Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Fool's Story

Here's a little story the Fool has for you. It's taken from observation and experience. Make of it what you will. For those of you with ADD, it's a very short read.I call it:

One day in the Life of One Black Man


OK. check this out. Dashon is a temp employed by Same Day Hire temporary services. He is assigned to work at Acme Roto Machine Company. Dashon is Black and the job pays $8.75 an hr. with the chance of becoming permanent, which would up his hourly pay to $10.50 an hour.

Mark, who is also employed by Same Day Hire, shows up also. Mark is White.

They are both sitting in the break room waiting for Mr. Elki, their contact. When Mr. Elki comes in, he assigns Dashon to work with Mike and Mark to work with Gene, two of the older workers.

Mike takes Dashon over to a large pile of machinery parts and tells him he has to separate the parts and put them into the proper bins. After showing Dashon around, Mike tells him he will check back with him to see how he is doing in a couple of hours.

Gene takes Mike (the White temp if you're keeping up) over to the shipping area, hands him a broom and tells him he has to keep the area clean and empty the trash. Gene also shows Mark around the plant. They stop off at the lunch area to get coffee and get to know one another. Gene also tells Mark about the break and lunch schedules and just what his job is about. Then Gene escorts Mark back to his work area.

After a couple of hours Mike shows up as promised to see how Dashon is coming along. Dashon has a few problems with the parts he is sorting. It seems some of the bins don't have part numbers and he has had to make guesses as to where certain parts go. Naturally this has slowed him down. Mike is sympathetic with Dashon and shows him where the part numbers are stamped on each peice. He assures him he will go to up to the office "right now" and look for the parts sheet and get them printed out. He tells Dashon to keep up the good work and leaves.

Since it is now two hours into the shift, Mike is sitting on the dock with Gene for first break. Acme Roto Machine takes pride in how they treat their employees. Gene has taken a liking to Mark and has found out that Mark has a wife and a two year old baby girl. They are saving money to move out of mother-in laws house.

Later in the morning Dashon joins them in the lunch room, having worked through break and with the rest of the employees have a quiet lunch.

Dashon goes back to sorting parts. Gene escorts Mark back to his work area, but before leaving ask whether or not Mark has any experience driving fork lift, to which Mark replies "yes".

The day passes with out incident. Dashon is still struggling to sort parts alone, Mark is still sweeping and having conversations with the other employees.

At the end of the shift, both temps leave for the day. Mike and Gene are called into the foreman's office and asked for their assessment of the the two temps. Mike tells his boss that his guy was kinda slow and was having trouble sorting out the parts. Gene says that he had no problems with his guy. As a matter of fact, he learned that his guy could drive forklift and was trying to support a wife and kid.

Guess who got the job?????

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