Where in the world is John M anyway? November 23, 1985

 

If you expect disaster, it always comes.

Leaving work at 6:30 a.m. with no one there to finish the disaster is a recipe for disaster. So, at 6 a.m. I began to worry.

The store is supposed to open at 7 a.m., even though it is in the mall.

John M told me yesterday he would be coming in early.

This surprised me at the time. So, when he did not appear, I began to think he was going down the same road as Tommy, only at a faster rate.

I remembered the talk about giving Tommy a second chance since he was the one scheduled to come in.

I kept thinking John M did not have the endurance to keep making up for what Tommy wouldn’t do.

But John M says one thing and often thinks something else – which is why I don’t always trust him.

Five days ago, before his own trouble started, John M mumbled something about Phil being “one cold-hearted bastard.”

I don’t think he could get the Tommy thing out of his mind, how Phil turned on Tommy, and how John M expected the same thing to happen to him at some future date.

John M also complained about Rich always hiring women for managers, a slip of the tongue that he regretted when I pointed out that Rich had hired him.

Perhaps he saw a pattern emerging and possibly having Rich replace him, so he started coming in early, both at night – at supposedly, this morning.

But he couldn’t get the thought out of his head and a day after the slip of tongue, he started to list all the managers in all of Phil’s stores – which included Clara Jean in Willowbrook, Michele in Washington, and Mary in Hackettstown.

He said he didn’t fit in.

He started to talk about maybe becoming a mentor or something if he couldn’t be manager, or Phil’s watch dog.

But how many watch dogs does Phil need?

That’s the role Phil pays Rich to fill, at $1,000 a week.

Perhaps John M simply served as a temporary assignment, filling in as a manager until Rich could find a woman, he would hire to replace him – with John M becoming finally expendable.

Perhaps that’s part of the explanation for the paycheck scandal and the overlapping hours with Tommy, and John’s desperation to cover up for Tommy, so, Phil won’t have an excuse to fire them both.

Rumor claims Rich has been sleeping with Clara Jean and has had an uncomfortably close relationship with Michele in the past.

I don’t know anything about Mary or her relationship to Rich, except for Rich’s occasional inuendoes, when he mentions how sexy she looks.

Maybe Rich is building himself a harem. John M seems to think so and thus is overcompensating, only now when he said he would be early, neither he nor Tommy have come in.

Did he oversleep?

This is just too much like the incident with Tommy last week when Tommy didn’t show up until two hours after he was supposed to, and the store didn’t have enough donuts for when the doors opened at 7 a.m.

Did John M simply give up, refusing to continue kissing the asses of Phil and Rich for a job he knew he would not keep regardless of anything he did?

I talked to him on the phone at 5 p.m. yesterday when he was still in the shop, holding down the fort because he wasn’t sure Tommy would come on time for the closing shift.

I reminded him that he still had my paycheck. He promised to give it to me when he came in this morning.

I found the check with my time sheet instead.

I began to think something happened after I talked to him.

Yet, if nothing did happen and Rich came in this morning to find the donut shelves empty, this will be the excused needed to remove both John M and Tommy – as if the overlap of hours (John M covering up for Tommy) isn’t enough.

 

  1985 Menu


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