The Shirts on the Conference Table
“Not on company time. Nobody leaves a station. Nobody raises his voice. Anybody walks out of anything, I will personally drive over there and walk you back in.” A pause. “You bring the shirt. Whatever you’re wearing, whatever’s in your locker. Fold it like you’d fold a flag, and put a card on it. Name, date of issue, how many times it’s been patched. Tuesday. The monthly production meeting is at 7 and the regional man comes. Put them on the conference room table by 6:45. Nobody says a word to Neil. I’ll take care of Neil.”
When he came back to the kitchen he said, “I’m sorry I snapped.”
“I’m sorry I went around you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m not.”
He laughed once, through his nose, and reached across the table and took the hand with the needle calluses on the forefinger. “Twenty-two years, and the first time somebody makes a fuss over me, it’s my wife on the telephone.”
Monday morning Ross put on the pale blue shirt from our daughter’s wedding and drove his own truck to the plant. The transmission had come out of the shop on Saturday.
I went as far as the front lobby and sat on a plastic chair under a framed poster of the 2019 Safety Award. I watched my husband walk down the hall to Neil’s office with his hands loose at his sides. The door was open about a foot. I could hear most of it.
Ross did not raise his voice. He did not ask for the money. He did not mention the law or a lawyer or anything he could be accused of threatening. He said, “Neil, have you got ten minutes?”
“Ross. I didn’t expect you.”
“I wanted to tell you something before you hear it somewhere else. Tomorrow at 7 a.m. there will be a table of work shirts in your conference room. Thirty-one of them, folded, each with a card. They are what the floor has been wearing since the uniform order was frozen. Rodney McAllister will be at the meeting. You can be standing beside that table, Neil, or you can be standing behind it. That’s all I came to say.”
A silence.
“Ross, you’re retired. You don’t have standing to organize anything on this floor.”
“I’m not organizing a thing. I’m telling you what will be on the table.”
“I can’t make exceptions. The policy on unreturned garments is corporate. If I waive it for you, I have to waive it for every separation going back to January. That’s a number I don’t control.”
“I know you can’t,” Ross said. “That’s the trouble.” I could hear him smile, not unkindly. “You’re a young man with a quarterly number. I had one once. Mine was scrap rate. All I’m saying is there’s a door, and you’re standing in front of it.”
He came out a minute later, walked past me, and held the lobby door.
“He didn’t take it,” Ross said in the truck. “But he heard it. He sat there with his jaw going the whole time.”
“And if he doesn’t walk through?”
“Then Tuesday happens.”
That night after supper he made one more call. I was loading the dishwasher, and the kitchen is small.
“Rodney? Ross Weller.” A pause, then a laugh, the first real one I had heard out of him since Friday. “Three days of retirement, if you count the weekend. Listen, I think you ought to come in early tomorrow. Six-thirty, before the meeting. There’s something on the conference table I’d like you to see.” He listened. “No, it’s not a complaint. It’s an inventory.”