Things moved on quietly for a few days, though tension could be felt within the office environment as Grumpy, Lumpy and Bling came and went. Something was clearly not right, but no one was talking to me. On June 11th the Bling monster reared its head again, though, and the tension was beginning to spread to the SCW’s in the office.
Aslam was trying to keep up with his inspections of the Porta-Johns during the daytime and would go out with Chitrah to get them done. On that Thursday afternoon, though, Bling stopped Aslam before he could go out the door. “You’re just office help. You don’t do inspections. You stay here and do your job.” Aslam was confused. He’d been ordered by Maxx to do the inspections and it had been his job since Indika had gone home. Bling wasn’t even his boss, but the orders were coming from everywhere these days. There didn’t seem to be a chain of command anymore.
I pulled Bling aside that evening and explained to him that Maxx and I expected Aslam to inspect at least 180 Porta-Johns each day in order to stay on top of their maintenance. Bling didn’t say much but he agreed to let Aslam do his job.
On Friday morning Chitrah came in complaining that Bling was trying to pull him off the job in order to clean buses at the main bus stop. It wasn’t Bling’s job to keep the buses clean and it wasn’t within his power to pull people from their jobs. I stopped him before lunch and told him that he couldn’t just pull people from their assigned duties without a little bit of planning. Again, Bling stayed silent but he didn’t try to exert his assumed authority again while I was there.
That night was going to be my last restful sleep for several months because life was about to pull me in a new direction that I wasn’t prepared for at all.
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