The Shirts on the Conference Table
“Hear me out. Neil’s been in that chair eight months. He’s got a number to hit every quarter, and they’re cutting hours on second shift in November, everybody knows it. If I make noise, he doesn’t take it out on me. I’m gone. He takes it out on the boys.” He shook his head. “Curtis has a mortgage. Tony’s got twins. Jimmy Pace is twenty-four and still lives with his mother. I’m not putting that on them over $300.”
I could have done what Lucille Gast down the street would tell me. Lucille worked county dispatch for thirty years and believes every problem has a number to call. “Renee, call the state labor office.” I knew what the call would mean. Six weeks of paperwork, a letter landing on Neil Dickerson’s desk, and Neil looking out at his floor and wondering who had put a retired man’s wife up to it. It would not be Ross he blamed. It would be the seventeen Ross had trained.
So I did not call the state. I lay in the dark, and sometime around two in the morning I stopped being angry and started being practical.
I did not need a letter. I needed the people still standing in that building to know what had been done to the man who had stood beside them.
Saturday morning I made the calls from the kitchen with the door shut.
Curtis Bell came first. He is forty-four, runs the night weld cell, and is the closest thing third shift has to a mayor.
I told him about the stub, the three sets, the rags in the garage, the folder. I kept my voice level, because if you tell a man something awful calmly, he does his own getting angry and it lasts longer.
There was a long breath on the line.
“Three sets,” Curtis said. “Mrs. Weller, they took $200 off Larry Haskins in April.”
“Larry quit in April.”
“Took a job at the Dana plant. His last check came short. He asked Neil, Neil showed him the form, and Larry said it wasn’t worth the fight.” Curtis was talking slowly now. “And the Boyd kid, Trevor. Left in June. That was $100. He’s nineteen. He didn’t even ask.”
“Curtis, I am not asking you to do anything.”
“I know you’re not.” Then, quieter: “We haven’t had a new shirt issued since January of 2023. They froze the uniform order. I’ve got duct tape on the inside of my collar right now, Mrs. Weller. So it doesn’t rub my neck.”
Hector Ruiz was next. He is fifty-one and keeps everything: every pay stub, safety certificate and policy memo since 1998, in a three-ring binder. When I told him, he said, “Hold on,” and I heard a drawer and a lot of paper.
“Page 14, section 6,” Hector said. “Garments are issued at hire. Garments remain company property. Garments shall be replaced at company expense when worn. Employees separating shall return all garments or be charged replacement cost.” He paused. “They can charge him for what he didn’t return. But the same page says they have to replace it when it’s worn. They haven’t replaced one since 2023. So where were Ross’s three sets supposed to come from?”
I called Tony Ferris, who has the twins and said a word I will not repeat and then apologized for it. I called Bill Oster, who is sixty and said only, “Thank you for telling me.”