It’s a small world

Funny how you bump into people from long ago. This afternoon I went to the credit union to get a few frogskins for the weekend. As I walked into the credit union I saw this old Cuban guy standing in line and I just knew that I knew him from somewhere. He looks at me, I look at him, our eyes meet… and we both get that, “I know you from somewhere” look on our faces. I cruised on over to the ATM to make my withdrawal and as I waited for the machine to spit out my cash, it struck me. It was my good friend Les…

I worked for Huge Aircrash (Hughes Aircraft) as a summer hire while going through college about 15 years ago. I worked in the plant facilities department with some of the laziest sons o’ guns you’d ever have the displeasure of meeting. I mean, to call them lazy was to compliment them extravagantly. It was a union shop and most of these guys would take full advantage of it. There was a big, ugly painter who stood heads and shoulders above the other guys in the lazy department and it was just my luck to get paired with him regularly. His name was “Les” (short for Lester) and I often cracked when we were all sitting around eating lunch that his name was particularly fitting because he did “less” work than anybody I’d ever known. The other slackers thought that was hilarious and really rode him for letting the college boy get the better of him. We had a mutual disrespect for each other built on a firm foundation of distrust and the plant facilities manager (who resembled Harry from Harry and the Hendersons) thought it was hysterical to pair us up together. One day we were given the task of painting a machine room. The walls were in terrible condition, full of holes and cracks so our first task was to slather joint compound on the whole thing to cover all the walls’ imperfections. Les delighted in talking to me like I was an idiot and told me to liberally fill any crack I saw, demonstrating the proper technique with long, S-L-O-W strokes. One of the machines was particularly close to the wall and the small amount of space made it awkward to fill some of the cracks in the wall behind it. To make matters worse, there was a thick layer of hydraulic fluid and grime on the floor between the wall and the machine. Les ordered me to climb behind the machine and fill the cracks. Until that time I never refused an order to do work but this time I told him to do it himself. Being that I was a summer hire I didn’t have the company-provided Dickies that the regular guys had and there was no way I was going to soil my own clothes doing this job. After a lot of empty threats, he decided he’d show me how work is supposed to be done. As he got down on his hands and knees to climb behind the machine, his shirt rode up and his pants slid down, revealing a sizable portion of the crack in his large, hairy ass. Over the din of the running machine, I hollered that I could see a big crack and did he want me to fill it. He instructed me to fill it. Just to remove any doubt, I asked again and he enthusiastically confirmed that I was to fill the crack. Seldom one to disobey and order, I loaded my 12” drywall knife and slapped down that joint compound, generously filling the crack and a fair amount of Les’s britches. “MOTHERBLEEPER!!” was all I heard. I dropped the knife and mud bucket and ran for my life. I spent the rest of the day hiding in the bathroom. I needn’t have worried, though. In his haste to extricate himself from behind the machine, he hit his head and knocked himself cold as a mackerel, also opening a nice gash on the back of his melon. When I went to clock out that day, the plant manager was waiting for me. Behind closed doors he admitted to me that he had a dilemma. Apparently my low opinion of Les was shared by many (including the boss himself) and none of the other guys could stand him. They all firmly announced that if I got canned for my misdeed they’d quit (certainly empty threats, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless). So I got off with a verbal reprimand, a note to my personnel file and the instruction that I apologize to Les (which I did… afterall, I didn’t want to really hurt the guy, just have some fun). The bonus was that I finished out my summer job never having to work with Les again.

As I walked back through the bank, Les still stood in line and our eyes met again. He still had that puzzled look on his face until I called out to him, “Heya, Les! How’s your head?”