Alice in ...Wonderland?

(This is story #4 of my employment stories. For an introduction to these stories, click here. Other stories are below this post.)

I offered her the job. To be honest, I was new at this hiring business, and she fit my naïve mental picture of a “light assembly” worker. Alice was middle-aged and had “been around” a variety of blue-collar jobs. Rough around the edges, she was tough-talking but friendly, knew how to schmooze, and it was obvious that her mama didn’t raise no fool. I wouldn’t have to worry about her, she assured me. She’d be there early. She knew how to work. Not like the goddam kids today. Why, she could teach them a thing or two.

“Can you start on Monday morning at seven?”

“I could start right now,” she replied with a wry smile.

On Monday, the call came in mid-morning. All four of the new hires were on the job, but one – Alice - had been late.

I called her that evening to see what had happened and to reiterate the importance of being at work on time.

“I had a flat tire,” she bellowed into the phone. “How can you get a goddam tire fixed at six in the morning? I showed my supervisor, but she didn’t care!” (And in fact, she had literally dragged her supervisor out of the plant to the lot where her pick-up was parked and pointed to a “flat” tire in its bed).

These things can happen, and so I sympathized with her misfortune and again reminded her how necessary it was to be on time from now on.

“Well I can’t help a goddam tire!” she repeated. “What the hell was I supposed to do? You can’t get a tire fixed at six in the morning.”

“Okay, Alice, no, you couldn’t help that. I hope tomorrow goes better.”

It didn’t. Tomorrow she didn’t show up at all, and when I called her home to see where she was, she yelled into the phone, “A goddam tree fell on my trailer! What was I supposed to do? Go to work?? I mean a goddam tree fell on my trailer, for chrissake.”

On day three she wasn’t on the job either. “I had to take my disabled daughter to the doctor in Syracuse, for chrissake. What was I supposed to do? I mean I’m her mother and she got sick and I had to take her to the goddam doctor.”

“Alice,” I said, “It sounds like you have too many problems in your life right now, so how about if you call me when things settle down and you are able to go to work.”

An indignant tirade followed in which she repeated all the excuses of the previous days, punctuated with the same chrissakes and goddams in exactly the same places. I got the sense these excuses had seen a lot of use over the years.

I never heard from Alice again, but months later I read about her in the newspaper. Using several aliases, she had defrauded the county welfare department, and using some gasoline, she had staged an “accidental” fire that destroyed her trailer. No doubt it was the same trailer the goddam tree fell on. Apparently the disabled daughter was out of harm’s way, probably sitting in the pickup truck with the goddam flat tire in its bed, for chrissake. Alice went to goddam jail.
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