The Hurricane Days

Another hurricane was rolling in. It was September, and I worked in an advertising department, tightly connected to the local papers for ads, so any reason to shut the office down had to be a major emergency - like a hurricane. So when this hurricane became a warning, management was forced to let us go, but that the office would stay open. I observed several colleagues ask about pay immediately. Would we get paid to stay home during the hurricane? And the answer was in fact - NO. Hourly employees would not get paid in order to remain at home safely, but salaried employees would be compensated. But let me clear this up a little more: Since the office was kept open, and the lights kept on, hourly employees who didn't come to work - or couldn't come to work, wouldn't be paid. At the time, I worked as an hourly employee. This was hard for me to understand, knowing what the hourly employees were up against.

No official emails or electronic footprints were written in regard to the announcement. I could hear a manager going around in person to be sure we understood.  I heard the comments, the groans, the whispers of outrage in the hallways.

"It's the way a company bends the rules, but not breaks them," I told my friend. He stood and thought for a moment. "Yeah, you're right. No emails, and nothing in writing." He turned and cursed something unintelligible in Spanish. Eventually everyone left the office.

I returned home, but the next day the hurricane remained in the Gulf Of Mexico. In the midst of the warning, most of the city remained home, but I returned to work. I never intend to put myself in danger - but the hurricane hadn't hit. My reaction was just to go to work, as it hadn't hit yet. Plus also boiling in the back of my mind was the pay issue.  (The company approx assets were in the range of four billion with a revenue of over six billion.)

Well, out of approximately three thousand employees, about five people were present in the employee parking lot the next day along with me.I parked my car and witnessed another employee begin a heated dispute between herself and two head managers that guarded the employee entrance. I heard words like "money" and "pay" fly out of her mouth. A hot volley of words ensued, but she returned to her car and sped away.

Just then I saw my colleague race up in his jeep.  He saw me and unrolled his window. He shouted"Kim! You wanna get paid? Lets clock in. C'mon!! He slapped the side of his car emphatically with the palm of his hand. "Lets do it." He did a few final spins in the parking lot like a crazed lunatic and parked. He had a hard working ethic, and never missed a day. He was usually even tempered and the voice of reason. A Libra forever trying to find balance in this life. He always played fair and followed the rules. But NOT today, no indeed, I thought to myself.

He climbed out of his jeep, and walked with purpose toward the hallway entrance where we usually clocked in and thought about his family's escape from Cuba. Over the years he had confided in me about how Castro's soldiers showed up at his door before they fled the country. They intended to take him and his brother to a work camp. His mother knew and had hidden them in a closet and answered the door calmly with a butcher knife in her hand. They took one look at the butcher knife and left. His mother was a teacher, and his father was an attorney. His uncle had died under suspicious circumstances there. The only thing left of him was a letter from the military stating he died in an accident while cleaning his gun and that his body had already been buried.

The two retail managers had scurried into to the hallway by now, to stop us from entering the elevator to the second floor office. As my friend hit the key board to clock in, one of them warned, "Don't do that!"  I felt a sudden surge of respect for his audacity as he stood there and clocked in anyway.

He turned and glared at them. "Must be nice to be salaried and get paid  during a hurricane," he said.

"Not really" one of them replied flatly. I looked at them and thought it was possibly true - they looked miserable and we were gloating with pleasure.

"Why are you blocking us?" I challenged cooly as we stood there. "The office is open, and I showed up for work." I saw their faces turning red in anger. One of them kept asking heatedly, why I showed up. They were steaming. They were fuming. They were practically jumping out of their skin.

At this point, my colleague pulled on my arm and we backed down. Both managers continued to claim it was too dangerous to work. Their pretense, insincerity, and posturing was almost laughable. But then again, the entire situation was almost laughable and not worth the trouble. We both left and returned to our homes.

Well the hurricane did strike the next day. A few gusty winds and a lot of little dead branches from an oak tree spread out over my lawn. I thought about what happened as I picked up the branches.  I guess I went off the deep end over the deceitful standards for the hourly employees - showing up to work like that.  I just didn't think it was right, and smiled a little over how I had kicked up my own little storm. A small little storm about as big as a teapot - but at least I tried.

I read recently that integrity is a trait in risk extinction and no longer seen in modern societies. And that the noble soul doesn't abound anymore in the workplace. Aristotle, for example defines "whole behavior" as a quality, or inner breath that is directly linked to our will to do the right thing. I have to agree with Aristotle, and much less with modern day philosophy, since we the two of us were both paid and no one else was. Due to legal reasons, maybe they had to, but ONLY  the two of us - out of hundreds of other employees were paid for that day. AND THAT is survival, certainly not extinction.