Melville Cooke
A HARD-WORKING young man takes his Mitsubishi motor car to be serviced.
After he has handed over the vehicle and left the businessplace, he realises that he has left US$30 in the car, which he immediately writes off as 'missing'. When he returns for his car, however, he finds that something much more important than money, something that is simply irreplaceable, is missing.
The bottle of cologne his mother gave him before she died two years ago, which he has been nursing to the extent that it is only quarter empty, is gone. He is, of course, livid. He goes to somebody in charge and is told that it is known that there are thieves in the wash area, but until they are caught there is nothing that can be done about it.
When other workers heard of his loss - double loss, if you will - they immediately said 'a roun' a de wash stan' dat happen. Everybody know sey tief deh roun' deh'.
Everybody knows, but no one does anything because it is the customer, not the bottom line, feeling the pinch.
On the other side of the coin, a man wants parts for his Toyota motor vehicle. He goes to the authorised dealership, waits outside until he sees someone coming outside in blue overalls that suggest service level in the organisation, approaches him and strikes up a conversation. The result is, shall we say, a significant discount on the items that he needs to keep his car in good order.
That money does not, of course, go on the company's books.
Service with a steal is as commonplace - and as accepted by those in charge, it would seem - as policemen hustling money off motorists in New Kingston on a weekend night. The tales of cars being stripped of electronics on the wharf are legendary; it is a foolish driver who does not watch the readout on the gas pump like a John Crow circling, waiting for a 'lick dung' dog; and many a person has seen strange withdrawals from their bank accounts.
ACCEPTANCE OF CRIMINALITY
No organisation will ever be able to screen out all the thieves on its roster of employees, but I find that there is a strange acceptance of the criminality, as long as the burden is the customer's to bear.
In addition to passing on losses to the customer by adding a couple dollars here or there, I can think of only two possible reasons why a businessplace would keep known thieves (and this applies to not only the low level employee, but also the manager who orders that his or her friends be given a 'bligh') in their employ. One is what I call the 'womanagwaanworkwiddit'
factor, where after being duped a few times a woman resigns herself to being lied to and cheated on, as "all man a de same". So the people who run an organisation decide that no matter who they hire it will be the same thing and it is better to stick with the thief you know than the one you have to learn about.
The other factor could be simply fear. In a thief's mind, other people's property is their rightful due and, in a perfectly logical way - to them - they reason that the person who stops them from having what is rightfully theirs is 'giving them a fight'. The next step from that is hatred of the person who is giving the 'fight'. The next step from that could be physical harm.
And remember that guns are very common in this country.
So it is service with a steal and a young man is left with the memory of a scent of his mother's love, up to the end of her life. And all he wanted to do was to get his car in decent order so that he could live up to her expectations of him after a lifetime of hard work to ensure that he got a decent education.
That stinks.
Mel Cooke is a freelance writer.
