DAVE

I was thinking about something the other day and I remembered this guy I used to know. I think his name was Dave. This must be 15 years ago.

I was working at the Mobil station and it was like the 6th real job I had by that point and I was only 22. I think I met Dave through another guy who had a carpet installing business.

Dave was 40 or a little older and life had not been kind to Dave. He had been homeless in the past.

Dave worked at the Howard Johnson's when I first met him as a cook. He was fired from there because of drinking on the job. A friend of his got him a job at the Ground Round. I remember one night he brought in a couple of steaks, frozen and packaged, and was trying to sell them to me. This was around 2am and normally that would seem strange, but many people came in with stuff they were trying to sell over the years, most likely all stolen.

The gas station was in the center of all the bars in the area and brought the worst kinds of people around. I saw a lot more in the 3 years I worked there on the overnight shift then most people will ever see in their life. I would have to say, unless you were a cop working vice or homicide you will never see anything even close. War, if you were in a real war you would have seen things like I saw. I got to see the real side of people and the real evil that dwells inside them.

I don't recommend it. It changes you forever.

Getting back to Dave, on one of the few nights that I had off, and there were only a few in the whole 3 years, the store was robbed. The clerk was beat with a metal pipe and hospitalized for a week. If it were not for the delivery truck driver arriving and grabbing his tire iron and attacking one of the other 2 robbers, the clerk would most likely be dead. On one of the other nights shortly after that, when I took the night off, they were robbed at gun point. So it was a dangerous place.

Right after this time I was nervous to work the shift and Dave came in to sell the steaks. I offered to lone him some money, which he wanted to buy beer. I knew that he had lost his apartment and had moved in with the guy that had the carpet business. he was living in the basement.

I offered to by him a 12 pack if he would stay there, since the station was never robbed when there was 2 people I felt this was in my best interest. This became a nightly thing and I felt that the 50 dollars a week was a good investment to keep from getting my head blown off or my brains bashed in. Did I mention that the police did nothing in either case, even though they caught the robbers both times.

Here is an interesting true fact. A police officer has a 1 in 100 chance of being killed in the line of duty. A taxi driver is 1 in 25. A clerk on the overnight shift at a gas station has a 1 in 10 chance. It is the highest mortality rate of any job. And the lowest paying.

Back to Dave. So I got to talk to Dave a lot and because he was drunk I got truthful answers. He felt that he had been wronged by Ground Round and by this one guy in particular who fired him. I guess he was the boss. Now, I felt that since he had been caught stealing the firing was justified, but that's not how Dave saw it.

So Dave's life continued to deteriorate and he was about to get kicked out onto the street for stealing from the people who took him in. The last night that I saw him He came in and had his 12 pack, then around 2am took another 12 pack. I yelled at him, but I could see he was not in a good place, so I just let him take it. As the night got late he told me that he had a plan to get even with the guy that fired him.

Now people when they drink say a lot of things, and most of it is crap, Drunk Talk. It doesn't mean anything. Dave explained how he was going to walk over one morning, he had no car, and take an empty windshield washer gallon bottle out of the trash, fill it with gasoline and take it over to Ground Round. He would then pour it all over this guys new car and set it a blaze and walk across the street to the McDonald's and sit and watch it burn.

The next night I came in and I reviewed the paperwork from the previous shifts and I saw that pump 1 had a drive off for 1 gallon of gas. I thought it odd, but compared to the usually 20 gallon drive-offs we had almost every day, I was happy it was only a dollar. Gas, a dollar a gallon, yeah a long, long time ago.

Around 5am the newspapers got delivered and on the front page of the paper was a picture of this boss guy's car engulfed in flames with the fire dept trying to put it out. Wholly SH*T was my thought at the time. He actually did it. What was even more amazing about this was that it happened only a few hours after Dave had left the station and he took a 6 pack for the road, so in 6-8 hours he had consumed 30 beers, yet was lucid enough to walk over to the station and then walk the 1/2 mile to the restaurant and carry out his plan.

I did not think this would have been possible, and maybe it is all a coincidence and Dave had nothing to do with the fire, but I can't say for sure. They ruled the fire cause unknown.

Most likely Dave is dead by now. He would have to be close to 60 if he was still alive. I feel bad for him, but I see many of the same injustices in my life and I wonder if I am making accurate assessments of the situations. I think that life is unbalanced and that many people get the short end of the stick, which allows a few to get the long end more then their fair share of the time.

Dave's boss was not on the bottom, but he was not much further up the ladder. I understand Dave's hostility even though it was misplaced. It's hard not to feel screwed over working in any business when you see how the business manipulates all the workers, like chess pieces, and puts plays into motion just by the rules they set up. Stealing is wrong, but from being on the bottom for so long I know why people feel it is justified.

My experience has been that the people at the top steal the most. Maybe not as often, but the take a lot more then their fair share and most of the time legally.

One of my former bosses stole money from every worker, right out of their paycheck. When the Labor Board finally believed the workers, which took about 7 years, they tried to fine him and get our money back. We never got it back and he never paid the fines and the Labor Board was powerless to do anything. I know this guy and he is a criminal. He has done several huge crimes and gotten away with them. Turning him in, even with evidence, would serve no purpose. With his resources he would have the guilt thrown on me and he would walk away a hero.

This is why people on the bottom feel right in taking from their companies, because the company takes from them.

It's easy to steal when the law is powerless against you. I'm shocked more employers don't do it more often.