The rise and
fall of Bill Cook volume IV.
For those of you
who haven’t read the other entries about this fascinating and disgusting man,
here are quick links to my previous posts about Bill.
(Now that you’re
caught up, here’s the end of the story.)
As I had
expected, Bill didn’t take his demotion away from manager well. He was told about the new arrangement
with me and another clerk as the store’s new management. They gave him the rest of the weekend off and told him to come in on Monday to hand over his keys and duties. As
assistant manager, I would be instructed on any new duties or responsibilities
by Bill, after things had settled down.
Unfortunately, they never did.
Bill pulled a
complete 180 with his behavior at work and his opinion of the owners. Instead
of being the ideal employee that just complained about his coworkers and constantly kissed the owner's ass, he was
now complaining about everyone and not completing the modest duties that were
his responsibility as a clerk.
When he ‘trained’
me how to order merchandise from the catalog, he essentially showed me the page
numbers for all the products we carry at the store. He felt the need to explain
that some prices were higher than others and that these higher priced items
didn’t sell as fast. He also said that if I didn’t learn the ropes quickly, he’d
be back as manager before I knew it.
After he handed
over his keys and the combination to the store’s safe was changed, he spent his
shifts bitching about his coworkers to customers and sitting on his butt. The few times I worked alongside
Bill were spent in awkward silence as he overtly ignored my presence. Even my suggestions to order Godfather's Pizza were ignored!
I’m sure he
feels betrayed. Bill was always paranoid that everyone else at the stores was
gunning after his job as manager. Now that he was ousted, he probably thinks
that we had been planning this coup for months and that everyone else at the
store was reveling in his failure.
It’s true that
all of the clerks wanted Bill removed as manager, but it wasn’t personal. At
least we didn’t intend it to be. The owner wouldn’t have named another manager
if Bill hadn’t been performing incredibly poorly in his position. If Bill hadn’t
been such a prick to everyone, we may not have been so eager to talk to the
owner about why he needed to be replaced. We were all shocked that he
was named manager in the first place, so to think that there was a conspiracy
to get rid of him even before he was made manager is just insane.
Eventually, Bill
succumbed to what he hated the most.
He put in his
two-week notice to start a new career as a truck driver and we thought we had
heard the last about him. A week after he left, a nervous 19-year-old came in
to the store and asked if I gave the same deals the fat guy did. When I asked
what this special deal was, he explained that he picked out what he wanted in the pipe case, Bill would bring the stuff out to his car after his shift and sell everything for $100
cash. I said that the owner probably wouldn’t approve of this practice and
that he would probably be calling the store now that he heard us discussing
this over the security system. (The phone just happened to ring 30 seconds after I said this and I
pretended like the dead line was the owner.)
It surprised me
that Bill would start stealing from the store, even though he felt completely
betrayed. More than anything, it was sad that he apparently tossed out all his
values as soon as he got mad enough.
Several weeks
after that, the store started to receive faxes from a bank Bill was trying to
secure a $900,000 loan from. He was attempting to purchase a new semi truck and had said
that he earned $150,000 a year as manager of the store. (In reality, he earned $22,000 at the most!) I sent these sheets on to the
main office and listened to the touring manager laughing his ass off as he told
the story of how Bill called the owner and asked him to lie about how much he
earned at the store.
They never charged Bill with theft, even though they had his back-door
transactions recorded, but the owner did threaten to charge him with everything
from larceny to harassment and trespassing if Bill ever called him again.
I was reminded how similar this situation was to that of the last manager who was fired from the store and thought it was funny how
life goes in circles.
I still wonder
what happened to Bill, but have been unable to find any information about him online. I wouldn’t
be surprised if he was dead, but every time I drive by an 18-wheeler on the freeway,
I look up with the slight hope that I’ll see Bill in the driver’s seat, pissed
that I must have tracked him down in his truck just to give him a hard time.
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