To understand this final installment in the Kinko's portion of this series that no one's reading, you must know three things:

• At 4 p.m. every day I had to make a pickup at a company called Quintiles.

• The new manager had also decreed that I had to have each customer sign their order envelope. The order envelope had a place for customers to write their instructions, but then they would say we hadn't done what they wanted at all, in spite of having the envelope. (I think this was primarily a horsehit way to ask for a discount.) The corporate customers usually left their order envelope with their mail room or security and then went to lunch, or their 17th floor office, or to their office a mile across the office park, so this new rule of his was causing major hold-ups as they had to hike back to sign these things.
  


• All of my deliveries were supposed to be left on and around a table near our stock room, per this new manager.

Wednesday afternoon 4 p.m. was drawing close and I had to make my pickup date at Quintiles, as well as a pickup at a company called Rytek. The shift supervisor wasn't letting me go, though. "Don't go nowhere, Ot! I got somethin' fuh ya!," she was saying. The Crown Plaza Hotel was a new customer and they were going to fax us something, and I could not go, per her and the new manager, until that fax came. After standing around with my hands in my pockets for 30 minutes they finally gave up on the Crown Plaza fax and let me go. I made the Quintiles pickup no problem, but by the time I got to Rytek they were closed.

My first stop Thursday morning was at Rytek to pick up their order, which they had hoped would be delivered by this point, not just picked up. (Thank the people who made me hang around 30 minutes for nothing!) The Kinko's copy mafia got to work and at 3:40 p.m. it was time to head to Quintiles, but once again they needed me to hang around for two orders that were just now coming off the copiers, including Rytek. Finally my buddy, the assistant manager, said everything was ready. I went to my special table and saw three boxes, three invoices, and hit the road.

About a mile down the road I realized one of the invoices was supposed to have a second box. Where the fuck was the second box?! I Nextel'd the store and they said it was still there. I said I would swing by on the way back up to Rytek, just have someone ready to throw it in the back.

I blew down to Quintiles, made the pickup/dropoff deadline, then breezed back to the store, pulled up to the curb, unlocked the doors, and honked. And honked again. And again. No one was taking my cue, so I had to turn the engine off and go get this extra box myself, which was not on the table like it was supposed to be. Team work! It's all about team work!

So I made this other delivery and made it to Rytek with 10 minutes to spare. I had defied the laws of physics by covering 20 miles or more in less than an hour at rush hour.

But did anyone say, "Great job?" No! The manager called me to his office the next morning. A box was left behind, you see, never mind that I got it and still made the delivery with 10 minutes to spare. "Well, I think that kinda worked out because that way you guys were finishing that one as I was making the Quintiles pickup," I said.

"It was already done when you left. I had finished it," he said.

Okay, so this invited an obvious question, "So why didn't you put it on the delivery table with everything else?!"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU ASK?!" he spoke in all caps. Why the fuck was I supposed to have to ask? Per YOU, Mr. Manager, all work for me to deliver was to be left on that table! When someone comes to me at crunch time and says everything is ready to roll, I'm going to grab whatever is on that table and bolt! I'm supposed to have to stop and think for you?

Then he had a second beef. The Quintiles envelope wasn't signed. Okay, if I was going to go between Quintiles and Rytek, which are probably 20 or 25 miles apart, in 4:30 p.m. Atlanta traffic, there was no way in hell I could stand there and wait half an hour for someone to sashay down to the mail room to sign something (and everyone looked at me like I was a fool with this request, too, by the way, just like with the corporate check thing) and make the trip to Rytek while stopping back by the store for the box he didn't put where it belonged. And who got us in this jam in the first place? How about the guy who told me to stand around waiting on a fax that never came?

The assistant manager came to the door. He told her to come back in 10 minutes. I said, "Make it an hour! I can go on like this all morning!"

He said, "Art, I'm going to have to ask you to seek other employment." No, he didn't say I was fired, "but one day you're going to come in here and find you don't have a job!" I asked him to give me an example of a customer complaining about me or a co-worker saying they couldn't get along with me, and he said he couldn't, "But that's not the thing." I told him one day he was going to walk in and find he had no employees, because everyone in there was sending out resumes, to which he said, "Good! I'll be glad when they're all gone!"

While we were at it, I had more questions, like why was it I was hearing he was telling my friend (who had already put in his two weeks' notice by this point) to fire me? No answer. Why is it two times in a row he'd told me to forget mopping the stock room, then had me written up for not mopping the stock room? No answer on this one, either. The assistant manager reappeared and said something need urgent delivery. The manager said meeting ajourned, and away I went.

At the next stop the customer said we had really botched her job again, and this was our last order from her, she had already started doing business with another company. I told her that was probably a good idea, because Kinko's sucked. She looked stunned and I said, "Well, they just told me to seek other employment, so...I dunno, does that mean I'm fired? I'm still here in the van? Hmm...I dunno." She looked like she was ready to phone security, so I left, did one more delivery, and then decided y'know...maybe this was a good place to end this horseshit.

Here was a moment I had fantasized. It was close to noon on Friday, the worst time of the week in the store as offices called trying to get rush work done by quitting time. I went to the manager and said, "Wow, it's busy, isn't it?" Yes, it was, he agreed. I dropped the keys in front of him and said, "Well I guess you'd better get moving, then." He said he didn't understand. I said, "You told me to seek other employment, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go seek other employment right now."

I had to sign an exit form, on which I said I was sorry I had single-handedly caused the store to lose $500,000 in sales (sarcasm!). I was also sorry I thought a $1,200 order was more important than going-away cake, unlike this fine new manager they had just hired. And out the door I went with a song in my heart. "Take This Job and Shove It!"

Of course beforehand I had called the unemployment office to make sure I could still get benefits if I had quit a job, and the person on the phone said yes. I suspected they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, and they didn't. My benefits were denied so I had to specify in a "plea" that I had been told "seek other employment," and also about the "I'll be glad when they're all gone!" comment. The benefits office said Kinko's said I had just quit after a "performance counseling" (where I was told to seek other employment?). Whatevah!

A couple of weeks later I was back at the store with a large bag in my hand. The manager gave me cursory acknowledgement while perhaps thinking I was there to rifle him down. Actually I was returning my Kinko's shirts. He said there was no written policy on that but, uh...thanks. Yeah, I'm such a pile of shit that I even bring shirts back if I don't have to. Some slack-ass I am. I'm "conscientious and thorough!"

That manager was fired just months later. I alternately have heard it was because of a "payroll issue," and then someone else said it was because he took a big job from a deadbeat customer and dumped it in the dumpster, which I would actually applaud. I hear he now manages a PGA Golf Superstore in Gwinnett County. Just look for a guy who looks like a Calvin Klein model but with hillbilly sideburns. Ask him about his Harley-Davidson, his Les Paul Custom or his plasma screen TV and clear 10 minutes out of your schedule.

I was on to another outrageous mess -- Fitzsimmons Wireless!

I got a tight feeling in my back just typing this.

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