Union Morality... Gimme a break!

March 30, 2006

I guess I really shouldn’t say that I have nothing to write about while I’m up here.  There are a ridiculous number of things that go on here on a daily basis that absolutely blow my mind.  

Take the phone call that I got yesterday for example.  The first time this lady called she was looking for her husband.  When she told me what company he worked for I told her that he had been moved to another camp.  She was satisfied with this answer and hung up.  

About four hours later the same lady calls back and I had the misfortune of answering the phone.  I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was obviously distraught and when she asked her first question I knew I was in for a weird conversation.  

“Is your staff unionized?” she asked.  I replied that yes the housekeeping and kitchen staff were unionized.  To which she asked where the hell are their moral standards?  Now I was completely confused by this and asked her what she meant.  She proceeded to tell me that she had been a union worker for 17 years and that if people she knew in her union acted the way that people in our union (allegedly) acted that she would be completely ashamed.  

By now I was wondering if she was calling from a mental institution.  “Well what did our people do?” I had to ask.  She then proceeded to tell me that her husband had (allegedly) been messing around with one of our female staff members, whom she referred to as a crack hoe, and that her union would never let that happen.  By this time I was frantically waving my hands trying to get the attention of my co-workers so that they’d rescue me.  My co-workers both walked across the office and stood in front of me mouthing what’s going on?  Well of course I couldn’t tell them I had a crazy lady on the phone so I had to go on listening to her for another five minutes with my co-workers staring at me.  I finally just told the woman that I would pass her thoughts on to the Union rep and that I hoped she found her husband soon.

Strangely enough you’d think that a story like that would be a-typical, well apparently it’s not.  Go figure.

Today I had to go to a meeting that proved to be insane.  All I had to do was take the minutes but I came out of there absolutely frazzled.  One of the most insane meeting experiences I’ve ever had.  For confidentiality reasons I can’t say what was discussed but I can say that in my view the demands of the people that live here are so out of whack with reality it’d make your head spin.

Final story for today, I don’t think I mentioned I got chastised the other day because I cleared my own spot at dinner.  Apparently by picking up my tray and carrying it to the dirty tray cart I was stealing Union jobs.

KS Out!