Fablespinners: Literature's Online Open Mic!

by Victor Om Shanti

"Hard work is what will get you up in the world boy. Always give 110%, if you want to succeed."

How many times had I heard my grandpa make those statements? I don't know. Innumerable. He must have known of what he was talking. He wasn't a naked tailor. He was a very well dressed owner of his own shoe store, with aspirations of owning a chain of them, who had started his business career as a bootblack.

I decided to throw myself into the corporate world with his enthusiasm in mind, via employment at R. H. Macy.It was inventory season. Counting ladies' dresses was the mission for the day. I knew that as one of the few Negroes on the staff of such a prestigious house of commerce there was a heavy responsibility on my shoulders to work more diligently than the whites to prove, in their eyes, that a boy of color can work just as hard as they.

Even before the second hand closed on the center of the twelve, marking nine A.M., exactly, I began to count, and count, and count...and count. After the first fifteen hundred dresses and three hours had passed through my hands, my fingertips began to tingle. At fifty-three hundred, the tingling became a blister. God, there must be forty acres of dresses on this floor. But, like a mule in harness, push on I must.

I laughed, almost aloud, as I saw myself as the representitive of all Negroes, standing before Mr. R. H., himself, saying, "Sir, you can count on me!"At 7,774 the blister felt better because six hours and thirty-seven minutes of counting synthetic dresses hung on wire hangers will develop a good protective callus.It was then that I noticed a suit under a scowl heading my way.

"Look sharp, boy.", I heard my internal warning monitor say, "Looks like an upstairs supervisor heading this way."

"Hello.", I said proudly, "I'm up to 7,774 with less than 500 to go!"

"To Hell with your hello. We've been watching you, boy."

I bristled defensively. Although, just a few day older than my eighteenth birthday, the racial epithet intended was clear to me. Certainly, the hostility was blatant.

"Boy? What do you mean you've been watching me? And, if you have been watching me, you must have noticed that I've been working almost all day without even taking one of my entitled breaks!"

"That", he said pulling himself ramrod straight, while spitting the words for dramatic emphasis, "is exactly what we've been watching, boy. As steward of the floor clerks and storeroom maintainers and suppliers union, I want you to know that if you keep this crap up, we'll see you get fired!""FIRED!"

I was dumbfounded. Grandpa couldn't have been that wrong. 'Course he also said a whiteman would never give a Black man a break, unless it was his neck, if he didn't have to.

"Listen, punk. We've struggled too long and too hard for years to let some Johnny-come-lately temp make the bosses think they can work us 'til we drop. Cut the showboat crap or your ass will be sailing out the door before morning."

# posted by Victor Shanti @ 6:38 AM