I’d been working at the bookstore at the mall for almost five whole months, which, if I could make it just one more week, would be a personal record for me.
It’s not that I don’t work hard— I show up on time, usually, and I always give an honest effort… usually. And I know it’s going to sound like I’m one of those people who insist it’s everybody else’s fault—even though it almost always is—but sometimes it seems like the universe doesn’t want me to earn a living.
When I first dropped out of college, it was temporary. I needed a semester to earn some money, and I’d be back. I even told my professors not to forget about me and to keep a seat warm, right in the front row. The smiling face of yours truly—Rosie Richards—would be gracing their lectures again before they knew it. I couldn’t wait to get back on track toward my degree and someday, somehow, become a psychologist.
Unfortunately, that ‘temporary’ break had stretched to nearly four years, and I had no doubt that any professors I’d once impressed had long-since forgotten all about me. With every day that passed, college was more of a closing chapter in the book of my life, which wasn’t all that great of a book, anyway.
After things ‘didn’t work out’ doing promotions for a minor league baseball team, nor at my job as an assistant to an assistant at the local radio station, nor robo-dialing for a call center, I thought I’d found something good at C2C Shipping, short for Coast 2 Coast, a company with orange trucks everywhere, which was trying to compete with FedEx and UPS.
I got hired just before the holiday rush began, so I technically wasn’t a ‘seasonal’ worker, meaning I had a permanent position. If I showed up and loaded my trucks quickly and accurately, I was told I might actually be on the fast track toward management or becoming a driver, whichever I preferred. They also offered a tuition assistance program for employees who stuck around for at least a year. It looked like I was all set.
People doubted me at first, and hey, I know how small I am, and yeah, I’m a girl, and loading trucks is a job for big, strong men, but when I want something, I go for it.
The jokes and comments and over-the-line flirting were typical of probably any job where the male-to-female ratio is twenty to one, but as long as nobody touched me, I could deal.
It was fast-paced and high-pressure, but I found that for me it all boiled down to attitude. The trucks were going out on the road to make their deliveries every morning whether I could keep up with the workload or not, even if it meant somebody had to help me, so there was no reason to let my blood pressure go through the roof like so many of my coworkers did. Anyway, once I clocked out, I didn’t have to think about C2C until my next shift, so I could compartmentalize it in my brain and put it away when I wasn’t there, which not everybody seemed able to do.
I wasn’t going to get rich loading trucks, and my new job, as physical as it was, allowed me to save some cash by dropping my gym membership. C2C was a killer workout, even if most of the people who’d been loading trucks for a long time wrecked their backs and knees. I was only doing it until I was ready to grab a clipboard and radio and go over to the management side of things or become a driver, where the money could be serious.
I was all set, until Edwin came along.
Edwin was a supervisor who transferred to our building from another C2C warehouse, and it wasn’t hard to see why he needed a fresh start. Within a few days, he had the lay of the land, had scouted the entire building for anyone with a vagina and a pulse, and set out like it was mating season or something.
No big surprise, his friendliness didn’t take long to morph into ‘accidental’ touching, which in turn became hands on lower backs or hips, hugs that lasted a little too long, comments about body parts he liked, stuff like that. It was all going in the direction of ‘hook up with Edwin, and the keys to the kingdom are yours’—easier trucks to load or places in the building to work, longer breaks, start times becoming mere suggestions rather than the time you were actually supposed to be clocked in, at your spot in the lineup, and ready to work.
If he was rebuffed? Edwin would write you up for the smallest infraction, give you more and harder work until you quit or played his game, and would generally make your work experience as miserable as he could.
It was the kind of workplace nightmare you read about, and when it finally happens to you, you’re shocked.
Unfortunately, Edwin targeted me big-time. But he was slimy and gross, so not only would I never get a drink with him, I also just full-on avoided his nasty ass.
To my surprise and probably even his, he managed to have some luck with a couple other women, especially one of our clerks, a curvaceous blonde who was, shall we say, a big fan of ‘workplace romance.’
Hey, if that’s your thing, go for it. I wasn’t into shaming people, no matter how many guys at work you fucked.
Anyway, rumors flew that Edwin and his clerk had been seen disappearing inside one of the out-of-service delivery trucks, and Edwin’s wife—yeah, he was married—was supposedly snooping around the warehouse.
It was a powder keg, and I guess I maybe, kind of, sort of, lit the fuse.
My bad.
The guy who loaded trucks next to me was a sweetheart, and we helped each other from time to time. One day, a few weeks before Christmas, when we were absolutely slammed, he fell behind.
I was barely keeping up myself, which left me no time to help him.
Along came Edwin, about two hours after he could have helped and averted disaster. He tore into the man, telling him that he was probably too old to load trucks anymore, that he ought to go ahead and quit and let somebody younger and faster have his spot.
Which of course is against about a thousand HR rules…
But instead of leaving it to the company to take care of, I had to put my two cents in.
Because, of course.
“Hey, Edwin, why don’t you chill and get off the man’s back,” I shouted from down the conveyor belt, where I’d gone to get some of my packages.
Edwin gave me a sneer and started toward me. “Don’t know who you think you are, Rosie, but you can’t talk to me like that. I’m up here,” he lifted a hand over his head, “And you’re down here,” he moved that hand down to waist level. “Got that?”
Oh, Edwin, I thought. You’ve got the wrong bitch on the right day. Or the right one on the wrong day. Or something.
“Maybe if you weren’t busy fucking Skye in one of those red-tagged trucks over in the corner, you’d have seen what was going on and could have helped before things got this bad.”
Yeah. I actually said that. But why not? Everyone was thinking it.
I said it loud enough for a big chunk of the people to hear, but it was one of those things that I knew as soon as the words left my mouth would be known verbatim by every single soul in the building within about ninety seconds.
So, I doubled down. “You’re disgusting. Marci deserves so much better than you, you maggot. Were you once her boss, too? Have you ever once in your life gotten laid on your own merit and not as part of some weird power imbalance because of your job?”
He leaned in so close I had to wince from his breath. He was so close our eyelashes were separated only by the width of, well, an eyelash. In a low growl only I could hear, he said “Don’t you ever talk about my family.”
Naturally, I responded as one does, by bringing my knee up as hard as I could into his balls.
He was in my personal space.
Somehow, upper management didn’t see it that way, and that was the end of that.
Which brings me full circle to how I lost my most recent job at a bookstore, which set in motion my winding up hogtied in a mall security office.
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