No Good Deed goes Unpunished

So, life is most interesting when it takes a right hand turn when you are going straight. God in all of God's wisdom is gracious and kind. Praise Allah. Thank you God. Just when a person thinks they might be going out of their mind, when you pray, "Dear God, help me here", and step back and let God get on it, well, amazing things happen. Might not be exactly what you thought was a good answer, but God moves in amazing ways.

So where is all this leading? Well, after being "Best of the Best" for Frito in February, less than a month later, I was suspended and terminated. Caught me waaay off guard, sort of. My prayers to God had included, "Dear God, PLEASE get me off this truck before I do something crazy" and my prayers were answered. again, not exactly like I thought, but hey, who am I to argue with God? or God's will?

So in Crazy Land, or more closely Frito Land, when you request, then DEMAND accomodation under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) you get fired. Question: Is this legal? Answer: Not so much. Especially when the termination is for something that you were taught to do by your former manager, who is now dead from a car accident, so he can not either confirm or deny that's what he taught you to do. complicated? not so much. I was taught to take product from inventory by doing a zero dollar ticket. ie: take a bag in, then defect it out. This is the standard way to get out of date product from truck or bin inventory (out of date product is a BIG no-no, it means you screwed up & weren't rotating properly or ordered wrong). So to get it out of inventory, you create a zero dollar ticket for a cash customer. Standard practice. EXCEPT if you are a pain in the ass and demanding your rights AND are an agressive female AND you are over 50 (ALL considered a "protected class") so what the hell, right?

I was suspended from my route on April Fool's Day...now why does that seem appropriate somehow? Then terminated the following Monday. I guess the management (read Zone Manager, bloated bag of ego, Tony Klote - ouch... is that a lack of respect? ) Poor Tony, he's gonna get the worst of it, but I imagine there will be fall out when all of this is said & done. I hope my boss, Monty doesn't get too much shit - I warned him that when the shit hits the fan, he's the one standing closest to it - I guess it was my way of telling him to document everything, on how he was acting on Tony's instruction, since that's where the blame lies. Tony doesn't like assertive (or agressive) women - I guess he must have a castration complex - you know, where all agressive women are coming at the boy parts with a knife... and it would really explain why his #2, Sandy Hance, who seems like a nice woman, always seemed to give me a "mixed message" - I had a hard time getting a read on her - but then I recognized what it was - passive-aggressive behavior on her part. Passive as hell around Tony, her real self when she wasn't. I didn't know what was up until all this blew through. Had several "epiphanys" - (moments of enlightenment).

Anyway - during the time I was suspended (prior to termination) Frito gave me the opportunity to get on line & do a little research. Seems that to terminate a person when they are requesting accomodation is called "retaliation" and is quite illegal for a company to do. Again, my thought, Tony Klote is dumb as a box of rocks. but I was wrong, he's DUMBER than a box of rocks. Where the hell was personnel? Human resources.. whatever. so the blame for his stupidity really should rise upwards. (again an epiphany - ahh, whose fault is it anyway?) where is HR in this? where's Tony's boss in this?

well, we shall see....