by menschenjaeger » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:50 am
I do come to this thread a lot, ready to bitch and moan about something that did ruin my day...and I always see something much worse. So it's a nice reality check. It reminds me of a story (true) that I heard while I worked at a greenhouse.
We had this guy there named Frank, a real Michigan militia-type, talking about the coming one-world government etc. In general, though, he was a good guy. One of his jobs was to look after this computerized, automated system that watered, moved our hanging baskets, running them along cables almost 100' long. The system was prone to glitches both digital and mechanical (one morning I arrived in my section of greenhouses to find a mountain of dropped, burst pots about 5' high and 12' wide, which also obliterated all the lilies underneath. Somtheing like this happened almost weekly during my time there). Anyway, Frank was the guy who fixed that system.
We also had a horde of Vietnamese and Cambodian day-laborers, brought every day by a man named Mr. Dee. Mr. Dee was an authentic Vietnam vet - a member of the South Vietnamese army. He'd actually escaped from the VC on multiple occasions, having been shot once during an escape attempt. At some point he came with his family to live in the U.S. Frank told me about the following conversation.
He was sitting on the floor holding his head in his hands, trying not to lose it over yet another failure in the Echo (the name for the automatic pot system) which was preventing him from getting to his other work. The problem had been exacerbated by one of the laborers messing with the system - somebody tried to alter the programming and had caused a major problem.
As he sat there, swearing, Mr. Dee walked up and asked "What wrong, Frank?"
"Well," said Frank, "you ever have one of those days where every %&#$ing thing seems to be working against you?"
"Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. One day the communists burn my village."
Frank told me he got up, said "Thanks, Mr. Dee," and got back to work on the Echo. So, like that.