A king amongst men.

I have been spending a lot of time recently looking back over my life. Where I have come from, how it has affected me and how I have changed. Basically, how I have become the man I am today. It was during one of these periods of self reflection that I was reminded of the greatest story ever told. No, not the story of Jesus as directed by George Stevens in 1965, but rather the tale of one man who worked two jobs and decided he wanted he didn’t want to work at the one job for a few weeks, but didn’t want to quit either. This is the story of Carlos Grande!

The year was 2004, the place was Johnstown PA, a western Pennsylvania town about an hour east of Pittsburgh. I had just moved back to town after spending two years in Pittsburgh and a year in Detroit. I had known and been friends with Carlos Grande for about six years at that point and I did consider him a worthy acquaintance but what was about to happen would elevate my opinion of him and solidify his status as a living legend FOREVER.

Now dear readers, what you must first understand, if you don’t already from reading my other various articles about my home town is that the job selection is limited to say the least. Up until the 1970’s Johnstown had booming steel, coal, lumber and rail industries and was in fact a pretty decent area. Such classic films as “All the Right Movies” featuring the King of Scientology Tom Cruise and “Slap Shot” with Newman’s Own Paul Newman were filmed there, not to mention comic book legend Steve Ditko, the Co-creator of Spider-Man was born their. Since the late 70’s however Johnstown has become the shithole of the world. Both economically depressed and polluted, people have forgotten about all of the contributions the city has made and instead only remember it for the great flood of 1889. The jobs are so few and far between here that really unless a person is trained in the medical field, or well connected the only employment available is manual labor, telemarketing or some other equally mindless job that pays just above minimum wage.

Carlos worked at the time for two such companies. During the day he worked full time for a local supermarket, which was a job he despised and a few evenings a week he worked part time at the local Wendy’s. Over the course of the previous year, Carlos had used up all of his vacation time from his supermarket job and called off the maximum amount of sick days. The problem was that he was only about half way through the year and decided he needed another two or three weeks off of work.

Now he didn’t want to not work at all during that time, in fact he even requested extra hours at his second job, he just didn’t want to be bothered working his day job. Lesser men like you or I may have just figured the job only paid 50 cents over minimum wage and had almost no benefits, so we would just quit, but not Carlos. No true believers, he hatched a plan that could baffle the minds of even the most stellar geniuses. Allow me to set it up for you.

Carlos and I shared an apartment together, at the time we had two other people living with us as well. We were all in the living room and Carlos and I were playing the latest edition of Madden on PS2. He paused the game and looked at his watch, remarking that he only had about an hour left before he had to leave for work, he then commented that he needed “some god damned fucking time” to himself.

The hour passed and he again paused the game, but rather than go to get ready for work, he walked into the bedroom and walked back out with a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He looked at me and said, “I’ve got it. I’ve got the perfect excuse”. The three of us sitting in the room watched him awe struck, it was if the following events unfolded in slow motion. He picked up the phone and dialed the number, it was the direct line for his manager. He said “Hello” and then after some light conversation dropped the bomb…

“I have some bad news…last night I went to the emergency room because I was feeling extremely sick. I was there for a couple of hours and the doctors did some blood tests. They called me back a little bit ago and want me to come in for more tests, they think I might have DIABETES.” He said a few more things and hung up the phone. With out a word he sat back down and continued playing Madden. The rest of us in the room broke out in to uncontrollable laughter.

Why Diabetes? How was he going to use this to his advantage? What the hell was he thinking?

That afternoon he called back reporting that he had more bad news. “They want to keep me in the hospital for the rest of the week to run more extensive tests on me.” More conversation went on and then he ended with, “I just can’t wait to get back to work.” With that he hung up the phone and spent the next three days playing video games. Finally the day came when he had to go to work at his night job.

As he was working at Wendy’s, on of his co-workers came from his other job came in and saw the he obviously wasn’t in the hospital. Rather than admitting that the jig was up and begging the co-worker not to say anything to the rest of the staff, he walked over, and sat down. The co-worker remarked that he and a few others went to visit Carlos in the hospital, but they didn’t know what room he was in, so they just left some flowers and a card at the desk. Carlos thanked him for the flowers and the card and said they were beautiful. Keep in mind he never got them because he was never actually in the hospital. Then without missing a beat Carlos said, “Yeah, they finished up the testing today, it turns out that I’m not diabetic, I was just malnourished.” MAL-FUCKING NOURISHED!!! Can you believe that shit?

In the end, he got away with it, he ended up getting four days off work scott free, he still had his day job, and not only that, he took a few more days to “rest” and no one said a god damned word.

For all of that Carlos Grande truly is “A King Amongst Men”

~ by E-Rokk on February 22, 2008.