The Case of the Missing Purple Gasoline
On Christmas Eve, Jamie, Jason and I snuck away early from work. We'd've been fools not to- we all got to quit early to drive the haultrucks down to park them in the main shop which is also where the parking lot is. We were supposed to turn around and ride the other way 20 kms back to our locker room to catch the bus which would then drive us back the same 20 kms to drop us off at the parking lot. So why drive an extra 40 kms when we could just leave from there? Makes sense, right?
The only minor inconvenience to that plan is we were still in our work clothes. So rather than burden the truck with extra, unnecessary hardhats, I suggested we store them in the KalTire truck which was always in the parking lot and never seemed to move. Jason thought this was a fine idea, and we chucked our hats into the truck. Jamie, however, had qualms and took his helmet home. And so we all enjoyed our Christmas break, with an extra hour thrown in due to our cleverness.
Of course, when we returned to work two days later the KalTire truck was gone.
Jamie had a good laugh and I once again called on my cleverness to rustle up me and Jason some lids. No big deal, though my hardhat had three unique things that I regret losing- my name was on it, as well as a 36-Year Safety sticker (kind of exaggerated, that), and a LED headlamp that is indispensible when I work outside, especially at night.
This week at work, my coworker Randy mentioned that we could get batteries for our headlamps, so I pointed out what I thought was an obvious fact- I no longer had a headlamp. I explained what happened and Randy said he would try and visit KalTire to retrieve our helmets.
At the end of the night he took me aside and informed me that KalTire was accusing Jason and I of siphoning half a tank of gas from the truck. And leaving our hardhats behind as evidence.
"That's ridiculous- I'm not a thief and also I'm not a moron."
Randy agreed, saying the accusation was insulting and stupid. Siphoning gas is pretty much impossible, and the other possibility was that we stole the truck. Since we were in such a hurry to go home for Christmas it seemed unlikely that we would take the time to cruise the minesite for three hours to use up half a tank of gas.
So what really happened to the gas? Who the fuck cares! Maybe KalTire guy took the opportunity to steal some gas and blame it on the guys whose hardhats he had suddenly come into possession of. Or maybe he just didn't realize how much gas he'd used already. Whatever, I don't care. But it wasn't us- throwing away three $70,000 jobs (not to mention my 36 years of service!) for twenty bucks worth of gas is like, is like, so ludicrous it's not even worth thinking of a good metaphor to show how dumb it is.
So anyways, next week on dayshift maybe I'll have to go to the bosses and explain why we had to toss our hardhats in the truck. I don't see anything serious happening, everyone with half a brain can see how baseless the accusation is. So I'm not worried.
I still never got my hardhat back.