Ethan Is A Psycho (Part 2)

The RGIS district I worked for covered a lot of territory. We handled inventories not only for our home city and county, but also several counties to the north and south as well. Our district's western border extended to the Pacific Ocean, and east to our nearest neighboring RGIS district, Vallejo (pronounced 'Va-LAY-ho, or 'Valley Joe' as some liked to call it).









So as a consequence we spent a good deal of time on the road. As a newbie I wasn't yet familiar with most of the out-of-town stores that we inventoried, so instead of driving myself I would ride in the company van. This was always an adventure, since you were never sure until the last minute who would be driving. It might AM Jeff who was a speed demon and one ticket away from getting fired, or maybe AAM Dean, who would be so fried from last night's inventory that he would keep nodding off while driving, so that one us auditors would have to keep an eye on him and yell out, "Dean, you're drifting!" when his head would fall forward and the van would veer towards the shoulder.









Plus you really didn't have much of a choice of who you could sit next to. There were a lot of fat people that worked in my district, and if you were so unlucky as to be squeezed between two of them in the van, it could make for one long and painful drive to San Francisco. Or maybe you might be fortunate enough to score a window seat, but then be jammed up against the window when two big ones crowded in next to you.









And as bad as that sounds, the people with BO? A million times worse. Besides Moby the Foul One, he of the 450+ lb. unwashed-for-weeks body, there were a couple of people in my district who must have been taking those garlic tablets, because oh my God they reeked of garlic. The stench was so thick and pervasive that you could almost see the fumes rising out of their bodies and flowing into my nose. Puke!









So the van rides to and from the stores were usually quite unpleasant. Between the speeding drivers and sleepy drivers and the XXL people squeezing the life out of you, and the garlic pill poppers making you want to vomit, you were usually in a foul mood even before you reached the store, which would last through the inventory and only intensify on the ride back to the office.









But there was one van ride to an out of town store once that I thought might be different. For starters, although AM Jeff was driving, he had been chastised recently for collecting too many speeding tickets, so he was actually driving at a rather safe and sane speed for a while. Also, everyone in this van ride was of a normal size and scent, except for cesspool Moby, but thankfully he rode shotgun next to Jeff so no one had to be pressed up against his sweaty, reeking greasy body.









This time it seemed like the long drive to Lakeport to do a Long's Drugs would be okay, even though we'd be on the road about 1 1/2 hours each way. Boy, was I wrong. The ride to the store was okay, but the ride back home was a nightmare from hell.









It started out innocently enough. The ride to the store was quiet, and the inventory itself went fairly smoothly for a change. Going home it was the same people in the van: Jeff driving, half-ton Moby in the seat next to him. The first bench seat had Conor, myself and Sam and the back seat had Lilian, Eden and TL Ethan. Ethan normally drove himself to all the stores, but his car was being repaired so he was stuck with us.









Eden, a girl, was sitting in between Lilian, an older woman in her sixties, and Ethan. TL Ethan had a serious crush on Eden. She was quite aware of this, and even though she had a boyfriend (not with RGIS. She told me once about her boyfriend, and how she accidentally blinded him with her thumbnail. Not a pretty story.) she didn't let that stop her from flirting all the time with Ethan, and every other guy in our district and several neighboring ones.









Eden was busy telling Ethan about her parent's house. She lived there during the summer, when she was home from college, and worked with us at RGIS while out of school. Eden told Ethan that her parents lived in a very rural part of town, high up on a hill. The only way to her house was a rough gravelly road that Eden claimed was accessible only by a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Ethan, smitten, immediately told Eden that HIS car (an early 1990's Honda Accord) could make it up to her house. She kept insisting that no, no, only 4-wheeled drive cars could travel on the road to her home.









The more that Eden insisted that Ethan's car couldn't make it to her house, the madder Ethan got. Used to Ethan by this time, I could tell without looking back at him that he was nearing his boiling point. (A word about Ethan. He could be a real pleasure to be around sometimes, believe it or not. Tall and good-looking, he was naturally quite a ham and loved nothing better than to be the center of attention. During lulls in inventories, he would often entertain us by acting out scenes from favorite TV shows and movies. Plus, he was great at counting, and one of the fastest auditors in the district. When he was on, and things were going well and nobody crossed him, he was a lot of fun to be around. The life of the party. Or inventory. And because I never gave him any trouble, and always did well in any inventory he ran, he was always nice to me.)









Any little thing could piss Ethan off at a moment's notice, so most of us had learned to tell when Good Ethan was about to transform into Bad Ethan, and to leave him alone to cool down by himself. But Eden, new to RGIS, wasn't able to gauge Ethan's moods very well and didn't notice that he was building up quite a head of steam. When Ethan kept on insisting that she didn't know what she was talking about, and of course his car could make it up to her house, Eden very jokingly told him, "Ethan, I am sooo close to hitting you right now!" Her tone of voice was very light and playful, and you could tell that in no way did she mean that seriously. But Ethan, crown prince of the district and used to getting his own way, was unused to having someone (especially a girl) stand up to him and, in a very characteristic and familiar way exploded as only Ethan could. "What?! You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Then go ahead and hit me! C'mon, hit me! Why don't you hit me? What do I have to do to get you to hit me? Do I have to call you a bitch? Fine, you're a bitch, a real bitch. Bitch! You're the queen of bitches! Fucking bitch!"









While this was going on, the rest of the van was completely silent. No one uttered a peep. Not even Jeff, the AM, dared to say word to Ethan (Jeff and Ethan, both in their early 30's, were best pals. Ethan was most definitely the dominant one in their friendship, and had Jeff thoroughly convinced that he couldn't do without him, Ethan, in the district. So as a consequence Ethan was allowed to do and say whatever he wanted). And myself, Conor, Sam and corpulent Moby were not about to confront Ethan. The rest of the van just sat meekly by and prayed silently that it would all be over soon.









But not Lilian. She was a feisty, no-nonsense woman in her sixties. She had been quietly sitting next to Eden the whole time, eating her lunch out of a little plastic container. But finally she had heard enough, and muttered to Ethan in her somewhat accented English (she was Russian born), "Oh, why don't you just shut up." Ethan immediately turned on Lilian. "You shut up, you bitch!" This went on for a while, back and forth, with Ethan and Lilian each telling one another to shut up, and Ethan telling Lilian to kiss his ass and Lilian saying to Ethan "I wouldn't kiss that nasty thing," when Ethan, who was now experiencing the unfamiliar sensation of having two females stand up to him in the space of just five minutes, said to Lilian ominously, "If you say shut up to me one more time, you're going to be sorry. " Lilian, never one to shy away from a fight, came immediately back with a "Shut up" to Ethan. Ethan then exploded a second time. "All right you bitch, that's it! When we get back to the office I'm slashing ALL of your fucking tires!" Lilian then very calmly told Ethan, "You do that, and you see this?" She held up the fork that she had been eating her lunch with. "I will take this fork and shove it right up your ass, and I'm gonna shove it up there so hard it's going to come up through your mouth."









Ethan was completely taken aback by this. As I mentioned before, he was unused to having anyone, much less a female, stand up to him and he could only sputter in reply to Lilian's threat. He finally managed to come back with a "Oh, yeah, well, you can take your knife there and slice off a piece of my ass", which was a weak reply and didn't even make any sense. It didn't matter. Everyone in that van, including Ethan, knew who had won that battle.









We were only about halfway back to the office by this time, with another 45 minutes or so to go until we reached Santa Rosa. But it didn't matter to Ethan. He called someone on his cell phone and told them to pick him up in a town nearby. His friend must have asked him was he back at the office already, because Ethan said into his cell phone, "No, we're only near Hopland. But I can't stand being in the van anymore with these fucking bitches." He slammed his phone shut and told Jeff, "Drop me off in Hopland."









AM Jeff, silent throughout this nightmarish ride, finally spoke. "Dude, I have to stop in Cloverdale (at the Long's Drug store there) to pick up the discs, why don't you just wait until we get to Cloverdale (about 10 minutes south of Hopland)?" Ethan told him, "No! Drop me off in Hopland!" And of course Jeff did as he was told. We reached the tiny dusty town of Hopland about 5 minutes later. It was the longest 5 minutes of my life. Everyone in the van was silent again except for Eden, who was crying in the back seat.









When we got to Hopland Jeff pulled over into this old abandoned gas station. Even before he pulled the van to a stop Ethan had the sliding door open. As Jeff parked Ethan leaped out of the van, storming off and throwing his leather jacket to the ground. Jeff, like a faithful puppy dog, jumped out too and followed Ethan a short distance away. No one in the van could hear what was being said by Jeff to Ethan, but it was clear that Jeff was trying to calm Ethan down, placating him with soothing words and gestures.









Now that Ethan was out of the van, all of the rest of the he-men in it finally came to life and began talking. Conor and blob Moby discussed with each other how unreasonable Ethan had been, and Sam told Eden not to cry, that she shouldn't let Ethan get to her like that.









Wow. Big brave guys. Where the hell were they when all of this was going on? I mentioned this later to gargantuan Moby, who reminded me that "You know how Ethan is. It wouldn't matter what anybody said to him, it wouldn't have made a difference, it wouldn't have stopped him." But so what! For God's sake, be a man and say SOMETHING to him. I mean, we had an Area Manager in the van, and he was afraid to chastise one of his auditors. How pathetic was that?









Jeff finally left Ethan and came back to the van and climbed in. We drove off, leaving Ethan behind in Hopland. He refused to look at the departing van and turned his back to us as we left.









As we headed south to Cloverdale, no one said a word. The silence was extremely uncomfortable. I think everyone was afraid to say anything (again). That is, except for Lilian. Maybe one minute passed since we had dropped Ethan off before Lilian spoke. She started to say something about how absurd the whole thing with Ethan had been, and about how childish he was, when Jeff abruptly cut her off. "I don't want to hear any more about it!" he told Lilian.









The tension in the van after that little exchange was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. I was afraid Lilian was going to pop up with some more about what Ethan had done, and thereby causing Jeff to erupt as well, so I hastily asked Jeff about the Long's Drugs store in Cloverdale. We were stopping there to pick up some discs that Jeff needed to program the audit machines for tomorrow's inventory. It was a brand new Long's, and this was to be our first inventory there. "So, um, Jeff, what's this new Long's Drugs like? Have you been in it before?" I asked him. Jeff seemed extremely relieved to be talking about something else besides Ethan, and chattered on at length about how much nicer this new Long's was than the old one. My diversion tactic worked, and the rest of the ride back to Santa Rosa was peaceful.









The next day, when we were doing the inventory at the Cloverdale Long's, I spoke with DM Kenny regarding the fiasco that had happened the day before. I told him that I was rather upset that AM Jeff had let the whole thing go so far, and had made no move to stop it. Kenny told me that had HE been the one driving the van, the incident would never have happened. He (Kenny) would have nipped the thing in the bud and would have told Ethan to shut up.









I, who was no fan of Kenny's, believed him on this one because he wasn't as close to Ethan as Jeff was. AM Jeff had made the fatal mistake of making friends of a few of the auditors in our district, and this I believe affected how he treated these friends/employees. It's one thing to be friendly with your employees, but making friends of a few of them was an error on Jeff's part. It clouded his judgment of these special few, and the F.O.J.'s (Friends Of Jeff) were treated much better by him than the rest of us. It caused resentment and discontent amongst our happy little district and would eventually contribute to Jeff's firing some time later.









(PS: Kenny must have spoken to Ethan regarding our conversation, because a few days later Ethan came up to me during an inventory at Andronico's Market in San Anselmo and apologized for the horror episode in the van. Wow, that was a surprise. So maybe there's some hope for Ethan after all.)









Coming up: More RGIS happiness.