It's hard to imagine I have to address this situation, however, I have been irked in my mind ever since this experience took place over 25 years ago and it was on this day that it became part of my consciousness that "it's OK to cheat Frank Nordby" and how true that became over the years.
It was back in 1986 and I had just been transferred to this store and so I was learning the necessary steps in order to fit into management. I was the person in charge during this time of the day at this Lucky Store in North Highlands. I had just finished doing a cash deposit and left the office to check out the front end (register area) and then head to the back of the store to see if the milk, eggs and other items needed to be filled. I noticed one of the checkers (cashiers) was missing from her register. I asked another cashier where Jean (Denson) had gone to and was told that she had left the store to visit Baskin Robbins on her break to buy an ice-cream cone.
So then I decided I would check out customers in her register until she came back from her break. She finally came back inside the store and proceeded to come back to the checkstand and continue her shift. When she entered the register area I quietly told her that it is a common courtesy to tell the person in charge when they are going to take a break. This is so at least I would know where this employee is. Jean at this time told me to shut up and get my fucking black ass out of her register-(this profanity is all coming out of a woman's mouth at the checkstand) I then quietly told her at that very moment she needed to go home. And I told her again because she didn't quite understand what "go home" meant.
Because of her seniority at Lucky Stores, I guess she figured she could say anything she wanted to me while in the checkstand/register and who was I to question her taking a break? How many minutes was she actually on a break if she went to buy an ice-cream cone from Baskin Robbins while I am up in the office doing a cash deposit? The company policy/union contract allowed for only two 10-minute breaks for a person working an eight-hour shift.
I don't remember ever taking a break without first informing the person in charge that I was going to take a break, or, if it was a good time to take a break. I just thought it was standard procedure with all employees. Apparently it wasn't for long-time employee Denson. I didn't care if Denson took a break but I found out quickly that Denson didn't care about letting me know.
What would have happened had she been hit by a car going over to this ice-cream store and was seriously injured or even killed? Also, imagine me trying to explain to company upper-management how and why I didn't know Denson had left the store to go on a break and venture off to an ice-cream store before she was in an accident? In all my years of being in the grocery business, this was the only incidence where an employee thought they could leave a store to buy an ice-cream cone at another business and do it all in 10-minutes. This was not a lunch break and these 10-minutes were still company time and not hers.
Denson asked if she could contact the store manager Matt VanAirsdale at home and so I let her make a store phone call to him. She told him that I told her to go home and he then told her that if Frank told her to go home for the day then she should go home. After she left I spoke with VanAirsdale and explained to him what had happened and why I asked her to go home. I also told Vanairsdale that courtesy clerk Dirk Crews witnessed the entire episode at the checkstand. The next day, a Monday, Vanairsdale relayed the incident to District Manager Norm Millert and he wanted VanAirsdale to suspend Jean for three days from work.
Sometime later Denson went to UFCW 588 to file a grievance against Lucky Stores for her suspension. It turned out she had conspired an iron-clad way to get back her lost pay and this was relaying information to the union that I had used vulgar racial slurs to her when she came back to the checkstand. Afterwards DM Millert questioned courtesy clerk Dirk Crews on whether he had heard me use racial slurs in the checkstand and Crews told DM Millert that had never happened.
I have never used a racial slur in my life and so it appeared that Denson was going to say anything she could to get back her 3-days lost pay from this suspension. In addition to that, I think she was also trying to get back at me for having the audacity to talk to her about her break when she came back from her journey to ice-cream land and also for me having the audacity to sending her home from work for the insubordination she thought I should easily accept from that moment on and into eternity.
So Denson reached far into the "hall of shame book of racial slurs" and grabbed the words smoldering in hot embers that she knew would surely set fire to an union arbitration for a poor old African American woman coming back to the real world from a simple 10-minute break with her lips still partially covered in dried rocky-road ice-cream while preaching the name of Jesus, being pitted against a man whom everybody would just assume, because he was white, spitted out racial slurs at her like a professional baseball player might spit out chewing tobacco during a Saturday afternoon game and then he skillfully grabbed the first white racist courtesy clerk he could find in front of the checkstands as they artistically painted her mind with the giant letters KKK and ultimately the two of them conspired against this poor emotionally beaten down woman with only a trace of the tasty Baskin Robbin's ice-cream still left lying on her lying lips.
John Burgos (Lucky's Rude Clown) was the supervisor who represented Lucky Stores at this arbitration hearing of Jean Denson. He attended this arbitration with Bob Gill from Lucky Stores Labor Relations. Nobody on this day was a given an opportunity to speak other than Jean Denson and the arbitrators who came back with their decision.
They didn't want to hear the truth and for all of them it was so much better on this day for a white guy to appear as a racist than it was for an African American woman to appear as a rightfully suspended insubordinate employee. This was their ultimate pathetic demeaning and slanderous reasoning in all of this union-hall madness. No amount of arbitral diatribe that I could spew into the airwaves would ever undue the injustice taking place on this day. Frustrated by my inability to preserve the sanctity of honesty and fairness within the building, I hurriedly walked away in total silence and later ran 10 miles in total isolation until I was no longer able to see the well laid out farce left behind.
Wow, they only let the liar and the only person who was suspended speak while this group of arbitrators were giving the appearance they were going to rule fairly on this case? Looking back, I realized they only allowed her to speak because if I and my witness are given an opportunity to speak, how could they rule in her favor. They couldn't allow us to speak and so therefore only Denson was allowed to express her lies. That way, the decision is based only on what is being said. If the Union wants the decision to come out in Denson's favor, make sure that she is the only one to speak. Wow again, this is their logic. It's dishonest, but you have to give them a little pat on the back for this one....it's pretty clever.
John Burgos gave back to a lying, insubordinate employee, who used racism as a defense, three days back pay while I walked away from this arbitration hearing looking like a racist. I was never even given an opportunity to speak at this arbitration to challenge Denson's claim of me using the word "nigger."
It's interesting too because when the union rep who told me, five years after the arbitration, that Denson had a witness and I didn't, then Lucky Stores would have never suspended this employee if that were the case.
If Denson had a witness that could have verified I called her racial slurs, Lucky Stores would have never suspended her and Lucky would have fired me. Lucky Stores suspended Denson based on the facts to the incident and the courtesy clerk who witnessed the entire episode at the checkstand. It was only after Denson went to the union did she come out and state I made upsetting racial slurs to her. Norm Millert questioned the courtesy clerk who witnessed and heard everything at the checkstand/register, before this arbitration was held, and he stated that everything Frank claimed happened, did happened and no racial slurs were used.
I just figured this case was a confirmed justifiable suspension until the board of arbitrators came back and ruled in Denson's favor. I was totally shocked. The Lucky Store witness (Dirk Crews, a courtesy clerk) who came to provide truthful witness information was also never given a chance to speak at this arbitration and told me later that he walked away feeling like he was a liar too. Just unbelievable.
John Burgos is "lucky" I didn't walk up to him at that very moment and crack him square in the face with my fist for the rudeness he once again displayed to me---and this time making me appear like a racist. He wasn't worth losing my job over or even my freedom. He is just a typical low-intelligent person you could find roaming around inside of a grocery store on any given afternoon.
I guess Burgos must have concluded that all "white guys" are racists and you don't give them the opportunity to speak at a hearing involving an African American woman who is claiming a white guy threw the "N" word at her. Burgos in my opinion is just a pathetic human being.
Now, to address the issue to why a union person would bring up this old arbitration case five years later shows me that back then the Union changed the facts pertaining to this hearing and it went down on record to show that Denson had the only witness and the company didn't. This was probably done to have on record that this arbitration was fair-how in the hell could the ruling be in her favor if she didn't have a witness? So this union's corruptness had to change the facts to this arbitration to support the ruling in Denson's favor. Just unbelievable. And since my questioning of all of this nonsense back in 1991, the union and Denson have probably changed the facts even again to relate to more recent revelations about me.
So this corrupt union rep looked at this old case and reported back to me what exists with that record on that particular current day and tried to discredit me in front of my brother. However, if he wasn't involved in this grievance arbitration back in 1986, then how would he know what took place or how would he know if the facts to this case hadn't been changed to fit the decision at the time??? Gosh sakes, it just doesn't ever end with their effort to try and discredit me.
It just shows how corrupt and dishonest this union was and still is. If this "Denson" was the one to have a witness, this arbitration would have never taken place. What would be the point? She would have never been suspended. This isn't based on rocket-science. It's all based on human dishonesty and human deceit. And it was all very well orchestrated.
What do you get when you take a number of dishonest assholes working for the union, join them together with a number of dishonest assholes working for Lucky Stores, let all of them, together, marinade for 12 hours below the water level of a Greyhound bus-depot un-flushed toilet? You get a bunch of filthy-scheming-dishonest people with bad breath. When they all climb out of this toilet they will be slimey and appearing like they are ready to start another episode of their games, deceit, dishonesty and anything else they can do to pull the wool over the eyes of some other unsuspecting person. What really gets me is the stench they leave behind.
On September 1, 1992 (one year after this letter was sent) Ma and Pa Pappadapoulos torched their mansion-read the case law about this case here
My letter above was sent to the "honorable" Terry Privott, and he did call me and let me know in a few words how the company did this and how the company did that and I shouldn't be concerned about anything. The record(s) of this arbitration were never looked at. I just closed my eyes to all of this deceit going on at Lucky Stores and UFCW 588!
Terry Privott turned out not to be such an "honorable" guy afterall and overall I caught him being a very deceitful guy too who should have never been positioned in upper-management. But then again, when Lucky Stores is filling its upper-management job openings from those floating around a Greyhound bus-depot toilet, then this is the pool of candidates you have to fill these important positions. Had I also "cc" this letter to Burgos, I probably wouldn't have been so professional sounding in this letter. In fact, I know I wouldn't have been.
This guy is one of many people I wished I would have never met while working for Lucky Stores. I just can't believe people like John Burgos and Woody Hunter, in which both of whom came from the S.F. Bay Area, were receiving a payroll check once a week to display their talented rude personalities. And then there is Jim DeAngelis, Tom Brunn, Dale Wolfe, Tom Ward, Tom Keorner,,,,the list can go on and on of those at Lucky that in my opinion were more dishonest than any thief I caught stealing at this same company.
It turned out John Burgos was just a racial coward and basically called me a racist when he allowed this dishonest woman to receive three days back pay!
Burgos had his office at the store where Shelton Campbell forced balanced the safe and Campbell was never reprimanded.
I grew up with the smartest man ever to walk into a grocery store and I had to put up with this dumb group of assholes for nearly 30 years.
