Sometime around 1990 I was working unloading baggage for the Major Airline carrier I worked at for 13 years. After unloading the luggage I went inside the baggage area to make sure all was well with the passengers picking up their baggage.h Shaniqua was the agent who that evening was working the lost baggage office the evening in question. Shaniqua did not like me because I refused to kiss the back of her front by insisting that she pull her weight working along with everyone else. Shaniqua was bad about stiffing her fellow employees in terms of sharing the workload. On that evening I had the keys to the baggage office which she needed. She was about 10 feet away from me and I lazily tossed the keyring to Shaniqua, pivoted to return to the baggage tug, and be on my way to my work thinking nothing about having tossed the keyring to her.
The next day I get called into the “bosses” office. Shaniqua had reported to the Manager that I had not lazily tossed the keys to her (in a large bending unthreatening arc) but rather I had maliciously thrown the keys at her and worse yet, “almost hit her” with that Medieval weapon. As such Moe (the Boss) was informing me that he would be putting a letter in my work file declaring “I was racist.”I assured Moe he would be doing no such thing and that in the face of his contretemps and protests to the contrary. In his words, he was “tired of your racism.” And this despite the fact that nobody in management had ever said a peep to me on “my racism.” What Moe didn’t know is that I was connected to some uptown high profile lawyers at that time in life. So, after work that day I picked up the phone and gave my lawyer friend a call. I told the lawyer I just wanted this to go away. The lawyer was more interested in filing a significant suit against this Forbes fortune 500 corporation. I finally talked the lawyer in just making it all go away. He relented and said he could do that.
About a week later one of the other employees who had heard about the situation told me that a letter had arrived at the station from the uptown Lawyer company; “McPherson, Riley & Smith.” I just nodded in acknowledgment of that information.
About another week after that I walked into Mo’s office and start pressuring about seeing the letter in my file that he promised stating I was a “racist.” Moe started tripping over his words speaking gibberish about how he had changed his mind. I just smiled and walked out of the office.
However, I had to pay for that stunt because when the next raise came along Moe cheated me a significant amount out of the raise that was supposed to be automatic. I found that out years later. I’ve always been convinced that when they closed that station Shaniqua and Moe were relieved to be done with dealing with me. Moe, because he couldn’t handle the racial tensions arising from having a core group wouldn’t work and because he couldn’t handle another core group who wasn’t going to put up with doing their own job and somebody else’s at the same time.
I have regretted several times over the years that I didn’t let that lawyer get into the pockets of that Airline the way he tried to talk me into when I first spoke to him.
