“Babe, this is a garage. You don’t wear uppity, high-class shit at a garage. You wear jeans at a garage.”
I straightened away from the computer and swiveled my chair to him, my head tipping back as I did so.
“Would you like me to draft an Employee Handbook that includes a dress code?” I asked.
“Yeah, Red, you do that,” Tack replied.
“Certainly,” I nodded. “Do you have a deadline?”
“End of business today.”
I blinked. Then I said, “That’s impossible. With everything else I need to do, that’ll take a week. Maybe two.”
“You got until the end of business. And I need those parts ordered and I wanna go over the order before you send it.”
Oh boy. Now I was beginning to panic. I was working on the order and I didn’t want to mess it up. Since I had a very loose hold on all that I was doing, I was certain I’d mess it up.
“It’ll be ready in an hour,” I told him, probably stupidly as it was highly doubtful I could learn Sanskrit in an hour and I knew for certain I couldn’t learn anything about cars and bikes in an hour.
“You don’t got an hour. I’m leavin’ in thirty minutes. You got thirty minutes,” he replied.
Damn!
“Fine,” I bit off.
He scowled at me then he turned away but stopped dead.
“Shit,” he muttered and twisted his torso to look back at me. “You bring in those donuts?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Why not is not an answer to why, Red,” Tack returned, his whole body moving now to face me again.
“The guys like donuts,” I told him.
“So?”
“So, I bought donuts for my co-workers. If you’re a nice person, it’s something you do. And I’m a nice person.”
“It’s something you do when you wanna crawl up their asses and make them like you. And it’s not something you are gonna do again, got me?”
Jeez. What was with this guy?
“I was just doing something nice,” I stated the obvious and kind of repeated myself.
“So you did it. Don’t do it again,” he returned.
“It’s donuts, Tack.”
“Don’t do it again, Red.”
I glared at him. Then I asked, “Are you this big of a jerk to just me or are you this big of a jerk to everybody?”
He shoved the rag in his back pocket and crossed his arms on his chest as he said, “Listen, darlin’, I told you I didn’t want you workin’ here. You cannot be surprised I’m gonna be an ass**le to you because I haven’t changed my mind. I don’t want you workin’ here.”