Wheeler dealer

 

I call Hanson “wheeler dealer” because he’s always up to something.

What I saw in him when I hired him I still don’t know.

Truth is I don’t remember hiring him.

He just popped up in my warehouse like a spore.

One day I needed a delivery driver; the next day Hanson was there.

My warehouse staff watched me each day for that day when I’ll flip my lid

I understand their hatred because I make them work.

Hanson I can’t make out at all.

He moves so slowly a turtle would beat him in a straight out race.

Yet somehow he manages to get his work done, even when I deliberately lay it on heavy.

I’m convinced he’s convinced someone else to do the work for him.

But I pay him so little, I can’t see how he can make such a scheme profitable.

God knows I’ve never actually seen him do any of the work.

Around the warehouses, he’s always off in day dreams so I have to yell at him when I catch him at it.

I’m sure he does the same when he’s on the road.

Yet he manages to get back to the warehouse on time and with a complete accounting of what he’s delivered.

Sure, he’s screwed up a few times.

Thinking back, I could have and should have fired him for each.

But the idea of him collecting unemployment irritated me even more than watching him saunter across the warehouse, so I kept him on.

Now, I watch and wait for that moment when he screws up so bad even unemployment won’t have him.

He claims he loves nature.

This may explain why – when the transmission on the van went on a route along the sea shore – he locked up the van and strolled two hundred yards to the beach.

The state police found the van within an hour and him eight hours later, crossed legged communing with nature.

When I asked him why he didn’t stick with the van, he claimed the birds called to him.

That almost made me flip.

But I told him: “next time stay near the van if it breaks down.”

He did, too.

When the van ran out of gas on a narrow road through The Meadowlands, he sat on the hood watching sea gulls rather than walking the quarter mile to the gas station for a refill.

This time I did flip, but was talked out of firing him by my supervisor who said Hanson had kept anyone from stealing the contents of the van.

As frustrated as any man could get, I lectured Hanson on common sense, saying he needed to deal with the situation if he could.

If he could get help, lock the fan and make the repair.

So when he got a flat tire and forgot the spare, Hanson took the imitative of locking the doors the way I told him so he could roll the worn tire to a near by gas station.

Of course, someone stole the van.

I couldn’t fire him for it. So I took him off the road, figuring to keep an eye on him in the warehouse.

And so I watch and wait for him to make a mistaken, even as he slowly saunters from place to place, somehow managing to get the work done as if by magic.

But I know if I wait long enough, I’ll get him.

Even if it kills me.