From: atovorni@engr.UVic.CA (Andreas  Tovornik)
Subject: Haitian Part Two
Reply-To: atovorni@engr.UVic.CA
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 00:29:25 GMT


  Since we were the only two guys working for the inspection lab, the Haitian
and I, we shared a house. Our company was given a four-bedroom house with
a kitchen, dining room/living room, etc. His thing was the kitchen. 

I bought some food and started cooking. He came in screaming at me in Creole,
which I had trouble understanding. He would then go into the basement and
pump his weights for half an hour. I would eat and clean up. He found a crumb
on the floor and started screaming again. 

I went into my room to be left alone and sleep. He put the TV on and cranked 
it up so that I couldn't sleep. The next morning he took a shower. He screamed
at me to clean out the washroom after I was finished. OK, I cleaned it. 

I am a bit of a slob when I work 16-hour days, so my room looked lived in.
He gave me shit for not making my bed! I said that since it was my room, he had 
no business with what goes on in there.

On the first day, I asked him if it was OK by him to smoke in the house. He
said it was OK by him. I had some Yugoslavian cigarettes that I was saving,
and lit one in the living room. The next day, he gave me a two hour lecture 
on drugs!!! I told him that it was only a cigarette. I showed him the pack.

The top was when he kept ordering me to sweep the floor. I asked what was wrong 
with the vac, and he said that it was no good. I took it out and found it to be 
full. I emptied it and vac'ed the house. He kept giving me dirty looks for
being a smartass.

At work, it was the same old thing. He would come to my end of the project, 
scream for five minutes, turn around and walk away. If he were to have spoken
his kind of French more slowly, I would have understood him. All that he could
do was scream.

When he wasn't screaming, he was humming no song in particular, but in such a
loud way that it was irritating in our soils lab. When other people were 
around, he was super nice to everyone. When he was alone with me, it was as if
my presence was a threat to his life. I asked our boss about this by a long-
distance phone call. Our boss told me that this guy is always like that, but
his work is the best. I think he hated anyone who could do a job well besides
himself. He took a perverse thrill in seeing others make mistakes but nothing was
any good if he wasn't a part of it, and nobody was any good except him.

I talked with other guys who had worked with him, and they had had similar
experiences. Was it because I was twenty-five years old and he was fifty?
No. Guys older than him had the same troubles when he was their co-worker.

Well, I spent another few months there with him the next year because I needed
the money. It was even worse than fall '89! Suffice it to say that after '89 
and '90 on the project, I never went back. They offered me the job again in 
'91 and I turned it down. Finally, by '92 the guy had been fired and the 
job that I had done was unfortunately phased out of existence. I ended up doing
other work for the company after the man was fired, though.   

dreas