New experience at Work

Well, yesterday was certainly an interesting experience at work. Saturday afternoon the girls at the hardware store (Jennifer & Patti) sent home another employee - a new woman who had been there for a few weeks - because she was drunk. She had been drinking from a bottle of supposed energy drink but that obviously wasn't what was in it. She couldn't function and so about 4:00pm when they realized what was going on they sent her home. Dad came home from work and told me about it that evening. The day before on Friday, another male employee who has been with us for more than a year now, got mad and walked out. He had been having "behavior" problems - swearing, yelling, anger management issues(I think he may be bipolar) etc. Jennifer and Patti had caught him taking candy bars out of the last freight order from DIB and stuffing them in his pocket, also. On Friday he figured out that we knew about this and got mad and left, which was a blessing as it prevented us from having to fire him. Phil and Dad were planning on letting him go Saturday night after work.

On Monday morning we were wondering if the gal with the drinking problem would even show up. She did, and just like nothing was wrong. Phil was a big chicken to talk to her about this, Dad wasn't around, so guess who got this responbility? I called her up to the office and told her that we were concerned about the problem she had on Saturday.. She looked at me and said "What problem?". So I proceeded to tell her what happened and of course, she denied everything - that she was drinking, that she didn't know what was going on and couldn't function. I offered to get Patti and Jennifer to come over and tell her what happened. Then she said, well, she had had drink at lunch. Finally, after pressing her quite a big, she admitted she had a drinking problem and begged for a second chance. I told her no. Joy knew that she had been in treatment in Bismarck when Leith was there, so obviously, it didn't take. She cried, which made me feel bad, but not bad enough to relent. She has a back problem and is in pain a lot and is having surgery for this the beginning of May. She said that the alcohol was to mitigate the pain. I'm not buying that. I told her that that was an excuse for drinking and if she got help when she was recovered from her surgery and could prove she was getting sober we would take her back in a minute. It actually was theraputic for her I hope, as we hugged each other and I told her how sorry I was, but that her health and well-being was more important than anything else. I really hope she gets the help she needs. Joy was in the office at the time and made sure she knew who to call if she wants to get help.

I keep telling you all that our employee situation is just a total soap opera. I wasn't kidding.

Mom