Yesterday I told you about fair weather traffic enforcement by the law enforcement officials here in Texas. It seems they just don’t like working in the rain, did I mention that it quit raining just about sundown last night? I don’t think I did, well it did quit raining right before sundown and I just found out at dinner tonight a young man who we are friends with got to meet some of those law enforcement officials last night.
This young man we know is a pretty decent guy, with a wife and four young daughters that range in age from 8 to 15. He has a good job as director of IT security for a major outfit; he also is a former Navy Seal and was injured in combat over in the Middle East back when G W Bush declared war on terrorism. Overall he is a straight good fellow and family man. He has just one tiny little problem and it got the best of him last night.
It turns out that his brother in law has been after him to go to work for the company the brother in law works for and after a whole lot of convincing on just how much better off he would be working for that outfit he agreed to a job interview. It isn’t uncommon now a day for job interviews to be conducted over a dinner in a restaurant, the last job I interviewed for that is exactly where my interview took place, and I even remember having shrimp etouffee with a big glass of un-sweet tee.
The interview for this friend was at a Mexican restaurant that is famous for their fajitas and their margaritas, not necessarily in that order though. The “boss” conducting the interview was downing some margaritas and our friend has a problem with alcohol , he knows it and to be honest I have never even seen him have beer let alone a mixed drink, however after much convincing by the “boss”, our friend had a margarita; then another and some more after that. By the time this drinking party that started out as an interview was over our friend was well over the legal limit to probably walk, let alone drive, but he drove anyway.
Those cops who had been keeping dry all evening were out when the rain quit and they didn’t have much problem spotting our friend weaving down the highway while speeding at about 90MPH. We have a term here in Texas when you are that drunk, we call it “shit faced” and honestly he is probably lucky they caught him and pulled him over before he caused a wreck and killed or injured some innocent people.
It is mind boggling to me that an owner or manager, I don’t know which this “boss” was, would allow himself to get drunk while conducting an interview that one just scrambles my brains on that alone. Not to mention that he kept hounding the person being interviewed to have a drink with him. From what my wife said, the boss made it home okay and was at work today and business as usual for him.
Our friend ended up in the county jail and wasn’t even sobered up enough to go before the judge for a bail hearing until like 2:00 PM on Thursday afternoon, he had to be some kind of drunk that it took that long to sober up. Needless to say our friend has some big expensive legal problems ahead of him, plus I’m pretty sure that the job he currently has will be in jeopardy when the agency he works for gets wind of this episode.
I lost a couple good friends to the hands of drunk drivers and I have had a few co-workers that lost their jobs after getting DWI’s. Nothing good ever comes from drinking and driving unless you are the cop trying to meet your quota on tickets written. I use to run a website that taught people how to keep from getting charged with DWI and screwing up their lives, I even offered a money back guarantee if my program didn’t work. I never had to refund one penny in the four years I ran that site.
The program was very simple and it was easy to follow, “No Thanks. I’m driving.” That was it, if someone offered you a drink, you just responded with that phrase. The key to the program was that you had to practice, and practice using that phrase when you didn’t need it or even when it made no sense to use it, so that when someone did offer you a drink you could refuse without even considering accepting a drink. I use to get a kick out of the responses from waitresses who would ask what kind of salad I would like with my meal and I would tell them. “No, Thanks. I’m driving.” Talk about some confused looks…
I guess I should have kept that site up and running and maybe our friend would have benefitted from it. We were friends while I had it running but I’m not sure that he ever really enrolled himself into it or practiced if he had. Honestly I was shocked at dinner to hear this sad news of his DWI arrest, and I never did hear if he got the job.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper