I got fired over seventeen dollars once.  The summer after my senior year of high school, I worked for a car dealership who owned between 50-60 convenience stores in Nebraska.  So Jesse Slaymaker and I would travel to these stores for “maintenance,” usually tearing out gas pumps so new could be installed.  It was brutal work that a trained monkey could have done, but it paid pretty well.  Nebraska, as Coach Bell can attest from his drive through there this summer, is not a small place, and the job necessitated Jesse and I spending the night on the road for three or four nights a week.  Because of this, we would get cash to take along for hotels and food, and we would take in the receipts and square the cash bag when we would return.

The accountant we had to do this with was a crusty cuss named Art.  (No, not Mr. Kline, who is neither crusty or a cuss.)  Art would continually bellyache to us about bringing back too many one dollar bills.  There was a particular day when he really laid into us about this, and I guess as a form of punishment gave us a huge amount of ones for our next trip, which was to Chadron.  Chadron was a six hour drive from home; the van we drove didn’t have air conditioning or a radio; these were the days before 5 hour energy drinks and in order to stay awake on the straight, flat, unbelievably boring highways we would insult each other, play various word games, and when we got desperate, sing.  Jesse would go solo on various Hootie and the Blowfish songs, and I would repeatedly sing the Rick Springfield song “Jesse’s Girl.”  (Full disclosure: I kind of did have a crush on his girlfriend at the time, so those of you who know the song understand it had special meaning.)  Slaymaker could kind of sing, but I was atrocious, and I don’t think either one of us, certainly me, would make Mr. Mettert’s cut…

Anyway, after a couple of days of work at Chadron, we were eating lunch getting ready to go home.  The lady who was our 40 something waitress struck up a conversation with us and told us about her kids, one of whom had cerebral palsy.  When the time came to pay up, we realized we had 17 one dollar bills left in the cash bag.  Jesse was and is a good guy, and he and I always had a pretty good connection.  Neither of us said a word, but as we left, I fanned out the 17 ones for a tip. (I don’t remember what the bill was, but I’m reasonably sure the tip was well above 20%.)

Needless to say, Art was not pleased about this; he asked about the seventeen dollar discrepancy, and I told him.  Art had a vein above his left eye that would bulge out when he got angry; I can still see that sucker just about ready to burst as he laid into me… I may have been a 19 year old hothead, but I understood I was wrong; I apologized, and said I had no problem with them taking it out of my next check.  That wasn’t good enough.

Art wanted me to drive back to Chadron and take the tip money back.  I was just digesting that when Art called this waitress, a woman whom he had never even met, a bad name.  And for some reason, that was it for me.  In a moment of misguided, late teen bravado which as I look at it over the course of time I see as both incredibly stupid and oddly noble, I told Art that he would have to fire me before I’d take seventeen dollars back from a woman who had done nothing wrong.  And he had no problem doing just that.

Things turned out OK; I was able to hook on with R&R Tire Company, making field calls to change tractor tires in hayfields.  (Maybe I’ll tell you a story or two on that job someday…) I saw Jesse Slaymaker last spring break when I was home, and he told me that he has told his 9 year old triplets the story of the 17 dollars many times, and confessed that in the story he always says he was fired too (even though he wasn’t.)

So why do I tell you of the only time I was terminated from a job?  Not to brag; don’t get me wrong on that.  I screwed up; I spent money that wasn’t mine in a way in which my employers did not approve of; I deserved to be fired.  But I tell you this in order to convey that there are lines that you need to develop.  And for me, one of those early lines, and one I hope will always keep, was that a job working for an individual who would say something about a woman who he didn’t even know, had never met, and didn’t even care to meet simply because he was angry with me just wasn’t worth it.  There are things that are much more important than covering your own behind.

It is easy to get swept up in “perks” of something; a job, a relationship, a place in an organization, but remember that nothing is worth removing the dignity of someone else simply for your own benefit.  And walking into that diner would have done just that to that waitress.  I have never, ever regretted not driving back to take money that I had given to a woman who needed it a lot more than I needed that job.