Posted on 05/10/2010 2:21:26 PM PDT by LowOiL
Today I was fired because "I wasn't a team player" and "didn't fit in". I worked for an eccentric "Christian" man in his 70's, I myself am Christian also. I will call the owner "Old Mac" for simplicity.
The place I worked as an mechanic was in a fabric mill (no more detail is needed, you know how hard the textile industry has been hit lately). The majority of the mill is illegals and some legals (from Mexico and Guatemala), with about a 30% other population of mostly white fixers and managers.
I worked a second shift and had only met "old Mac" casually before. Stories of his strange behavior ran deep but I never believed them before. Stories of how "old Mac" once saw a fellow on the loading docks lounging around and didn't like it, so he walked up to him and asked him how much he made and was answered XXX per week. Mac calculated the amount in his head, paid the fellow cash and said he was fired. The fellow took the money and left and Mac later found out he didn't even work there, he was just a delivery man.
Anyhoo... my story is one night "old Mac" came in at lunch time (we work 8 and 1/2 hours a day, 30 minutes are suppose to be lunch time and he does not pay us for it). I used to go to my truck and eat lunch in the cab in the parking lot. I would "allow" the "illegals" to go outside too since it was their lunch time too. I didn't see there was any problem, since he wasn't paying them. Old Mac came in and was furious, he did not want "little Mexico" outside his doors and that they were in the mill and he could be fined XXX amount of dollars. They were not in the mill, but they could be he reasoned. I was flabbergassed, I couldn't believe he was doing this. He often ran the air system so the illegals could run their machines during their "lunchtime" but any work they did was not time and a half pay like the law requires. Also us fixers (me and another fellow) were expected to repair the machines during our "lunchtime" and not being paid for it.
I asked "old Mac" if he owned us during the time that he was not paying us, he slowly looked at me and said I was "not being a team player" and that "it set a bad example for the Mexicans" at lunchtime and that they were NOT allowed to go outside whatsoever.
I told "Old Mac" that it was not right to keep me his "slave" during the time he was not paying me. He grumbled off and today I was told I was fired. I was handed my paycheck for the last week and told to leave. I argued that he was not "Christian" what he was doing and that I would bring up the subject to his church on Sunday.
I went to get my supplies and tools and booklets and say bye to everyone and as I left the back door I smelled tire smoke. A police officer had just tore into the parking lot and was waiting close to where I was parked. I guess "old Mac" had called the police on me. I never said a curse word, I never even called him anything more than "Sir". I was Christian about the whole affair, but I was not ran over by him like he wanted me to be.
My question fellow Christian Freepers is this... What is the precedence (protocol) for presenting my case to his church. I do not belong to his church (Baptist) but I am a fellow Baptist of a neighboring church. I have read before somewhere that I am allowed to address their church elders and then I am allowed to address the church next if that fails. I have talked to their pastor (nice fellow) and he said actually I had no Biblical right to talk to their church in that manner since I was not a member.
I seek godly knowledge from fellow freepers.
Please.
“Old Mac” may think he is a Christian, but he is due someday for a most rude awakening.
The Lord’s children do not behave like that.
Read Jon’s first epistle, and Paul’s 1Corinthians, ch 13.
You spoke the truth, and that is all you can do.
.
“You knew he was nuts, and yet you argued with him.
Sounds like you didn’t really need the job, to me.”
.
Really?
You’ll love the ‘America’ that’s just around the corner...
The moment I read that I thought, "...must be kalifornia..."
Then I clicked your name, sho-nuff!
Thanks again for your wisdom.
You have much to learn :o)
“God expects us to help ourselves.”
.
Most assuredly not! - Read Matthew ch6.
Thank you SO MUCH for that encouragement, I’m printing your post to stick it under his nose!
Blessings,
OTAC
Since your son has the Truth, he has everything. He knows his boss/enemy has the lies. We just don’t let the lies attached themselves to us with ANY belief in them. Good vs evil.
Your son wins, slam dunk!
Forget the Little House on the Prairie crap. Nail his ass to the wall with La Migra!
Oh, and learn to keep your mouth shut. Even if you’re thinking it, even if you know you’re right, just find ways to make em hurt for it that can’t be pinned down on you. Nothing illegal, just small things. Don’t work as hard when being treated like a rented mule, etc.
"Have a relative call for reference ...."
You will have to thank Recovering Ex-hippie for that sage bit of advice.
Do you smell ozone?
That was in Oregon ;)
Thanks....
This is the first time I posted something that was considered “sage”!! I’m thrilled.
Funny how in life experiences you can help someone else after you’ve gone through something lousy yourself.
Ha! I doubt that. Age imparts a little seasoning whether we want it or not. lol
It's easy to get discouraged when you're young and you hit a bump because you don't really know what's right and what is not. Not in the moral sense but in the rules of the road sense. I had a few bosses that fired me for their own selfish reasons. Needed to hire a relative, needed to cover for someone else's theft, etc.
I think more of that goes on during recessionary times when labor is cheap and plentiful. I never had one that directly threatened me like this guy though. They either covered more creatively or were just plain honest about their ill-motives.
>Anger, pride, and righteous indignation are snares.
Foolishness!
indignation -–noun
strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting, or base; righteous anger.
Was not Jesus displaying indignation, even righteous indignation, when He overturned the tables of the money-changers in the Temple and drove them out with a scourge?
John 2:13-17 [See also: Matthew 21:11-13 & Mark 11:15]
13 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers doing business.
15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.
16 And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”
17 Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.”
The question is not whether you were fired wrongly. The question is why you would want to be there. With all this stuff going on, you don’t need to be there.
Whether or not you were fired wrongly, someone did you a favor. Take it as a welcome change, go out and make a new and better life. All the things that you are reporting are not a part of an acceptable workplace.
There are other bosses, (both Christian and non-Christian) who are decent people. You don’t have to work for a wing nut or a boss that engages in a lot of questionable practices. If you are a good worker, and you have something to offer, don’t associate with people who have bad business practices.
Take it as a new lease on life and go for it.
“Was not Jesus displaying indignation, even righteous indignation, when He overturned the tables of the money-changers in the Temple and drove them out with a scourge?”
I getcha...but Jesus is God. No man is righteous. I leave it to God to right the wrongs in my life. He is radically better-equipped to judge and mend things that I would bungle. And I have that propensity.
I do understand, and I let my own tongue fly inappropriately. I’m sorry.
>>“Was not Jesus displaying indignation, even righteous indignation, when He overturned the tables of the money-changers in the Temple and drove them out with a scourge?”
>
>I getcha...but Jesus is God. No man is righteous. I leave it to God to right the wrongs in my life. He is radically better-equipped to judge and mend things that I would bungle. And I have that propensity.
That sounds, to me, very close to the “If I don’t try, I can’t fail” argument. That is very close to the admonition in Romans 6:1 — What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
A paragraph from CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity [ch 31, found here: http://www.philosophyforlife.com/mc31.htm ] sums up quite nicely what I am trying to get at:
“And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make to-morrow to do the simplest duty. As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, ‘God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.’”
A child walks by design; running or fighting patent danger, a reaction designed into the being.
A person designing a reaction to circumstances, where the divination of others’ hearts, minds, and motives are guessed at, is something very much more, no? Only God knows the heart and mind, regardless of physical or other communicative ‘tells’ perceived by the human afflicted by travails.
If I believe, and I know angels surround me, is it not better, in uncertain circumstances, to trust God to goad my conscience; the Spirit to impel my action; to allow God's timetable, purpose, and will to assemble themselves with certainty in my mind, and, thereafter, direct my response? The view to right action should appear like an opening in a defensive line... through which I, the running back, may carry the ball to the end-zone. No?
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