I moved back up to the northeast in the latter part of the year 2000, and worked for one of my sisters for about 6 months.
Then I found myself moving back to the area where I had raised my son. By this time ‘911’ had happened and the whole country was in an emotional state of horror!
About the only thing available was a sales position at the local plumbing and hardware store of the town I moved to, for a job.
While working retail was very familiar to me, plumbing and hardware products were not. The owners of this establishment graciously allowed me to shadow the plumbing showroom employee while I learned about this particular industry.
While it was a small company of about 5 employees, there was a lot of traffic coming through the doors. After a few months, I totally understood why. The era for ‘mom and pop’ companies was quickly fading away to big box corporations. What also was fading away was that personalized customer service a person receives from these smaller businesses. This company not only kept customer service as a major part of their business, they also added to it by knowing just about all their customers, and greeting them by their first names.
The longer I worked there, the more I began to see that the particular 5 people (myself now included), were perfectly matched to work together. What a team we made! That was also something that was unheard of anymore.
Besides the five of us and the husband and wife who owned the company, the only other person who worked there was the owners son who at this time was probably in his early to mid 30’s. I use the word ‘working’ very loosely when describing his part in this company. It was totally clear from the beginning that he had no clue what work was, nor was he interested in learning. Sadly, his mother supported him wholeheartedly. His father was another story. You could clearly see that he was not at all pleased with how his son was basically dancing through life, thinking that taking 3 hours to sweep a floor that would take a regular person 10 minutes (I am not exaggerating here!), was considered work and hard work at that.
I knew from the beginning that I should avoid this ‘kid’ at all cost. I did just that for about the first year. Then one day, this kid just started spewing out about how he hated all the men and women in our military forces for going to these other countries and fighting in war. He thought that everyone should just get along and these men and women were just stirring up trouble.
Having two nephews at this time overseas I can only tell you that it was everything I could do to keep my temper. This kid was standing at the copy machine that was right in front of my desk! Facing the copier meant he was facing me. I stood up and right in front of his parents, I said with all the control I could muster, that the men and women in our armed forces are in those countries defending the people in our country to continue to have the rights they were raised with….one of them being that even if it was garbage, people in this country had the ‘right to freedom of speech’. By this time both the owners could see that I was controlling my anger with everything I had. Before I walked away, the only thing I added was that I had two nephews fighting for this country and while in my presence, even if he didn’t believe it, to show the armed forces a little respect.
Thankfully, in the following few months, whenever he was around me, he kept his opinions to himself. Life went on. That is until one morning when he came into the store to (ahem) work, he was agonizing how his best friend was now in training to be a sniper in one of the branches of the armed forces. Even though no one responded to his wailing, he added that when they were kids, they played guitars together. Fortunately, his mother had him work in the paint room with her. About an hour later, she came out in a huff and walked up to my desk telling me that she spilled a gallon of paint in there, and wanted me to help her son clean it up. What!!?? Me? Are you kidding?
I quietly got up and went to the paint room and started helping him clean up the mess. As he started what he thought was just a simple conversation about his friendship with the guy who was now in the military, I could no longer keep silent. But this time, I decided to show the kid how he sounded instead of just tell him. So I asked him a few questions about his van he drove.
They were simple questions like “you sometimes sleep overnight in that van right?” his answer was yes. I believe there were a couple more mundane questions about basically where he would camp out. And then I asked him this… “What would you do if a guy showed up one night and as you opened the door to your van, he pulled a gun on you and told you to get out of the van?” I truly did not expect his answer that he knew how to defend himself! I mean this guy for all purposes comes off as a 60’s flower child! He wouldn’t kill a fly, just catch it and let it outside.
“Oh!” I said, “So, you would defend your property?” With his “absolutely!” as an answer, I did not hesitate; “well, you know your friend who is training to be a sniper? He isn’t waiting for them to make it to his doorstep he will find and fight them before they ever make it to his town.”
You could have a heard a pin drop, in that paint room for the next minute. Then very quietly, he said “wow, I never saw that coming”. My answer to him was basically this: until he found a way to respect people for standing up for what they believe in and for their right to believe in those things at all, he would never see ‘the enemy’ until they were at his door.