Every word of it, including the quotes. That must be understood, right off the bat. The following is a work history of Willie Gee (above), a friend of mine from back home. It has been compiled by another friend of mine, Nat “the Truth” Jones. This is an accounting for of every job Willie has ever had, and the reason for his quitting or termination, or, in some cases, both at the same time. If you enjoy Henry Earl’s arrest record, you’re going to enjoy this.
1. Summer 1993 – Gardener A nice couple in Silver Beach hired this bright-eyed teen to tend to their prized garden while they took a well deserved summer vacation. Willie, in his first real work experience, “messed up the timers” and “everything died”. He was promptly fired upon the couple’s return home.
2. Summer and Fall 1993 – Gardener A gentleman named Donnie Walters, despite Willie’s history of ineptitude in the area of botany, decided to give the kid another crack at it and gave him the job of taking care of his garden. This job went on uneventfully for “a couple months” and then Willie quit. “He wanted too much for what he was paying,” Willie would later comment.
3. Summer 1994 – Camp Counselor Willie was recruited by the Hoods, teachers that he had relationships with for years in school, to work as a junior counselor at Camp Greenbrier for Boys in Alderson, West Virginia. Things were rocky almost at once. “I lasted the summer,” Gee would later state. “But I was told I could never come back.” Among the many things he did during his seven weeks at camp was covering children with shaving cream in the middle of the night.
4. 1995 – Cook and Dishwasher Willie worked at the Nassawadox restaurant Little Italy “for about 5 months on the weekends”. He was never a model employee; he was terminated after a dispute with Franco Nocera (owner and proprietor of said establishment) that ended with Willie giving the boss the finger behind his back but “in front of a bunch of other people.”
5. Summer 1996 – Ice Cream Scooper Willie scored a job at Confetti’s, an ice cream shop in Onley, Virginia for the summer. Willie always hated it. This was not a problem for too long as one day he “just stopped coming in”. The owners called after him a few times with no success in locating him.
6. Summer 1997 – Clam Digger Willie worked with Scott Webb and immediately hated it. The job lasted 2 months. During that period, Willie “skipped work a lot” and eventually was “cut from the rotation”. He reflects when prodded that there had been a massive argument that he had with his boss which “may have led to his dismissal”. “If the fight wasn’t a backbreaker in itself, it certainly didn’t help my standing there,” he said.
7. June 1998 to August 1998 – Clinch Valley College ‘Corporate Puppet’ Willie was a manual laborer for the summer at the college he was attending. He was reprimanded for making private calls on the job and when the summer ended he was “not invited back”.
8. Fall Semester 1998 – Computer Lab Worker Willie looked to go low profile this time around, accepting a job working at his college’s computer lab. He was ultimately fired for “stuff I didn’t do”, although he readily admits he had done similar things on other occasions and had not been caught. Fondly remembering the job, he reminisced that he “gave the code out to a lot of people who weren’t supposed to have it.”
9. Summer 1999 – Yard Worker Willie spent the summer with his friend Nat raking leaves and doing other odd jobs around Nat’s parents’ home. It “went OK,” Gee recalled. “There were no real incidents.”
10. Summer 2000 – Camp Counselor Willie took another stab at being a watchful mentor to impressionable youngsters with this colorful stint at Camp Silver Beach. He quit with a week left in the summer term, citing that he was “on a collision course with the administration there,” and “things were definitely heading in a bad direction.” Willie was later banned from the premises about two years later during a non-work related incident.
11. November 2000 – Roofer Willie helped Nat put a roof on a house. Neither of them had any experience doing this, but although sometimes things were tough they did build a good roof eventually. There were no reportable incidents stemming from this gainful employment.
12. October 2000 to March 2001 – Manual Laborer Willie worked at New Ravenna for an impressive five and a half months before he was finally fired. “It had been building to this for a while,” he said. “I was constantly in trouble, always being threatened with drug tests… I argued with the boss about something or other and they fired me.” Although it was a shame to lose the job, Gee does recall that he “bought a Q.P. the day I was fired and made decent money on it.”
13. April 2001 – Night Stocker This night stocking job at Food lion seemed as good a way as any to pay for Willie’s extravagant lifestyle, so he threw his hat in the ring. He worked there for just under two weeks before he quit. Greener pastures were calling him…
14. May 2001 to February 2002 – Hotel Desk Clerk Since Willie had demonstrated a mastery of social interaction in his past lines of work, it was an obvious transition into the service industry. He held this job for close to nine months; a record that would stand for several years to come. He was finally fired for letting his friend Terran have the secret access code and letting him behind the counter, all of which was caught on tape. Recalling that he had distributed a similar code at a former job in college, Gee mused “I guess you can’t keep a secret with me around.”
15. March 2002 to June 2002 – Hotel Desk Clerk Following the success at Best Western, Willie confidently dove into another job in a field he knew like the shady end of Virginia Street. It went well enough for about three months before “there was an argument and they told me to go home. Then they tried to say I quit when I tried to come back.” The story did have a happy ending, however. Massey was about to enter a new phase of his professional career. “After the dispute about me quitting or getting fired, we went to court. I won, and the next thing I knew… I was collecting unemployment.”
16. July 2002 to December 2002 and May 2003 – Unemployed During these stretches, Willie was able to achieve everyone’s true dream: collecting unemployment. “I was getting paid to do nothing. I really enjoyed this time.”
17. May 2003 – Restaurant Worker Willie worked at a fine establishment called Harry’s Barbecue briefly. He “liked it all right,” and “got paid under the table so the unemployment wouldn’t be an issue.” He was eventually forced to quit so he could continue to draw unemployment; he lied to his employer about the real reasons.
18. Summer 2003 – Construction Worker The small company A&R Construction hired Willie as a manual laborer in the summer of this year. It wasn’t a great experience overall. “It took forever to get paid, and we ran out of work because some Arabian guy was being a jerk. I ended up being banned from the restaurant he owned a little later on.” Looking back on it, Gee admits that he’s “pretty sure his boss was a crack head,” and that he was “almost certainly smoking our profits” which led to the delayed payments.
19. August 2003 to October 2003 – Store Cashier Willie dove back into the service industry when he took a job at GNC in the mall. Things went OK for a short while, but then he recalls “the new manager hated me.” Willie then “argued with another store’s manager,” which led to him quitting angrily. Things were not quite resolved, however. Willie confesses to “going back a few times and talking s***, as well as “calling the company a couple of times,” and “cussing them out.”
20. October 2003 to March 2004 – Store Cashier Waldenbooks came calling and Willie was there to answer the call. The job went “fairly well,” and Willie “left under pretty good terms.” Gee does mention as an afterthought that “there was a little embezzling going on. The store was stolen from.”
21. March 2004 to May 2004 – Manual Laborer Hired by Cherrystone Campground after a “job fair,” Willie looked to impress the brass with his tireless work ethic. “It was an awful job,” he said. “I could tell right away.” He was “verbally abused” by the higher-ups regularly, told on one occasion to “quit f****** around.” Willie responded to this command by demanding more money if he was “going to be expected to work this much.” This led to a prolonged verbal altercation in which Willie “cussed him out,” then “defaced my time card,” and stormed off the job. When he returned to get his check, he was not allowed on the premises. Infuriated by this turn of events, Willie muttered in a later interview that “If I didn’t have weed on me, I really might have fought him.” He was banned from ever setting foot there again. “They sent me a letter from the courts and everything,” he remembers. “They were serious about me not coming back.”
22. May 2004 to June 2004 – Waiter When the historic Eastville Inn underwent renovations and decided to open for business, the first order of business was to staff the place with a world class wait staff to treat their customers to a fine dining experience. Willie heard opportunity knocking and answered the door. Things were difficult right away; Willie “couldn’t understand the complicated menu,” and felt the place was “too fancy.” Before too long he was told he “wouldn’t be on the schedule anymore until further notice.” Once this message was delivered, Willie acknowledges that he “could read the writing on the wall. It was pretty clear.”
23. June 2004 to August 2004 – Potato Inspector Inspecting potatoes for the summer seemed a perfect way to chase the blues away. It went well “as far as work goes,” he said later. “It was pretty uneventful… not enough work, I guess.”
24. One Late August Day in 2004 – Manual Laborer Clayworks offered Willie a job, and he eagerly accepted, thinking he would be “working in a store or something.” In fact, he was assigned to a crew and went on to experience a day of dreaded manual labor. “I didn’t sign on for that,” Willie firmly stated when asked about it later. “I didn’t come back for a second day.”
25. August 2004 to February 2006 – Hotel Desk Clerk Getting his job back at Best Western was a lot like “winning the heavyweight title an two separate occasions,” Willie reminisces. This term of employment was unique in many respects. Willie had already been terminated from this establishment once before, he managed to keep it longer than any other job, and he managed to keep several other jobs at various times while at Best Western the second time around. During this second bite at the apple, Willie “had a fight with his boss” that ended with him “punching the door really hard.” He also was scolded more than once for “putting the NO VACANCY sign out,” which one would imagine was not great for business. In the end, he was fired because he was “accused of leaving the front desk too much,” during night shifts. “But the thing is, I’d been doing it the whole time,” he says. “They just decided to have a problem with it all of a sudden.”
26. October 2005 to January 2006 – Working With An Autistic Child Willie tackled this job with some degree of enthusiasm. “All I had to do was play with a kid,” Willie said. Employment ended abruptly when he was terminated for “being accused of possessing something that had crack-cocaine residue on it.” Gee adamantly denies this slanderous attack, saying he had left an article of clothing there and they had found a piece of plastic in it “with something whitish-brown on it.”
27. August 2005 to December 2005 – Teacher’s Aide Northampton County Schools needed a few new employees, and Willie pounced on his chance. Working as an assistant that helped special needs kids, things “went well for the most part.” Sadly, Willie was fired when the school finally got around to doing a background check on him and discovering he had a “marijuana charge” in his recent past.
28. March 2006 – Cafeteria Dishwasher Willie was inexplicably rehired by the good people at Camp Silver Beach, given an opportunity to wash dishes in the cafeteria. The guy who runs the camp “played basketball with me a few times, and saw that I was a hard worker. He mistakenly assumed this would translate into a strong work ethic.” As of the writing of this work history, Willie remains employed by Camp Silver Beach on a “very part-time basis.”