GREEN BEANS

Some folks you just can’t please no matter how hard you try. Tyler’s green beans weren’t green enough. The biscuits I made weren’t round and brown enough. Then when I proudly placed the perfectly round and brown biscuits on the table, I was questioned as to why they had all that white powdery stuff on them. Isn’t it funny how a green bean would spark past memories?

It was my first venture back into the real workforce world after staying home with the kids for years. I landed a temporary job working as a bank vault teller of Compass Bank. My job was to take the money from the armored trucks when they drove into the basement. A new vice-president had just taken over to solve the problem of missing money. Since we were new together, I thought that was reason enough to be kind. The only problem was that he was proud of his nickname he had in Florida of “Castro”. He didn’t want to be kind. In fact, he was mean. I had never seen people cuss their boss out on the way out the door.

Several weeks into the job, I took a deposit and signed for the amount on the top sheet. I kept the bottom copy and gave the truck drivers the top. As they left, I noticed that the bottom carbon copy was not a copy of the amount I had signed for. I immediately went to “Castro” and thought he might be glad that we were on to them… WRONG!… He pushed himself back from his desk in anger and scolded me like a dog. I took my scolding and comforted myself by going out and buying a sucker with a worm in it to give to the truck drivers next time they came back.

To my surprise, Castro called me into his office one day and asked if I would like the job permanently. I didn’t show it, but I was elated that he was actually civil. I was more excited about that than the job offer. I should have known better than to think I had penetrated the harsh wall that surrounded him when he came barking about a report he couldn’t find. When I informed him it was in the tray on his desk, he abruptly rebuked me and declared that the tray on his desk was not an in-tray and that if I wanted him to see something… “Put it in my seat!”

The following day, as he met with his “fear filled” supervisors, I took him his report. Trying yet again to break the ice, I said, “Excuse me, but would you mind getting up off your in-tray so I can put this in it?”

Well… it didn’t quite have the results I intended. I realized that I was not military material and voluntarily moved on to a better place.

I said all that to say this… “SHUT UP TYLER AND EAT YOUR GREEN BEANS!”