A few months later, I myself, got into a motorcycle accident that put me out of work for 6 months. The list of injuries was long and physical therapy sucked, but I was told that I would be dealing with body aches and that my shoulder would never be the same. I explained to the company doctor that I would probably never be the worker I once was, but, thankfully, she released me and the company accepted me back knowing that I wasn't a 100% and never would be. I called my center manager and apologized for everything I had said on that morning(stroke and accident) and told him I couldn't help but feel that maybe my accident had happened because of what i'd wished upon him. He agreed that we both had said some things to each other that neither of us meant out of emotion. However, he still would NOT admit that he'd put his hands on me, nor would he admit that he said the things about my buddy dying. It bothered me that he wouldn't come clean with this, but I came back to work and did my route as best I could which was anywhere from a .5 hour over to 1.25 hours over as many of us drivers know is not that bad. Now the center manager was always on my ass about my performance. I reminded him that my route had never had good standards and that because of my accident, that i'm not the guy I used to be but I would try my best to improve and to prove the doctors wrong and am trying to exercise and build my muscles back to the point before the accident. I started to get back into shape and my performance was improving, but he wanted it fixed in a day and this just wasn't feasible. He continued to be on my case 3 times a week about my performance. I just started ignoring him.
I started seeing him talking in dark spots of our center with a co-worker of mine, a co-worker who doesn't like me very much because she was an off the street hire who has like 1 week less full-time seniority than I, but 7 years less total seniority than I. She doesn't care for me because I have ignored her ever since she had an affair on her husband years ago with a well liked supervisor we had. The sup ended up getting canned for this but she kept her job, which we all felt wasn't fair, so nobody really likes her except for supervision and management. Her affair with this dispatch sup caused many problems for the rest of us in her loop because if she came in to work and had a rough day ahead of her, all she had to do was to go tell our dispatch sup(the one she was sleeping with) or start to literally cry with tears rolling down her face and the next thing you knew, 20 or 30 stops were coming off her car and onto yours!! Since she is not liked by her subordinates, she does everything and anything they ask of her and has become their pet. She is now the high seniority bid coverage person and if no route is available that she likes, supervision will create a route for her and fill it with gravy stops or if she wants to get done early during the work week, they will create a combination preload job, so she'll load trucks for 5 hours and then do safety committee stuff for 3 hours and then get out of work at noon. They won't do this for anyone else, just her. So I wasn't surprised to come in and see her loading my truck for a week. The problem didn't arise until she took something I had said and turned it around to sound dirty. I have a stop on my route at a pediatric dentist office. When they get a lot of those dental pkg's that are banded together it is frustrating to deliver there because you have to cart the packages around to the back of the bld'g, bring them up some concrete steps and go through a door that doesnt have a stop on it and once you get them inside, there's no room to put anything, and then on top of this you have to deal with the children screaming and crying. I like most drivers just make the best of a bad situation and provide service with a smile. I put some stuff here, some stuff there, and the developer under the x ray machine for the old ladies that work there. When I get in my truck to see what kind of day i'm gonna have, I always look to see how much I have for Dr. Pink's office(the pediactric dentist) and if I have a lot, I always say the same thing no matter who is loading the truck-"Oh great, looks like I have a lot for the old ladies at Pink's" Well she goes to the center manager and tells him that I said "I'd like to see if some of them ladies are still pink inside". Supposedly she asks him to talk with me, but she doesn't want me to get fired and she doesn't wanna file a complaint. The center manager persuaded her to file a complaint and while I was on vacation the following week, unbeknownst to me, an investigation was taking place. I received a call while on vacation by the center manager and told that I was terminated under Article 17 (i) for "other serious offenses". I was like what the hell? What the hell did I do? He told me it was for comments made to a fellow employee. They fired me without even asking for my side of the story, which didn't really surprise me because like I said earlier, she's there pet and she gets whatever she wants. They had asked the other 2 witnesses about her statement and they put in their statements that I had NOT said what she'd claimed and that her statement was fabricated from her imagination. So it came down to a he said she said situation. The weird part was that during the local level hearing, I finally was able to tell my side, but we didn't focus as much time on what had taken place with her that morning as much as we talked more about what had taken place between my center manager and I over time. It was probably a mistake, but by that time, I'd been out of work for a month, and just wanted to get back to work and put all this bs behind me so I agreed to sign a final warning that I would respect my co-workers, my management team, and work in the best interest of the company. To be cont'd........
.
