Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Trouble With Tommy


Tommy came to work at the cab co. about 5 or 6 years ago,he was in Canada illegally from Louisiana,he was looking for a cash job in order to stay under the radar of Revenue Canada.
So my boss with his ever present distorted version of reality,went ahead and hired Tommy to drive the night shift.
Tommy was short and strong along the lines of "strong like bull,smart like streetcar".

I was working night dispatch at the time,and I was forever fielding call's from angry customer's complaining to me how Tommy had kicked them out of his cab...or worse had kicked their ass.
He was an angry young man with a wicked temper,and it didn't take much for a drunken fare to piss Tommy off.
One night in the middle of a snow storm,a drunk had said who knows what to him,but it was enough to have Tommy stop his cab in the middle of the main drag,pull this guy out of the cab,and beat the hell out of him,leaving the poor bugger laying in the street.
I heard from that customer and the cop's that night,but Tommy somehow avoided an assault charge.
This kind of behavior went on for months,we were not going to have many customers left,if Tommy didn't stop beating the crap out of them.
When ever I called him on his rather poor customer relation skills,his response would always be the same "If they didn't piss me off,I wouldn't have to punch them out"
Great I thought,I'm working with a sociopath,at this rate half the bar crowd will be limping around town on crutches.
The law did finally put a stop to Tommy the slugger he was eventually charged with assault,fined and court ordered to take an anger management course.
The course didn't seem to help him much,but it wouldn't matter for long, as just a few months later Tommy was dead,he had a heart attack as a result of a drug overdose.He was 32yrs.old.







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