To: Union Headquarters
Grocery Workers Local 655
Saint Louis, Missouri
From: Kevin Gruder
I don’t want to walk picket anymore. Not with Tom. You keep scheduling me to walk picket with Tom Smith and I’m not going to do that anymore. Please don’t get me wrong. I still support this strike. I still want to be in the union. I still want to help get us some fair and equitable pay, but my walking with Tom Smith has got to go.
Let’s just start with the first day. The day we were supposed to go inside and get that letter telling us we were locked out. Maybe you heard about this and maybe you didn’t, but if you don’t believe what I’m about to tell you, you can contact Mary Gillis, cause she was inside and saw the whole damn thing.
Remember the first day? The first day of the strike, when we were told we were going to be locked out? We were told by John, the shop steward, to go inside and get the letter and then just come back outside. John told us not to engage the manager... told us not to talk to anybody. So what happens? Tom goes in and takes his letter. And then he hands Dave Leftearly — that’s the store manager — Tom hands Dave a big scroll. I think Tom made the scroll. Made the scroll out of some cardboard tubes and a piece of cloth from a T-shirt. So of course Dave opens the scroll and reads it and then rolls it up and Dave’s face gets real red. He points at Tom with the scroll and says he’s not gonna sit by while the store gets death threats.
Tom makes his fingers into a gun and backs out of the store, all crouched down in a gunfighter stance, like Kurt Russel in that movie, “Tombstone,” that part at the end where Ricky Nelson throws the flower pot through the window.
Mary Gillis says she saw the message later and recognized it. It was pretty long but the last part of it said: “We hold thee as robbers and knaves and wager our bodies against ye in battle siege or otherwise and pledge do our utmost to your annoyance and destruction where upon may god have you in his keeping this written by a man of god under the great trysting oak in Hart-Hill this day of our lord...”
But the funny thing is, it wasn’t even signed by Tom. Mary said it was signed by Wamba the Witless, and Cedric the Entertainer. I think I know Wamba. I think that’s the guy who drives the poultry truck. And I’ve heard of Cedric and I don’t think it hurts to have a celebrity backing our strike.
Well, anyway, Tom backs out of the store and turns and runs to our picket line. Running up the little hill, he reminded me of that scene in “Butch Cassidy,” the last scene, where those two guys are running out of the church. Only Tom just has “gun fingers” and he doesn’t have a cowboy hat, and isn’t very good-looking.
Tom is excitable. If you know Tom, you know that’s his only virtue. Tom is excitable. So, right away, he starts building a barrier around the building. He tosses shopping carts around and starts building a wall around Schnucks. “WE’RE NOT LOCKED OUT... YOU’RE LOCKED IN,” he yells. He has on his blue Schnucks apron and the pockets are just full of eggs and rocks and stuff. Tom starts throwing eggs at cars that are passing by. So we yelled at him to stop, and we’re holding his arms back and he gets real quiet and then he looks right at me and says, “Sometimes you snap with the wind, or you break.” Which I didn’t quite understand.
I tried to tell him he was alienating people. “Look if they’re driving by,” I told him, “they could also be driving PAST... consciously driving PAST.” and he laughed at me and accused me of believing in time travel. Which was another thing I didn’t understand. In fact — let’s just take it all together — Tom is something I don’t understand.
The police drive up and ask him about the written death threat. He gets away with having written it because he hasn’t put his name on it. The police ask about the shopping carts all piled up, and Tom tells them they rolled there by themselves, which the police weren’t inclined to believe at first. but just then a shopping cart breaks free of the pile and rolls uphill and strikes the police car. So they finally give up, get in, and drive away.
I tell Tom he shouldn’t be in such a hurry to cause trouble. He said he wasn’t a trouble maker and that he usually stays calm.
“So, why do you have nails and rocks and rotten eggs in your apron pockets?” I ask.
“Well, I always have those,” he says.
And Fannon, who works with Tom in the video department: and who’s standing next to us during the exchange, Fannon just nods his head.
All that, was the first day. Since then I’ve walked with Tom five times. The whole time he keeps annoying me. It’s become my number one headache. It’s worse than the loss of income. It’s worse than not working. It’s worse than dealing with management ever was.
For one thing he keeps asking me if he can go inside. And, I actually think he goes inside. One day it started raining and Tom was walking around in front with us, and then he says he’s going to walk clear around the building just to make sure nothing is going on in back. And he disappears on the left, and when he reappears on the right, he’s wearing a yellow rain poncho. It sure looks like the ponchos we sell inside. It sure looks like it came from aisle five.
And he keeps asking me “IF”questions, dumb questions. So he asks, “If I already had coffee, could I go inside and get some creamer and sugar?” And I said, “No.” And then he asks, “If I already had Chinese food, would it be okay to go in and get some soy sauce?” And I said, ‘No.” And then one time he asked, “If I bought a cake before the strike happened — you know, bought a cake from the bakery and I’ve already paid for it and everything — would it be all right to go pick that up?”
And if you remember, that’s when I called headquarters. I talked to Paul Weize. If I remember correctly, he was in negotiations at the time. But Paul came out to the hall to take my call. And then the owners said if Paul was going to leave the negotiations just to take a personal call they saw no reason to stay and get humiliated, and so they walked out again. Well, Paul said it would be okay to pick up a cake, if it was already paid for. And so I went to go tell Tom he could go get his cake. But then when I told Tom he could go get his cake he just said, “What cake?”
And it’s his sayings that really drive me crazy. He says things like, “The greatest enemy of the little and the mundane is the big dog and the Great Dane.” and then he barks. So, like, what’s that about? He says things like, “It’s better to curse the darkness than launch obscenities at the lack of light.” He says, “Sorry pilgrim” and, “You know how to whistle: just put your lips together and blow.” One time he pulled the sleeves off his shirt and stood facing the store and he yelled out that whole speech from, “Matrix Reloaded.” You know, the speech that ends: “WE’RE NOT AFRAID. AFTER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF BATTLE WE’RE STILL HERE!” I have to tell you, It just loses a lot of impact when it’s done by a white guy with skinny arms. You have to picture a porky guy with skinny arms pretending he’s Morpheus. It just don’t work.
To remind you why you have this letter, I don’t want to walk picket line with Tom Smith. I don’t want to. It has come close to turning me into a criminal. I’ll explain that in a second, but first, couldn’t you at least investigate if he’s crossing the picket line? I can’t watch him every minute, and it seems every time I turn around he has coffee in his hands, or donuts, or a fountain drink, or sunflower seeds. One time, one of the check-out people — one of the scabs — she was standing outside and waving a piece of paper at us. “Sir, you forgot your receipt!” she yelled. And Tom wouldn’t turn around, like we all did. He wouldn’t turn around and look, and she finally gave up and went back inside.
And later Tom comes to me and says he has an idea for a business. And he wants me to invest in his business idea. He says he wants to start a business to replace the glass in those new carts for kids. Those carts we bought recently. He says he’s shopped a lot, and every child’s cart — you know the ones that look like fake cars — he says every single one of those carts has the glass broken out, and he wants to start a business replacing those.
I think he may be crazy.
It’s his latest idea that scared me most. It was his latest idea that has me afraid I may become a criminal. Tom said he wanted to dress up like he was a shopper crossing the picket line, and then we should pretend to beat him up to discourage people who were crossing the picket line. So we thought that might be a good idea.
So Tom got a couple of grocery bags and filled them up. I think he filled them inside the store, but that’s a separate issue. Anyway, Tom starts walking past and we start pushing him a little and hitting him. Softly at first. Because, remember, it was supposed to be us pretending to beat him up. But then Fannon kicked Tom pretty hard in the head. And Lucy, one of the checkers, pulled a knife! She’s pretty old. I didn’t think she’d be the type to carry a knife. But she sure had one. I kept yelling, “We can’t actually kill him!”, but the crowd wanted blood. So they let Lucy cut him a little, and eventually Dave came out and said, “People it isn’t worth all this! Things will work out eventually!” But then he noticed it was Tom on the ground and Dave stomped on Tom’s hand.
I guess what I’m saying is, at least we finally agreed on something. But still, can’t you schedule Tom at a different time? I’m afraid he’s going to get killed and I don’t want to be here when it happens. Mainly because I’m afraid it might be me who does it.
Thanks,
signed
Kevin Gruder
Copyright © 2003 by Thomas Lee Joseph Smith
