The Email

“Speak now.” Rico commanded, poking his finger at the chest of a smaller man.

Jimmy did not speak for the past minutes as his Supervisor admonished him.

He stood still as a mouse beneath the paw of a cat. He hardly breathed out of fear of making his supervisor any more angry. His neck bent down like a forlorn statue. Jimmy was shorter than Rico by a good four inches and lacked facial hair like his manager.

“Jimmy! Talk to me! What – the hell – were you thinking!” Rico barked, poking him with a finger again.

Rico tried his best to not curse and scream, restraining himself to the best of his ability. Despite that, his usual gruff and harsh tone still resonated very easily with anger at every word. This time, Jimmy knew he had made a grave mistake.

“I wasn’t thinking.” Jimmy admitted, still not looking up.

The two men were standing at the open dock of a tall warehouse that was being refurbished. The building was stripped of old insulation, rusted pipes, and deteriorating building materials that were piled up and pushed into one corner. The entire facility had its interior cavity scraped off so that the wiring could be replaced and eventually remodeled for a new company.

Both of them were wearing polos, khakis, and steel-toe boots, along with having a satchel of work tools near them at all times. They worked as technicians for Wiring Co, a company that laid wire for different commercial purposes, from security to networking. It was a job where the skill level was above the head of Jimmy. He was regretting becoming an intern.

Rico had brought his mentee over to the edge of the worksite to talk to him alone after a very important afternoon meeting which had just transpired with most of the managers and executives of the company. Rico was in a relatively good mood before that meeting, but definitely not afterwards. It did not take long for Jimmy to find out why.

“Of course, you were not thinking! You’re twenty-seven! You’re an adult now! Act like you have the sense of one! Respect the chain of command! That email was the worst decision you could have made!” Rico continued to bark.

Jimmy looked up at Rico and wished he could see his eyes, as he always wore sunglasses most days, hiding any indication of emotion beyond his voice. It was hard to tell when he was in a good mood until he cracked a joke. Jimmy found difficulty in connecting with him on many levels. Rico was forty-two, loved sports and was good with electrical systems. Jimmy on the other hand hated sports and was not good with electrical systems.

“I just – I did not feel safe about this – it would cause an acci—”

 “THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU TALK TO ME!” Rico shouted, throwing his hands up in the air like a mad man.

Jimmy winced at that vitriolic and caustic voice. It also contained a note of sadness and betrayal like when you leave a friend out from some important event. It burst from Rico’s lungs loud enough to echo around the empty room, lingering in Jimmy’s ears.

“I was – I didn’t want to cause trouble. It just got to a point where I could not take it. I just needed a job. I didn’t know it would be like this. I just wanted to get something changed.”

 Rico put his arms to his hips and paced around back and forth.

“Do you know? Do you know how much trouble that email caused me?” Rico said with grave reproach.

Jimmy’s face turned white and his stomach flipped as he thought the email would have sparked some sort of positive action within the company, but not like this – all of this was unexpected.

“Did they…reprimand you?” Jimmy asked hesitantly.

Rico swung his head his way and if not for the sunglasses, he might have been turned to stone with that glare.

“Of course they did! Garrett did too! He got more of a verbal beating than I did! It was humiliating! Jimmy – they called you a loose cannon. They wanted to fire you. I had to explain that you were not very experienced and just got spooked. They thought you were trying to get OSHA involved. Potential lawsuits! The whole damn works.”

“But. I wasn’t – I just wanted to change things…”

Rico stopped mid step and craned his neck towards him like a bird of prey ready to take flight.

“You have to understand, the executive level thinks in terms of liability. They think about the bottom line and their jobs. You have to go through the proper channels before you do that. They don’t think of the job as you do. You messed up!”

That answer cut Jimmy’s remaining confidence into shreds. He was twenty-seven and had no stable job or career. Everything he worked for and everything he dreamed for, all of that felt meaningless after he failed to get a quality job after college. After dozens of interviews and over a hundred jobs applied for, he finally thought this place was a good place to find stability. Then the job started to take a toll on him when he realized that things were much different from expectations. He thought differently, learned differently, and saw things differently. And all his coworkers around him did too.

“I…I am putting in my two weeks soon.” Jimmy uttered.

“That’s probably for the best.” Rico said, wiping sweat from his sunglasses, “Look…I am telling this for your own good. Watch how you go about things. I want you to be the best worker in the world. I want great things from you – I am the one who watches out for you as your supervisor. But you need to know how your actions affect the company you work for. If you have a problem, then tell me, your immediate boss, then I will help adjust things. Don’t just shoot off an email to the CEO complaining about how regulations are not being followed! You sound like a whining baby!” Rico exclaimed, as he had started breathing easier and was less fidgety, now that the unpleasant conversation had been completed.

Jimmy had a thousand different questions, but none of them mattered at the moment.

“Yes sir.” Jimmy said with a cracked voice.

Richard took another breath, shook his head, and checked his cell phone.

“I got to make some calls. Finish up your work with Kyle then check back with me. The building contractor has revised the layout, so we won’t start running the wire through the ceiling conduit until next week.”

Rico walked off to the warehouse offices, leaving Jimmy to walk around to the exterior of the building to where his co-worker was sitting, enjoying the day. The warehouse sat off the main road in an industrial park, which gave some privacy away from crowds.

Occasionally, a transfer truck would drive by, going to some other occupied buildings further back into the gated area.

Kyle sat under the shade of a set of construction scaffolding eating a peanut butter honey sandwich, which he declared the best type of sandwich in existence.

“Heya, Little Jim.” Kyle said cordially.

Little Jim was a nickname he received from the other technicians, both because of his shorter stature, but also because he was the youngest of age employed at Wiring Co.

“Hey.” Jimmy said, squeezing out one word from his throat.

Jimmy sat down against the wall, not far from Kyle who watched him with interest. He was a tall man with dark slicked-back hair and a trimmed down beard. There was always a smile on his face.

“So. I heard part of that exchange.” Kyle said, being nosy as ever.

“Probably everyone heard it.” Jimmy said, putting his head on his knees like a kid.

The sun felt hot today.

“Yeah. Rico has been pretty miffed today. I also heard through the grapevine about your email.”

“Are you going to give me a talk too? Go ahead. I deserve it.” Jimmy said looking back up.

Kyle laughed and ate the last bite of his sandwich, then tried to locate a napkin. A gust of wind snatched it up and he eventually just wiped it on his grease and dirt-stained pants. Jimmy knew was not going to get a nap when Kyle was around as he was too chatty to ignore.

“Nah.” Kyle said, returning to the conversation, “I think you have had enough of that – but I do want to know why you just didn’t talk to Rico about all this stuff. I bring up things to his attention all the time.” Kyle said, stretching his legs.

Jimmy thought back to last week, summarizing his memories into a compressed explanation; one that he had not properly explained to even Rico himself.

“I was scared. I didn’t want to lose my job by not being able to do the things you guys do. All the other techs know all about this type of stuff. I was hired here as a mentee without any knowledge or even experience. I didn’t want to look weak. I just wanted to do the job, but then I realized everything that we did was not properly planned. I almost knocked Jerry off his ladder with some tangled wire. None of the ladders were ever overseen by two people at all times or put in the middle of doorways in active construction zones, and we did not even have a permit for the scissor lift yesterday!” Jimmy explained his heart out.

Kyle was not present yesterday when they used a scissor lift to hang some wire on the top beams around the warehouse. It was sketchy at best, and negligent at worst. Rico did everything in his power to make things safe, but the area was not scouted and every aspect of this particular sub-contract job was rushed. Rico was only following orders as he always had done to provide for his family. Jimmy fully knew how hard his boss worked too.

Kyle listened without judgment and said nothing the whole time. He was in his early thirties and able to relate more to him than Rico, along with having a more easygoing personality overall.

 “I see now of – why – yeah…This whole debacle makes sense.” Kyle said after Jimmy finished his explanation.

“So you agree I messed up or the company?” Jimmy asked, wiping his brow of sweat.

Kyle took a swig from his water bottle before answering.

“I think you messed up in how you went about it. But not what you complained about.”

This honestly surprised Jimmy.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve worked for Wiring Co. for almost a year now. It’s not a good company. Rico, Garret, Jerry, and a bunch of others are great. It’s the higher-ups that are at fault for the lack of standards here. All good or bad decisions filter down to the bottom. Problems start and end with them. I will interject and say there is a lot more assumed risk in these jobs. You kind of have to get over it if you want to do any kind of trade skill. Overall, I am used to it, so I don’t mind it. But for an outsider like you, who has never done this kind of job before, it must have been surprising.”

Jimmy was slack-jawed at the response. 

“It isn’t how it should work.” Jimmy stated, thinking about his college classes.

His introductory business class taught about rules, standards, and methods of work procedures, yet it never spoke of the stark actuality of what transpired on a job site. It dawned on Jimmy that is the difference between a class and the real world; callous-handed tradespeople lived entirely different lives.

“That’s the funny thing about life. It’s how the world operates. Just because it should, doesn’t mean it will – “the ought to be from the is” – as they say. I think you should have talked to Rico. He could have built a case for you, then brought it up with Garret, who then would have talked to the executive board about safety changes. You only escalate issues when the first solution attempt does not work out at that level. Don’t escalate to the highest authority right off the bat, not unless you have too. Going above Rico’s head makes it automatically seem like he failed or did something wrong.”

This weighed on Jimmy’s mind. No one told him how to interact in life. He came to the realization he could not discern how to handle proper interaction when it came to accountability.

“I guess I need to be able to communicate better. I think I was a sheltered kid, maybe for good reasons.” Jimmy admitted, thinking to himself that he wished the world could relate to him better, because he found saying the right sentence at the right movement monumentally difficult.

This made Kyle break out with laughter, which he tended to do for many reasons.

“I think you are rough around the edges.” Kyle said tossing a wrench from his belt in the hair and catching it, “But you work hard. Also earnest and ask a lot of questions. I made a lot of mistakes on my first job – a lot – got scolded worse than what Rico could ever dish out. I am pretty sure deep down he is proud you took such a verbal pounding and did not quit on the stop.”

“I guess that’s a consolation since I disappointed him so much already.”

“That feeling gets easier with time. There aren’t many who don’t experience that embarrassment as an adult by another adult within the workplace. We’re social creatures and we all eventually have our time for humility, humbling, and comeuppances.”

“Well. My humility is seeing what I am not. I am not cut out to be a technician.” Jimmy said, looking over to Kyle who gripped the wrench tight in his hand.

Kyle gave a silent face of contemplation. Jimmy knew he was choosing how to state the obvious without being too degrading.

“That all depends on you.” he finally answered.

“I already put in my two weeks. This stuff is interesting, but I don’t think I am a great fit and I don’t want to extend myself so hard to make myself fit. If that makes sense. ” Jimmy said with a shrug.

“You’re golden. I miss you already, little Jim.” Kyle said with a smile, “do what you need to do. Finding a job that pays well is hard. Finding one that helps you grow as a person is even harder. I think you will make a great fit for something – somewhere in a place you want to be everyday. I just know it. You deserve some place better.”

Kyle reached in his lunchbox and tossed Jimmy an apple.

“Make sure to eat something today.” he said.

Jimmy had not eaten very much since getting to the worksite at 7:00 am. Working all day did put a strain on his body, although not as much as the mental drain a few minutes ago since Rico’s outburst and Garret’s strange evasion of questions and sternness this morning.

“This week might be easier than you thought.” Kyle said getting out from under the platform to stretch, “Rico was going to show you how to set up the basics of the control wrack for the security system, but since you will be leaving the company he will probably put you on some other duty. You know, you don’t need to learn something complex if you leave.”

Jimmy held the apple in his hands and squeezed it tight.

“I will learn anything you all are willing to share. I will be my own boss one day and it will be my turn to be accountable. But first I got a lot to learn.”

Kyle smiled.

“Whad’Ya Know – I think you just grew up from Little Jim to Big Jim.”