Sunday, December 10, 2023

My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty. Pilfering. Louis Shalako.

$110.00 worth of meat, in 1977 dollars...






Louis Shalako




Pilfering. In the world of work, the criminal instincts are sort of subsumed by the need to keep a job, to earn a paycheque, and to stay out of trouble. To the average worker, this means to avoid anything that would bring discredit to the employer, to avoid anything that would tend to lose a contract or a renewal. This was a secondary consideration. Simply put, if one must pilfer, it is best not to get caught. Stealing from the customer is as bad as stealing directly from the employer.

These attitudes aren’t exactly universal. At C.H. Heist, serving Chemical Valley with high pressure water-blasting, industrial vacuum and sandblasting services, I worked the vacuum side. The foreman on the water side asked me if I wanted to work a shift. Honestly, I should have said no, but I was still short of hours, and only working sporadically. You needed six hundred hours to get into the union.

I asked him for a pair of rubber boots, size thirteen and some fresh face-shields for our helmets. The fucking goof (Mokey), asked me, ‘can’t you just steal that from Dow?’ I ended up jamming my feet into size twelve rubber boots and used a scratched-up face-shield that I could barely see through. And that was the foreman—

A guy I worked with, who seemed like a pretty good bloke, Steve, was in the union. He’d been there some years. He had a house. He was an operator on a vacuum truck, for that you need the airbrake certification, whether that be DZ or AZ, I don’t really know the difference. Admittedly, he could get a good job driving a big truck pretty much anywhere, and yet he’d invested a certain amount of his time with Heist, and probably expected to retire out of there someday, far in the future, with his house paid off, his pension maxed out by contributions, often matched at some rate by one’s employer. A pretty sweet set-up, assuming this is what you want to do for the next twenty-five or thirty years.

Steve was seen. Steve was seen at the plant—probably Dow, possibly somewhere else. Someone made a quick phone call to the shop, laid on a pretty strong complaint. Someone was watching when poor old Steve brought the rig back to the shop after another long day…someone caught him red-handed. Steve lost his job, ladies and gentlemen, over three boxes of disposable paper coveralls, stolen from Dow, which he dragged out of the rig and stuffed into the trunk of his car, before even heading into the building to turn in reports, take off the boots and get instructions or orders for the next day. For the sake of a hundred and fifty dollars of disposable coveralls, he lost a pretty good job in an instant. To put that into perspective, the real overtime hogs, working twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, plus the odd hours here and there—some guys literally slept in their truck and pulled 24 and 36-hour ‘shots’, well. They were pulling down $70,000.00 a year, and getting three weeks paid vacation a year once they’d been there long enough.

Let's hope it was worth it, eh...

Some of us would have killed for that sort of a job; that sort of money. That sort of future. Steve was just dumb.

***

Still trying to finish off my Grade 12 at Lambton College, I got a part-time job at the Hallmark Auto Centre, a concessionaire of the old Woolco department store chain.

I did oil and filter changes. I put grease in the differentials of vehicles, I greased ball joints, which was still a thing back then. I did air filters and PCV valves, fuel filters, and I did tires. I put new tires on, rotated tires, changed from snow tires to regular and back again. I learned how to fix a flat, which I have done on my own tires in the years since.

What was I getting? Minimum wage.

When I got out of school, at least I had a full-time job, which was enough to keep the old man off of my back for a while.

The sheer convenience meant that I bought a case of oil. I bought tires, the boss sort of appreciates that. I bought a few tools from the retail section outside the garage proper. Yet when he wasn’t around, we did sort of roam around in the stock room. If I needed four spark plugs, I probably grabbed them. I had a pair of quartz halogen bulbs, still in the package, in the toolbox for many years. I never got around to converting the MG to higher-powered lighting. Nowadays, it’s almost as if car headlights are too bright, well, not back then—British electrics of the day being what they were. There comes a day, when you’re asked to come in on your day off, and help out with the yearly inventory.

With a slightly guilty conscience, one had to wonder if there was a little more to it than that, and if maybe there was some sort of a hint being dropped…

But some guys were real bad at pilfering. Guys with wives and kids and good jobs, and they just can’t seem to help it. That temptation is there, and some of them absolutely abuse it.

***

Willy had his welding ticket by this time, and he helped me to get in at Bice Specialties, which sold and serviced industrial doors, residential garage doors, and steel doors and frames for the construction industry.

I mostly worked with Pete, who had exactly one year of experience, whereas I walked in the door with zero experience, other than some minimal mechanical experience. For six bucks an hour, which was better than minimum wage, what do you expect. I was a helper, and Pete had a temper. I could keep my cool, but he had the responsibility when we were out on a job. I imagine he felt the pressure, with a wife and a kid and a home in the Sherwood Park area of town.

Pete had the pilfering instinct real bad.

Fuck, at some point, you lose patience with the guy.

We’re at some warehouse at the back of a big refinery in Chemical Valley. I’m taking the ladders off the truck, I’m shaking out extension cords and opening up the tool bins, I’ve got my tape measure, I’m checking out the door opening, and checking out the door sections to see if this thing’s going to fit.

Where the hell is Pete? Going up and down the aisles in this deserted building, dusty old shelves full of…valves. Flanges. Gaskets, little boxes with bits of hardware and boxes of one-inch bolts for bolting big pipelines and valves together. Racks and racks of electrical conduit, pipes of various sizes, rack after rack after rack…of nothing he could use.

For fuck’s sakes, Pete, what do you expect to find back there?

This was called The Georgian, back in the day. We had the end unit on the left.

Pete is stealing a four-foot pipe wrench, not so much because he needed one, or had much use for one in our work. No, it was the only thing he actually recognized, ladies and gentlemen.

All the plants had their colour codes—the tools are painted in the company colours, and on your way out the gate, you’re just praying that the security guards don’t ask to have a look in the bins or behind the seat of your pickup truck…

Pete hardly qualified as a criminal—those guys at least had some sense, a lot of the time.

Pete had no sense at all, and it was only luck that he never got caught at it.

***

When we were about eighteen my girlfriend and I moved in together. We had a townhouse on Indian Road, two bedrooms, a basement, with a laundry room. So, we had a fridge, a stove, a washer and a dryer. A bathroom upstairs and a half-bath down below.

Johnny agreed to take a bedroom and help out with the rent. I was working at Fibreglas, making pretty good money for an eighteen year-old.

My girlfriend worked in the ladies wear at a local department store, and Johnny worked at Dominion Grocery Store, at Eastland Plaza on Indian Road South.

Theoretically, we should have been able to make it, but we were young. We liked to drink, to eat, to smoke, and to party…it is also true that Fibreglas Canada would lay me off when orders, and hence work, were short. If the line’s going to be down, even for a few days, it’s kind of expensive to keep forty guys standing around, and the best thing is a temporary layoff. The unemployment people downtown certainly understood this, and they didn’t push you to go look for another job when you clearly would be going back in the immediate future…only real problem, was the delay. Your last paycheque might have had only a few days on it, and your first pogy cheque can’t come in for two or three weeks, and that one might be only for one week anyways, at whatever the rate: sixty percent of earnings, nowadays it might even be lower, fifty-five percent or whatever.

Fuck, it’s not like any of us had any savings, ladies and gentlemen.

So, poor old Johnny calls me up one night. He’s stocking shelves on the night shift for like $2.85 per hour, for crying out loud…

Check outside the back door, behind the trash compactor, he says, hanging up just as abruptly.

"...check outside the back door," says Johnny.

Well, I can take a hint. I take the car down to the alley behind the store. Setting the handbrake, leaving the lights on, the car idling away, I step out and holy, fuck. There’s a wooden crate with green grapes. Full. I have to admit, I like grapes, and so we took them. I forget who was with me, probably Willy or my brother The Duke. Twenty-five pounds of fucking grapes, and I reckon we shared them around as best we could—yes, Johnny got some too.

A few days later, the guy’s grabbed a case of tins of cashews…fuck, I love cashews. These were a premium brand. Okay, one morning he comes home, looking proud of himself, and he’s lugging a big cardboard box. He’s gotten a hundred and ten dollars’ worth of meat.

We all know this can’t last, and one must admit, this is no way to sustain any kind of household, a point that I have made in a previous chapter. It’s all right for a while. But sooner or later, Johnny was going to get caught, and I reckon we told him that, and I also reckon he got it. But my girlfriend’s older sister had also broken off with Johnny. Now he’s sharing a house with us, we’re fucking like minks and he’s just down the hall…nothing wrong with the poor guy’s hearing.

Like many a thing, it has its natural lifespan, and the arrangement was arguably doomed to fail anyways, bearing in mind our ages and our levels of maturity. I’m not making any claims or comparisons there—it was what it was, as they say.

First, Johnny moves down to the basement, and within two weeks, he announces he’s getting a lot of pressure from the old lady, she’s all worried about him. And he’s moving back home. My girlfriend’s parents are putting on the pressure as well—they’re willing to help out if she wants to go to university, ah, but first, young lady—

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. My girlfriend’s moving back home to her parents’ house.

Not that it really changed things, we were together for seven years all told. As for the place on Indian Road, we were in and out of there in about three months.

By this time, I was back at work, of course—and back in my dad’s basement, as well.

***

When I worked at the Delhi News-Record, circa 1984, when it was time to quit, the last thing I did, was to open up the supply locker and grab a half a dozen rolls of film. I suppose it was illegal. I suppose it was simply unnecessary, I just did it. I had a few rolls of Ilford HP-5, and a few of the HP-4, black and white 35-mm films.

I don’t even know why I did it. I had been cut off at the motel where I had lived for a few months, I had been sleeping in my car. At the motel, I paid off the bill, no problem there—but he just didn’t want to do it any longer. I couldn't pay in advance...can’t say as I blame the man for that.

I had been making $210.00 a week…I suppose I didn’t need a reason, I just did it.

Yeah, I took my key off the ring, left it on the editor’s desk, along with a brief note.

Unlocking the window, I raised it, stepped across the sill, and let her down again quietly in the night. An interesting point: I could have locked the front door, but only from the outside. I would still have the damned key, wouldn’t I.

I got in my MGB and drove home to Sarnia, with a couple of suits, a small gym bag, and whatever dignity I could muster…

That, is a fairly long story and this isn’t the place to tackle it, not by a long shot.

 

END


Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his art on Art Pal.

Grab yourself a free copy of One Million Words of Crap, available from Google Play.

Check out Working With Pete, right here on this blog.

See The Note, by Ian W. Cooper.


My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).

My Criminal Memoir, Part Two.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Six.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Nine.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Ten.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eleven.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Twelve. (Access restricted due to content. 18+)

My Criminal Memoir, Part Thirteen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Fourteen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Fifteen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Sixteen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Seventeen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eighteen.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Nineteen. 

Thank you for reading, and listening.

 


 

 

 

 


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