I’m a greenhorn in my trade. One of the old-timers (I use that phrase affectionately, by the way) I work with–let’s call him Mike–was openly supportive of Trump during the several weeks right before the 2016 general election. We never talked about it. It just seemed to be a tacit, mutual agreement between us. I was here to learn, he wanted to help with that, and both of us wanted to get shit done because that’s our job. If sweeping political differences under the rug was somehow instrumental to all this, so be it.
Within less than a month of my arrival at the shop, he made himself stand out from the others. I have conditional asthma (‘conditional’ = requires environmental trigger, of which there are plenty in a sheet metal shop). It took some time to get respirator clearance and in the interim, I was miserable. A fifty-pound industrial fan was my ball-and-chain during those few weeks, having to lug it around the shop to wherever I was working where there were nearby fumes, vapors, or fine particulates–which is to say, pretty much everywhere. And some days the air was so bad that I had to drop what I was doing, step outside, take a couple puffs from my inhaler, and wait for my breath to return.
Mike was the only one in the shop to set aside his own work, walk towards the door, and ask me if I was OK.
That gesture of kindness may well have reset the course of our coworker relationship. The day before Thanksgiving I walked by his station and saw a ‘Happy Birthday’ balloon tied to his work cart. After my shift, I went to the gas station to buy him a tin of his favorite tobacco. Gave it to him with a pat on the back and a wish of ‘happy birthday’. He blushed and stammered ‘thank you’.
By now, he almost certainly knows I’m a staunch lefty (word travels at the speed of gossip in a union shop). He most definitely knows I’m a hard worker and determined to be a better one at the end of my shift, every day. I am happy to destroy the pseudo-stereotype of ‘the lazy liberal’ and glad to be doing so through action, not words.
Anyway, we get along just fine now.
