SPEEDY
Speedy, a building manager, was always falling off ladders. It wasn’t that he was uncoordinated, it was he worked too fast. He could “turn” a vacant apartment in a day. I regularly got claims from workers comp, and I paid.
Eventually I had to fire Speedy because his relatives and friends were ripping me off: stealing hoses, lawnmowers and snow blowers. Speedy’s relatives were crooks. Also, he started hanging around with a prostitute who ripped me off. (She eventually got arrested. Story is here.) Speedy was loyal and worked like a fiend. He was 5-3 and often limped. He didn’t complain and never turned down a job.
Three years after I fired him, I still received letters from workers comp: “open wound of hand, right; OxyContin, $349.00; knee, right, active, 2000; right knee disallowed, 2003; eye allowed, 2005; right arm,2005, allowed; neck sprain allowed, 2003.” Speedy’s forwarding address was a porn shop. He wrote me, “There is one thing you can never deny, I was the best manager you had. I don’t want a job as a manager. I just want to paint or do tile work. I had a major heart attack.”
I didn’t call him. Anything not nailed down: gone.
Speedy & two rooftops
2 comments
Was his last name Gonzales?
On the first day of fifth grade gym class, with Mr. Carbaugh, they went outside to play baseball (potential horrors!….) and Carbaugh asked me to go inside to bring some piece of equipment out. Either I had trouble finding it, or I had trouble finding the group in this big field between our Middle School and the High School, so when I got back the teacher referred to me as “Friday.” He did this for the rest of the school year. In eighth grade, after I had lost so much weight, he asked me to come into the Teacher’s Lounge and he sort of showed me off to other teachers as to how much weight I had lost. That was the GOOD Mr. Carbaugh!
I think Speedy deserves another chance.
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