Tommy and My Janitor Job

(shortened version) 
by Marvin Anderson, retired

Note: The names have been changed to protect the guilty; and they are guilty.

Each day as I was walking in and out of the Plant 2 Clockhouse at Inland Steel Company, I would see this old guy (at least he looked old) dressed like a bum wearing several layers of coats with a long scruffy beard down to his chest. I later discovered he dressed like this year round. I thought to myself, "I bet that guy hasn't shaved in five years. Probably saved himself a ton of money on blades." On occasions, he would be leaving on the four to twelve shift, the shift I worked for several years early in my career. I noticed that the guards would never bother him any more than to tap the side of the bags filled with newspapers he always carried out. They listened for anything that jingled, a sound that contraband was leaving the plant. One day when he was leaving the plant, the guard tapped his bag as usual but to his amazement instead of hearing jingling, he heard "coo, coo". Now the guard thought, "what is going on here?" He made Tommy open his bags only to discover that he was carrying out two pigeons. Now what was Tommy doing with pigeons and where did he find them? Up above the locker rooms there is an area where the pigeons come to rest and breed and I think that is where Tommy found the. How he caught them and what he planned to do with them, we never did find out. Maybe he wanted pets, eat them or give them to his son to dissect at school.

Well, when anything out of the norm is discovered by the guards, a report has to be written up with a copy going to Plant Protection, the Union Hall, and the departmental superintendent . All I believe that management did was to tell him not to do it again. After all, birds are free spirits and though they were found on company property, they weren't owned by the company. After a while, I got to know this person - Tommy- how he got to work, where he lived and some of his quirky ways and ideas. I found out he had two homes in the Black Oak section of Calumet Township where a lot of poor lived with large families and mean dogs and sometimes mean kids. He was a person who would pick up other people's discards. In fact, he picked up so much stuff enough to fill one of the houses he owned on his property. He lived in the smaller of the two houses. In order to get to work he would walk down one of the main streets in that area for a mile or so and up the railroad tracks for five and a half miles over to another railroad track that run east and west at the south end of Lake Michigan for another one and a half miles. He gave up that walk after someone pulled a gun and robbed him on the way home. That someone was probably watching him and knew his route. At this time I didn't know if Tommy had a car or truck as he walked so slowly leaving the company property as if he had all the time in the world. I had heard that sometimes he would ride his horse Roscoe to work and that he would tie him outside the south clockhouse. I wondered what people thought when they saw a horse there. One evening on the four to twelve shift the weather turned from pleasant to downright nasty as a cold wind was blowing form the north. As you have probably realized by now the steel mill was located on the south end of Lake Michigan. and it could make the weather turn on a dime. The plant guard knew that this fellow sometimes rode a horse to work and felt sorry for the horse taking it into the clockhouse when the weather turned bitterly cold and nasty that one day. When Tommy Tomkins came out at the end of the shift, the guard told him not to bring the horse to work anymore. So shortly thereafter, I would see him driving an old rusty yellow Chevy pickup with a camper cap on the where he would stash all of his treasures that he found while riding around this area. He told me once that the cops told him not to drive in their town anymore. Now that was hard to believe! As time went by, Tommy got tired of working shiftwork. It gets hard on the body after a while. So he transferred from the primary mill where the work is hot and dangerous. Plus he didn't have time to pursue his moneymaking hobby. So he transferred to the labor gang so he could work a straight shift. What moneymaking hobby could one have in a steel mill without getting into too much trouble? Tommy would go from trash can to trash can to find empty brown lunch bags and newspapers. Once I found him in the dumpster looking for those items. How pray tell me, what would he do with these things? He would store the empty bags in empty lockers in his locker room. the papers he would carry out to his truck at the end of the shift. So now we listen in on him and another guy in his locker room: "*^^&$&(*&)_)_*" Tommy was swearing up a storm. "What's wrong, Tommy?" I asked. "Someone turned me into the general foreman, Mr. Dizzo, about the brown bags in these lockers. He told me he would be back to check these lockers. This is my money! I did a lot of work to find and save them." "I know, Tommy, I know! Why does someone always have to act like that and snitch? You weren't doing anything wrong. Why does anyone want to be a snitch?" "Remember Joe Jones? Now he was a snitch! He snitched on everyone because he thought even though he had low seniority, the company would keep him on if there was a layoff. Wee, that worked for a while. They kept training him on different jobs until the personnel department put so much pressure on the bosses they had to lay him off. So what did all that tale bearing do for him?" "You know it is layoff by seniority. You know what happened to him, Tommy?" "No, what?" "I saw him at the Jewel Food Store the other day and I hardly recognized him. He had lost so much weight. I asked him where he was working and he told me he was loading trucks." "You look like you have lost a lot of weight. Don't then have forklifts or electric hand trucks?" "No, they only have hand-truck manual, no power." "Why don't you go to the union hall and see one of the grievers or officers because now since things have picked up other people with your seniority are back." "I helped him, Tommy, but did he say he was sorry he snitched on myself and others?" "Nope!" "You got that right. Those kind of guys never reform. Once a snitch, always a snitch. They never learn. They must be retarded." "Yeah", said Tommy, "They must be retarded." "Now, let me help you, Tommy. There must be some empty lockers in here. Why don't you just transfer your bags to the other lockers? You're on company time now. Use it to your advantage. When Mr. Dizzo come up here, show him the empty lockers. He'll probably assume you put them in the dumpster. Now he will not go into the dumpster to check it out. When the heat is off, in 3 to 4 weeks, go back and use the lockers but watch who is up here when you are moving the bags around or are getting ready to take them out. Do it during the shift, not during the shift change when everyone and his brother is up here." "Now Mr. Dizzo shouldn't yell at you. He should thank you for being caring about the environment by taking that paper to that packaging plant in Griffith. If you didn't do this, all this would fill up the landfills." "Hey, you are right", said Tommy. "Why doesn't Dizzo think that way?" "You know the bosses, Tommy. All they are good for is going to meetings, standing over us and making sure that we work, work, work. Tommy, do you remember Terry was the boss three men before Mr. Dizzo? Well, I walked into the labor office one day while doing my janitor job and there he was chasing Janet, his secretary, around the desk. She was trying to calm him down. I told him that she could press sexual harassment charges on him and that made him change his tune real fast."

As long as I do my job in my assigned area, no one can say squat. I find out a lot of interesting things accidentally. As I used to go from locker room to locker room, I would pick up used slivers of soap with my gloves on and throw them away. Sometimes I wouldn't find any, but I wouldn't give it give thought until one day. "Tommy Tomkins, what are you doing in the shower with your shoes and work clothes on? What are you doing with those slivers of soap? Throw them in the garbage! They aren't good anymore." "Hey, I got a use for them. I take them and use them to wash my clothes in the washer." I know some products have multiple uses, but this guy was just plain cheap. This was too much especially because they were used on people's private parts.

One day Tommy was driving home on Cline Avenue east of the plant when he had a flat tire. The back end of his pickup was filled with newspapers that weren't bundled up on in bags. The jack and spare tire was up in front by the cab. The wind was blowing hard from the south. (Now don't get ahead of me on this.) The papers had to be removed and the wind blew them across the highway with Tommy chasing them in hot pursuit. Luckily, this was after midnight without many cars on the highway. You can just imagine the scene. Tommy has since retired about ten years before me, as I am newly retired. I still see him sometimes around Griffith and we talk about the old times at the #2 Blooming Mill which has since closed. His daughter after he retired got him to shave and clean up. But soon he went back to his old habits. 

THE END