Four Men Who Refused to Stay Silent
The paper was already typed when I walked into the break room.
Bart Brubaker had it laid out on the table, squared to the edge like a place setting. Next to it sat the speakerphone from the front office with its little red light on. A woman named Jodi from the corporate human resources office in Peoria was on the other end. I had worked for that company for 43 years and I had never once heard her voice.
My right arm hung in a dish towel somebody had tied around my neck. It was 2:15 on a Tuesday afternoon. Less than four hours earlier I had been standing in aisle nine of the Prairieland Farm and Home distribution center, and a pallet had been falling.
“Galen, have a seat,” Bart said.
“I’ll stand.”
I could not have sat if I wanted to. When I lowered my chin, the top of my shoulder lit up.
“This is a notice of termination for cause,” Jodi said, in the voice of a woman reading a recipe. “Effective immediately. The cause is a violation of the cross-aisle exclusion policy, section 4, and removal of a posted barrier. Do you understand the notice?”
I looked at Bart.
He was 41 years old. I had trained him on the sortation line when he was 22, back when he still had acne on his chin and a sandwich his mother packed. I had shown him how to read a bill of lading. I had stood in the back row at his father’s funeral in this same county.
He was looking at the paper.
“Bart,” I said. “Take a minute. Think about what you’re signing.”
“It’s already signed,” he said.
“Then you tell me which barrier.”
“The chain across the cross aisle.” His thumb moved on the paper. “Employee removed the chain and proceeded into the exclusion zone with a suspended load overhead. That’s a terminable offense. It’s in the handbook.”
I did not shout. I did not throw the chair. I looked at a man I had known since he was a boy and I said one sentence.
“You took that chain down yourself, Bart.”
He didn’t look up.
“I’m going to need your badge,” he said. “And the keys to the cage.”
Jodi cleared her throat on the speaker. “Mr. Burkholder, the notice also states that you declined to complete an incident report. If you would like to complete one now, it would be noted.”
“I would like to complete one now. I’d like to put down that my shoulder is torn.”
“We’ll note your comment.”
“Not the comment. The report.”
There was a pause. I heard a pen click somewhere in Peoria.
“Given the circumstances of the termination,” Jodi said, “the incident would be handled separately.”
That was the whole thing right there. If a man is fired for cause at 2:15, then at 2:16 he was never really hurt on the job. He was a man who broke a rule and got what he got. The injury belonged to him. The bill belonged to him. The company’s number on the wall stayed clean.
I took my badge off the lanyard with my left hand. It took me three tries. I put it on top of the paper, and I did not sign.
Let me back up to the morning.