Weekend Edition 9/10 October

Well it has all finally come to a head at work. My favourite driver who speeds, demolishes the trucks, equipment, tools and I have had a couple of rather long and loud “frank discussions” as they say.

Wednesday morning started with me asking him to bring the grass cutter he borrowed to cut his grass, back on Thursday morning as Adrian had managed to get us a chance for a monthly contract at Don Bosco Training School, nearly $2,000 a month for one days work each month.

So I got accused of saying he’d stolen the grass cutter, it was written in the register, etc etc, and I’m trying to get a word in that all I was asking was that he bought it back so we could use it on Thursday. It did get a bit tense, in the end, he said he wasn’t going to do Don Bosco anyway, and if I insisted he would stop all the crew from working and they would sit there till I left and never came back.

I’ve had enough of all this, so I sent an email to K about it, and I refuse to work with him unless there was another person there as a witness to anything said or done. So that led to another “discussion” when he found out.

Thursday got even more heated, he arrived in the old truck, loaded all the crew up and was gone by 8.20, in the big truck. I thought ok, at least we have the old truck if we need it, but he’d locked it and taken the keys with him. So we had no vehicle.

They all got back about 12.30, I asked where the keys were which led into another “discussion” so I finally had enough and decided to go in to see K in her office, I couldn’t be bothered with emails and phone calls. So I got into the big truck and started to back out. There were a few words shouted, he tried to stop the truck by grabbing the rear mirror bracket, which caused the mirror to hit his head, so that got smashed off the arm, then he chased after the truck as I was backing out and wrenched the door open. I was wondering if I was going to get done over totally or just a lot of bruising by this stage, but he just grabbed the keys and we had a bit of a stare off for a little bit till he finally handed the keys back.

I told K that there was no way I am prepared to work with him at all, too unpredictable and erratic, so we have a meeting on Wednesday to supposedly sort this out. There are a lot of other issues as well, but until they are in the open I’d rather not go into them.

So, I have my resignation letter typed and printed if they keep him on, after that I’ll see what or where I go. Getting out of Honiara will be a good idea I think. 18 months here without being able to get out of the town is more than enough, plus the frustration level that is involved with trying to get anything done here.

I’m getting too old to be having to put up with threats and intimidation by anyone. I had 10 years of that in NZ with the TOPS courses, there was always some gang wannabe trying it on. I often wonder how the hell I never got done over in all that time, with some of the guys that I had confrontations with. Ok, my house got turned over a couple of times, and my van got trashed once, but they never tried it on with me. Came close a few times I know, but backed off.