdom he blessed me with:

"Ferrerman, let me tell ya- if you set goals, work hard and act determined, next year I can get a convertible!"

Well, actually that's a current meme making the rounds as most bosses stop just short of being that obvious no matter how prickish they are. It did remind me of a co-worker, Crackhead Tim, (not his real name) who was a contemporary of mine who just had delusions of leadership grandeur.

One day we were sitting down at lunch and Tim was giving us a pep talk that no one had asked for. He was running the job. At that company there were no foremen because that might make people think they were valuable and/or deserving of more money. To 'run' a job, you basically had to be the first one to set foot on the job. The superintendents, either 162 IQ Lou or Little Jimmy (not their real names) would walk the job with you, go over what needed to be done, tell you that it needed to be done "last week", hand you some paperwork and then be off to either a 2 hour lunch or the casinos in Tunica, Lou liked to eat and Little Jimmy liked to lose money. Neither liked to actually do their job. Much of the time it was the commercial painting equivalent of "Lord Of The Flies".

There was some method to the madness. I'd get a call the night before and either one of those mopes would ask me to meet them at a site thus giving me the authority, but much of the time it was first come, first served. Bottomline: Crackhead Tim was no more a foreman than I was.

However, this day at lunch he was fluffing himself and I don't think whoever else was there was listening either until he said: "The better you guys do, the better bonuses Danny and I make."

I was taken aback. That was par for Timmy's course but it was so obscenely blunt that I was momentarily speechless. Tim was poor white trash. This was in Memphis, Tennessee so, it was a fair and politically correct assessment of his being. The guy once had bragged about having spent $40,000 on cocaine in a year. It was his way of saying: "YOU can't spend $40k on blow in a year!" But, he could. And he snorted it and that made a difference to him and was supposed to make a difference to you. And that's why we often called him Crackhead Tim, because it made a difference to him that he snorted rather than smoked.

So, I laughed. And I asked him why the fuck his or Danny's bonuses should be a career goal of mine.

Tim was clearly flustrated at my indolence. But, wasn't that just like a Ferrerman to be so non-Timcentric?

He offered up nothing else in explanation. There was no elaboration saying that what he meant was that the better we perform, the better it was for him, Danny and us. Nope. The fucking asshole really thought to inspire us by citing the benefit to his own wallet. Who outside of a phony minister like a Reverend Ike or the more contemporary, Creflo Dollar, is so brazen about their selfishness?

Timmy was nuts but, often entertaining. On another job he had called us all outside for some reason to explain something to all of us and his brother, Carlton, complained that Timmy was always talking to him as if he were "a dog". Well, Timmy replied as he got down on all fours and began barking. Carlton was a dog and Timmy showed him.

I recall Big Brian and I losing it. The others just kinda wished they were somewhere else. Indulging Timmy by reporting outside to the parking lot as if he were our commanding officer and it were the parade deck had annoyed Big Brian as much as me but, watching Tim on the ground barking like a redheaded pooch made it all very much worth it!

Crackhead Tim was a major rat in a company full of rats. Thus, the name of the company was Ratmo, (not its real name) for the purposes of this blog. Paint companies everywhere are rat's nests- probably all jobs are though. Somebody is always looking to be a slightly bigger fish no matter how small and scummy the pond. That's human nature, I guess. Sometimes it's very embarrassing how petty people can be. Well, you know how it is. We have the same congress in Washington...

I know that in the shop they first admired his work ethic almost as much as his snitching. Eventually he wore out his welcome in the shop because they tired of him coming in arms waving, freckled-face-flushing (all the things we found so entertaining) every time things weren't going his way. They told him to quit coming to the shop. Eventually it was no longer endearing that Timmy would work seven days a week for weeks at a time, and then take a couple of weeks off. I don't know if they knew he was binging on coke though. They just knew he wasn't showing up to work.

In the end, my hard work and that of others couldn't save Tim. My hard work didn't do me any good at Ratmo either, come to think about it. Tim had gotten a vehicle out of the company. It wasn't new though. It was a vintage Nissan mini-truck with untold miles on it that, in a secret drawing, he had won the right to buy from the company for $600. It actually wasn't a bad deal as those little fuckers were runners. I wouldn't make a meme out of it though and it's not like I helped him get it.