Chapter Three: Getting Even
I worked in that foundry for 15 years before I got to move to the machine shop. It was a very hot, dusty, noisy, dangerous place. Every dept. had it own phone and connected to each phone was a loud speaker they called a squawk box. You could hear a phone ring all the way across the foundry. While working in the foundry I worked for a foreman we’ll call C.O. He was the type of boss that would ride you as long as you would let him and would only back off after you had a nose to nose screaming, yelling fit with him. After that he’d back off for two or three weeks and then it would start all over again. He did a lot of the employees the same way, one of which was a guy nick named “Paddle Footâ€. C.O. had a habit of sitting in a chair in the middle of his department and watching all the employees. When the plant manager would call he’d get up and walk over to the phone, answer it, and go back and sit down.
One day Paddle Foot decided to ring the phone in C.O.’s dept just to make him get up and answer it. Paddle Foot wouldn’t say anything but just hang up. He had been doing this three or four times a day for about a week when C.O. noticed that every time the phone would ring he’d see Paddle Foot looking at him, from across the foundry, laughing. The phone Paddle Foot used was not in direct line of sight with C.O.’s phone. So C.O. never actually saw Paddle Foot place a call. After Paddle Foot had been making him play jumping jacks for a while, C.O. went over to him and chewed him out for ringing the phone and hanging up and threatened to fire him if he was ever caught calling. Paddle Foot just laughed at him and denied it and took it as a challenge to continue. This went on for a couple of months but C.O. could never catch Paddle Foot making a call. At times C.O. would go to answer the phone and then run at full speed around a big row of equipment and try to catch Paddle Foot on the phone. What C.O. didn’t know was that I could and would see him coming and warn Paddle Foot to hang up and get busy doing something. C.O. never did caught Paddle Foot on the phone.. After C.O. enlisted another foreman to watch Paddle Foot, he finely got scared that he would be caught and stopped calling. SOOOOO, I took up the challenge. I worked in the middle of four machines. I could unplug some of the lights and it would be so dark that I could stand there and not be seen. I quickly decided to step up the assault. I wrote down the number of every phone that I could see from my position and C.O. could not walk by one anywhere in the plant without it ringing. Then I discovered conference calling. I would ring every phone in the entire plant, being careful not to do so when there was any other foreman in sight. Have you ever watched the opening scène in the move \"The Omega Man\" with Charlton Heston…… “THERE IS NO PHONE RINGING. DAMITâ€
AHHHHHHH the good old days! :lol:
P.S. After reading this it does seem kind a mean! But it was a blast to do and he deserved it. :evil:
One last shot! When employees would retire someone would run a list and take up money for a going away gift. The list would contain people’s names and how much they gave.($5 or $10 ect.) When someone came around with a list for C.O. the sheet was about full of name so I used a large red marker to write my name 2 lines high and put \"2 CENTS\" beside it. I said \"Make sure he gets it\"
Sometimes the good old days weren\'t so good.
