Johnny wants to slam his burrito in my face. Wants to, will do, hard to read, but I’m leaning toward will do.
You took my job. Why don’t you take my lunch too? Johnny snarls.
He’s drunk, voice slurring in an ocean of saliva, jaws loose on their hinges. I just wanted a quick lunch. This little burrito joint run by a nice older lady, La Taqueria it’s called, on the corner of Leavenworth and Ellis, its steamed windows marked with finger drawings by bored customers, the thick aroma of refried beans wafting from pots on a black stove that could use a good soap and water wipe-down, usually provides me a relaxed place to eat without anyone bothering me. A kind of break I can’t get when I bring my lunch and eat in my office. Until Johnny showed up, I’d been sitting blissfully by myself.
He always drank but I never knew him to get this wound up. Of course, I’d not fired him before. We sat in my office two days ago, his eyes bloodshot and rheumy, pigeons on the windowsill, pacing back and forth, cooing, heads bobbing, witnesses to the hammer coming down on a guy I’d lied for and promoted.
Johnny, I said, you know how this works. When state budget cuts come down, I have to lay off staff. My way of doing things is to let go those people I think can find work. You can find work. You can get another job if you chill out on the drinking.
Over the last three years, I’ve laid off more staff than I want to think about. Fired. That’s how it feels to them. The look in their eyes. The sense of betrayal. The tears. All the self-respect they had clawed back gone in the two or three sentences it takes for me to tell them. What did someone who had spent years on the street have other than the minimum-wage job I gave them? A room at a residential hotel, no kitchen, bathroom down the hall, and a tab at some restaurant that extended them credit, that’s what. I laid them off and saw them back on the street in no time, back to what they’d known, back to the sidewalks, the doorways, the homeless shelters, in line with everyone else for whatever benefit they might be eligible for—general assistance, SSI, unemployment—blending in with one another in an undistinguished mass of ill-fitting thrift-store clothes in a poor version of a nine-to-five routine, as if they’d never left. In a way, I suppose, they hadn’t.
This because of yesterday? Johnny asked.
Yes, I thought, it is. But instead I lied one more time to spare him the truth and to spare me his denials. Besides, our funding had been cut. That was no lie.
No, it’s about the budget. It’s about who I think can find a job.
I hated to fire Johnny. He was one of my guys I could rely on. But when the state slashed our funding, I had choices to make. My program coordinator, Don, found a new job. That saved some money but other staff still had to go. The way I saw it, a drinker like Johnny, who no matter how lit he gets can still make it to work on time and supervise the shelter, has a chance—I’m not saying a great one—of finding another job. That person, according to the skewed logic I engage in, should be laid off.
Is that it? Johnny asked.
I extended my hand and nodded.
I’m sorry, Johnny.
He wiped his eyes and looked away. He didn’t believe me, I knew. Too bad for him he ran into McGraw yesterday reeking of booze. Too bad McGraw knew he was on the clock. McGraw called me. You know Johnny smells like a brewery? I haven’t spoken to him today, I lied. Well, he does, McGraw said, and now here we are.
I nodded and he left.
I want you to have my burrito, Johnny says again.
I’m trying to keep calm but I’m getting a little pissed off. How many times did Johnny show up to work smelling of booze? How many times did I talk to him about it? He used mouthwash, like that’d fool me or anyone. I looked the other way. I considered his drinking a perk I let him have because no matter what I could rely on him. He kept the train running, so to speak. But the staff and clients all knew he drank. They didn’t say anything but they knew, and they knew I knew, and when I caught people nursing a bottle of Thunderbird in the shelter and told them to toss it or leave, they’d say, rightfully, What about Johnny? I had no good answer.
Johnny came to Fresh Start a year ago for a clothing referral. He wore an army fatigue jacket too big for his slim body. His graying hair hadn’t been combed in a while and his missing front teeth left a gap in his mouth that made him hard to understand. He told me he’d been in the army, stationed in the Philippines. One morning, he was called into the office of his CO and told he was being discharged. The base was closing, he was no longer needed, the CO said. Johnny caught a flight out that night with nothing but his duffel bag. Twenty-four hours later, he landed in San Francisco, the closest US airport to the Philippines, or so he claimed.
What a crock of shit, I thought. The army doesn’t discharge soldiers because a base closes. Johnny screwed up somehow. Maybe it was his drinking, I don’t know. If I’ve learned anything I’ve learned this: Don’t believe what anyone on the street tells you. They have their secrets. They’re not all bad or all crazy or all addicts. I’ve met more than a few who have nothing wrong with them. They need a job, that’s it. I have to admit, I’m always blown away when not having a job turns out to be their only problem. But even then they have their secrets, their unbelievable tales to fill in the blanks of what they don’t want you to know. I let Johnny have his story. I presumed he’d lost everything else.
While he stayed at the shelter, Johnny volunteered. He put mats on the floor, mopped the bathrooms, made coffee. When one member of the shelter staff quit, I offered his job to Johnny.
I really want you to have it, Johnny says again, tossing the burrito from hand to hand as if it were too hot to hold. I’ll give you a fork and everything so you don’t mess yourself.
Johnny takes a step toward me, trips, regains his balance. I hope something will distract him. People coming in for lunch. Something. To think that only a few months ago, I lied my way to hell to get Johnny the shelter supervisor job. At the time, the supervisor had been a guy from Texas we all called Tex. He seemed as normal and middle class as a bank teller, until one day he decided to resume his crack habit and I never saw him again. That created a job opening. I wanted Johnny to fill it.
However, I had hoops to jump through. My contract with the city doesn’t allow me to appoint people to administrative jobs. Johnny and anyone else interested in the supervisor position had to appear before a three-member hiring committee made up of homeless men and women elected by people in the shelter to, according to the contract, give the homeless served by the agency a say in staffing. That in turn, or so the thinking went, would teach them responsibility. They’d be, in contract-speak, invested in the program and their own outcomes. The contract emphasized that the director could in no way influence the committee. I could sit in on interviews and help facilitate but I could not participate in discussions about the applicants or vote.
I posted the position and asked a homeless volunteer, a guy named Ross Hitchcock, to coordinate the election of a hiring committee. Ross grew up in Boston and has a thick New England accent. He had no teeth and when he wasn’t talking, his mouth flattened into a thin line above his chin. He schemed and had a racket unique to anyone I knew. For several hours a day, he’d stand beside a parking meter and flag drivers searching for a parking space. He’d then offer to get them an hour on the meter in exchange for a quarter. If they agreed, he’d withdraw a popsicle stick from his pocket, jam it in the meter, crank it up and down, and watch the numbers flip until they reached sixty minutes. Pleased and amused by his ingenuity, drivers would often give Ross additional change. Within a few hours, he’d make a few bucks.
Ross announced the election that night at the shelter. Whoever wanted to run wrote their name on a piece of paper tacked by the front door. More than a few people thought the candidate sheet was the sign-in list for a bed. As a result, we had many clients unaware they were running for the committee. Three days later, I left ballots with the names of dozens of candidates by the front desk. Completed ballots were put in a box. The three candidates who received the most votes moved on. If they showed up for the interviews, we had a hiring committee. If they didn’t, we held another election.
The day of the vote, I called Johnny into my office and told him I wanted him to be the new super.
You can’t go before the hiring committee with alcohol on your breath, I warned him.
I don’t drink when I’m working.
You drink and everyone knows it, period. If you want the job, don’t come here smelling of booze.
At first, only Johnny put in for the job. Then the day before the application deadline, one other staffer applied. Billy White. He had come to the shelter about the same time as Johnny. He had a wide, open face with a mole on his right eyelid that seemed not to bother him, but always distracted me whenever we spoke. Guys would hit him up for money and he’d give them what little he had and then act surprised when no one paid him back. If someone said, Hey, Billy, I like that sweater, he’d lend it to them, but of course he never got it back, and I’d see him at night in line waiting for the shelter to open, his arms crossed, shivering, the hurt expression of a child who knew he had been taken advantage of but didn’t understand how or why writ large across his face. I hired Billy to get him away from the piranhas feeding off him.
He did not make my life easy. He never got to work on time, because he insisted on standing up to the indignities of his life, as if, now with a job, he could finally assert himself against those who had abused his trust. One time, he blamed his tardiness on his landlord. That morning, he refused to pay rent after he had complained about the halls being dirty, and nothing was done about it. The landlord threatened to evict him. Billy then called lawyers to sue the owner. Then he asked other lawyers to sue those lawyers for not taking his case. When they refused, he walked to the San Francisco Chronicle to ask a reporter to write about the dirty halls. He demanded a meeting with the editor. He waited a long time before his request was denied. Had they not made him wait, he explained, he wouldn’t have been late.
I kept him. Firing Billy would have been like kicking a puppy. Fresh Start existed for the Billys of the world, and the Johnnys and Texes too; people who, we should concede, will never fit into the five-day workweek. Unless, of course, our work ethic changes and allows for people who talk to other people none of us can see, people with twenty-four-seven drinking and drug problems, people like Billy who obsess on the smallest slight, people with college degrees who look good on paper, but have troubles too, and have ended up on the street among all the other dispossessed in an equal-opportunity smorgasbord of triaged men and women, unable to get past the gated entrance to the American Dream.
About two weeks after Tex vanished, Johnny and Billy appeared before a hiring committee made up of clients I knew well:
Charles, a speed freak, a tall, lean man in his late thirties, was on one of his periodic sober runs. He could sing like nothing else mattered in a voice that should have had Berry Gordy knocking at our door.
Gill Harlee, a barrel-chested guy with a huge laugh; a round, bowling-ball stomach; and an explosive temper. A meaningless disagreement on something as simple as the weather could set him off and lead to fights. Good mood or bad, he always shouted as if he was trying to make himself heard above insurmountable noise.
Marcela Brooks, a woman who came in every morning for coffee, who we all called Granny because of her age. Depending on the day, she’d tell us she was seventy-eight or ninety. She wrapped herself in at least three coats and used a wheelchair like a walker, hobbling behind it and pausing every so often to catch her breath, her lined face canyoned with exhaustion.
On a Wednesday afternoon, the committee interviewed Johnny first. We sat in a circle by a closet where we stored the mats. We held a list of ten questions. The sun shone and I could see seagulls circling above a YMCA at the corner of Golden Gate and Leavenworth. Johnny took a chair next to mine. I smelled the alcohol on his breath.
First question:
Charles: What would you do if the shelter was full and someone needed a place to stay at two in the morning? Would you turn them away?
No, Johnny answered. He’d find them a spot even if it meant sitting in a chair. Granny asked a similar question about a family that showed up in the middle of the night. Johnny said he wouldn’t bother calling other shelters. He understood we weren’t a family shelter, but at that hour a family would need rest, especially the kids. He’d take them in too.
God bless the children, Granny said, and then launched into a story about how she was denied shelter by the Salvation Army because she refused to take a shower.
That wasn’t right, she said. A shelter’s not supposed to turn people away. I’m an old woman.
After we finish here, Granny, you and I will talk about it, I said.
It wasn’t right what happened to me, Granny insisted.
I turned to Charles and Gill.
Let’s continue, I said.
What about me? Granny said.
We’ll talk, I said.
Second question:
Gill: What would you do if . . . Gill stopped and put the list of questions aside. Instead, he asked Johnny if he’d kick someone out of the shelter if they were caught drinking or using. Before he could answer, Gill demanded, What about you? Would you eighty-six yourself?
What do you mean?
You come to work drunk.
I don’t drink here, Johnny said.
Gill smirked.
Do you attend AA, Johnny? Charles asked.
No, Johnny said.
Would you go to AA if you get this job?
I don’t see why I would, Johnny said. I don’t drink at work.
Let’s stick to the questions, I said, raising the list.
Gill made a face and his hand shook with mounting anger, but he didn’t explode. I appreciated his self-control. Still, he’d done some damage.
Billy showed up fifteen minutes late. He couldn’t find his keys, he explained. As excuses went, that was so acceptably mainstream he left me speechless.
First question:
Charles: If it’s raining outside, would you open the shelter earlier than usual?
Billy scrunched up his face, thinking. He wanted to know the situation of each person seeking shelter. Had they ever been eighty-sixed? Were they intoxicated? Were other shelters available to them? The committee made up answers to his hypotheticals until I intervened, contract be damned.
Billy, just answer. It’s a yes-or-no question.
Then yes, he said, although I think these questions need to be more specific.
When we finished interviewing Billy, I walked him to the door, closing it behind him.
What do you all think? I asked.
Johnny, the committee agreed, was the better applicant. He answered the questions with common sense. They’d seen him on the job. They knew he was reliable. Billy, they worried, would complicate the simplest problem. They worried he’d obsess over one task at the expense of others. However, Johnny’s drinking disturbed them more. Whatever else could be said about Billy, he wouldn’t be drunk when he enforced the rules about alcohol and drugs.
Why do you allow Johnny to work with alcohol on his breath? Charles asked me.
I’ve always wondered that myself, Gill said.
I didn’t answer. My overriding principle: Make a bad situation less bad. Johnny was my less bad.
Because we’re here for people with problems and despite all of his, he works out better than most.
They didn’t disagree. However, whatever their own problems, Charles, Gill, and Granny understood hypocrisy. They voted for Billy.
Now, are we going to talk about me getting thrown out of the Salvation Army? Granny asked.
Billy, I knew, would be a disaster. I needed a plan. Crisis fueled quick thinking. I reminded the committee that according to the contract, the ED had to sign off on all new hires. I knew McGraw wouldn’t care who I hired. I just had to tell him. I didn’t. Not yet. Instead, I called the committee back for a meeting the next day and commenced to tell them one bald-faced lie after another. I told them that I’d met with McGraw and he had recommended hiring both Billy and Johnny. He wanted one of them to supervise the day program, the other the night shelter. It would provide for better coverage to split the position into two.
Granny and Gill liked the idea. Only Charles objected.
What’s the point of having a hiring committee if McGraw’s just going to make his own decision? he asked.
He didn’t decide, I said. He just gave us another idea. Think about it. This will open up two staff positions.
Charles, I knew, wanted a job. It served my purpose to dangle the possibility now. I couldn’t tell if he picked up on my not-so-subtle hint, but he didn’t push his objection. The contract could talk about homeless people participating in decision-making all it wanted but everyone knew who was in charge. McGraw. The committee had its say. By channeling McGraw and offering a bribe, I had mine.
As I figured, McGraw didn’t care. He thought it was a little cumbersome having two supervisors, but if that’s what I wanted, fine. I gave him some mumbo jumbo about how it was an example of the agency taking a job opening and creating more than just one opportunity. He gave that laugh again and slapped me on the shoulder. He liked how that sounded. Funders would eat it up. McGraw got his talking point. The committee got Billy. I got Johnny. Win-win-win.
I gave Johnny days and Billy nights. There wouldn’t be much to do at night once the lights went out at eight, which I thought would suit Billy best. Johnny worked out as I knew he would. Boozy breath, but fine. Billy, however, was Billy.
I’m sorry I’m late, Billy would apologize to me. The bus was running behind schedule. And I talked to the driver about how that wasn’t right, and he talked back to me. So I wouldn’t get off until he apologized.
I’d listen. I always listened. Billy’s outrage at everyday insults that the rest of us took for granted I found endearing. Soon however, the tardiness got out of hand and I suspended him for two days, but it didn’t make an impression. Finally, I dropped him down to shelter staff again. He didn’t object. OK, he said. The dejected look on his face told me he didn’t understand that I didn’t appreciate his need to confront life’s every disparaging moment.
He was so preoccupied with standing up for his wounded dignity that the demands of being a supervisor had, I think, become just one more humiliation. Whatever he felt didn’t matter. I got what I’d wanted all along. Johnny was now in charge. No one asked me about filling Billy’s position and I didn’t offer.
About two weeks later, McGraw called me into his office. He sat at a long table strewn with files and spreadsheets, glasses perched at the tip of noise. A computer glowed behind him and a shelf behind his head held books about time management. I knocked on his open door. He looked at me, dragged a hand through his mop of blond hair and laughed a here-we-are-in-the-shitstorm laugh that I knew couldn’t be good. He pointed to a chair. I sat down. Then he got to it. Another budget cut. This time the state had decided not to renew a homeless adult programs grant that, among other things, covered some of my staff’s salaries. I’d have to cut some positions and combine others.
Start at the top, McGraw said. Higher the salary the better.
I knew what that meant. In the pecking order of high salaries I was first, Johnny second. Well, I knew I wasn’t going to lay myself off. McGraw looked at me over his glasses, gave that laugh again, and went straight to the nut cutting.
I saw Johnny this morning. He smelled like a brewery. You have to draw some lines.
If I draw lines, I’ll fire everybody.
Johnny came to work drunk. There’s your line.
Now that I’d drawn it, Johnny had nothing to lose going off on me in La Taqueria. I watch him take another unsteady step toward my table. I look at the guy behind the register. He’s adding up receipts and doesn’t notice a thing. Whatever’s going to happen, I guess, will happen. I push back in my chair but remain seated. If I stand, Johnny might think I’m gearing up for a fight. Don’t be the aggressor. De-escalate. Where’d I learn that? Some staff development. Strange what goes through your head when you think a burrito is about to wallpaper your face.
I don’t want it, Johnny, I say again.
He sways and grabs the back of a chair. He drops the burrito on a table and sits sloppily in the chair. Stares at the floor, chin against his chest, arms loose at his sides as if something essential had left him. Saliva hangs off his mouth in a thin line, and he closes his eyes until I assume he’s nodded out.
Johnny, I say. Johnny.
I smell it before I notice Johnny pissing himself, a slow, wet stain unfurling across his crotch.
Johnny, Jesus, wake up!
I get up and shake his shoulder. He opens his eyes slowly, looks lost, confused. He closes them again and I keep shaking him.
Johnny.
He turns his head and stares bleary-eyed, sagging deeper in his chair.
What? he says, his voice burdened by the effort to speak, rising out of his throat in a cracked whisper.
Before I can say anything, he presses a hand against the table and rises seemingly half asleep. He reels over the table like a bop bag, turns slowly, and walks out stiff-legged, arms out for balance, angling through the open door to the street. Through the fogged windows, I see the outline of his body pass in staggering steps. The odor of piss rises off his chair. I was sure I’d take a burrito to the face. I hadn’t expected it to end this way. In the words of my contract, a positive outcome. Staring out the door, I remind myself that Johnny was just another layoff, nothing personal. He brought it on himself. I covered for him until I no longer could but as much as I want to, I can’t rationalize away the guilt I feel wrapped tight and tucked away deep inside me and out of reach most days. I stand beside his chair a moment longer, then reach for the burrito and drop it into my coat pocket. Someone in the shelter will eat it.