I got a job as a crew chief on a dig.
I told the boss I would do it, but on my own terms.
I wouldn’t stand around and look important. I would give the crew
their marching orders and come down to supervise them if they came upon
a feature, or at the bottom of a level, to plot and photograph the squares
and shoot elevations. I would keep careful records, to write the site report,
at the end of the dig. But when they were just excavating a level I would
repair to the attic of The Shadows and write. He said that was okay.
He would be down there, to give tourists the speech. Do the PR.
The crew were two high school kids. They dug for two months.
The third month he and I would analyze the materials and write
the site report. To make his accounting easier, he paid me the same
as them the first two months and the third month I would get
all three paychecks. Theirs and mine. At the end of the second month,
the kids went home and the company told me to go home too.
They told the boss to write his own report, and he wouldn’t get paid unless
it was satisfactory. So they fucked me out of a third month’s work and
two months difference between a crew member and a crew chief’s pay.
My boss was so feckless he couldn’t convince them we had made
a bargain, a contract. They said he didn’t have the authority
to do that, or they had the authority to countermand it.
The company decides, not the bossman. To them,
we were in cahoots. Don’t count on a fourflusher
delivering. Don’t deal with amateurs.
I kept my end of the bargain.
He didn’t keep his.
This has happened to me before.
This will probably happen to me again.
I don’t give a shit about money. This puts me at a disadvantage.
It weakens my bargaining position. I don’t have any leverage.