When I was his apprentice, my grandfather would tell me that no one could be a proper jeweler if he had "jelly sausages", fat squishy fingers. A few years ago, I had to hire a third jeweler. I decided to do a blind hiring, whereby each applicant would submit a portfolio of his previous work and I would give the job to one with the best oeuvre. Unfortunately, in my drive to be meritocratic, I ended up hiring a ham with some of the worst jelly sausages I have seen to date. We'll call him Hammy.
THE BIRTHDAY SURPRISE
In the middle of each month except December, we have a birthday party for our employees who were born in that month. Each person gets a cupcake for a certain nearby bakery. Because I have two security guards who work overnight, we set two cupcakes aside in the break room refrigerator; everyone knew the drill with the guards' cupcakes. The cupcakes are not only decadent in terms of their ingredients, they're also quite large; I've never finished one in a single sitting.
It's June, and Hammy has been with us for three months. We had our birthday party, everyone got his cupcake, everything goes normally for the rest of the day. At the end of the day I noticed that there was only one cupcake in the break room. I thought I had filled out the order wrong and got one too few cupcakes. It's no big problem: I buy the two guards dinner and they can split the one cupcake that is there.
In July I was careful to order enough cupcakes for everyone. But this time there were two missing cupcakes. Now, all of my security people are retired LEO's or military, and so cake probably isn't on top of their list of priorities, but I still don't like to leave them out of the shop's activities. So once again, I have to make things right for the two night guards.
In August I ordered two additional unfrosted cupcakes. Someone who isn't me prepared a special frosting consisting of an ungodly amount of beta-alanine mixed into store bought frosting. After the birthday party, SWIM swapped out the two guards' cupcakes with the special cupcakes. About an hour before closing, Hammy comes into my office complaining that he's having an allergic reaction to something and wants to take the rest of the day off.
In September, the same thing happened. By October, however, he had learned to stop eating other people's food.
THE DISPLAY CASE
Each of my jewelers has his own display case to show off what he's made. The things in these cases are for sale, but they don't really sell well; they're more or less to show what each jeweler can do, to people who want to hire them for commissions. Each jeweler has access to the store's gem collection (save one stone) for use in their works on display.
It's like saying to a chef, "here's virtually every ingredient you can think of, make something." Every jeweler who has ever worked for me has found this arrangement to be like a dream... except one. Enter Hammy.
Hammy left his case completely empty for the first two months he was here. "Hammy, I'm tired of looking at an empty case. Can you fix that?" To his credit, he did fill up his case. It took him three weeks, but he filled it.
He filled it with wedding bands; plain, unadorned wedding bands. Making a wedding band is one of the simplest things to do: you take a span a wire, wrap it around a mandrel, weld the two ends of the wire together, polish the ring, and you're done. It takes literally ten minutes.
So, I have one case with with plenty of white diamonds and platinum that looks like the New Year's Eve in Time Square. I have a second case the plenty of colored stones and fancy diamonds with something that the jeweler calls the "Rainbow Tiara". And in the final case, I have fifty plain, unadorned wedding bands.
"Hammy, don't you think you should put a bit more effort into your display case"
"No, I'm too busy, I can't."
"But that's how clients will hire you for commissions."
"I'd rather not." Oh no, I've hired Bartleby, the Ham. "I'm just too busy." With that, I let the issue die.
THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
Every year, on the first Sunday after Christmas, all of my employees and their plus ones, go to dinner at a nice restaurant and I pickup the bill at the end of the night.
So, we have our Christmas party. Everyone has a good time and to my great surprise Hammy did not embarrass himself by having half the restaurant sent to his table. The night winds down, everyone clears out, and I go to pay the bill. It's nearly $800 more than last year. I'm a bit annoyed, but it's late and I'm tired.
The next morning I look over the bill. Hammy came stag and so his table only listed a single main. He also ordered four half-bottles of Chateau d'Yquem. Hammy had managed to create a meal that cost as much five regular person meals.
THE LAST STRAW
After several months, Hammy decided it was time to start trying to get commissions. He took my advice and decided to put something besides plain, unadorned wedding bands in his display case. So he set to work making a white diamond necklace with a fancy color diamond pendant.
It took him a long time, but he was finally ready to start setting stones. Everything is coming together.
While Hammy is setting his stones he keeps going back and forth between his bench and the gem safe. I think nothing of it, he's probably just having a hard time matching stones. I went to have lunch with a client, and don't give a second thought to Hammy.
I come back as Hammy is leaving for his lunch break, still no problem. As soon as I sit down at my desk, my assistant comes in and says, "Hammy cracked some diamonds."
I'm thinking, no big deal, shit happens, learn, and move on. "Did you tell him not to make a habit of it?"
"Uh, you should look at his sweepings." (Sweepings are like gold filings, etc. that get swept off the bench, but still have value and so can't just be tossed in the trash.)
I went over to his bench and look at his sweepings. "What the hell. LOOK AT THAT. WHAT THE FUCK." There was probably about 50 carats of broken, chipped, and shattered diamonds. Then I saw something that pissed me off so badly, that I just went silent. There are no words in the English language that are vulgar enough to communicate how angry I was. There beneath the pile of diamond dust, was an insanely expensive, vivid pink diamond that had been cleaved in two right down the center.
I could only pick up the poor diamond that never got a chance to be part of something special, and take it into my office. I sat in silence mourning the diamond and waiting for Hammy to return.
When he got back, I was livid. It was a quiet, calm, but still furious rage. Hammy was sitting in front of me across my desk. I was sitting within six feet of an unrepentant murder with the body of his victim between us.
"Why did you feel it was okay to break stone after stone after stone?"
"I was having a hard time getting the setting right. I did stop using the diamonds and tried to practice on that synthetic (he looked down at his victim), before [my assistant] told me to go to lunch."
"That was a very rare pink diamond. It is... it was worth more than a brand new Jag."
"Well, I didn't know that. I would have been better off using that ruby next to it."
At this point, I lost my shit. The ruby he was referring to is an epically valuable red diamond that has been in my family for at least four generations: it is the one stone that every employee knows not to touch. I don't remember exactly what I said after that point, but I do remember using the phrase, "Fuck the fuck off, and get the fuck out." And with that he was fired.
TL/DR: I hired a fat ham. It went just as expected. I fired a fat ham.
Submitted June 21, 2015 at 12:30AM by MuscleMouseBro http://ift.tt/1GyTy88 TalesofFatHate
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