It's my money and I'll yell if I want to

So I think I've mentioned that one of our guys got a job recently. He is a courtesy clerk at a local grocery store. (Essentially, he bags groceries and gets carts off the lot.) He was very excited to start earning a paycheck. And we were excited for him. He is getting out of the house, off the internet and XBOX.

However, in a recent meeting with one of the people in our finance office, I learned that he will only actually be receiving a very small portion of each check. Once SSI gets their cut and he pays back some of his debts for damages, etc., he only ends up with about $25 a week. After a couple of meetings about who was going to break this news to him, Lowell and I finally volunteered just to get it out in the open. Needless to say, he was not happy with the news and told us in no uncertain terms that he will NOT sign up for direct deposit and he will NOT turn his check over to anybody except the lady at the bank who will cash it for him. With this, we decided that if the finance people want to talk to him about it more, they can, but we are done.

However, he did receive a check in the mail for a training period where he was essentially "trying out" for the job and not getting paid. When finance got this check, they immediately deposited it into his bank account so that his bills can get paid. After he checked the mail for several days looking for the check, we finally told him that it was already in his account. Then we hunkered down and prepared for war. After several threats of things he was going to do, we got his dad on the phone so that he could try to reason with him.

After no fewer than three hours on the phone and yelling and cursing like you wouldn't believe, he finally calmed a little. During the three hour period, I took the liberty of jotting down some of the better quotes that were being yelled throughout the house.

"If I don't have the check in my hand in the next 48 hours, I am going to go down to City Hall, get a lawyer and sue this company until they are bankrupt."

"I'll just hack into the IRS' website and change my income so they won't know how much I am making and won't change my SSI. (Pause) I can too hack into it. I'll get on YouTube and learn how. You can learn how to do anything on YouTube."

"Don't they know it's a federal offense to take somebody else's paycheck?" (We can see he is not getting the fact that the money is in HIS account to pay HIS bills.)

"I was so mad today about all this that I couldn't even focus on bagging groceries."

"I will turn over every check I've gotten as soon as I get that big one back in my hands. Except for the fact that I've already cashed them and bought 3 games and 2 movies and don't have any of the money left."

And my personal favorite:

"Tomorrow I am calling the 800 number and taking this company on Judge Mathis. We'll see what he has to say about it!"

But the best quote just might have come from me. A few days earlier, I watched the movie "Gran Torino" with this particular client. I thought it had such a great story except for all of the extraneous language. It made me sad, because there was just no good reason for all of the language used throughout this movie. Joshua wants to see it, but Lowell and I were both adament after seeing it that he has no business seeing (or rather hearing) this movie. Yet, after three hours of this guy yelling and cursing throughout their side of the house while Joshua watched Monday Night Football and tried to turn up the volume when the language on the other side of the house was particularly offensive, I looked at Lowell and said, "Tell me again why we won't let Joshua see Gran Torino??" (Still not gonna let him see it, just gonna let him live it.)