The great Highland conspiracy happened 40 years ago this month- it took
many weeks of planning and diligent effort. On May 20, 1977 the fruits of all
that labor came to pass; I got fired by the Highland Appliance Company. As a
result I suffered through having the entire summer off before leaving for
college and getting paid for it. Here’s how it all happened…
From the very beginning Doink was on my case. You see the company headquarters in Taylor, Michigan had set up what they called “a required completion rate.” In other words, there was a specific number of calls where I was supposed to arrive, completely fix what was wrong and move on to the next call. When it was not possible to fix whatever device it was that Highland had sold the customer that was defective right out-of-the-box, I had to bring it into the shop; such things were called "shop pulls" and did not count as a "complete." According to the home office figures I was required to get 8.6 completes per day. The problem was that the home office had based their figures on service calls being performed in the densely populated suburban Detroit area. Not only were sales greater in those areas but calls were closer together. In my area of operation, which was Saginaw, Michigan, my calls were often in rural areas that required a good deal of driving to and from the call. Additionally sales were far lower than they were in the Detroit area. To make matters worse, I vary rarely had more than 8 calls, so getting an 8.6 average was almost impossible. To Doink it made no difference, my daily completes had to come up to the home office's average; no excuses.
As the months went on through the winter my job became more and more of a pain in the ass. Then came that magical day when I got my letter of acceptance to the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach Florida. My final letter of enrollment arrived on April 25, 1977 for a class that was supposed to begin on the first day of September. When Doink found out that I would be leaving in four months he decided to try and get rid of me more quickly by really turning the screws to see if I would quit. However, the other technicians that worked in the shop, who hated Doink perhaps more than I did, had a different idea. Ken, who is the shop lead, did a little bit of homework. He discovered that under the Michigan Employment Security Commission’s (MESC) schedule, my wage level was the lowest that would provide maximum benefit. Meaning that if I made any higher wage, I would still get the same benefit, but if I made any less I would be in a lower benefit category. Also under that same commission, if I were to be fired without having provided any damage to the company, such as theft, damage to facilities, or punching my boss in the mouth, I was entitled to collect unemployment benefits immediately. But, if I were to quit, it would be six weeks before my benefits would kick in. Together with his friend Gary, who was our "white goods technician" or the guy who fixed the stoves, dryers and dishwashers, they hatched a plan that would allow me to depart Highland Appliance and get the summer off with pay. All I had to do was be so crappy at my job that Doink would just have to fire me. It was a diabolical scheme that I bought into immediately.
Suddenly while out on the road I acted as if I
just couldn't figure out how to fix the most simple problems. At nearly every call I would have to phone back into the
office and ask Doink what I should do about this broken piece of equipment. I
took extra long lunch hours, in fact, I even took a few occasions to throw my
hockey bag into the back of my van and go to the ice arena at noon and spend a
couple hours playing pickup hockey. One of the girls in the office told me that
Doink was positive that I was hanging out in a bar somewhere. She giggled at
the fact that Doink didn't know me well enough to know that I'm a non-drinker.
My average of completes soon dropped to about one per day and Doink was slowly
going out of his mind as the home office pestered him to do something about me
other than firing me.
I have to admit here that I was not
the stereotypical TV repair guy that some of you reading this may remember from
the days when people actually got their TVs repaired in their homes. I didn't
walk around wearing a jacket with a white oval patch that had my name on it. I
didn't lug around a big giant tube caddy and I didn't spend a lot of time
counseling customers on what was wrong with their television. Instead of the
horn-rimmed glasses wearing repair nerd that they were expecting to come into
their home carrying a giant case filled with assorted electronic tubes, which
we didn't use anymore, what they got was a 19-year-old kid in blue jeans with a
nut driver in his back pocket, a clipboard in one hand and a module to fix the
TV in the other hand. For example, we had a rash of Admiral TVs that always seem to blow
their sound cards. I'd look on the dispatch, see it was an admiral, see it was
a sound issue, grab the module, enter the house, pull back of the TV, swap out
the module, replace the back of the TV and have the entire repair done before
the customer was finished bitching about the problem. I made it in and out of
one call in just 11 minutes- and then scooted over to the ice rink to spend an
hour or so playing shinny. That was all it really took to get the job done. At one point they
had one of the technicians from in the shop ride with me to ensure that I
carried my tube caddy around, "because that's what the customers expected
to see." Needless to say nothing worked- they were going to have to fire
me for "inability to perform job function" which was exactly what Ken
and Gary had planned.
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The following
morning I showed up at work and only had four calls on my list with a note
saying, "return to shop after last call." Again I walked back into
the shop, showed the guys the message and we all quietly celebrated. Gleefully
I ran my last four calls telling every single customer that this was my last
day and I was going away to college in Florida to learn to become a
professional pilot. Every one of them congratulated me and a couple of them
said that they wished they could go with me.
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The reason why I was so eager to not
hang around while he "inventoried" my van was the fact that I knew
full well that once I left the van in his charge without having it inventoried
in front of me I was no longer responsible for anything that may be missing
from the van. But, Doink thought that this was his big opportunity to really
hang me. When I showed up at the unemployment office to file my claim they told
me that Highland was withholding my paperwork as well as my final check which,
by the way, under Michigan law he was required to give to me at the moment that
he fired me. Now I had to go back to Highland and face-off with Doink to get my
check and my paperwork. When I got there he accused me of major theft of items
from the van. Of course I hadn't stolen a thing. My whole goal was to get
cleanly fired so I could collect my unemployment right away.
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To let you know just how popular Doink was at that Highland store, there was a day when one of the salesmen approached me in the parking lot and seriously told me that he would give me the biggest TV set of my choice if I would kill Doink. I thought it was a joke but he went on to tell me that he thought I was one of the few people he knew of who had the temperament to do such a thing and was savvy enough to dispose of the body! The attitude of almost everybody else that I met at that company was the same when it came to Doink. When I showed up to get my final paycheck Doink was in and out of the office several times while I waited on the sales floor. Ken came out, took me aside and said that Stan was on his way up from the home office and Ken had been told to be ready to take over Doink’s job. The salesman were all giddy with delight. One told me he's never seen Doink this nervous and they’re loving every second of it. Before long Doink showed up and reached through the service window with an envelope. I took it and then pointing it right back at him said, "You had no right to hold this from me." Standing just behind me, my dad placed his hand firmly on my shoulder; perhaps sensing that I wanted to ask Doink if he remembered birth and then pull him through that window. As we left the store and got into the parking lot I threw my hands in the air shouted out aloud "Wahoo! He shoots- he scores!” Dad laughed and just shook his head.
Indeed I got the entire summer of 1977 off with pay. I spent my time between camping up north and going down south to Plymouth and hanging out with my girlfriend. Highland Appliance was the only job from which I was fired in my entire life. Although I have been furloughed from three flying jobs, in aviation we don't consider that as being fired. I had a lot of managers who were idiots, but none who were as inept as Doink. So, I needed a summer vacation- with pay.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: All of my typos belong to Dragon.
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