Employee of The Month

It's December 1986 during my winter break from Ohio State and I need a job. Home at this time is Evanston,Illinois (beginning of North Shore of Chicago suburbs) where my mother has a 2 bedroom apartment. Down the street is a high end florist who has a sign in the window DELIVERY DRIVER NEEDED. Perfect. Drive around for 2 weeks of the holiday season making decent money and low stress. I go in and meet the owner who is this little wispy man making a floral arrangement. My interview lasted about 3 minutes ("Do you have a valid driver's license and are you sober?"). I got hired.  All I had to do was make about 8-10 deliveries a day. My hours were about 2:00 P.M. until I got done which was usually around 6:00-6:30 P.M.  Could it be easier?  I spoke too soon. First of all, 99% of the flowers being delivered were Poinsettias plants(the Red Colored Plants that you only see holiday time). I saw so many Poinsettias plants that I was actually dreaming about them. In my dreams(remember, I'm 21 years old) the girls in my dreams are wearing bikinis made of Poinsettias! So every day I would go to the store, listen to the owner scream at everyone including me(you'll find out later not a nice man) and load up his station wagon (anyone reading this who is under 35 years old, that was our generation's mini van) with all the Poinsettias. Well, also remember this is 1986 and we're about 10-15 years away from having GPS Systems, so I'm using road maps. Not being Rand McNally(again for you youngsters-Rand McNally is the company that makes road maps), I can't find 70% of the houses I'm supposed to deliver these plants to.  So I would go back to the shop and tell the owner the people weren't home. Nice work ethic. He wasn't too happy about that. Also, the weird thing was, I was delivering (To the houses I did find) to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Chicago and nobody tipped! Nobody! I couldn't believe it but I guess that's maybe how they got so rich. So it's a snowy afternoon and I'm making my usual partial deliveries when the snow starts to really pick up. In Chicago it can go from flurries to a blizzard in about 3 minutes. Well, I'm driving and having a hard time seeing the road. I take a left turn down a narrow street and there's another car coming right at me going really fast. I swerve but the driver of the other car hits the back of the station wagon. We both get out and access the situation. First off, I went down a one-way street the wrong way. My fault. Then I notice that the driver of the other car is a young black kid who is smaller than me(I was about 5'6" and 125 lbs when I was 21). He's crying. I say " Relax, are you OK?" he says "No! I'm dead! I'm only 14 and I stole my brother's car!" HOLY $##@%@% !!!!!!!  The good news for me is there's no way this kid wanted to get the police involved to write up an accident report. I'm assuming he was going to ditch his brother's car and let his brother think it got stolen(that's what I would've done). So we go on our separate ways and as I'm driving the floral shop's severely damaged car, I'm thinking, "Well , I'm going to get fired but at least I'll get paid for the week and a half  I worked." I get back and tell the owner what happened. I thought maybe his reaction might be  "Are you OK" or "Don't worry about it as long as nothing happened to you" . Nope. He called me everything in the book. This little guy was just going off on me. On top of him telling me I was fired, he also said he wasn't going to pay me for the 10 days I worked due to the damage of the car. I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say. This sawed-off floral maniac just ripped me a new one. I left with my tale between my legs. I told my mother about what happened and she said to call a family friend who was a lawyer. He told me that the floral shop owner had to pay me and that he takes the risk of car damage when he lets an employee drive it. I said "Really? He has to pay me?" The lawyer said "Absolutely"  So now I'm angry. I'm angry that this guy yelled at me (in front of all the other employees mind you) and that he was going to stiff me for the work I did(not great work but I did deliver some flowers). Plus since I can remember, I've always hated bullies and learned  that if you stand up to a bully they will more times than not back down( didn't work all the time aka getting my butt kicked in high school). The next day I walked into the shop and the owner says "What do you want!" I said " I want the money you owe me!' He says " Get the f*ck out of my shop!" I walk right up to him and get right in in face( he was almost my height exactly) and said "Listen, if you don't pay me right now, not only am I going to sue you for the pay you owe me but I'm going to go after your entire shop!" He backs up a step(I'm shaking at this point) and says "Hold on, I'll write you a check" Holy crap?!?!? It worked!  So I got paid and felt pretty confident that this job experience was not going on my resume.