Dad and working for ‘The Man’

“I didn’t want to work for The Man.”

My brother and I heard that quite often growing up. Our dad would say he didn’t have to put up with any bullshit because he didn’t work for what he termed “The Man.” It didn’t take long after I start working a real job for me to figure out who “The Man” was.

Though I’d worked for my father for several years digging mud pits full of livestock poop and running his shoe repair/leather shop in Lyndon, and as a sports reporter for the Osage County Chronicle, I really didn’t get to know “The Man” until the summer of my freshmen year of college at Kansas State.

During my lone year at K-State, I worked as a ticket taker for events at what is now Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium and Bramlage Coliseum a few days each month and four days a week as a clerk in the inner-library loan department at the library. Those were relatively low-stress, easy gigs through the work study program.

When I came home for the summer and lived with Dad and my brother, it was understood that I’d work. I ended up working as a cashier for $5 an hour at Builders Square, a big-box home improvement company owned by Kmart. It was a 30-hour-per-week job that I mostly hated, aside from a few co-workers who are still friends more than 25 years later.

Most of my memories of that summer are of angry customers who lost their minds having to wait more than three minutes to check out, the occasional person trying to hide a tape measure under plywood on a cart, and the only time in my life I’ve been written up.

The latter wasn’t entirely my fault. I was working on a register in the middle of several lanes during a week night when the supervisor, also a part-timer, hurriedly moved me to another lane during the shift. Both of us forgot to clear the till of $20 bills, and, predictably, he blamed me for the mistake. The next day, I had to sit with a store manager, who was a perfect example of “The Man,” and sign a form for the alleged screw-up.

I went home as pissed as the aforementioned customer and vented to my father, who said, “Well, son, now you know why I don’t work for ‘The Man.’”

I got it then. The old man was never a fan of authority. That went a long way toward explaining how he ended up in jails and prisons and why he spent quite a bit of time “in the hole” (the old school term for solitary confinement).

Dad and I talked often about work through the years. I know he was proud of the careers my brother and I carved out, but I was far more impressed with his work than mine. I marveled at his ability to stay one step ahead of his competitors and make money out of what seemed to be an incredibly silly item (like a belt buckle for the Hog Farmers of America or charging $1 for a leather key chain that he made out of scraps and might have cost him 5 cents).

“Son, there’s an ass for every seat,” he said.

One of my favorite stories about the old man and work was about his wood-cutting days. Just a few years out of the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, California, and still on probation, Dad and Mom moved from San Diego to Joplin a few months before I was born. Dad worked multiple jobs for a few years until he was off probation.

At one point, he was working full-time managing a print shop, full-time at a convenient store, delivering the Sunday paper in Neosho and cutting wood on the timber-covered property we lived on in southwest Missouri. Only one of those jobs, the latter, was one in which he did not work for “The Man.”

As the story goes, a woman in Joplin contacted Dad and ordered two ricks of wood. My father spent several hours cutting down trees and splitting wood to fill the order. When he arrived at the lady’s house, a palace of a home in Joplin, she complained about the price they agreed on and said she only wanted half of the order.

Fuming, Dad took the check and watched as she left the house. Further, she wouldn’t allow him in the backyard and told him he’d have to throw the wood over the six-foot high fence. “Just an example of somebody who thinks they’re better than you because you’re working a certain job,” he said.

The old man complied with her instructions, spending the next hour behind the fence, heaving piece of wood after piece of wood high over it … and into her empty swimming pool.

“Dad, with all the trouble you’ve been in, weren’t you worried about her calling the cops?” I asked.

His response: “I did what she asked. I threw the wood over the fence.”

Within a few months, Dad and Mom started their first crafting business. His days of working for “The Man” were over.