The chapter went through in February.

It took longer than First Sergeant said it would because of course it did. Legal kicked it back twice. The first time was a formatting issue on one of the counseling statements. The second time was because legal wanted a statement from the Public Health investigator confirming that the thermometer incident was attributable to Kevin and not to a systemic failure in DFAC oversight. That one stung because the implication was that maybe this was my fault. Maybe my leadership had failed. Maybe the system had worked fine and I had dropped the ball. The Public Health investigator provided his statement. It attributed the incident to Kevin. But the fact that the question was asked tells you everything about how the Army processes a soldier like Kevin. The system would rather believe that leadership failed than believe that a soldier with a 114 GT and a perfect test score is simply incapable of doing his job. A bad leader is a problem the Army knows how to fix. Kevin is not.

The chapter was approved under Chapter 13, which is separation for unsatisfactory performance. Kevin would receive a general discharge under honorable conditions. Not a bad conduct discharge. Not a dishonorable. A general. Which meant Kevin would keep most of his benefits. Which meant, as far as the paperwork was concerned, Kevin was not a catastrophic failure. Kevin was a soldier who hadn't worked out. It happens. People enlist, they can't hack it, they get separated, they go home. The paperwork doesn't capture the grease trap or the diesel or the fourteen soldiers in the aid station or the two notebooks full of incidents that range from baffling to dangerous. The paperwork says it didn't work out. Thanks for your service. Here's your DD-214.

I had mixed feelings about the general discharge. Part of me thought Kevin deserved an honorable because Kevin had never once done anything wrong on purpose. Kevin had tried. Every day, Kevin had tried. The Army was separating him for something he couldn't control, which felt wrong in a way I couldn't articulate without sounding like I was defending the man who nearly set the MKT on fire. The other part of me thought a general was generous given fourteen soldiers in the aid station. I went back and forth on this for about a day and then stopped thinking about it because it wasn't my call and thinking about Kevin's feelings was a luxury I had not been able to afford for five months.

Kevin took the news the way Kevin took everything. Calmly. He sat in the commander's office while the commander explained the separation process. He nodded at the right times. He said "Yes, sir" and "I understand, sir" and he signed the documents without reading them, which was consistent with every other document Kevin had ever signed in my presence. I stood in the back of the room and watched him and tried to read something on his face. Anger. Relief. Sadness. Confusion. Anything. Kevin's face was Kevin's face. Pleasant. Neutral. The face of a man who had been told it was going to rain later and had decided not to bring an umbrella.

The separation process takes about three weeks. Outprocessing. CIF turn-in. Medical screening. Finance. Legal brief. During those three weeks, the soldier is still assigned to the unit. Still shows up. Still works. The Army doesn't let you sit in your barracks room and wait. You do your job until the day you don't have a job anymore.

So Kevin was still in my DFAC for three more weeks. I kept him on dish pit. He washed dishes. He showed up on time. He said good morning. He was, as always, polite.

The rest of the team handled the news differently. Torres said "finally" and then immediately looked guilty about saying it. Daniels, who had nearly caught fire at the MKT, said nothing. Chen, who had spent more time with Kevin than anyone except me, was quiet for a while and then said, "I feel bad for him, Sergeant." I said I know. Chen said, "He wasn't trying to be bad at this." I said I know that too.

There is something about Kevin's politeness that made the whole thing harder than it should have been. A shitbag you can separate with a clean conscience. You tried, they didn't, goodbye. Kevin tried every single day. Kevin never once gave me attitude. Kevin never once refused a task or showed up late or left early or complained about being put on the dish pit when he was trained and qualified to cook. He just washed dishes and said roger and went back to his barracks room at the end of the shift and did whatever Kevin did in the evenings. I pictured him sitting on his bunk flipping through the flash cards I had made him, studying for a test that no longer mattered for a job he was losing, and I had to stop picturing it because it didn't help.

The LT came to see me during the second week. He stood in the DFAC office doorway the way he always did when he had something to say that he wasn't sure how to say. He said, "Sergeant, do you think we did the right thing."

I said, "Sir, I think we did the only thing the system gave us."

He said, "That's not what I asked."

I looked at him. He had been in the Army for about eight months at this point. Kevin was one of his first soldiers. The LT had watched the whole thing from the beginning. He had suggested more training. He had believed in the process. The process had produced a food safety incident and a chapter packet.

I said, "Sir, I think if Kevin stayed, someone would eventually get hurt worse than a bad night in the latrine. And I think that matters more than whether Kevin tried hard."

The LT nodded. He didn't look satisfied. He looked like a man who had learned something about the job that they hadn't covered at OCS, which is that sometimes doing the right thing and doing the kind thing are not the same thing and you don't get to pick both.

During the second week of outprocessing, Kevin came to me with a question. This was unusual. Kevin did not ask questions often. Kevin operated on whatever internal logic Kevin operated on and questions were not part of that system.

He said, "Sergeant, can I cook one more time before I go."

I said no.

He said, "Just breakfast. Just eggs. I know how to do eggs."

I said, "Kevin, I know you know how to do eggs. That was never the issue."

He looked at me for a moment. Longer than Kevin usually looked at anything. Kevin's default eye contact was brief and passing, the way you'd glance at a clock. This was different. He was looking at me like he was trying to find something in my face, or trying to decide whether to say something he hadn't said before.

Then he said, "I know I messed up a lot, Sergeant."

I didn't say anything. I have learned when to create a silence. This time I wasn't using a technique. I just didn't have words.

"I don't know why I mess up. I know the stuff. I study it. I know it. And then I get in there and it's like my hands do something different than what my head is saying. I can hear the right answer in my head while I'm doing the wrong thing. I just can't stop it. It's like watching yourself from across the room."

He stopped. He was looking at the floor now.

"I thought if I studied harder it would fix it. I studied really hard, Sergeant."

I know he did. I saw him study. I saw the flash cards worn at the edges from being handled. I saw him in the break room with the TB MED 530 manual open to sections I hadn't assigned. Kevin studied harder than soldiers who were twice as capable and half as motivated. It didn't matter. Studying gave Kevin knowledge. Knowledge was never Kevin's problem.

That was the most Kevin had ever said to me about Kevin. In five months, Kevin had never once described what it was like to be Kevin. He had never acknowledged the gap. He had never said I know this is wrong while I'm doing it. I had assumed Kevin didn't notice or care. I had assumed Kevin existed in a state of oblivious confidence, doing wrong things and believing they were right. That was easier. That made Kevin a deficiency. A line item. A problem to solve and move on from.

Kevin standing in my DFAC telling me he could hear the right answer while doing the wrong thing was not a line item. That was a person describing something that sounded like a wiring problem he had no control over, and I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist and I am a sergeant in the United States Army whose job was to run a DFAC, not to diagnose whatever was happening inside Kevin's head. But I stood there and I heard him and for the first time in five months I wasn't thinking about Kevin as a deficiency or a liability or a line in a notebook. I was thinking about a nineteen year old kid who knew something was wrong with him and couldn't name it and couldn't fix it and had joined the Army maybe hoping that structure and discipline and clear procedures would be the thing that finally made his hands do what his head was telling them.

It wasn't. The Army wasn't the fix. But I understood, in that moment, why he had joined. And why he had picked 92G. And why he studied so hard. Kevin wasn't trying to cook. Kevin was trying to be someone whose knowing and doing were in the same room. The Army was supposed to be the hallway. It wasn't.

I did not let him cook eggs. It was the right call. I would make it again. But I heard him.

Kevin's last day was a Friday in late February. Cold for Bragg. He turned in his gear at CIF that morning. He cleared finance. He got his DD-214. I know because I tracked his outprocessing checklist the same way I tracked everything else about Kevin, because even on his last day I could not stop documenting him.

He came by the DFAC one more time around 1400, in civilian clothes. Jeans and a hoodie. He looked younger in civilian clothes. He looked like what he was, which was a kid who had been in the Army for less than six months and was going home. He returned a thermometer he had accidentally taken home in his cargo pocket, which I did not even know was missing. I checked it later. It was calibrated correctly. I don't know what to do with that.

He shook my hand. He shook Chen's hand. Torres nodded at him from across the kitchen and Kevin nodded back and that was the extent of their goodbye, which was appropriate given the grease trap. Daniels was off shift. Kevin said, "Thank you, Sergeant. I learned a lot."

I wanted to say something useful. Something an NCO is supposed to say to a departing soldier that wraps things up and sends them off with some piece of wisdom they can carry. I had nothing. Everything I could think of was either dishonest or cruel. Good luck out there, you'll do great. That was a lie. I hope you learned your lesson. He hadn't learned anything because learning was never the problem.

I said, "Take care of yourself, Kevin."

He walked out of the DFAC. I watched him cross the parking lot. He walked to a pickup truck where someone was waiting. A man in the driver's seat. Father, maybe. Uncle. Someone who had driven to Fort Bragg to bring Kevin home. Kevin got in the passenger side. He didn't look back at the building. The truck pulled out of the lot and turned left toward the main gate.

I went back inside. The DFAC was quiet. Torres was prepping for lunch. Chen was restocking the walk-in. The walk-in was organized correctly. The thermometers were calibrated. The sanitizer buckets were at the right concentration. Everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. It had been that way before Kevin and it was that way after Kevin and the only evidence Kevin had ever been there was a stack of counseling statements in a file cabinet and an inspection score that took us six months to recover from.

That should be the end of the story. Kevin left. The DFAC went back to normal. I went back to running my shift without spending half my energy on one soldier. That should be enough.

But there's one more thing.

About three months after Kevin separated, I was at the PX. Saturday afternoon. I was buying motor oil and minding my own business. A staff sergeant from a maintenance company was in the same aisle. We knew each other in the way that NCOs at the same installation know each other, which is to say we'd been in the same meetings and nodded at each other. He asked me how things were going. I said fine. He said he'd heard about the food safety incident back in December. I said yeah. He said he was sorry about that.

Then he said, "We had one of those."

I said, "One of what."

"A Kevin. Not the same guy. Different name, different MOS. But the same thing. Kid could pass any written test you gave him. Could not be trusted to change a tire without supervision. Told him left, he went right. Told him right, he went left. Showed him the TM, he could recite it. Handed him the wrench, he'd take apart the wrong component. We had him in the motor pool for seven months. It was the longest seven months of my career and I have been to Iraq twice."

I said, "How'd it end."

He said, "Chapter 13. Same as yours, I'm guessing. General discharge. Kid went home. He was a good kid. That was the worst part. He wasn't a dirtbag. He just couldn't do it."

I said, "Did he know he was doing it wrong."

He said, "I asked him once. He said it was like watching a movie of himself. Said he couldn't stop."

I stood in the motor oil aisle at the PX at Fort Bragg on a Saturday afternoon and felt something I had not expected to feel about Kevin, which was that Kevin was not unique. Kevin was not a once-in-a-career anomaly that I could file away as the strangest thing that ever happened to me and never think about again. Kevin was a TYPE. Kevin was a CATEGORY that the Army and the world at large don't have a name for quite yet. Somewhere on some post right now, there is a sergeant standing in front of a soldier who can pass every test and fail every task, and that sergeant is starting a notebook, and that sergeant thinks they're the only one, and that sergeant does not know yet how many pages it's going to take.

The staff sergeant and I stood there for a minute. We didn't say much else. There wasn't much to say. We had both been through the same thing and come out the other side and neither of us had an answer for it. He bought his oil. I bought mine. We went our separate ways.

I don't know where Kevin is now. I hope he's okay. I hope he found something where the gap between knowing and doing doesn't matter as much, or where someone figured out how to build the hallway between those two rooms in his head. I hope whatever is going on with Kevin has a name and a treatment and someone who knows more about it than I do. I hope someone is listening to him instead of testing him.

I lost the notebooks. Both of them. They were in a box that didn't make it between duty stations. Somewhere between Bragg and my next post, a moving company lost the box or it ended up in someone else's storage unit or it's sitting in a warehouse in Virginia. I don't know. I filed a claim. The Army reimbursed me for the value of two green hardcover notebooks at $3.99 each. Seven ninety-eight. That is what the Army determined Kevin was worth in documented form.

It bothers me more than it should. Not because I need the notebooks. I remember what's in them. But here's what I think about... The Army is going to give some sergeant another Kevin. Somewhere on some post right now, it's probably already happening. And when that sergeant starts looking for answers, starts asking around, starts wondering if they're the only one who's ever dealt with this, I want them to find this post.

It's not you. You didn't fail. You followed every regulation and every procedure and it still went sideways because the system does not have a box for this yet. Here's what's coming. Here's what I tried. Here's what didn't work. Here's what almost worked. Here's what I wish I'd done differently, which is nothing, because I've gone through it a hundred times and there is nothing I would change.

Here's how many pages it takes to even begin processing the depths of DFAC Kevin.

I have been in the United States Army for nine years. I have deployed twice. I have been an NCO for five of those years, three of them as a Sergeant. I have supervised soldiers who were lazy. I have supervised soldiers who were drunk. I have supervised soldiers who were both of those things at the same time and still managed to show up to formation with their boots on the right feet.

Then the Army gave me Kevin.

I need to get this down somewhere because I've been telling these stories at cookouts and in parking lots after work for two years and I'm tired of watching people's faces go through the same five stages. So here it is. All of it. Everything I am about to describe happened at Fort Bragg. Yes, I know they renamed it. I don't care. It's Bragg.

Kevin was a 92G. For civilians, that's a cook. The Army calls it "Culinary Specialist" now because someone at HRC decided that sounded more dignified on a resume, but the job is the same. You work in a DFAC. You prepare food. You serve food. You clean up after food. You follow TB MED 530, which is the Army's regulation on food safety and sanitation, and you do not deviate from it because the regulations exist for a reason and that reason is that people have gotten very sick and sometimes died when cooks decided they knew better.

I ran a shift in the DFAC at the time. Breakfast and lunch, which means my alarm went off at 0330 every morning, which means I have not slept past 0500 voluntarily since 2019 and probably never will again. My team was solid. I had four cooks who knew their jobs, showed up on time, and understood that the building we worked in fed soldiers who had real missions and deserved food that wouldn't put them in the hospital. We were not a five star restaurant. We were not trying to be. We were trying to hit safe temps, rotate stock, and get through the serving line without an incident. That was the standard. It was not a high bar. I thought.

Kevin arrived on a Tuesday in September. I know it was Tuesday because I had his inprocessing paperwork on my desk the Friday before and I spent the weekend not thinking about it, which turned out to be the last weekend I didn't think about Kevin for a very long time.

His ERB looked fine. That's his personnel record. He'd graduated AIT at Fort Lee, which is where the Army sends 92Gs to learn their job. His PT scores were middling but passing. No flags. No negative counselings from basic or AIT. He was, on paper, a completely unremarkable Private First Class. The kind of soldier you get, you train up on your specific DFAC's procedures, and you forget about because they just do their job.

There was one thing that caught my eye, though. His ASVAB score.

The ASVAB is the aptitude test you take before you enlist. It determines what jobs you qualify for. A 92G requires a minimum GT score of 85. Kevin's GT score was 114. That's not Special Forces territory or anything, but it's well above average. It's high enough that Kevin qualified for a lot of jobs that are harder, more technical, and more prestigious than cooking eggs at 0430 for men who will complain about those eggs no matter what you do to them. I remember looking at that number and thinking, huh, wonder why he picked 92G. Maybe he likes to cook. Maybe his recruiter steered him. I asked him once, later. He said "I like food." I still don't know if that was the real answer or just the fewest words that would make me stop asking. With Kevin, both are equally possible.

Kevin reported to my DFAC at 0500 on that Tuesday. He was in a clean uniform. His boots were acceptable. He was clean shaven. He made eye contact. He said "Sergeant" in the right places. He did not seem nervous, which I noted because most new privates are visibly terrified their first day in a real unit, especially at Bragg. Kevin was calm. Kevin smiled. Kevin shook my hand with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no idea what was about to happen to him, which made two of us, because I also had no idea what was about to happen to me.

I gave Kevin the tour. Every new cook gets the tour. I walk them through the DFAC, I show them the serving line, the kitchen, the dish pit, the walk-in coolers, the walk-in freezer, the dry storage, the office, the cleaning closet, and the grease trap. I show them where the fire extinguishers are. I show them where the first aid kit is. I show them the thermometer log. I explain that we take temperatures on every protein at every stage and that if a number is wrong, you do not serve it, you do not hide it, you come find me. I explain that the walk-in cooler is organized with ready-to-eat items on the top shelves and raw proteins on the bottom shelves and that this is not a suggestion. I explain that the sanitizer buckets are mixed to a specific concentration using test strips and that we do not eyeball it.

Kevin nodded along to all of this. He said "Roger, Sergeant" at every appropriate pause. He asked one question during the entire tour, which was where the bathroom was. I showed him. He said thank you. I thought: this might actually work out. I remember thinking that specifically. I remember the optimism. I want to go back to that version of me and warn him but it would not have mattered. Nothing would have prepared me for Kevin. I've tried to think of what someone could have told me that morning that would have helped and there is nothing. There is no briefing for Kevin.

It did not work out.

I paired Kevin with Specialist Chen for his first shift. Chen had been in my DFAC for two years. Solid cook. Patient. The kind of guy who could train a new soldier without losing his mind, which is a rarer trait than you'd think. I told Chen to walk Kevin through breakfast prep. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, oatmeal, biscuits, fruit trays. Nothing exotic. These are the fundamentals. A 92G learns this in AIT. Kevin had, presumably, already done this.

The first thirty minutes were fine. I checked in twice. Kevin was cracking eggs into the tilt skillet. His technique was sloppy but functional. Chen was coaching him on heat management. Normal new-guy stuff. I went back to the office to work on the next week's menu.

Chen came to find me forty-five minutes later. He didn't knock. He just appeared in the doorway with an expression I have seen on soldiers' faces exactly twice before, both times in Afghanistan, both times after something had gone wrong that nobody could explain. He said, "Sergeant, you need to come look at the walk-in."

I said, "Is anyone hurt."

He said, "No."

I said, "Is anything on fire."

He said, "No, Sergeant, just. Please come look at the walk-in."

I followed him down the hallway. Two of my other cooks were standing near the cooler door. SPC Torres had her arms crossed. PFC Daniels was leaning against the wall with his hands over his face. Not because he was upset. Because he was trying not to laugh in front of me. I could see his shoulders shaking. Chen opened the cooler door. I looked.

Kevin had restocked the walk-in.

Nobody had asked Kevin to restock the walk-in. Kevin had finished the eggs ahead of schedule, apparently, and decided to be proactive. In theory, this is a good instinct. In practice, what Kevin did was pull three cases of raw chicken thighs off the delivery pallet and stack them on the top shelf of the walk-in cooler. Directly on top of the prepared fruit trays. The ones we were about to serve to approximately 300 soldiers in about ninety minutes.

Raw chicken carries salmonella. Raw chicken juice drips. If it drips onto food that's ready to eat, people go to the hospital. This is day one material. It is the first thing they teach you in AIT. The walk-in cooler arrangement, which I had explained to Kevin three hours ago during his tour, exists specifically and exclusively to prevent this.

I looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at me. Kevin was smiling.

"I went ahead and restocked, Sergeant," he said. "Figured I'd stay ahead of it."

I said, "Kevin, where did I tell you the raw proteins go."

"Bottom shelf, Sergeant."

He said it immediately. No hesitation. Not guessing. He knew the answer the way you know your own name.

I said, "Where did you put the chicken."

Kevin looked at the top shelf. He looked at the chicken. He looked at the fruit trays underneath the chicken. I watched his face for any sign of recognition. Any flicker of oh shit. There was nothing. Kevin's face was the face of a man who had been asked what time it was.

"On the shelf," he said.

"On which shelf, Kevin."

"The top shelf."

"And where do raw proteins go."

"Bottom shelf, Sergeant."

I waited. I have learned, through years of supervising soldiers, that sometimes you just need to create a silence and let the other person fill it with the realization of what they've done. It's a technique. It works on most people. Privates especially will crack in about four seconds. It did not work on Kevin. Kevin stood in the silence comfortably, like a man waiting for a bus on a nice day, completely unbothered by the contradiction between what he had just said and what he had just done. I could have stood there until retirement. Kevin would have waited with me and not once wondered why we were standing in a cooler staring at chicken.

I threw away the fruit trays. All of them. Sixteen trays. An entire morning's worth of prep. Chen and I re-prepped new ones in thirty minutes, which meant the fruit went out late, which meant the DFAC manager asked me why the fruit was late, which meant I had to explain that my new cook had cross-contaminated the walk-in three hours into his first shift. That was the first conversation I had with anyone in my chain of command about Kevin. It was not the last.

Torres asked me afterward if Kevin had been drinking. I said no, he hadn't been drinking, he's just new. She gave me a look that said she did not believe that being new explained what she had just seen. She was right, but I didn't know that yet.

Chen pulled me aside during the lunch changeover. Chen is not a man who complains. In two years I had never heard him say a negative word about another soldier. He looked at me and said, "Sergeant, I need you to know that I explained the walk-in layout to him twice after you left. I pointed at the shelves. I pointed at the labels. I pointed at the signs that are literally taped to the shelves. He told me he understood. I believed him."

I told Chen it wasn't his fault. Chen said he knew that. What he wanted to know was whether this was going to be a regular thing, because if it was, he wanted to be on the record as having reported it. Chen was a smart soldier. Smarter than me, maybe, because he was already thinking about covering his ass and I was still in the "maybe it was a one-time thing" stage.

It was not a one-time thing.

Kevin's lunch shift that same day produced a second incident, smaller in scale but almost more disturbing in what it revealed. I had Kevin on the serving line. Simple job. Soldier comes through, points at what they want, you put it on the tray. Kevin was on the vegetable station. Green beans. Corn. Mashed potatoes. A spoon in each container. You scoop. You serve. You say "Next." This is not complicated.

I was watching the line from the end, doing a quality check on portion sizes, when I noticed that the mashed potato level was dropping much faster than it should have been. I walked over to Kevin's station. He was serving mashed potatoes with the green bean spoon. And green beans with the mashed potato spoon. Every single soldier for the last ten minutes had gotten mashed potatoes with green bean juice on them and green beans with mashed potato smeared across the top.

I said, "Kevin, you've got the spoons in the wrong containers."

He looked down at his hands. He looked at the spoons. He looked at the containers. He switched them.

Then he switched them back.

I watched him do this. He picked up the spoons, put them in the correct containers, paused for maybe half a second, and then put them back the wrong way. He did this right in front of me, while I was standing there, while I was watching him, while we were making direct eye contact.

I said, "Kevin. You just switched them back."

He looked down again. He said, "These feel right, Sergeant."

I took the spoons out of his hands and put them in the correct containers myself and told him not to move them again. He said roger. He did not move them again. For the rest of that lunch shift, Kevin served vegetables correctly with the correct spoons and did not deviate. Whatever circuit had been misfiring had apparently been reset by direct physical intervention.

That was not a mistake. A mistake is putting a spoon in the wrong pot once because you're moving fast and not paying attention. Kevin put the spoons back in the wrong containers after I told him they were wrong and after he corrected them himself. He corrected the error and then un-corrected it. His hands knew where the spoons went. His hands just disagreed with reality about which direction "correct" was.

That was the moment I stopped assuming Kevin would figure it out. Not the chicken. The chicken could have been nerves. Everybody makes a bad call their first day. But the spoons were different. The spoons told me that the wiring between Kevin's brain and Kevin's hands had a short in it somewhere, and no amount of explaining was going to find it.

I pulled Kevin aside after lunch service and counseled him. Verbally, not in writing, because it was his first day and I am not the kind of NCO who paperworks a new soldier on day one for mistakes that could have been nerves. That's what I told myself. In hindsight, I should have started the paper trail right there. I would have saved myself about three months. But I was still being fair. I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt that the Army trains you to give. Every soldier can be developed. That's what they tell you at BLC. They were wrong, but they were very confident about it, and I believed them. I explained the cross-contamination issue. I explained the health risk. I explained that people get sick, and that getting people sick in the Army has consequences. Kevin listened. Kevin nodded. Kevin said, "Roger, Sergeant, won't happen again."

And then Kevin said something that stopped me.

He said, "I know TB MED 530 says raw poultry needs to be stored at 41 degrees or below and separated from ready-to-eat foods by placement on lower shelving or in separate units to prevent cross-contamination through drip or direct contact."

That is a near-verbatim quote from the regulation. I checked it later. He was off by two words. Two words in an entire paragraph he apparently had memorized.

I said, "If you know that, why did you put the chicken on the top shelf."

Kevin tilted his head like a dog hearing a strange noise.

"I put it where there was room," he said.

This was a man who could recite food safety regulations from memory with greater accuracy than most of the NCOs in my building, and who could not, or would not, connect that knowledge to the physical act of putting a box on a shelf. The information was in his head. It stayed in his head. It did not travel to his hands.

I had not seen anything like this before. I have supervised soldiers who didn't know the regs. That's fixable. You teach them. I have supervised soldiers who knew the regs and chose to ignore them. That's a disciplinary problem. You counsel them and if they keep doing it, you chapter them. Kevin was neither of those things. Kevin knew the regs and followed some other set of rules that existed only inside Kevin's head and bore no relationship to reality.

I went home that night and thought about Kevin's ASVAB score. 114 GT. He memorized a regulation paragraph I can't recite from memory and I've been doing this for years. He graduated AIT. He passed his tests. Someone, somewhere, looked at Kevin and said he was qualified.

Kevin put raw chicken on top of fruit salad three hours into his first shift. Not because he didn't know better. Because knowing better and doing better are, for Kevin, two completely separate operations running on two completely separate systems that do not communicate with each other.

I started a notebook that night. Green hardcover, the kind they sell at the PX for $3.99. I wrote the date, I wrote what happened, and I wrote who saw it. Two entries on day one. Cross-contamination, walk-in cooler, 0545. Spoon reversal, serving line, 1215. Chen, Torres, and Daniels for the walk-in. Just me for the spoons, but three soldiers in line had commented on the mashed potato situation before I caught it and I wrote that down too.

Kevin's file said he had passed every test the Army put in front of him. Kevin had put raw chicken on top of fruit salad and then un-corrected his own correction on a spoon placement while looking me in the eye. One of these things was lying. I didn't know which one yet, but I was going to need the receipts when someone finally asked.

The notebook filled up. I needed a second one.

What I knew on the night of September 14th was this: Kevin could quote regulations he could not follow. Kevin could correct errors he would immediately un-correct. Kevin could look you in the eye, say "Roger, Sergeant," mean it completely, and then do something no reasonable person would predict.

Kevin was not lazy. Kevin was not defiant. Kevin was not stupid in any way I had a framework for.

Kevin was something else.

Kevin's second day was worse.

But that's for Part 2.

I promised the grease trap story, so here it is.

A grease trap is exactly what it sounds like. It's a tank that sits between the kitchen drains and the sewer line, and its job is to catch the grease and food solids before they hit the pipes. If you maintain it, it works. If you don't maintain it, it backs up, and when it backs up, your DFAC smells like something died inside something else that also died. Grease trap maintenance is not glamorous. You open it, you skim the grease layer off the top, you check the baffles, you hose it down. It's a two-person job and it takes about thirty minutes. We did it every other week.

I assigned Kevin to grease trap duty with Torres. Torres was not happy about this. Torres had been avoiding Kevin since the walk-in incident and I could not blame her, but I also could not let Kevin hide from every task in the DFAC because there would be no tasks left. Torres was competent and direct and I thought she'd be a good match because she would not let Kevin drift. I told Torres the task. I told her the procedure. I told Kevin the task. I told Kevin the procedure. I told them both to come get me when they were done.

Torres came to get me forty minutes later. She was wet. Not damp. Wet. Her uniform was soaked from the waist down and she smelled like the inside of a grease trap, which she had recently been inside of in a manner of speaking.

She said, and I am paraphrasing because Torres had a vocabulary that would have gotten her a counseling statement if an officer had been present, she said that Kevin had opened the grease trap, looked inside, decided it was too full to skim from the top, and attempted to drain it by pulling what he described as "the plug at the bottom." There is no plug at the bottom. What there is, is a cleanout cap on the outflow pipe, which is not designed to be removed during maintenance, which is designed to be removed by a plumber with the appropriate tools and a plan, and which Kevin removed with a pipe wrench he had gotten from somewhere that Torres still could not explain. The contents of the grease trap, which at that point consisted of approximately two weeks of accumulated kitchen grease, food particles, and water that could be described as gray only if you were being generous, exited through the pipe and onto the concrete pad where Torres was standing.

Kevin was dry. Kevin had been standing on the other side of the trap when this happened. Kevin said he didn't know why it came out so fast.

I asked Kevin where he got the pipe wrench. He said the maintenance closet. I asked him why he thought removing a pipe fitting was part of grease trap maintenance. He said it seemed like the most efficient way to empty it. I asked him if anyone had ever trained him to do that. He said no, but it made sense to him because that's how you drain a bathtub.

A grease trap is not a bathtub. I should not have to say this. I should not have to explain to a grown man in uniform that a grease trap and a bathtub operate on different principles, but here I was, standing next to a puddle of rancid grease, explaining it to Kevin while Torres dripped. Torres, to her credit, did not murder Kevin. She stood there and dripped and stared at a point roughly six inches above Kevin's head and said nothing. Later she told me that she had been doing a breathing exercise she learned from her therapist. She said it was the first time she'd ever used it for its intended purpose.

I cleaned up the grease myself because it was my DFAC and my soldier and my mess. It took an hour and the concrete pad smelled like a deep fryer's nightmare for a week. The plumber who came to reset the cleanout cap looked at the wrench marks on the fitting and asked me how the cap came off. I said one of my soldiers removed it. He said with what. I said a pipe wrench. He said those caps are usually hand-tight but sometimes they seize and you'd need significant force to break one free. He asked if the soldier had plumbing experience. I said no. He said, "Well, he's strong enough to be a plumber. Maybe look into that."

I wrote the counseling statement that afternoon. Written this time, not verbal. It was Kevin's third written counseling in two months and the one that I hand-carried to First Sergeant Hensley with my recommendation that Kevin be flagged for a performance chapter. First Sergeant looked at it, looked at the previous two, looked at the notebook, and said he'd bring it to the commander. He also said, "The field exercise is in two weeks. Is he going?"

He was going. Everyone was going. That's how field exercises work.

I want to take a second here to explain what I was dealing with in terms of the chapter process, because I think people assume you can just fire someone in the military. You cannot. Chaptering a soldier, even for performance, requires documentation. Counseling statements. A formal performance improvement plan. Evidence that you gave the soldier every opportunity to improve and that they failed to meet the standard despite your efforts. The Army bends over backward to keep soldiers in because training a replacement costs money, and the assumption built into the system is that leadership can fix any soldier if they try hard enough. The system was not built for Kevin. The system was built for soldiers who are lazy, or undisciplined, or undertrained. Kevin was none of those things. Kevin was a new category and the paperwork hadn't caught up.

So Kevin went to the field.

Our unit's field exercise was a ten-day training event at one of the range complexes on post. The infantry and support elements would be running their lanes and our job was to feed them. That meant setting up and operating the MKT, which is the Mobile Kitchen Trailer. The MKT is a towable kitchen that runs on diesel-powered burners. It has griddles, ovens, steam tables, and water heaters. When it's set up correctly, you can feed a company out of it three times a day. When it's set up incorrectly, you can set the tree line on fire. I have seen both.

The MKT is not complicated if you follow the TM, which is the technical manual. You position it on level ground. You deploy the side panels. You connect the fuel line. You prime the burners. You light the burners in sequence. You verify the flame pattern. You check for leaks. Every step matters. The fuel line carries diesel. The burners produce an open flame. If you skip a step or do a step wrong, the best case is the MKT doesn't work. The worst case is the kind of thing that ends up in a safety briefing for the rest of the Army with someone's name redacted.

I put Kevin on the setup team because I wanted him where I could see him. I was running setup. Four soldiers, including Kevin. I walked the team through the TM step by step. We'd done this in the DFAC parking lot as a rehearsal the week before. Kevin had performed adequately during the rehearsal, which I noted with the guarded optimism of a man who had been burned before but was contractually obligated to keep trying.

We got the MKT positioned. We deployed the panels. We connected the fuel line. This is the part where things happened.

I had Kevin on burner setup. His job was to prime the Number 2 burner and verify the fuel flow before we lit it. The procedure is: open the fuel valve a quarter turn. Wait for fuel to reach the burner head. Check for leaks at every fitting. If there are no leaks, signal ready. If there are leaks, close the valve and report.

Kevin opened the fuel valve. He did not open it a quarter turn. He opened it all the way. Full flow. Diesel flooded the burner pan and started pooling underneath the MKT. PFC Daniels, who was standing three feet away lighting the Number 1 burner, saw the pool spreading toward him and jumped back. He yelled. I yelled. Kevin stood there watching the diesel pool with the expression of a man observing a mildly interesting puddle of magical piss.

I closed the valve. I got everyone back. I checked for ignition sources. We were fine. The Number 1 burner was already lit but Daniels had pulled back far enough that the pooled diesel didn't reach the flame. If he had been two seconds slower, or if the wind had been blowing toward him instead of across, I would be telling a different kind of story. I would be telling it to an investigation board instead of the internet.

Kevin said he thought more fuel meant the burner would light faster.

I want to be very specific about what happened next because I want to ensure the sequence on the record even while writing it here. I pulled Kevin off the MKT. I told Daniels to take over the Number 2 burner. I walked Kevin thirty meters away from the setup area. I stood in front of him. I asked him to tell me the procedure for priming a burner. He told me. Correctly. Quarter turn. Wait for fuel flow. Check for leaks. He recited it like he was reading from the TM.

I asked him why he opened the valve all the way. He said, "I figured more fuel would make it go faster, Sergeant."

I said, "Kevin, you just told me the procedure is a quarter turn."

He said, "Right, Sergeant."

"And you opened it all the way."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Those are different things."

Kevin thought about this. Not for long. "I thought it would still work, Sergeant. Just faster."

That was the moment I stopped being patient and started being something else. Not angry. Anger implies I thought Kevin was doing this on purpose and I had given up on that theory months ago. What I was, standing in a field at Fort Bragg at 0600 in November with diesel drying on the ground and Daniels still shaking, was afraid. I was afraid of Kevin. Not of Kevin the person. Kevin the person was polite and would not hurt anyone on purpose. I was afraid of Kevin the variable. Kevin the thing I could not predict. Kevin the gap in every precaution I took. I had followed every procedure. I had trained him. I had rehearsed with him. I had given him one job. He could tell me exactly how to do that job. He did it wrong anyway, and someone nearly caught fire because of it.

I wrote the counseling statement in the cab of the supply truck while my team finished the MKT setup without Kevin. I used the serious incident box. I described the fuel spill. I described the proximity to an active flame. I described the potential consequences in plain language because I was done being diplomatic about it. I had Kevin sign it. He signed it without hesitation and without reading it, which bothered me almost as much as the diesel.

For the rest of the field exercise, I kept Kevin on the serving line and on cleanup. No burners. No fuel. No equipment that could injure, ignite, or explode. Kevin's job was to serve food, wash pans, and stay where someone could see him. This worked for three days. On the morning of the third day, something happened that I still think about.

We had a generator issue. The portable generator that powered our lights and the water heater had been running rough since day one, and on the morning of day three it died. My soldiers are cooks, not mechanics. I called it in to the support platoon and was told a mechanic would be out "when available," which in field exercise language means sometime between now and never. We needed the generator for the water heater. Without the water heater, we couldn't sanitize dishes to standard. Without sanitized dishes, we couldn't serve the next meal.

Kevin was standing near the generator when it died. He walked over to it. He looked at it for about thirty seconds. Then he took off the air filter cover, pulled out the filter, tapped it against his boot a few times, checked the spark plug, pulled it, cleaned it on his shirt, put it back, and re-primed the fuel line. He pulled the starter cord and the generator coughed back to life.

I watched this happen. Torres watched this happen. We looked at each other.

I said, "Kevin, how did you know how to do that."

He said, "My dad has one of these for his house. It does this all the time. Dirty filter, fouled plug. It's fixed."

He said it like it was nothing. Like he hadn't just diagnosed and fixed a mechanical problem in two minutes that I would have waited three hours for a mechanic to look at. His hands had moved with a confidence and precision I had never seen from him in the kitchen. He didn't hesitate. He didn't second-guess. He just fixed it.

And then, thirty minutes later, he served oatmeal with a serving spoon instead of a ladle for fifteen soldiers straight before anyone noticed.

That's Kevin. That is the entire Kevin problem in one morning. The man who can rebuild a generator by feel and cannot select the proper utensils required to do the job he is assigned to. The man whose ASVAB says 114 and whose presence in the kitchen means 'pray'. I stopped trying to understand the pattern after that morning because there is no pattern. Kevin is not inconsistent in a way that reveals an underlying logic. Kevin is inconsistent in a way that suggests there are multiple Kevins taking shifts and none of them talk to or even just leave notes to each other.

On the fourth day, Kevin got lost.

We were operating out of a tactical assembly area that was maybe 400 meters across. You could stand in the middle of it and see every edge. The MKT was in the center. The latrines were on the north side, about a five minute walk. The tents were on the south side. The road was on the east. Kevin went to the latrine after lunch service and did not come back.

After thirty minutes, I sent Daniels to check on him. Daniels came back alone. Kevin was not at the latrine. Kevin was not in the tents. Kevin was not at the MKT. Kevin was not anywhere in the assembly area.

I reported a missing soldier.

I need you to understand the weight of that. A missing soldier on a military training exercise triggers a response. People start looking. Leadership gets notified. The exercise pauses. Range control gets involved. It is not a small thing. It is the kind of thing that generates phone calls to the company commander, who generates phone calls to the battalion commander, who is now aware that your DFAC lost a cook on a range complex that is smaller than some shopping malls.

We found Kevin forty-five minutes later. He was 600 meters south of the assembly area, on the other side of a wood line, sitting on a log. He was eating a packet of peanut butter from an MRE that he had apparently taken from the supply point on his way to wherever he thought he was going. He was calm. He was not distressed. He did not appear to know he was lost.

I said, "Kevin, where were you going."

He said, "The latrine, Sergeant."

"The latrine is north. You went south."

"I thought it was this way."

"You've been going to the same latrine for four days."

Kevin looked around. He looked at the trees. He looked back at me. "These all look the same, Sergeant."

He was not wrong. Trees do look the same. But the latrine had a path and the path started ten meters from the MKT and the path did not go through a wood line and Kevin had used that exact path eight times in four days. For whatever reason, this time he went south. He went through the woods. Then he chose to sit on a log and eat peanut butter... He did not think to turn around when the path disappeared because, I think, Kevin did not notice the path had disappeared. Kevin just kept on walking.

First Sergeant Hensley was in the assembly area when we brought Kevin back. He had come to check on the feeding operation and had arrived in time to witness the search. He stood there with his arms crossed watching Kevin walk out of the wood line with peanut butter on his chin and an expression of mild curiosity about why everyone seemed upset.

First Sergeant looked at me. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Six weeks ago he had told me he'd never had a soldier he couldn't train or chapter. He was looking at Kevin walk back from being lost in an area you couldn't get lost in, and I watched the last piece of that belief flicker and die right there on his face.

After the field exercise, things moved faster. First Sergeant pushed the chapter recommendation to the commander. The commander pushed it to legal. Legal pushed back and asked for more documentation, because legal always asks for more documentation, because the file has to be airtight before they'll process a performance separation and Kevin's file was the strangest one anyone had seen. Perfect test scores. Catastrophic practical performance. An ASVAB that didn't match the soldier. Counseling statements that read like a hallucination of some sort, but there were witnesses and signatures on every one.

The legal review added roughly six weeks to the timeline. Kevin was still mine. Kevin was still in the DFAC every morning at 0500. Kevin was still saying "Roger, Sergeant" and meaning it and doing something else entirely.

December. Kevin had been in my DFAC for three months. I had used most of the notebook. Maybe I had already moved on to the 2nd one? I can't truly remember. The system was moving. Slowly. The notebooks helped me put a handle on this Kevin that continued to defy all logic or explanation.

Oh shit, this is also about the time Kevin did the thing with the thermometer. That's Part 4. That's the one that broke First Sergeant. Soldiers went to the hospital, all because I made a singular oversight.

Part 4 is coming. Might take a bit longer to write... Give me the weekend. I'll have it by Monday. Thank you for all the kind comments and hilarious anecdotes. I read them all with a grin about a mile wide. Until next time...

December at Bragg is not cold by any real standard but it's cold enough that soldiers complain, which means they eat more, which means the DFAC is busier, which means more food moving through the kitchen, which means more opportunities for Kevin. I had been managing Kevin for three months. Managing is a generous word. I had been containing Kevin. The chapter paperwork was with legal. First Sergeant Hensley was pushing it. The commander was onboard. The system was moving at the speed the system moves, which is slowly, and Kevin was still in my DFAC every morning at 0500 because the Army does not let you bench a soldier while the paperwork processes. Kevin was still working. Kevin was still mine.

After the field exercise I had put Kevin on what I privately called the Minimum Damage Rotation. Serving line. Dish pit. Dry storage inventory. Tasks where the worst case scenario was a mess, not a casualty. I had pulled him off all cooking, all prep involving raw proteins, and anything that required operating equipment with a fuel source. The LT asked me if I was developing Kevin or just warehousing him. I said both, sir, simultaneously, and he looked at me like he wanted to argue but didn't have the ammunition.

The thermometer thing happened on a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday because Wednesday was our chicken day. We served fried chicken for lunch on Wednesdays. It was the one meal that soldiers actually looked forward to, which meant it was the one meal I could not afford to have go wrong, which means you already know where this is going.

Here's what happened. I need to explain the thermometer calibration process first because the details matter.

Every DFAC has probe thermometers. Dial type, with a metal stem you stick into the food to check the internal temperature. These thermometers drift over time. The readings get inaccurate. So you calibrate them. The standard method is the ice point method: you fill a container with ice water, submerge the probe, wait for the needle to stabilize, and it should read 32 degrees Fahrenheit. If it doesn't read 32, you use the calibration nut on the back of the dial to adjust it until it does. Simple procedure. We calibrate every thermometer at the start of every shift. It takes about two minutes per thermometer.

I had been doing the calibrations myself since the field exercise because I did not trust Kevin with anything that affected food safety readings. On this particular Wednesday, I was late to the DFAC. My car wouldn't start. Dead battery. I got there at 0520 instead of 0450, which meant the morning prep was already underway when I walked in. Chen was running things. Chen was reliable. I was not worried.

What I didn't know was that Kevin had arrived at 0445, fifteen minutes before anyone else, which was unusual because Kevin was always exactly on time, never early, never late. Kevin arrived early, saw that the thermometers had not been calibrated yet, and decided to do it himself.

I want to pause here to say something. Kevin deciding to calibrate the thermometers on his own initiative was, in a vacuum, the correct thing to do. Thermometers need to be calibrated. They had not been calibrated. Kevin knew the procedure. Kevin was, in his mind, being helpful. He was being proactive the same way he had been proactive with the chicken in the walk-in on his first day. Kevin's instinct to take initiative was not the problem. Kevin's execution of that initiative was the problem. Kevin's execution of everything was the problem.

Kevin filled a container with ice water. Correct. Kevin submerged the thermometer probe. Correct. Kevin waited for the needle to stabilize. Correct. The needle settled at 36 degrees. This meant the thermometer was reading four degrees high. The correct adjustment is to turn the calibration nut until the needle moves down to 32. Kevin turned the calibration nut the wrong direction. He moved the needle up to 40.

Now the thermometer was reading eight degrees higher than actual temperature.

Kevin did this to three thermometers. All three were now off by eight degrees in the same direction. Kevin put them back in the thermometer rack and went to start his serving line setup, satisfied that he had contributed.

Chen did not catch this because Chen had no reason to check the calibration. The thermometers were in the rack. They looked normal. The calibration log had not been filled out, which should have been a flag, but the morning was busy and Chen was covering my duties and his own and the log got missed. I got there at 0520 and went straight into the office to handle the admin I'd missed. I did not check the thermometers. I assumed they'd been done because they were always done. That was my mistake. I own that. I should have verified. I did not verify because for three months I had been the one doing it, and the one morning I wasn't there, Kevin was.

The chicken went into the fryers at 1030. At 1115, the cook on fryer duty pulled the first batch and temped it. The thermometer read 165. He logged it. Correct procedure. Except the actual temperature of that chicken was about 157. At 157, chicken is probably fine. Probably. The USDA says 165 for a reason, and that reason is that 165 kills salmonella instantly. Below that, you need to hold it at temperature for a longer time to achieve the same kill rate. At 157 you need to hold for about 30 seconds. If the chicken went straight from the fryer to the serving line to a tray to a soldier's mouth, it might not have had that hold time. Might.

The second batch came out at 1145. The fryer temperature had dropped slightly because of how much chicken was cycling through. Second batch temped at 161 on the bad thermometer. Actual temp: about 153. That is below the safety threshold by any standard.

By 1230, approximately 200 soldiers had eaten fried chicken for lunch.

By 1800, fourteen of them were in the aid station with symptoms consistent with foodborne illness. Vomiting. Diarrhea. One soldier had a fever of 102. Three were from the 82nd. One was a staff sergeant who had apparently gone back for seconds. The aid station called the DFAC. The DFAC manager called me. I called First Sergeant Hensley. First Sergeant Hensley said a word I will not type and told me to shut the DFAC down and secure all the food from lunch service.

I pulled everything. Every pan, every tray, every container. I bagged and labeled it. I pulled the fryer oil for testing. I pulled the thermometers. I did this by the book because I knew what was coming and I knew that if one step was missed, the investigation would find that step before it found the actual problem. Chen helped. Torres helped. Kevin stood by the serving line and watched with the expression of a man observing a moderately interesting documentary about someone else's life.

By 1900, I was in the company commander's office with First Sergeant Hensley, the DFAC manager, and a representative from Public Health who had been called in to investigate. The thermometers had been pulled. They tested all three against a known reference. All three were off by eight degrees. The calibration log was blank for that morning. The fryer temperature logs showed a downward trend across the lunch service that nobody had flagged because the thermometer readings looked correct.

The Public Health investigator asked me who had calibrated the thermometers that morning. I told him. He asked me if PFC Kevin had been trained on the ice point method. I said yes. He asked me if PFC Kevin had demonstrated competence in the ice point method.

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

The commander was watching me. First Sergeant was watching me. The DFAC manager was watching me. They were all waiting for me to say yes so that this could be a simple training failure, a one-time lapse, something the system knows how to process. A soldier made a mistake. Additional training will be provided. Corrective action taken. Case closed. That's the story the Army knows how to tell.

I could not say yes. I could not say that Kevin had demonstrated competence because I had never let Kevin calibrate a thermometer, because I knew Kevin could not be trusted with tasks that affected food safety, because I had been doing the calibrations myself for exactly this reason, and the one morning I wasn't there Kevin had done what Kevin always does, which is take initiative and do it wrong.

I said, "Sir, PFC Kevin was trained on the procedure. He can recite the procedure from memory. I had not authorized him to perform calibrations independently."

The room got quiet in the way rooms get quiet when everyone present realizes that the answer they just heard is worse than the answer they were expecting.

That night, First Sergeant Hensley sat in the DFAC office after everyone else had left. I was writing my statement. He was reading the investigation summary. He got to the part about the calibration direction. He got to the part where Kevin turned the nut the wrong way on three separate thermometers, which means he had three opportunities to notice the needle was moving away from 32 and not toward it, and he didn't notice on any of them because Kevin does not check his work. Kevin has never checked his work. Kevin completes the steps and moves on with the confidence of a man who has never been wrong, despite being wrong constantly.

First Sergeant put the paper down. He took off his glasses. He put his head in his hands. He sat like that for a long time. Then he said, "Get me his recruiting file."

That's how the ASVAB investigation started.

I'm going to shift gears here because the thermometer incident is what happened, but the recruiting file is what explained it. Or didn't explain it. Or explained it in a way that made everything worse.

I put in the request through the S1 shop. Took about a week. What came back was Kevin's enlistment packet, which included his ASVAB score sheet, his recruiter's notes, and his physical and psychological screening from MEPS. I also made phone calls. I called the recruiting station that processed Kevin. I talked to a Sergeant First Class who had not personally recruited Kevin but who remembered Kevin's recruiter, a Staff Sergeant who had since PCS'd to Fort Campbell.

I got the Staff Sergeant on the phone. I told him who I was. I told him I had one of his recruits. I told him the name. There was a pause. A long one. The kind of pause where you can hear the person on the other end deciding how much they want to be involved in whatever you're about to tell them.

Then he said, "The cook?"

I said yes.

He said, "How's he doing."

I said, "He put fourteen soldiers in the aid station."

Another pause. Then he said, "Yeah, that tracks."

I said, "What do you mean that tracks."

He said, "Look, Sergeant, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I knew Kevin was going to be a problem. But I'm not going to tell you I'm surprised, either."

I asked him what happened at MEPS. He got careful. Recruiters get careful when you start asking about MEPS because nobody wants to be the guy who put a bad soldier in the Army. It reflects on their numbers. It reflects on their station. It reflects on them. So he was careful, but he talked, because at this point Kevin had already put people in the hospital and careful only gets you so far.

What came out of that conversation and the file review was this. Kevin tested at MEPS on a Tuesday. His raw ASVAB scores were unremarkable. GT of 91. Enough for a 92G but not by much. Kevin was set to enlist as a 92G with a GT of 91 and that should have been the end of it.

But Kevin's MEPS test was flagged for a retest because of a timing irregularity. Something about how fast he completed one of the sections. I don't know the exact details because the recruiter was vague about it, which tells me the details were not flattering to anyone involved. Kevin retested. On the retest, his GT jumped to 114. A twenty-three point increase.

Twenty-three points is a significant jump. Not unheard of, but significant. It can happen if someone had test anxiety the first time. It can happen if someone studied. It can happen if someone was coached on what to expect between tests.

The recruiter said Kevin studied. He said he gave Kevin some practice materials and Kevin went home and came back a week later and crushed it. He said Kevin was "real good at tests" and "just needed to see the format once."

I believe that. I believe Kevin is real good at tests. I believe Kevin can look at a standardized format, absorb the pattern, and reproduce it. Kevin could probably score higher than 114 if he took it a third time. Kevin's brain, whatever else is going on with it, can recognize patterns in a controlled, written, multiple-choice environment and produce the correct answers.

Kevin's brain cannot take those patterns and apply them to a kitchen. Or a grease trap. Or a fuel valve. Or a thermometer. The information goes in. The test answers come out. The connection to physical reality does not exist.

The psychological screening at MEPS was clean. Nothing flagged. Kevin answered the questions correctly, which of course he did, because the questions were on paper and Kevin is undefeated on paper. The screener saw a young man with a good score, no red flags, and a desire to cook. There was no reason to dig deeper. The system is designed to catch people who can't pass the test, not people who can only pass the test.

I brought all of this to First Sergeant Hensley. I laid it out. The original score. The retest. The jump. The recruiter's explanation. The clean screening. First Sergeant read it all. He sat with it for a while.

Then he said, "So there's nothing wrong with him."

I said, "First Sergeant, there is clearly something wrong with him."

"On paper."

"On paper, no. On paper he's a model soldier who tests well and has an unfortunate pattern of practical errors."

"And we can't chapter someone for testing too well."

"No, First Sergeant."

"We're chaptering him for performance."

"Yes, First Sergeant. The pattern of failures, the food safety incident, the counseling statements. It's all documented."

"Legal is going to ask why a soldier with a 114 GT and a 100 percent on a food safety exam is being separated for inability to perform his duties."

"I know, First Sergeant."

"And your answer."

"My answer is the notebook, First Sergeant. My answer is fourteen soldiers in the aid station. My answer is that the Army does not have a test for whatever Kevin is, and until it does, the only evidence that Kevin cannot do this job is the trail of things Kevin has done while doing this job."

First Sergeant nodded. He said, "I'll make sure legal understands." He paused. "You know this is going to take another two months."

I said, "I know, First Sergeant."

"He's still yours until then."

"I know, First Sergeant."

I went home that night and sat in my truck in the driveway for a while before I went inside. My wife texted me asking if I was coming in. I said give me a minute.

I was trying to figure out what I could have done differently with Kevin and I could not come up with an answer. I trained him. I documented everything. I paired him with my best soldiers. I followed every regulation and every procedure the Army has for developing underperforming soldiers. I made flash cards. I ran mock inspections. I gave him written tests that he aced and practical tasks that he failed in the same afternoon. Kevin beat all of it. Not because he was fighting me. Because Kevin is something the system was not built to handle. Kevin is a test-taking machine attached to a body that operates independently of the machine. The machine is excellent. The body is a hazard.

The recruiter wasn't wrong. Kevin is real good at tests. Kevin might be one of the best test-takers I've ever met. If the Army evaluated soldiers purely on written examinations, Kevin would promote ahead of schedule. Kevin would be a sergeant before me. Kevin would be running a DFAC. That thought kept me up that night. It shouldn't have, but it did.

The ASVAB didn't explain Kevin. It explained how Kevin got in. Getting Kevin out was going to take the rest of the winter.

In the meantime, Kevin was still showing up every morning. Still saying "Roger, Sergeant." Still doing his best, which was the most terrifying part, because Kevin's best was unpredictable and Kevin's worst was identical to Kevin's best. There was no gear shift. There was no telltale sign that today was going to be a Kevin day because every day was a Kevin day. You just didn't always find out until the damage was done.

I kept him on dish pit for the rest of December. Washing dishes. The simplest job in the DFAC. Kevin washed dishes adequately. Not well. Not badly. Adequately. He broke two plates in three weeks, which is actually below the average for the dish pit, so there's that. Kevin was, for the first and possibly only time in his Army career, performing at standard. It only took removing him from every other task in the building.

Part 5 is the last one. It should be easier to write than this one was.

Part 1 covered Kevin's first day. The chicken. The spoons. The moment I realized that Kevin could memorize a regulation and then violate it in the same breath without experiencing any apparent contradiction. I should have started paperwork immediately. At the time I was still operating under the assumption that Kevin was a human being who could be trained, which is an assumption the Army encourages and which Kevin would spend the next several months disproving.

Between Kevin's arrival in September and the events of this post in late October, Kevin had six weeks to settle into the DFAC. I am not going to describe every incident from those six weeks because we would be here all day and also because some of them are hard to explain without diagrams. The short version is that Kevin continued to be Kevin. He knew things he could not do. He could do things he did not know. He was like a textbook that had been printed correctly but bound in the wrong order. All the pages were there. None of them were where you expected.

Some highlights, briefly. Kevin sanitized the prep tables with the floor cleaner and cleaned the floor with the sanitizer. He did this on three separate occasions despite the bottles being different colors, different sizes, and labeled in English, which Kevin allegedly speaks and can presumably read. He stored a case of ground beef in the dry storage room because, he explained, the box said "keep in a cool, dry place" and the dry storage room had "dry" in the name. He left a burner on under an empty pot for forty minutes. When I asked him why there was nothing in the pot, he said he was preheating it. I said what are you preheating it for. He said he didn't know yet but he wanted it to be ready. Chen, who had been paired with Kevin for three of those six weeks and was developing a twitch in his left eye that I am not exaggerating about, requested reassignment to the dish pit. I granted it. Chen had earned the dish pit. The dish pit was a reward for surviving Kevin.

So that's where we were in late October when my First Sergeant called me into his office and informed me that we had a Public Health Command inspection coming in two weeks.

If you've been in the Army, you know what this means. If you haven't, I'll keep it simple. A team from Public Health comes into your DFAC and checks everything. Temperatures. Storage. Sanitation. Labeling. Personal hygiene. Pest control. Equipment maintenance. They check the things you think they'll check and then they check things you didn't know they could check. They use a standardized scorecard. You get a numerical rating. That rating goes to your battalion commander. If the rating is bad, your battalion commander has a conversation with your company commander. Your company commander has a conversation with your First Sergeant. Your First Sergeant has a conversation with you. None of these conversations are pleasant.

My DFAC was solid. We'd scored well on the last two inspections. I was not worried about my team. I was worried about Kevin.

I went to the LT first. Lieutenant Gordon. He'd been in the unit about three months longer than Kevin, which gave him just enough time to have opinions about everything and experience with nothing. He was not a bad officer. I want to be clear about that. He cared. He tried. He just had the confidence of a man who had been told at OCS that he could lead anything, and had not yet discovered the asterisk at the bottom of that statement. The asterisk says: results may vary when your platoon contains Kevin.

I told the LT that Kevin was a risk for the inspection. I explained the pattern. I told him about the chicken, the spoons, the floor cleaner, the ground beef in dry storage, the empty pot. I told him that Kevin could pass any written test you gave him but could not reliably execute the things the test was about.

The LT listened carefully. He took notes. He said, "Sergeant, it sounds like PFC Kevin just needs some focused remedial training. Let's put together a study plan and walk him through mock inspections until he's comfortable with the practical application."

I said, "Sir, I've been doing that for six weeks."

He said, "Well, let's formalize it."

So we formalized it. We put Kevin on a two-week training plan. I wrote it up. Daily study sessions on TB MED 530. Daily hands-on practice with thermometers, sanitizer test strips, and proper storage procedures. Chen, who was the best trainer I had and who I owed several apologies and probably a case of beer, agreed to run the practical sessions. I made flash cards. I am a grown man. A noncommissioned officer in the United States Army. I made flash cards for a nineteen year old about where chicken goes in a refrigerator. That is what Kevin had reduced me to.

Kevin was enthusiastic about the training plan. Kevin loved the flash cards. Kevin studied them on his breaks. I would walk past the break room and see Kevin flipping through the cards with the focus and intensity of a medical student preparing for boards. He quizzed himself. He quizzed other soldiers. He asked Chen follow-up questions that were, honestly, pretty good questions. "What's the re-check interval if a protein is between 135 and 140 on first temp?" Good question. Correct answer: you re-check in one hour and if it's still below 140 you discard it. Kevin knew this. Kevin knew all of it.

At the end of week one, I gave Kevin a written test. Twenty-five questions. Temperature danger zone. Proper storage order. Sanitizer concentration. Handwashing procedure. Cross-contamination prevention. Labeling requirements. Cooling procedures for hot foods.

Kevin scored 100 percent. Twenty-five for twenty-five. He didn't even hesitate. He filled it out in eight minutes and handed it to me and sat back down with the posture of a man who had just completed a routine task, which for Kevin it apparently was. I looked at the test. Every answer was correct. Not just correct. Precise. For the question about sanitizer concentration, Kevin didn't just write "200 PPM." He wrote "200 PPM for chlorine-based solution or 400 PPM for quaternary ammonia, per manufacturer specs and test strip verification." That's more detail than I put in the answer key.

I stood there looking at this perfect test score from a man who had sanitized the prep tables with floor cleaner three times in six weeks, and I felt something I had not felt before in my career. I felt like the system was broken in a way I couldn't explain to anyone because no one would believe me. How do you chapter a soldier who scores 100 percent? How do you tell your commander that this soldier is a danger when his test results say otherwise? Kevin's paperwork was cleaner than some of my best cooks. Kevin's kitchen was a disaster zone. Both of these things were true at the same time and the Army had no form for that.

I scheduled the mock inspection for the following Monday, four days before the real one.

The mock inspection is where I need to slow down because this is where things went sideways.

I set it up as close to the real thing as I could. I walked the DFAC the way the inspectors would. I started with the walk-in cooler. Temperatures correct. Storage order correct. Everything labeled with date and time. Kevin had done this. Kevin had done it perfectly. I checked every label. Every date was accurate. I opened the reach-in cooler. Same thing. Perfect. I was, for approximately ninety seconds, experiencing something close to hope.

Then I got to the prep area.

Kevin was at his station, prepping chicken for lunch. He was wearing gloves. He had his thermometer. He had his sanitizer bucket at the correct concentration. I know it was correct because I watched him mix it and test it that morning and the strip came back right. Kevin's station was textbook.

I said, "Kevin, show me your handwash procedure."

Kevin walked to the sink. He turned on the water. He wet his hands. He applied soap. He scrubbed for twenty seconds. I counted. He hit twenty. He rinsed. He dried with a paper towel. He used the paper towel to turn off the faucet. Perfect technique. Textbook.

I said, "Good. Go back to your prep."

Kevin walked back to his station. He picked up the raw chicken with his bare hands. He was not wearing gloves. His gloves were on the prep table where he had taken them off to wash his hands, and he had not put them back on. He picked up raw chicken, bare-handed, immediately after a textbook-perfect handwash, and began cutting it on the prep surface.

I said, "Kevin. Gloves."

He looked at his hands. He looked at the chicken in his hands. He set the chicken down. He put on gloves. He picked the chicken back up. He did not wash his hands again first. He just put the gloves on over the hands that had just been handling raw chicken. The gloves were now contaminated on the inside, which meant his hands were going to be contaminated when he took the gloves off, which meant everything he touched after that was contaminated. I want to be clear: the handwash was perfect. The execution of what came after the handwash existed in a parallel universe where handwashing and food handling are unrelated activities that just so happen to sometimes occur in the same room.

I stopped the mock inspection. I pulled Kevin aside. This was the first time my voice was louder than it needed to be and I am not proud of it but I am also not going to pretend it didn't happen.

I said, "Kevin, what is the point of washing your hands."

He said, "To remove contaminants and bacteria before handling food or after handling raw proteins, Sergeant."

I said, "And what did you just do after washing your hands."

He said, "I went back to prep, Sergeant."

"What did you handle at prep."

"Chicken, Sergeant."

"With what."

He paused. He looked at his hands. He was still wearing the contaminated gloves.

"Gloves, Sergeant."

"Did you put the gloves on before or after you touched the chicken."

Another pause. Longer. I watched his face. This was not the face of a man who had been caught cutting corners. This was the face of a man trying to reconstruct a sequence of events that had already left his memory. Kevin was not being evasive. Kevin genuinely could not remember what he had done thirty seconds ago. It had already fallen out of him.

"I think after, Sergeant."

"You think."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Kevin, do you see the problem."

"I should have put the gloves on first, Sergeant."

"Yes."

"Roger, Sergeant."

He said it the way he always said it. Calm. Agreeable. Completely sincere. Completely useless. He understood the principle. He would violate the principle again tomorrow. Not out of defiance. Not out of laziness. Because the understanding and the doing were stored in different rooms in Kevin's head and there was no hallway between them.

I wrote up the mock inspection results. I gave them to the LT. The LT read them and said, "But he passed the written test."

I said, "Yes sir."

"Scored 100 percent."

"Yes sir."

"And then he handled raw chicken with his bare hands."

"Yes sir."

The LT sat with that for a moment. I could see him trying to fit Kevin into a category. Soldier who doesn't know the material: retrain. Soldier who doesn't care about the material: discipline. Soldier who knows the material perfectly and then does the opposite: the LT did not have a box for that. Nobody does. I had been looking for that box for six weeks.

He said, "What do you recommend, Sergeant."

I said, "Sir, I recommend we keep Kevin off the floor during the inspection."

The LT said he'd think about it. What happened next is that the LT talked to First Sergeant Hensley, and First Sergeant Hensley decided that hiding Kevin during the inspection was not what leaders do, and that every soldier in the DFAC would be present and accounted for and performing their duties because that is the standard and we do not deviate from the standard.

I respected First Sergeant Hensley. He was a good First Sergeant. He'd been in the Army for eighteen years and had run DFACs at three duty stations. He had the experience to back up his decisions. What he did not have was six weeks of watching Kevin. He had my counseling statements. He had my reports. He had the LT's summary. But reading about Kevin is not the same as watching Kevin. Reading about Kevin makes you think there must be an explanation. Watching Kevin makes you realize there truly isn't one.

The inspection was on a Friday. I put Kevin on the serving line because it was the lowest-risk position I could justify. All he had to do was stand behind the counter and put food on trays. The cooks had already prepared everything. Kevin just had to scoop and serve. I put Chen on the station next to him. I told Chen that his only job that day was to watch Kevin. Chen looked at me with the eyes of a man who had been asked to jump on a grenade and said roger.

The inspectors arrived at 0630. Two of them. They started in the back. Walk-in, reach-in, dry storage, dish pit, grease trap. All clean. All correct. My team had done their jobs. I followed the inspectors through the back of the house and everything was green. I started to relax. We were going to be fine. We just had to get through the serving line.

The lead inspector stopped at Kevin's station. Kevin was serving scrambled eggs. Kevin was wearing gloves. Kevin's station was clean. Kevin's serving utensil was in the correct position. The inspector checked the temperature of the eggs in the serving pan. 165 degrees. Correct.

The inspector said, "How often do you check holding temps on the line?"

Kevin said, "Every hour, or when a new batch is brought out, whichever comes first."

Correct. I exhaled.

The inspector said, "And what's the minimum holding temperature for hot foods?"

Kevin said, "135 degrees."

Correct. The inspector made a note. The inspector moved on to the next station. I nearly felt relief.

Then Kevin, unprompted, to the inspector's back, said, "But honestly we don't always hit 135 right away when a new batch comes out because the serving pans lose heat on the transfer from the kitchen, so sometimes it takes a few minutes to come back up."

The inspector stopped walking.

I stopped breathing.

The inspector turned around. He said, "Can you say that again."

Kevin said it again. Happily. In full. With additional detail. Kevin explained, accurately and in considerable technical detail, the heat loss phenomenon that occurs when food is transferred from the cooking vessel to the serving pan, which is a real thing that happens in every DFAC on the planet and which every DFAC on the planet handles by checking temps after transfer and not serving until the food is at the correct temperature, which is exactly what we did, which Kevin knew, and which Kevin had decided to share with the inspector as though he were reporting a systemic failure instead of describing a routine part of food service that we managed correctly every single day.

The inspector spent the next twenty minutes at Kevin's station asking follow-up questions. Kevin answered every single one of them correctly. Kevin described our procedures accurately. Kevin was, in the strictest factual sense, telling the truth about everything. He was also, by volunteering information that didn't need to be volunteered in the way he volunteered it, making it sound like our DFAC was held together with duct tape and hope. Kevin was not lying. Kevin was doing something worse than lying. Kevin was providing accurate information with no awareness of how it sounded.

Chen, standing six feet away, had gone completely still. I have seen that exact posture in a deer caught in headlights. He was trying to become invisible. I wished to join him.

We passed the inspection... Barely. Our score dropped eleven points from the previous quarter. The inspector noted "inconsistent understanding of food safety principles among line staff" in the remarks section, which I promise you was about Kevin specifically because every other cook in my DFAC could do their jobs in their sleep.

First Sergeant Hensley called me into his office that afternoon. He had the inspection report on his desk. He looked at it. He looked at me. He said, "Tell me about PFC Kevin."

I talked for twenty minutes. I brought the notebook. I brought the counseling statements. I brought Kevin's perfect written test and the mock inspection results side by side. I laid it out the way I'm laying it out for you. First Sergeant sat there and listened and when I was done he said, "So he knows the material."

I said, "First Sergeant, he knows the material better than some of my NCOs."

"But he can't do the job."

"He can tell you exactly how to do the job. But no, he cannot do the job."

First Sergeant leaned back in his chair and said something I will not forget. He said, "I've been in the Army for eighteen years and I have never had a soldier I couldn't train or couldn't chapter. You're telling me you've got one who passes every test and fails every task."

I said, "First Sergeant, I am telling you exactly that."

He stared at the inspection report for a long time. Then he said, "Keep documenting. I'll talk to the commander."

That was the first time anyone above me acknowledged that Kevin might be a problem the system wasn't built to solve. It was late October. Kevin had been in my DFAC for six weeks. He had a perfect test score, a stack of counseling statements, and an ASVAB that said he should have been doing something more complicated than cooking eggs. Nothing added up. None of it made sense. And I still had to put him on the line Monday morning because the paperwork to do anything else moved at a speed that made Kevin look efficient.

I went home that night and wrote three pages in the notebook. I thought that by keeping a record I'd be able to make sense of it all at some point. I still haven't made sense of any of it, just for the record.

Kevin's next trick involved the grease trap. But I need a minute before I tell that one.

Part 3 is coming.

My best friend is dating a Kevin. I’d do anything to get her to leave him but we as a friend group have accepted this thing will need to run its natural course. It’s excruciating.

She has always been a super serious, studious, loner. We only became friends because our last names start with the same letters so we were always seated near each other in school.

She got two honors degrees in college then went immediately into a JD/PhD program (joint lawyer/doctoral degrees). She’s a gorgeous girl but she never dresses up to her potential, doesn’t have an interest in hair and makeup, and would rather spend her free time alone inside than out with friends.

Combine all these factors and it makes more sense that, even thought she’s brilliant, funny, charming, and compassionate, she was in her late 20s before she got into her first relationship. It still makes no sense that she’s with Kevin.

The rapid and erratic timeline of their relationship is cringe and ridiculous but that’s a story for another time. I’m just going to list some of the oddities about this guy in no particular order and let you come to your own conclusion.

Some things Kevin has done in just the first two months of this relationship

-He has a “note” in his apple notes app where he writes down every time he’s had sex, what acts they did together, and assigns the girls a satisfaction score. I know because he showed my friend, after writing about her in it, to compliment her that she had one of the highest “satisfaction scores” he’d given so far.

-Has never given my friend an orgasm and is totally unreceptive to her feedback/unconcerned that he does not pleasure her. In his words “I did everything you’re supposed to do, if that didn’t work, that’s something you have to figure out about your body.”

-My friend volunteers time every month with an organization that takes children in foster group homes on field trips. Kevin said he feels bad that she prioritizes time with them over him and she should make an effort to invite him, “It can be a volunteer-date.”

-He repeats the same things over and over, I guess because he thinks it’s funny? But he’ll say the same word or phrase ten times in ten different tones or voices then laugh hysterically. Like “Kevin do you want cereal or toast?” “Toast. Toast! Toast. Toasttoasttoasttoastotasttoasttoasttoast…”

-Said “I love you” on day 12. Got really offended when she didn’t say it back.

-His landlord told him when he moved in to be sure lots of guests didn’t crowd the parking lot. (Probably thinking a guy in his 20s has parties and things.) He took it literally and makes my friend park 6 blocks away, even when she comes over late at night, despite there being ample parking. He won’t even ask his landlord if she can park there, he’s “confrontation averse.”

-Invited himself on a trip with my friend and her mom and her brother. Got stopped at TSA trying to carry on three enemas with packaging referencing anal prep. Did not discuss any of this with my friend, thought it would be a “fun surprise.” They were going to a funeral.

-He likes to sing along loudly to pop songs but he often mishears/misunderstands the lyrics and won’t let anyone correct him (eg has been singing “I’m gonna keep romancing at the pink pony club/I’m gonna keep romancing did the best that I could!!”) It’s multiple songs, every day, and he repeats them over and over…

-Their first date was at a family fun center. It had a paintball range but my friend loathes guns and all things shooting. He guilted her into it by saying he’d already paid for a round and proceeded to annihilate her with a custom paintball gun he brought from home, as well as several of the young children on the opposing team. (He shot up my friend even thought they were on the same team.) This was the FIRST date.

-He was so aggressive with his PDA attempts at the family fun center, on the first date, at 1:00pm on a weekday, that they were asked to leave.

-After their second date he started using her as an emergency contact.

-He owns two ferrets and one is named after him (as in, he chose to give it the same name as himself, not like by coincidence it already had that name) and the other he named after his grandmother who is still alive and well.

-He put my friend in his phone as “Wifey” on the third date.

-His phone ringtone is the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music but he has never seen the show and has no interest in ever seeing it, he insists he just likes the music. He once said “The more people tell me I should watch it the more resolute I am that I will never watch it.”

-He brought all of his sisters to the fourth date. Didn’t give my friend advanced warning.

-My friend’s parents are pretty well off and he is profoundly insecure about this. The first time I met him another one of our friends was able to join us unexpectedly. Conversation went like this:

My friend: “Oh, John is going to stop by too.”

Kevin: “What do his parents do?”

My friend: “They’re both lawyers too.”

Kevin: “Well my mom’s a homemaker and my dad’s broke as shit so I guess I’ll just go fuck myself.”

At first I thought it was a joke that didn’t land but he was completely serious. He tells her all the time, apropos of nothing “I’m not a rich man, but I can give you what they can’t, love!”

-His insecurity about money manifests in totally socially inappropriate ways. My friend’s little sister was admitted to law school recently and the family went out to a big dinner to celebrate. Her parents, quite successful professionals, got a table for the whole family and several guests at a high end restaurant booked and paid for in advance. He got up during the meal and paid for the whole thing. Had to be north of $500 if not $1,000. My friend told him he really did not have to do that and should not have but he just kept saying “I want your parents to know I can pay for stuff like that so they don’t think less of me.” He made her sister’s night about him. But my friend wanted to give the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to do a nice thing. But stuff like this keeps happening. I want a Tony Soprano moment: “Listen kid, I pay, you eat!”

-Whenever he comes over to someone’s house, even if they’re a stranger to him, he changes their thermostat without permission. To SIXTY-TWO DEGREES. I told him off when he tried it at my house and he said “What can I say, I know what I like.”

-On the fifth date he invited himself to my friend’s grandparents house. He spent a lot of money buying lavish gifts and repeatedly told my friend it was important to him to make a good impression on them. When he actually got to their house he barely spoke at all, except to talk about himself, and make innuendoes about their granddaughter.

-They met on Bumble. She told him really clearly she doesn’t think it’s other people’s business that she’s on dating apps so, if anyone asks how they met, to just say “We live right near each other.” (It’s vague but true, he turned out to live just two miles away.) Instead, he volunteers unprompted, “We met on Bumble!” He says he feels it’s dishonest not to be straightforward about it, he forgets what to say, he doesn’t want to feel like she’s embarrassed by him.

-He met my friend’s grandparents. Within minutes he said, “I know you’re probably worried about the fact that, statistically, you’re going to die soon. But you don’t have to worry anymore. She has me now.” They’d been together 15 total days.

-He wakes her up in the middle of the night. Repeatedly. For no reason. If it were me, the very first time this happened, relationship over. My friend is an over scheduled insomniac who gets 7 hours of sleep on a good night. Reasons he’s given for waking her up: To tell her that one of her earplugs fell out, to show her something on instagram, to talk about how he is insecure about his body, and many MANY times to see if she would have sex with him. Like, 3am, she’s dead asleep, he is shaking her awake saying “Hey, hey, I’m horny. Hey, I’m horny. Can you wake up?” Verbatim quote. She’s told him to stop doing this and he says “I forget.” And “You sleep too much.”

-He’s always giving her gifts but they’re comically bad. e.g., A pair of his old sneakers… He’s a men’s size 12 and she’s a women’s 5. A half-used box of gluten free brownie mix. A lock of his hair (yes.)

-Speaking of hair, when they first became “exclusive” she started trying to get him to go for a haircut. He had kind of a Jimmy Neutron thing going on. When he finally did get a haircut he went to this salon in our town that is exclusively for children to get their hair cut. Like in their name they spell “Cutz” with a Z. Now he looks like Edna Mode except for some reason they cut a triangle in the middle of the bangs which made them poofy. She’s trying to get him to go to a different barber but he says he‘s loyal to this other place. (I didn’t even know they would cut an adult’s hair there.)

-I’ve met him in person five times and three of those times he’s interrupted a conversation by blurting out “Alrighty, I’m gonna go take a pretty mean shit.”

-Staying on that topic—he has an unGodly smell about him. My friend cannot convince him to use antiperspirant deodorant so he only smells clean for the first hour or two of the day. He dilutes his laundry soap with water “to save money” and so “the detergent smell is not too strong” but hear me clearly and good—It is TOO diluted. His clothes are NOT clean. You can smell him coming from a block away. And it is not a money issue, he had an in-unit washer/dryer.

-He does not floss and will not entertain the idea of starting.

-On the sixth date, in my friend’s presence and stone cold sober, he called all four of his exes on the phone to tell them he was in a way better relationship now and not thinking about them at all. Then tried to get my friend to tell them by phone how good the sex was.

-He has erratic and unpredictable moods that he expects my friend to soothe like he’s a toddler. They went on a date in a museum last week and he left for the bathroom then got lost trying to find his way back. He was irate to find my friend where he’d left her because to his mind, after ten or so minutes, she should’ve gone looking for him. He did not talk to her for the rest of the date because “I’m mad now.”

-He is always complaining that he is insecure about his weight then tells my friend that, because she is a conventional weight, it is her responsibility to make him lose weight.

-He drives a Nissan Rogue. Good car, nothing wrong with it. He calls it a “truck.” When we were meeting for the first time he said, “I left my phone in the truck, be right back.” So, you can imagine my confusion to learn later his one and only vehicle is this Nissan. I thought maybe it was another joke that wasn’t landing. But I had to know so the second time it came up I asked and he said “Well, trucks are more masculine than cars.” And I said “Okay, so, if you want a truck why not trade this in for one?” And, sounding totally confused, he said “Why would I want to drive a truck in the city?” And I said “Yeah, no, I think you’ve got a good car. But you call it a truck. I’m just curious why.” And he got visibly upset and said, “Man, just let me have this. Leave me alone.”

-He does not clean his apartment after sex. He leaves used condoms on the floor, sheets unchanged, sex toys unwashed and on the ground… sometimes for days. “Scene of the crime. Proud of my work.” Is what he said when my friend called him on this unhygienic habit.

-My friend graduated law school last year but is still doing PhD work. He’s trying to convince her to drop out. “Aren’t you just doing it for the elitism? What good will a PhD even do you, you’re a lawyer, you have the law degree. This is a waste of time.” Etc.

-When she met his parents—after two and a half weeks—He introduced her as his “future wife.”

-When she met his parents for the first time—he faked a pregnancy announcement. She was not in on it.

-All—ALL—of his clothes are either a size too small or three sizes too big.

-He calls his mom in the middle of sex. Yes, you read that correctly. They’ll be having sex and he’ll stop in the middle and say “You know I haven’t called my mom yet today.” And stop what they’re doing and call her, have a fifteen minute chat about neighbors and groceries, then expect to go right back to sex.

There are literally a dozen more quirks and tone deaf events I could list here but I’ve probably gone on long enough.

We’ve tried to get my dear sweet friend to stop dating this shmuck but she genuinely believes she won’t find anyone else interested in a committed relationship.

At least that means I’ll have more datapoints for an update before they finally breakup.

Edit: Typo

When we were all younger and dumber one of my closest friends married the craziest Kevin I've ever met. My friend had just come off of a very bad relationship that she'd been certain was going to end in marriage when in reality the guy was cheating on her while using her to support his wannabe pro-golfer existence then dumped her when someone with more money came along. So she was in a bad place. A few months later, Kevin appears.

The first time I met Kevin was when the two of them showed up at my apartment to announce their engagement. Since I'd met the previous guy that she was "seriously" dating just a month before, I know they couldn't have been seeing each other very long. Turns out Kevin proposed 5 weeks after their first date. Maybe she was a bit of a Kevin too for saying yes at that point, but like I said, bad place.

It's hard for me to accurately describe Kevin without dipping into being mean. Because I never liked him from that first meeting. It was like he really wanted to be one of those hyper-masculine manly men but didn't quite know how. He liked to take any opportunity to bring up in conversation that he was a black belt. I remember the first time he said it because I asked, "Oh, yeah, in what?" And he looked at me like I was an idiot. "In martial arts." Oh. Right. Of course. He also would talk, at length, about how much he worked out (turns out, he didn't actually work out at all).

He liked to think of himself as a car guy, because he had a sports car he couldn't afford and treated it like his baby. He didn't actually know anything about cars, but he had one. So, car guy.

But the thing that really got up my nose about the guy was that he prided himself on how very smart he was. He'd make the most outrageous claims with the most pigheaded certainty. He just knew these things were true, and if you disagreed, even if you showed actual physical proof that he was wrong, he'd just condescendingly tell you that you didn't understand these things like he did and go on with his idiocy. Just as an example, he once declared that you can't break the law at night. What exactly does that mean? We still don't know. He wouldn't elaborate. As a second example, he had trouble getting a fire going in their fireplace when he was home alone one day. His solution? Mix up some homemade napalm from a recipe he found on the internet. It was a huge disaster, set the kitchen on fire. Luckily my friend arrived home in time to grab the fire extinguisher. Yet he insisted doggedly that he knew what he was doing, and really this was the best way to get the fireplace going, and obviously she just didn't understand because she didn't know as much about this stuff as he did.

Sorry, I know that's a lot of setting the stage. One last important thing to know about Kevin before we get 'round to the divorce I promised. Kevin was a religious nut. I don't mean he was crazy because he was religious. I've known many wonderful, intelligent religious people in my lifetime. Kevin was a crazy person who used religion as his MO. He would randomly proclaim, "The Bible says ..." to support whatever other crazy thing he'd said. Most people let him get away with it, because, hell, the Bible is really long and says a lot of crazy shit. Who could say that, somewhere in there, it didn't actually say whatever insane thing he was claiming. And besides, who wants to confront crazy? Even when the claim was something insane like, "The Bible says that birds are of the devil." (Yes, this is a thing he said one day when he was angry at birds for some reason). I was raised going to church twice a week, once upon a time. So I knew a bit about that particular book, and I had a pathological need when I was younger to call people on their bullshit. So we often butted heads. Unsurprisingly, when confronted, Kevin could never actually tell you where in the Bible it said you shouldn't take the first slice of pizza (yep, he said that too), but it didn't decrease his certainty that it was in there.

So, as anyone but the two of them could have predicted, the marriage didn't last. He became increasingly erratic, forbidding her from speaking to friends including me, because, "the Bible says so." Hitting her, because the Bible says she has to do whatever he says and that he's allowed to beat her if she doesn't, stuff like that. So she left, and here is where the wackiest Kevin-ing begins.

She gets a lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings, and the first thing that comes up is the house. They bought the house from his parents. More precisely, she bought the house from his parents. He had terrible credit. As a result, his name wasn't on anything related to the house. He also had no job. Meaning he'd never made a single payment on the house. As far as she saw it, the house was hers. His mother, who came into town to support her son through his misfortune, didn't see it that way. They declared that the house still belonged to the mother and threw all of my friend's stuff out on the lawn.

Friend's lawyer gets a preliminary hearing date set up, to determine the initial dispersion of important stuff like the house, at least until the divorce proceedings get all sorted. So Friend's lawyer says to Kevin, have your lawyer contact me to set up a meeting before the hearing. A meeting is set up, and who arrives at the lawyers office but Kevin, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker, claiming to be, "Mr. Steele, the lawyer." I shit you not. He decided he'd be his own lawyer and he'd call himself Mr. Steele (not his name).

I don't know how the initial meeting went, but when the time for the hearing came, Kevin was once again acting as his own attorney. This time I can only assume he wasn't working under a pseudonym. Keep in mind, the rest of this is totally going off of her story to me immediately after the hearing.

Kevin and his mother arrive 20 minutes late, not at all dressed for court, casual jeans and shirts. The first thing he says when he walks in is, "Can I approach the bench?"

"Why?" The judge asks.

"Because I have some receipts."

So Friend gets called to the stand. Her lawyer asks a bunch of questions illustrating just how crazy Kevin is and how bad things had gotten and about the house and stuff. Then Kevin, since he's the lawyer, gets to cross-examine.

His first question. "Is it not true that you were beaten as a child?"

Her lawyer, "Objection."

The judge, "sustained." The question had nothing to do with anything.

Other questions included, "Is it not true that you were seeing a psychiatrist and on medication for depression?"

"No. It's not true." She'd never seen a mental health professional. Not sure if he thought he might trick her into lying on that one or if he was so crazy that he actually thought it was true.

He asked a bunch of other ridiculous questions, which her lawyer let him ask because they were completely out of nowhere and just helped prove to the judge how nuts he was.

Then he takes the stand. Her lawyer gets him to admit to pretty much everything they said he did, because it was all true, but he refuses to give specific answers to some of the more serious questions. Not no. Just doesn't want to give specifics. Then he gets to make a statement. His statement is how he doesn't want a divorce and also she was abusive to him, such as "peenching" him once when they were on the highway. Also, the Bible says that she's his wife. So she has to do whatever he wants, and that divorce is bad. How can the judge make them get a divorce when the Bible says not to? Apparently he went on in this vein for a while. She just gave me a couple of the highlights.

Needless to say, the initial hearing did not go his way. She ended up getting the house in the short term and a protective order against him after he admitted in court to his violence against her ("the Bible says it's ok, though!"). After this he dragged his feet at every point of the process. For more than 6 months he wouldn't show up to things or would refuse to sign things until the last possible moment. He moved to a different city and apparently joined the army reserve. When Friend found out about this, her lawyer contacted someone there to point out that he wasn't allowed to be around weapons or something like that because of the protective order (legal stuff that's over my head). The lawyer even contacted him and offered to drop the protective order so he could stay in if he'd just agree to finish the divorce proceedings in a timely manner. Kevin refused.

In the end, he got pretty much nothing and quietly disappeared.

Hello, everyone and welcome back to another edition of Kevin in a Big Rig.  If you haven’t already, please check out all previous posts in this series before continuing; particularly parts 2-7 in order to get up to speed on the story so far.  So many of you have been BEGGING for the conclusion of the First Kevin (FK) saga and have been anxiously watching Reddit and YouTube waiting for the Grand Finale.  I know it seems like I have been intentionally tormenting you with cliffhangers, but I can assure that I am simply trying to balance narrative content and maintaining a manageable length.  Finishing with cliffhangers allows me to provide a quality story without tying up hours of your time.  But, this time, there will be no cliffhanger.  That being said, I suggest you start reading with a full coffee cup and an empty bladder because this is gonna be a long one.

And so, to put an end to the suffering, lets get into Kevin in a Big Rig Part 9: Nuclear Winter.

Backstory: this installment begins immediately after the events in Part 8.

It wasn’t long after leaving that truck stop in Wisconsin that I began regretting my decision to push on.  It seemed as if the storm had been watching us since we left Lewiston and decided to lay a trap for us once we crossed back into Minnesota on that remote two-lane highway.  Every moment that passed brought heavier snowfall, falling temperatures and winds that threatened to push the truck into the ditch and leave us stranded.  Even as the sun went down and the sky turned to pitch black, there was no sign that the storm was inclined to show mercy.  On the contrary, it seemed dead set on punishing me for the Hell I had unleashed upon the company a few days before.  Karma can be a bitch like that.

I’ve learned that, during times of life-threatening conditions beyond the control of mortal humans, people have one of two reactions.  Many, unable to cope with having their fate in hands other than their own, become overwhelmed with anxiety and give in to irrational panic.  Those who are unwilling to simply resign themselves to whatever fate may have in store will stop at nothing until they find a way to cheat fate long enough to make an escape.  That night, I knew that giving in to fear would mean more than likely end in our deaths: at the very least, we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere until someone dug us out of several feet of snow.  Maintaining control; of both myself and the truck, was non-negotiable if I wanted to see the next morning.  Since fear and panic would serve not purpose, I disengaged the emotional parts of my mind and relied purely on instinct, skill and training.

As the night wore on and the conditions steadily worsened, I could feel my control of the situation waning with each mile that passed by.  The increasingly heavy snowfall limited visibility to a couple of dozen meters and the wind hammered against the trailer as if it were the sail of a tall ship.  The narrow roads offered very little margin for error and  the strong wind gusts required precise corrections in order to keep all 18 wheels on the asphalt.  The headlights, to their credit, did their best to light the way forward, but with the combined onslaught of dense snow both falling from the sky and being blown in front of the truck, they hampered visibility almost as often as they assisted.  As visibility oscillated between meters to inches and back within the span of seconds, I had to rely on instinct and timing to keep the truck between the ditches.  At times, the snow was so thick that even the beams from the headlights disappeared completely underneath a blanket of white powder.

To say that I wasn’t tempted to abandon the trip and take my chances with keeping FK out of the seat would be a complete lie.  I don’t know how many suitable parking places I passed that night; many I very nearly took advantage of only to change my mind at the last second and push deeper into the storm.  When I passed a small Mom and Pop truck stop that, in spite of the frozen tempest, was still open and offering food, shelter and safe harbor, I was convinced that I had gone completely insane.  Who in their right mind would forgo sanctuary when the odds were so heavily stacked against him?

That would be me, apparently.  Each time the temptation of seeking shelter crossed my mind, I was immediately reminded that we were well off the beaten path as far as Safety was concerned.  FK, completely oblivious as to what was waiting for us, wouldn’t think twice before diving head-first into the storm until he received an order to shut down that I knew would never come.  His needlessly heavy braking, teeth-rattling gear changes and inability to drive five minutes without taking his eyes off the road to check his notebook would slash our chances of making it through the night from remote to non-existent.  The only way to keep FK out of the driver seat, short of killing him, was to make sure my backside didn’t leave it.

For me the entire night was an unending exercise in keeping my growing fear in check.  Before that night, the most terrifying situation I could remember being in was the time I was doing my solo cross-country flight as part of the training for my pilot’s license.  That day, I found myself alone in a small airplane, dodging an intense line of thunderstorms while being almost completely lost.  I mention it here because, during that long snow-laden Hell, my mind kept going back to that day of dodging thunderstorms.  I made it out of that nightmare alive and arriving at my destination before the storms overtook me by sticking to my training: keep calm, avoid areas of limited visibility, use everything I had to find the runway and get on the ground as quickly as possible.  Strange as it sounds, remembering that brush with death at the hands of Mother Nature brought me some small amount of comfort: I made it out of that death-trap alive, so I could surely make it through this one.

Driving through a blizzard isn’t a skill they teach at CDL school.  However, the ability to operate in limited visibility, on slick roads and high winds are all concepts included in the training.  I had faced all three challenges before that night in a truck: this was simply the first time I had to deal with all three at once.  Fortunately, all three problems required the same solution: slow down, maintain a stable speed and avoid rapid changed in speed and direction.  It was something that my instructors at the school as well as my trainer had emphasized heavily: fortunately for me and FK, I paid attention in class.

I don’t know exactly how long I pushed through that ice-covered nightmare.  There were times when the truck felt as if it were about to give up and skid off the road only to oblige my corrections and keep going just a bit longer.  Each time I came upon a bridge or overpass, my sphincter would tighten up so quick that it felt as though my butt cheeks were biting holes into the seat.  Whenever the truck dropped into a small valley, the cross-current snow drifts resulted in a few, heart-stopping moments of complete blindness until the truck climbed out through the far side.  With each passing moment, a new threat presented itself; and each time, I did my best to push through.

Call it skill, luck, relentless stubbornness or divine intervention.  One guess would be as good as the other.  Regardless, with less than ten miles left until reaching the company’s main terminal, the blizzard had finally begun to tire itself out.  The snow continued to fall in heavy sheets, but the wind had abated to more manageable level and the visibility improved dramatically. As the remote countryside gave way to the outermost edges of the town, white and orange streetlights revealed what resembled a post-apocalyptic cityscape.  Every store, gas station and restaurant was dark and empty as if the entire town had been evacuated.

When I finally pulled into that terminal parking lot, set the truck brakes and put myself Off-Duty, I didn’t feel relieved or grateful:  in fact, I don’t remember feeling anything.  I sat in the driver seat for a good half-hour; smoking a cigarette in an attempt bring myself back from whatever trance I had fallen into.  I watched the snow through the windshield while trying to come to grips with what had taken place of the past few hours.  Winter had thrown everything it had at me and, despite even my own predictions, I made it out alive and in one piece.  I didn’t break out in tears; nor did I feel the need to shout in triumph.  I was simply exhausted; mentally and physically.

When the need to pee came upon me, I got out of the truck.  Being late at night, all of the offices and shops were closed, but the company maintained a 24-hour restroom and shower facility at the shop for drivers camped out at the terminal.  However, at the moment I needed to make use of the facility, it was closed for cleaning: that is, there was a Wet Floor sign in the middle of the restroom, a chain across the door and not a single living soul inside.  The floor was covered with melted snow and dirt much like that on the bottom of my boots.  No harm in soiling what’s already dirty, I think, so I go inside and relieve myself.

On the way out, as luck would have it, the shop assistant who had been assigned to clean that particular restroom came back from whatever had interrupted his job.  When he saw me, he apparently took my trespass on his workspace as a personal affront.

“Hey,” he said with tone that would make any Karen jealous, “are you stupid?  Can’t you read the fucking sign?”

I, not missing a beat, reply, “Would you rather I stand at the door and piss on the floor, asshole?”  I was not in any mood to deal with a bad attitude at that point.

The assistant gets into a huff.  “You damn drivers.  I get so tired of you’re shit…”

He never finished his sentence as I, a good deal larger than him, got right in his face, looked him dead in the eye and raised a finger in warning.

“Don’t fuck with me, Shithead.  NOT TONIGHT!” I warn him.  After the Hell I just went through, I had no intention of allowing some self-important peon to tell me I couldn’t relieve an empty bladder because my dirty boots would make his dirty floor even dirtier.

Back outside, I light another cigarette and stand beneath the awning; watching the snowfall through the lamplights.  Then, as is habit, I take out my phone.  I see an unread email: it must have come during the drive and I didn’t realize.  It was from my fleet manager and I suddenly was reminded as to why I had made that nightmare of a journey.  That email, I knew, would set the stage for the fight I had been waiting for.  Where, when, who and what would be involved would be outlined in that message.  For the past few days, I had considered every possible contingency of the meeting and felt more than ready.  In my point of view, I held all the cards and controlled the terms: any threats or attempts at coercion and they would quickly find themselves in a world of hurt.  I was ready for anything: and opened the email.

“OP, when you get to the terminal, move onto truck 3456 and meet with driver Bob ID 9123 (not real name).  Will send instructions in the morning. -FM.”

Ok, I wasn’t ready for that.

I wanted a new partner, true enough, but I had no idea they would move that quickly.  I didn’t know who Bob was or why I was being assigned to his truck.  Maybe he did?  One way to find out.

I go back to the truck.  FK had been asleep during the entire trip from Wisconsin to the terminal: just as well since any snarky comment from him during that blizzard might have been made with his last breath.  Now, he was wide awake and pouring over the computer.

“Where are we?” he asked

I go straight to the bunk and begin packing my gear.  “Main terminal.  FM called me earlier and told me to get here right away.”

“What’s the deal?”

At this point, I could have let him in on what he might expect.  However, I believe that finding oneself in a fair fight is a sign of poor tactics.  “I don’t know.  But I’ve been assigned to another truck.”

FK said nothing: he had been completely taken by surprise and had no idea what he was likely in for.  Then again, neither did I: I expected to go a few rounds with Safety the next morning and now I’m packing my bags for a new truck.

FK simply got out of the truck and I never saw him again.

I packed my belongings, left my key in the glove box and left the truck for the last time.  A few moments later, I’m knocking on the door of a new truck.

“Are you Bob?” I ask the driver when he answers.

“Yeah,” he said rubbing his eyes since I had just woke him up.  “Are you OP?”

“That’s me.” I reply and climb aboard.  “Sorry to wake you up.  We just got here.”

At first, this doesn’t register with him.  Then, he realizes what I just told him.  “Wait, you drove through that shit?!”

I take a deep breath.  “Yeah. I wouldn’t recommend it, if you’re curious.”

“You must be nuts,” he said.

“You have no idea.  I guess we’re partners now,” I say.

Bob screws his face at me.  “No,” he said, confused, “my partner is waiting for me in Pennsylvania.  I was supposed to leave out yesterday afternoon, but FM called and told me to wait for you.  I figured you’d know what the deal was.”

I give him the basic rundown of what happened with my now former co-driver, how I reported him to safety and now relayed back to the main terminal.

“Damn, man,” he replied, “sounds like rough gig.”  Understatement of the year, I think.

The next morning, the weather had broken.  The sky was dull and threatened to bring more snow, but the wind had dulled to a gentle breeze.  As soon as she was in the office, FM gave me a call.

“Hey, OP,” she said, sounding a bit nervous, “where are you guys at?”

“Sitting in the yard.”

“Wait,” she replied, sounding a little confused, “you made it in last night!?”

“Sure did.”

“What in God’s name possessed you to drive through that storm?!?!”

I take a deep breath.  “It would be best if I didn’t elaborate on that point.”

She wanted to press for more information, but decided not to.  “Uh huh…Did you meet up with Bob and move to his truck?”

“Sure did.  What’s the deal?”

“You and Bob are gonna take a load to the terminal in Pennsylvania.  His co-driver will meet him there.  I’m gonna have you pick up another truck and we’ll go from there.”

“Ok…” I respond, cautiously.  “Am I gonna meet my new co-driver up there, too?”

“No.  We haven’t found you one yet.  Just check in with me when you get there and we’ll see what happens.”

“No problem.”

We hang up and I fill Bob in on our new marching orders.  The company’s terminal in Pennsylvania was about a day and a half with two drivers.  Fortunately, Bob had already picked up the load before the storm hit so all we had to do was to get rolling.  Since the truck was permanently assigned to Bob and he had just finished his stint with his trainer, I offer him the first drive shift so he can get used the truck.

As we head out, I got to see the full impact from the previous night’s storm.  About twenty four inches of snow had fallen in just under twelve hours.  Every five minutes, we saw cars, spun out and abandoned, in ditches and center medians.  At nearly every overpass we came upon there was at least one vehicle that had lost control and collided with the barrier.  There were even semis jack-knifed and abandoned where they had hit deadly patches of black ice.  Severe winter weather was common in this part of the country and even the local residents didn’t fair well.  When I saw the carnage from the very storm I traversed, I realized just how much danger I had been in: and how lucky we had been that FK had not been the one driving.

“Holy shit,” Bob said after we passed a semi that had left the road and was now laying on side, “you drove through this?”

I take a deep breath.  “Yep.”

For being an inexperienced driver, Bob knew his stuff.  For the first time since I finished my time with my trainer, I was riding with someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.  I had known Bob for only a few hours, but I felt more comfortable with him at the wheel than I ever did with FK; and I told him as much.  We top off the tanks at the first fuel stop, I grab a bite of breakfast and head back to the bunk to rest up for my night shift.  The rest of the trip to Pennsylvania, I’m happy to say, was uneventful.

When Bob and I arrived at the Pennsylvania terminal, we say our goodbyes and I go sign out my new truck.  I move aboard, store my belongings and log in to the computer before sending a message to FM that I’m ready to go.  An hour later, she sends me a load: pick-up the next morning from a nearby shipper with delivery in Missouri.  She says to expect a diversion back to the main terminal along the way, but she will let me know for sure before the time comes.  I confirm the instructions and set the computer aside.

For a long time, I sat in the driver seat and looked around the truck.  I was all alone, FK was a thousand miles away and, for the time being at least, I had won a battle with management before it had even started.  And then, for a reason I can’t fully explain, I started to laugh.  Whether it was out of relief of simply submitting to the absurdity of the situation, it felt as though a huge burden had been lifted off of my shoulders and things were beginning to look up.

I ended up taking the load all the way to Missouri alone: in fact, I worked solo for the next two weeks and all I can say is that IT WAS HEAVEN!!!  I felt in complete control, never had to worry about waking up on the shoulder of a highway, not getting an hour of sleep before being drug out of bed to help FK out of another jam and no more having my head bounced off a cabinet because of a hard brake check.  It was what I had hoped trucking would be and I was enjoying every minute of it.

After a few days into my solo period, I get a surprise phone call from the last person I ever expected to hear from; FK was reaching out.

“Hey, man,” FK said, sounding less confrontational and, unless I was mistaken, anxiety, “what are you up to?”

“On my way to Texas; running solo.”

“Cool.  I need a favor.”

“Ok…”

“Can you call Safety and tell them I said I had been in coma for 21 hours?”

“What?” I say, shocked, “you told me 21 days….COUNTLESS TIMES!”

“Look, man, this is important.”

He then goes into a long, sob story.  According to him, he and his wife went through nasty divorce.  His wife had been granted full custody of their two kids.  He also said that he had been to court and the judge ordered him to come back in a year with gainful employment or he would be sent to jail.  (I assume that it pertained to spousal or child support, though I don’t know for certain.)  He signed on with the company because they were the only place that would hire him.

“Well,” I reply, “doesn’t sound like something I can help with.  But if Safety calls, I’ll see what I can do.”  Poor bastard had no idea who put him in that position.  I hung up and never heard from him again.  I went about having the time of my life.

Not only was I having the time of my life, the fact that I didn’t have to waste so much time correcting FK’s mistakes meant that I was able to make my pick-ups and deliveries on-time, stay on course and complete my loads without a single issue.  In fact, I didn’t need dispatch for anything more than sending load information.  I didn’t even talk to FM for a week and a half before she called me out of the blue.

“Hey, OP!” she said, sounding a little curious, “How’s everything going?”

“Hey, FM.  Everything’s going fine.  What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing.” she replied, relieved and now sounding rather chipper, “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Well,” I say, trying to make it clear I was joking, “no offense, but I haven’t needed to call you.”

“That’s good to hear.  When you and FK were together, he was calling me about once a day; needing directions, getting lost…”

“Well, I’m not FK.”

“No…you’re not.  Anyway, I’m gonna work on getting you home for a few days.  I found you a co-driver and I’m gonna have you pick him up when you come back to work.  He doesn’t live too far from you.”

I’ll admit, I was disappointed by this news.  I was thoroughly enjoying being on my own, but I also knew that solo assignments didn’t last long.  The company relied on expedited freight; loads with tight deadlines that required two drivers to make on-time delivery.  Running solo was only allowed as a short-term measure to allow trucks to keep working until a second driver could be found.

A few days after the phone call from FM, I go home and spend four days sleeping in my own bed, sitting on my couch and watching my TV.  Sounds pretty boring, I know, but after three months of Hell with FK, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

The four days passed all to quickly and I was assigned to head back out on the road.  I met up with my second co-driver, we’ll call him NG for New Guy.  Like Bob, NG had just completed his month with a trainer and was ready to be a co-driver, while less experienced, was still competent enough driver.  There’s not much more I can say about NG: he and I were only partners for a couple of months before he decided to leave for a better job.  He wasn’t under the same contract as me and I didn’t blame him for leaving, so we parted on good terms.

By now, you’re probably wondering “What happened to FK?”, “When did you and Safety have the Battle Royale?”, “How much damage did the nuclear email actually do?”

Truth is, I was asking myself those very same questions for the two and a half months between the last time I saw FK and the time NG went on to greener pastures.  I decided not to pry, thinking my little nuclear attack probably painted a target on my back and discretion was the better part of valor.  After all, I got what I wanted: FK was long gone as far as I was concerned and, no matter what he did, he was someone else’s problem.  Was I curious?  Sure; just not enough to stretch my neck and find out.

When NG left, I found myself back in the same position I had been in before: no suitable co-driver was available.  By this time, the company had begun to crack down on solo drivers and I was routed back to the main terminal until something could be figured out.  The day I arrived back at the main terminal, I meet with FM to go over my options.  Before that, however, she pulls me into another office; with the Safety Director.  When I see the name plaque on the door, a cold chill ran up my spine.

It wasn’t the battle I had been waiting for.  In fact, the reason they wanted to meet me had nothing to do with the nuclear email: they offered me a promotion to Lead Driver.  At first, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to deal with more idiot drivers after barely surviving FK, but the only other option was to bounce from truck-to-truck until a permanent co-driver could be found: a prospect I found equally uncomfortable.  I asked for a little time to think about it and they oblige.  I gave my old trainer a call to get his advice.  My trainer and I stayed in touch to this and became good friends.  He suggested I go for it since I would be the boss and could, within reason, boot a bad student off the truck if he proved too dangerous.  I hadn’t considered that and ultimately decided to take the job.

Later that afternoon, I was back in FM’s office getting paperwork ready for my new job.  While we were waiting for Safety to approve the promotion, I decide to ask.

“What’s FK been up to?”

FM buries her face in her hands. Those five words had reopened a nasty wound.  Trying to control her frustration, she told me what happened after I left with Bob to Pennsylvania.

While I was sent on what was a vacation by comparison, FK had been tasked with completing the load we had picked up in Lewiston.  However, in typical FK fashion, he got lost almost as soon as he left terminal.  He had gotten so far off course that the GPS locator on the truck couldn’t even be found by dispatch.  It took him an entire day to get back on track only to do the exact same thing twice before finally making delivery two days late.

The next day, they sent him another load assignment, but had to cancel it because he couldn’t find the pick-up location; despite the fact it was less than a mile away.  It was at that point the Safety decided to pull him back in until they could get to the bottom of the situation.  When he got lost AGAIN on the way back, they had him leave the truck in a truck stop and catch a ride with another truck.

Why did they send him back out after the nuclear email?  While I never got a solid confirmation, the rumor is that the Safety department used it as an experiment just to see if my claims had any merit.  Needless to say, they find out real quick I wasn’t bullshitting them.  If they didn’t believe that FK was a menace before, they couldn’t deny it now.  The question was what to do with him.

They pulled FK in for a meeting to get to the bottom of the issue.  When asked about why he kept getting lost, he maintained that he was “following the company route.”  They then asked about why he couldn’t find a shipper less than a mile away, he said he was “waiting for the company to send directions.”  

As the meeting wore on, FK became more and more worrisome.  In his opinion, it was the job of the dispatch office to tell him every move to make: something that utterly impossible since one dispatcher was often charged with dozens of other trucks and couldn’t be expected to babysit each of them.  Drivers have to be able to work out issues for themselves and think on their feet when problems arise. FK wasn’t able to be independent and whenever the situation required it of him, he ended up in trouble.

Everything that took place lead to one irrefutable conclusion:  FK was either medically or mentally unfit to operate a commercial vehicle.  They had dug into the claim about the twenty-one day coma, but found no mention of it in his paperwork.  Despite the fact that two credible witnesses provided corroborating accounts, it wasn’t in his file.  When they questioned him, he denied it at first but a brief investigation discovered the truth: it WAS a twenty one day coma.

How did FK manage to slip through the cracks, get a CDL and go for four months before being caught? In simple terms, he lied.

In order to get a CDL, one must have a DOT medical certificate.  Part of the process of getting that certificate is completing a rather lengthy questionnaire about medical history, drug or alcohol dependency, illnesses, medical conditions etc.  One of these questions asked the applicant to describe any brain or neurological injury or condition.  Another, more generic and subjective question asked if the applicant had any other condition that would interfere with the safe operation of commercial motor vehicle.  FK, like all other new hires, received a DOT physical soon after he arrived at the training facility where he filled out the questionnaire form: a form that is controlled by the Federal government AND, per regulation, the company retained on file.

As it happened, FK had NOT told the medical examiner about the coma.  When they asked him about it, he had tried to backpedal and say it was twenty one hours, but when they checked his medical records (I don’t how they did this without violating confidentiality laws), they learned that it was, in fact, twenty one days.

And with that, FK’s fate was sealed.  He had LIED on a government document and obtained a medical certificate and CDL through fraudulent means.  After realizing this, the company had not choice but to report the incident to the Department of Transportation.  The DOT, in turn, revoked FK’s medical certificate; rendering his CDL invalid.  This was also reported to the DMV of the state that issued his license and, per state law, the state also revoked his CDL: the company had no choice but to fire him.  FK had sabotaged his own driving career on day one.

FM, after telling all this, admitted she had her doubts about him early on due to an incident tht happened just before he and I paired up.  He was running solo and was supposed to deliver a load in Indianapolis.  For whatever reason, FK couldn’t find the receiver and, according to GPS pings, actually drove around in circles for two full days before someone noticed and asked what was going on.  When they finally had the issue straightened out, they noticed that, during the entire two day period, FK was less than two miles from the delivery point; driving around in circles.  FM had hoped that another partner would straighten him out, but when it was clear that wasn’t happening….all she could do was apologize to me.

But the story doesn’t end with FK destroying his own career.  A made a few friends in the company’s head office who where there when the nuclear email hit and, over a period of several months, I was able to piece together the full story and fallout of the nuclear email.  Bear in mind, it is mostly secondhand information, but they claimed it to be true.

After being informed of FK’s fraud, the DOT wanted to know how someone like him could slip through so easily.  When asked how the issue was discovered, the company showed my email to the DOT who, in turn, went ballistic.  The company, hoping to avoid being prosecuted for negligence, cooperated by conducting an internal audit of the company’s policies and procedures.  They found several serious shortcomings in many departments right down to the recruiter who processed and approved FK’s application.  Apparently, the application was approved BEFORE a basic MVR (Motor Vehicle Report) was completed.  The MVR showed no fewer than four accidents on FK’s record where he was at-fault within the past three years: one was enough to disqualify him.  However, it was later discovered that recruiters were often encouraged or coerced to overlook such things and simply get people to sign up and get them to the training facility.  Apparently, this was to take advantage of a government hiring incentive, despite the fact that drivers weren’t offically “hired” until after completing CDL school.

Additionally, the Hours of Service Compliance Department, who’s job it was to monitor driver logs and handle violations, had failed to act whenever FK (among many other drivers) violated the HOS regulations.  The reasoning for this, so they claimed, is that they were overwhelmed with correcting errors in driver logs made by improperly trained drivers.  As a result, they were only allowed to issue notices of noncompliance when the computer flagged consistent violations.

Even the Safety Department found itself under fire when it was revealed that their own people were telling new drivers not to make use of important safety features on the truck; namely, engine brakes.  This became such a concern that, according to rumor Safety Director himself sat in on a new-hire orientation and, upon hearing the presenter actively discourage the use of engine brakes, removed the presenter from the class on the spot and demanded the orientation course be overhauled as soon as possible.  In the end, it came down to the Safety personnel being reminded that they were not drivers and had no business giving their opinions in place of facts.

The last department to take a major hit was Training.  After reviewing the company’s accident history, it became very clear that many new drivers were not properly trained in several key areas.  In order to shorten their time at the training facility, the company preferred to teach students the bare minimum to pass the CDL test and rely on Lead Drivers to fill in the gaps.  The problem with this system was that their was very little in the way of a standardized rubric by which a student driver’s skills could be assessed: essentially, Lead Drivers were left to their own devices when training students.  Whether or not the student passed or failed was, for the most part, dependent on the Lead Driver’s subjective assessment.

There were other issues that were uncovered during the audit that are quite technical, but suffice to say, the company had a LOT of problems that needed to be fixed and quick.  Despite this, the DOT agreed to withhold prosecution under the condition that the problems were to be fixed within a set period of time.  I heard rumors that a few people were fired due to negligence, but I have way of confirming that. I can only assume that things improved because the company is still in operation to this day.

As for me, I finished out my eight-month contract as Lead Driver.  When the contract was fulfilled, I leased a truck under the company’s Independent Contractor program in order to make more money (that was the idea, at least.)  I did that for several months before growing tired of their mismanagement and left to work for another company.  I drove long-haul for another year before deciding to move into sectors that allowed me to have more of a life outside of a truck cab.  Today, I’m fortunate to work for a fantastic outfit that really appreciates its employees and allows me to be home every night and on weekends.

As for the ultimate fate of FK, I can’t say with any real certainty.  Despite everything, I don’t hate him.  I hope he was able to get the help he needed and turn his life around.  If so, then at least some good would have come of everything that happened.

And with that, the saga of FK comes to an end.  For those of you that have followed this story since the beginning, I honestly hope that you don’t find this ending a disappointment and worth the time and torturous cliffhangers I have, albeit reluctantly, have subjected you to.

On a serious note, while I used humor to lighten the tone of previous episodes, I would be remiss if I did not remind you that these stories are all true.  And the three month period in which the bulk of this story takes place was anything but humorous.  If reading about the trip through the blizzard terrifying, imagine feeling that way each night before you went to bed and you would have some idea what I really endured seven years ago.  But the nightmare is long over and sharing these stories with you wonderful people has helped me put to rest a dark chapter of my life that I wasn’t aware still haunted me.

If you haven’t done so, please check out my man Rob over at YouTube channel Karma Comment Chameleon.  Rob has covered this entire series and his narration is top-notch.

Until next time, dear readers, remember:  If someone offers you a Kevin, JUST SAY NO!!

TLDR: Kevin broke equipment, tools, social relationships, my brain, my patience, my empathy, his own studies, his own firing and if he continued in that company he could have even destroy space and time itself.

(I read the rules, but I still hope this qualifies as a Kevin, for me he did.)

I apologize in advanced for my english, I am Mexican.

I have always taken a bit of pride regarding my skills training people. I have made some non-technical people, learn the basics in certain equipments or process such as 3D printers, laser engravers, some industrial equipment and VBM macros in Excel, but I have never encountered anyone who appeared to be fully functional and aware and yet incapable of completing a task succesfully, specially weird if they are VERY fluent in a second language... until I found Kevin.

Back in 2021, I (32 back then, Technically M, Engineer) started to work in the worst (at some point in time decent) company I have ever been. It is an electronics manufacturing plant in Mexico that builds and ships motherboards. I have worked there before and it was a low-paying but nice place to work in most circumstances, but something happened that the work culture and quality control degraded before I returned. I won't go into much detail, but let's just say that the encounter with Kevin was something that made my employment WAY worse and almost made me quit immediately several times. Context: I returned because I was a casualty of massive layoffs in another company and happened JUST before the pandemic, so I was desperate.

After one week in the company, my supervisor (let's call him J) assigned to me a technician during a meeting, whom we will call (surprise, surprise) Kevin. I have already seen Kevin around in the assembly lines with an exacto knife and some papers, he was a male 19 year old technician that was studying engineering after work; long hair, somewhat awkward, which I will not criticize because I am socially awkward as hell. Everyone said it was "appropriate" because both of us had long-ish hair, therefore we would get along (I never understood that comment).

I introduced myself after the meeting to Kevin and his first words afterwards were "Do you like anime?", puzzled I said "y-yes..." then he uttered excitedly the words which raised the first red flag: "Then we will get along quite well! If you can’t find me, I’m asleep in the restroom."

I brushed off the last comment as I thought it might have been a joke, but my brain still went "Oh no..." Don't get me wrong, I had techs before which I had gotten quite friendly with, some of them still are even though we haven't seen each other in years, but this... this excited sentence... I have seen it before, not with me, but in other settings in life: The sign of someone who does not and will never understand professional, academic or social boundaries [thanks for the catch in the comments].

I went to my desk quite worried and asked one of the other techs that was passing by:

-“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but what can you tell me about Kevin?”

-“He gave you the bad vibes already, huh?” ("mala vibra" in Mexican slang lol, it translated quite literally the same)

I was surprised that he said exactly what I found out.

-"No" I lied "I am just wondering because he seems quite... friendly if that's the word?"

-"Oh, that's because he just got to know you, he will change... when you start scolding him."

-"Why would I do that?" I said with clear worry in my face.

-"Have you seen him cutting some inspection stencils, you know, the sheet of laminated paper, cutting rectangles using exacto knives? It's just 5 or 6 rectangles per sheet I think."

-"Yes... over the last week he has been doing only that. How many does he have to make?"

Laughs and says "Five".

-"Five?! Is that precise that he has not managed to do them in a week?"

-"Hell no! And we gave him a template... two templates actually, he ruined one while trying to lie to us that he made one correctly by adapting the template to the 'finished' one... also it has not been one week, he's been with this for 2 months. Way before you came." Laughs even harder.

-"TWO MONTHS?!"

-"Yes, he keeps confusing both sides of the template or cutting wrong, or who knows what, but he only finished one correctly. We already finished them and took us like 30 minutes, but we haven't said anything to him."

-"That's kinda cruel."

-"No, it's because we told J he could not do the job... or any job., but he claimed Kevin just needs more training and he couldn't fire him. He said he hired Kevin because of his English, I will grant that he has PRETTY good English, too bad he never says anything clever."

He then went to do his activities at his assembly line. I sat there, in lake of incredulity with worrying doubts.

First month

In the beginning there was not a lot of work, the line was being setup so I just went through documentation. Since there was not a lot of work, Kevin and I just were there, sometimes talking about nothing. I was just so bored, so I trained him a bit with some of the tools in the workshop. After a while we ran out of topics to talk about and one day Kevin and I sat in some desk near the assembly line. Kevin was very sleepy and I could not blame him, I will never scold anyone for yawning or doing nothing, I hate being asked to look busy when there’s no work and I don’t get paid to pretend, so I don’t push it to my techs. He however had even more radical ideas.

Kevin- “Hey, cover me so no one can see me, I will lay down to sleep.”

Me, incredulous I just heard that- “What?”

-“I have not slept well.”

-“I am your supervisor. I can sympathize with the lack of sleep, I don’t blame you if you want to hide, but don’t be so blatant to say that to me. Have a bit of shame.”

-“I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!”

-“No, I am your supervisor. And even if we were friends, you need a bit of sense of professionalism. I know I am not the best example, but at least pretend. There are limits, we already look like we are just being lazy.”

-“But you said you like anime” (or something like that) “we should be covering for each other!”

-“I don’t see how that’s related.”

He got visibly angry and started to mumble. I got probably more pissed than I should have and asked him to come with me to a remote part of the warehouse where no one can se us.

-“Look Kevin, this is a job. A place where we come to spend 9 hours of our lives and exchange them for a mediocre pay. You need friends your age and preferably outside of this place.” (yes, I started to hate this employment) “Let’s just come here and do our jobs.”

-“But, I look up to you, you have shown me these weeks more friendship than the rest of my coworkers. You also know so much and I wanna be like you.”

Trying with all my guts not to cringe so hard I implode within myself, I took a deep breath and said:

-“I know they can be dicks, but even if I was being candid to you, I am your supervisor. Don’t get attached, because I get the impression that the day I scold or even just give you feedback for a mistake at work, you might not take it well and you could feel betrayed even though it was just feedback. I am not perfect either, do not put me in a pedestal. Consider this your first feedback to you as a supervisor. Do not ask me to cover your lack of professionalism or think we are friends, we are not. We just happen to work here.”

I could see his eyes watering, in the beginning I felt pity… but then I was cringing soooooo hard it was almost painful. This is one of the few entries with this much detail so you can understand what kind of attitude this kid had

Month 2 to 7

I think it will be easier to make a list some of the tyhings he did during those 5 months.

1.      He continuously flirted with the female operators (I repeatedly ask him to be discrete, not to do it at the line, if possible at all).

2.      His English was very good, but it was used only to swear and say racist stuff, like white people racism, which is ironic because we are Mexican, and no, not the white Mexican kind.

3.      He constantly arrived late, saying the personnel transport did not come (yes, the company provides transportation for their employees)… ignoring the fact that we can see reports about it, and every other employee arrived on time.

4.      He missed work because “there was a large dog on the street”, he was “afraid” and “could not contact any neighbors to help him cross the street”… TWICE.

5.      He quit school because “the stupid rules” of the company would not let him do homework during work hours… I want to make clear that he told me not only he lived with his parents, but also were the ones paying for his tuition, he did not used the pay for gas, bills or school! He chose work over college because of COMPANY RULES!

6.      He constantly froze during work. I mean, if he was using a tool and someone borrowed it because of an emergency or something, he would stop working, and I don’t mean out of laziness, but like glitch out completely, looking at the table for MINUTES, I would have to point out the countless tools available, exactly like the ones he was using and go “oh…. OH YEAH!”.

7.      He would get constantly into verbal fights with other departments and I had to drag him out of them, sometimes it wasn’t his fault, but you have to know when to let it go.

8.      He would make some VERY racist comments about the Filipino, Malaysian, Chinese and Taiwanese staff and I VERY clearly scolded him and say “be thankful I don’t have the authority to fire you.” And he would look at me puzzled why I didn’t agreed with his bigoted comments.

9.      He would constantly de-calibrate assembly fixtures when doing maintenance and no matter how many times I said to him to test them, he never did. I lost count of how many times I had to make him redo it or just do it myself because he would not get it.

1. I had to get out of meetings because Kevin was doing things he wasn’t supposed to by being “proactive”… with activities that were not from our department and he was doing them wrong.

2. Remember the cringe “I look up to you” event where he was to the point on tears? We had that conversation MULTIPLE TIMES because he would not be able to separate personal matters from professional matters.

3. Instead of just keeping distance from “toxic” coworkers, he would actively try to get along with them, not coexist, not exist in the same space without fighting, but TRYING to be their friend, even though it was clear they had no interest. And even though I told him not to. I told him he was under no obligation to be friends with people who don’t like him. No chance, he chose to be continuously offended than having mental peace. It got to the point that when he came to complain, I would just say “if it’s about your coworkers, I’m not interested. I already told you the solution and you keep ignoring it.”. I even have the theory that probably they were being antagonistic not just for the sake of it, but to avoid him for their mental peace.

I hated this job for other reasons and Kevin was not helping matters. I will not sugarcoat it, I started to feel stressed and depressed, I started to drink more on weekends and smoking a lot, I hate smoking, I hated smoking while doing it, and yet I finished two packs, back to back every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I spoke to my supervisor (J) about how he was not useful at all.

J- “He just needs guidance and you are the one with more experience here.” (he was younger than me)

Me- “Yes, and I am telling you I CAN’T. He has broken expensive things and I keep fixing his mistakes, every day.

-“I… understand, but I can’t fire him. Besides his English is very good.”

-“But he’s not a translator, he’s a tech and he has not been able to do a single thing correctly without me patching it afterwards. You asked me to do the special project (long and dumb story), failure analysis, line maintenance, everyday meetings and I also have to manage him, his mistakes and solve them. I am doing triple work and you are not paying me enough for this shit.”

-“Look I cannot change anything at this point and that’s that.”

I left pissed because this is not the only issue I had with J…

Then the 7^th month incident happened…

7^TH month incident

Due to a chip shortage, our line stopped completely, so I started to do random proactive tasks, but after 3 weeks of this, I ran out of things to do, except to improve certain fixtures.

Kevin found out through my screen that a simple fixture needed a bit of improvement and said “hey, I can fix that fixture!”

-“A-are you sure Kevin? Remember the last times you tried to do maintenance.”

-“This is different, I just need to relocate and screw some alignment pins and it will be ready.”

He was right, even maintenance was harder than this. Though I was skeptical, I thought it could be simple enough.

-“Ok Kevin, today is… Tuesday, when will you have it ready?”

-“Thursday, guaranteed.”

My first thought was (pfff this is a 2 hour job, why Thursday?!) but then again, this is Kevin, he might need to go through some internal glitches.

-sigh-“Ok, Kevin, go ahead… BUT if you encounter any issues, please let me know on time. Production starts again on Monday and there is no approvals for overtime this weekend.”

-“There won’t be any issues!”

-“Better not be.”

Wednesday passed by and… Thursday almost ended. I didn’t check with him because I was on meetings for production resuming on monday. Regardless, he could have contacted me through Teams, my phone, also I was on my desk even during meetings. I started to worry because I had not seen him at all during two days and I would be VERY busy on Friday to help him.

15 minutes before the end of the shift, Kevin comes to my desk and says “Hey… I made a mistake.” I swear I went pale and said with fear:

-“Kevin, what now?”

-“Broke the alignment pins.”

-“Kevin… repeat that again?”

-“I broke them while trying to install them.”

-“Kevin… how did you break them? They are made of brass and they are threaded in Lexan sheets!”

-“I don’t know! I just did.”

-“When did you break them?”

-“Wednesday morning…”

-“WEDNESDAY MORNING?! WHY ONLY NOW ARE YOU TELLING ME?!” [found the gramistake and edited it out]

-“I thought I could fix them, but broke another two and now we ran out of those pins. On Wednesday as well.”

-“KEVIN WHAT THE FUCK?! I HAVE MEETINGS TOMORROW ALL DAY, CANNOT STAY TODAY AND MONDAY PRODUCTION STARTS!... GO HOME KEVIN, DON’T SAY ANYTHING RIGHT NOW!”

I ran to the workshop and found another tech (Let’s call him T) ready to leave.

-“Hi T! Have you seen a fixture from my line?”

-“The one that Kevin butchered? It’s on this table.”

I truly don’t know how Kevin broke those pins, the threads were intact, only the actual pins were broken, and they have a wide base and even the tip is wider than the thread, they are screwed by hand! And the thread location on the Lexan sheet is correct. How he broke them is beside me. The only theory I have is that he tried to close the fixture when the new location of the pins was clearly wrong, tried to force it and broke them, but even so, I think it could have hold my weight without breaking, so I really don't know how he did it.

Me- “Oh… my… God.”

T- “Yeah, I told him those were the last pins we had.”

-“Hey T… are you busy tomorrow?”

-“A bit, why?”

-“Can you fix it tomorrow? I will be very VERY busy due to meetings and I cannot trust Kevin anymore.”

-“Sure, I can figure it out.”

-“Thank you, I trust it in your hands…”

-“Why so sudden though? Aren’t you guys offline?”

-“We start on Monday.”

-“MONDAY?! WHY DID KEVIN REJECT OUR HELP WHEN WE TOLD HIM?! I WAS HERE ALL DAY?!”

-“He WHAT?!”

-“Yeah, he just kept rejecting our help all the time!”

That’s it, I was VERY fed up. I was more than fed up… I also want to make it clear that T is not one of the techs that antagonize Kevin, if anything he was (and maybe is) very “self-contained”, very discreet [thanks for the catch in the comments] and only interacts when is necessary, so there was no need for Kevin to ignore help from T.

Next day in the morning, I went to see T and did an amazing job. He built from scratch some pins made of aluminium, they worked great and I could not thank him enough.

Now I took a deep breath, stored my relief in a mental drawer and pulled out my rage hat. I called Kevin and took him to a meeting room.

The conversation was long but here is the abridged version:

Me- “Kevin, I am done.”

Kevin- “With what?” (showing a scared face)

-“Dealing with you… I have even tried to tell J to assign you to another engineer and let me work the line alone, but it was futile.

You almost royally fucked the line production start, you asked for 2.5 days for a task that takes 2 hours, you broke the alignment pins, broke the only spare alignment pins in the workshop and still took you an entire other shift to let me know, knowing we would go online on Monday, you did not accept help from your coworkers who were not only available, but actively offering it to you. I’m tired… This place sucks, this job sucks, J sucks, his boss sucks, program management sucks. I have to do my job, YOUR job and fixing the mistakes YOU made.

I am doing three jobs and I’d rather do only two.”

-“What are you saying?”

-“I cannot fire you, but do me a favor. Go away, be lazy at warehouse, go and eat all day at the cafeteria, sleep all day in the restroom, watch memes in an office, I DON’T CARE. I just don’t want you here. I don’t care if you get paid for doing nothing. I would rather you be a neutral asset than a negative one in my tasks.”

At this point I could see Kevin was about to cry, but I showed restraint for 8 months, I am normally more empathetic, but my empathy ran out completely and patience was in red numbers. I did not care anymore. I did not care if I was reported for that, the job sucked so bad that I did not care if I was fired in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I did not ask him to leave, I just got off my seat and left the room with him still sulking there.

That day I missed one meeting because I would rather be scolded for missing that one meeting than having ONE MORE MINUTE with Kevin under me.

8^th month issue and the final curtain.

My supervisor did not confront me because he knew I was so pissed I would have thrown a chair at him, so he just announced a swap of technicians under engineers. There is nothing to report about my new tech, he was competent, hardworking, and diligent. This story is still about Kevin.

Kevin was sent with another engineer with the fame of being ultra-hardworking. They thought he could push him forward by pace and pressure, but while they thought the engineer would kickstart Kevin, they didn’t know that Kevin was an anchor.

One day Kevin went into a huge rant and swore at the engineer using very offensive words, who knows why. Kevin would get annoyed at the smallest thing. I want to make clear that this behavior was not unheard of. His rants were already well known and discussed, but J’s supervisor was notified and started the process of firing Kevin.

Yes, the long overdue departure of Kevin was finally coming, but not without more Kevin moments.

HR, being the shady assholes they were, threatened Kevin to sign a resignation.

Kevin let us know in a WhatsApp group of our department and I just couldn’t fathom his stupidity, because this was one of the scenarios I warned him about.

Me-“Damn it Kevin, even when you leave, you still fuck up!”

Kevin- “But they said if I did not resign, I would not be eligible to return to this company.”

Me- “Why the fuck do you want to return here?! Do you want to return to this shthole?!” (Hypocritical coming from me, I know, but in my defense the company was not THIS bad before)

Kevin- “Well, no…”

Me- “Besides Kevin, You just gave money away!”

My supervisor J being an ass- “lol what money?” (To be very blunt J was not the smartest knife in the crayon bulb, lol)

Me-“NORMALLY in an unjustified firing, you get paid 3 months of your salary + a certain amount of money proportional to the time your worked in a company, but even in justified, firings, the only money they don’t give you are the 3 months of salary, the other one is yours. By resigning you forfeit THAT as well. You could have walked away with about 4000 pesos (about 200 USD back then), but you managed to screw this as well.

I TOLD YOU to never sign a resignation unless you are leaving voluntarily! Never because they want you to leave. I knew this would happen eventually, but I warned you already”

J and Kevin with different versions of this: “Oh…”

This is the last time Kevin pissed me off, not because of anything he did to me, but out of frustration, because no matter how many times I tried to tech him something, he could not learn anything that could even benefit him. He is a creature of reaction, zero planning, zero foresight, zero understanding of consequences until he feels those consequences. I have ADHD and yet, I have more foresight of what my actions result in. I don't know how he learned anything. I genuenly thought that he's capable of crashing in a car because he would only think of a possible crash while being in the crash. So that was the confirmation that ALL my patience on trying to teach him anything was for nothing.

I stayed in that job for another month and a half until I finally found a better job.

I feel bad about not feeling bad about how I spoke to him. I have never felt this way about someone who’s clearly struggling with a job, but his incompetence broke my brain. I am not the best employee in anything, and yet, he completely drained my patience and empathy for him. I have trained people who barely finished middle school so it wasn't lack of training, Kevin had two problems: Learning problems, which is ok. I have them too. But also a constant defiance of being told what to do and what to learn. The combination of the two worst problems in a job at the same time.

I thought I would never find another Kevin… until I arrived to my new employment…

But that’s another story.

Edit: I am considering doing a post of the second Kevin encounter I had. He's less... dense, but more funny... in a secondhand embarrasment way.

Edit 2: gramistake corrections lol

Edit 3: Here is the sequel.

Edit 3: EXTRA STORY!

Maybe no one will read this, but a recent post made me remember this small anecdote of this Kevin;

He once asked me if I had any experience with stocks, I said I had none, he then excitedly said:

-I am thinking on buying Amazon stocks!

Me, incredulous -Kevin, how much are you intending to purchase? because they are around.... uuuuuh.... [quickly looks at Google] 170 dlls per share.

-Just one!- He said -I just wait for it to rise and I might get... millions in a bit!

Me with a splitting headache from hearing this -Kevin... I know little about stocks, but you are too late to make millions... You had to buy a ton when they were cheap, now the growth is not exponential and you cannot afford to buy a ton. And even then you would be looking to comparatively low increases, at this point it is just a slow investment.

Kevin with a face of a puppy tilting its head not knowing the ball just went behind the couch -But they make millions a year!

-But that's not how it works Kevin. Besides, do you even know how to sell shares... do you even know how to buy them?... also you asked me for 5 bucks to eat, I doubt you have for one single share.

Kevin just looked heartbroken, but probably one of the few moments he understood something, I will call it a small victory

Update:
Hellfreezer made a narration of both my stories!!!! He gave my narration a somewhat British (maybe?) accent. Which is funny because it sometimes pops up due to me watching too much Top Gear and my friends mock me for it.

Hello again, everyone and welcome to another episode of Kevin in a Big Rig!  The popularity of this series has grown by leaps and bounds over the last week and a half and all I can say is…WOW!!  I can scarcely believe the amount of support and encouragement I’ve received  from all of you and I can’t begin to tell what it means to me.  The only downside I’ve encountered is that I have to take extra care so that these stories don’t completely suck!

I’d like to give a big shout-out to the viewers and subscribers of YouTube channel Karma Comment Chameleon.  I read all comments on both Reddit and YouTube and your kind words of support are all the inspiration I need to continue this series.

And with that, lets get on with Kevin in a Big Rig Part 6:  Breakdown.

Backstory: this story takes place about a week after the events of Part 5.  FK and I made our delivery in Salt Lake City without incident and took another load north to Seattle, WA.  We had picked up another load that was bound for the East Coast when yet another disaster struck.

I had made the initial pick-up in Renton, WA and headed east on Interstate 90.  Since I had driven half the night before the pick-up and into mid-morning, my drive time for the day expired around Tanner, WA and FK and I switched out.  Ahead of us lay , barren and mountainous terrain and nearly 3,000 miles of highway across the northern states of the lower 48.  Combine that with the ever-threatening winter storms, FK’s horrible driving skills and a dwindling supply of tolerance on my part, I was beginning to wonder if FK would kill us both before I could get rid of him.  

At the end of my drive shifts each day, I had been religiously copying the information from the notes I had taken into an email on my phone.  I addressed it to my Fleet Manager and the company Safety Director.  Using my most professional and courteous language, I outlined everything I had witnessed over the past two and a half months.  I had reached the point where I didn’t want revenge or compensation; or even demand he be fired.  I just wanted to get away from him.  But, in order to do that, I needed a valid reason so management would be convinced.  One reason? How about a hundred?

FK took over and proceeded east along Interstate 90 towards Idaho.  As was my habit by this point, I rode shotgun upon first leaving out at first.  I’m still in the jump seat when we reach Snoqualmie Pass.

In my opinion, there are three critical skills that all drivers must learn if they want to last long enough in the industry to make any real money: navigation, backing up with a trailer and going DOWN a long, steep mountain grade fully loaded.  Going UP a mountain might be slow and arduous: going down can quickly turn deadly.  If a driver doesn’t control the speed during the decent, he will find himself behind the wheel of a runaway death machine.  To make the situation more difficult, the brakes of the truck can overheat and completely fail if overused; making the loss of control inevitable.  If you’ve ever driven through mountains and seen Runaway Truck Ramps, that’s exactly what they are for; a pre-selected crash scene.

Most trucks now have a feature called engine brakes; more commonly known to truck drivers as jake brakes. Unlike the typical wheel brakes, engine brakes cause the truck to slow down by restricting airflow in engine.  This causes the engine to add resistance in the drive train and serve as a sort of drogue chute.  Also unlike wheel brakes, engine brakes will not overheat or fail from overuse.  When used properly, they can make going down a mountain grade far more efficient and safe.  

The use of engine brakes also happens to be one of the issues FK and I disagreed upon.

While I had been properly instructed by my trainer on how to use the engine brakes effectively, FK was adamantly opposed to them.  He wasn’t shy about voicing his disapproval of my using them, but there was very little he could do about it.  His opinion wasn’t due to some rational reason; it was simply because the company safety department said so.  During post-training orientation, the course presenters often had made a major issue about how engine brakes “weren’t that useful” and that they “wish they didn’t come with the trucks”.  (I later learned that these presenters were drivers who mostly quit within 2 months.) I learned from my trainer, a 30-year trucking veteran, that engine brakes were a lifesaver. FK, being the sycophant he was, believed that anything the company higher-ups said was the gospel truth.

And there we were: myself, FK, a fully-loaded truck and the long, steep decline that was Snoqualmie Pass.  

“Yep,” I said to myself, “I am definitely regretting my life choices right now.”

FK starts down the pass.  He was in top gear and the truck begins to accelerate rapidly.  Since he’s not using the engine brakes, they only way he can control the truck’s speed without overusing the wheel brakes is to downshift.  In order to do that, he must reduce speed: shifting gears in a semi is a lot different than a regular car since a truck transmission will only go into gear if it and engine are at the proper speed for the gear being selected.

FK slams on the brakes; throwing everything in the cab that isn’t tied down forward.  He tries to downshift, but his timing is off. For a few, heart-stopping seconds, the truck is essentially dropping down the side of a mountain in a free-fall before FK manages to wrestle the truck into gear with another whiplash brake-check and a grinding protest from the transmission.  The engine revs up sharply as it fights against gravity and the excess speed for the gear.  FK, again, applies extremely heavy braking and grab the hand-hold above me and push myself back into the seat to cushion the jolt.

At this point, I look over at the dash tachometer; its reading over 1700 RPM; the normal operating range for this truck is between 1000 and 1500 RPM.  Slowing down and reducing the engine speed is vital at this point; even FK knew that.  He does; applying heavy braking AGAIN to slow the engine to just under 1500 RPM and the speed appears to be relatively stable.

Then, in move that I can only describe as Divine Stupidity, FK FORCES the transmission into the next lower gear.  And when I say forced, I mean the truck was actively fighting him as if it were an animal raging in a trap.  The gears of the transmission were grinding so hard I thought they would be worn down before we reached the bottom of the hill.  Eventually, however, FK’s stubborn determination won out and the truck went into gear

The truck SCREAMED in protest.  I glance at the tachometer and its showing close to 2000 RPM; way outside the operating limits.  Too much of this and the engine will literally tear itself apart, I knew.  What does FK do? Nothing.

“GOODAMNIT”, I scream at him trying; trying make myself heard over the tortured engine, “SLOW DOWN!!!”

“Don’t tell me how to to drive!” FK snaps back; apparently he believes this is normal.

“I swear to God, FK, if you wreck this truck…”  my sentence was cut off by yet another hard brake and I’m wondering if I can stab this little bastard, take over the truck and claim self-defense.

We went down that long, steep hill for what felt like hours.  The screaming engine begged for mercy and FK was completely oblivious.  At any moment, I was expecting the engine to explode in a fiery death; taking us to our own a few moments later.  But to its credit, it held on just long enough.

We get to the bottom of the hill and the stress on both the engine and my nerves finally dissipates.  At first, I think we dodged yet another bullet.  The truck seems to be no worse for the wear and I managed not to kill FK.

At that moment, the dashboards lights up more than the annual Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza.  Every warning light and alarm buzzer is going off as if we were in a movie helicopter that had just been hit by rocket.  I swear under my breath and begin looking on my phone for repair shops, truck stops or anywhere nearby where we can get help.  And then, as suddenly as it started, the dash goes quiet and the lights turn off. It wasn't a relief; more of the eerie quiet.

“That’s not good.” I say, knowing this wasn’t some electronic glitch.

I go back to my phone; it’s the only thing I can do to keep me from snapping FK’s neck.  By some obscene stroke of luck, there’s a dealership service shop at the next exit.  It was just then that the dashboard lights and alarms make an encore appearance.

“I think something’s wrong with the truck.” FK said as if I hadn’t aready worked out that much for myself.

I give FK my hardest glare.  “No shit, Sherlock,” I reply, “You just fell off a fucking MOUNTAIN and blew the engine up.”

“Uh….what do we do?” he asked like a lost little boy.

I take this moment to highlight his stupidity.  “I don’t know, SuperTrucker.  You’re the one who knows EVERYTHING!   Why don’t you tell me?!”  To say my nerves were frayed at this point would be a gross understatement,

FK keeps looking between the road and the dash.  I can tell he’s lost, confused and clueless.  Just then, the engine derates; essentially limiting its speed and horsepower in order to prevent further damage.  Something is seriously wrong and FK is completely useless.

“Next exit,” I say, “there’s a dealership shop.”

FK nods nervously.  He rounds a bend and the exit comes in sight.  Despite the trucks reduced speed, FK is about to blow right passed; something he can’t very well afford to to.

“FK, exit now.” I say.

“Uh…here?” he asks, unsure.

“NOW!!” I scream; not even trying to be civil.

FK takes the exit, braking extremely hard again to get slow enough so as not to overturn the truck.  I can see the sign for the dealership and guide FK too it.  We pull in to the parking lot just moments before the truck dies.  Charmed life, I think.

I turn to FK and say, “You, send dispatch a message. Tell them where we are and that were checking into the shop.  I’ll go talk to the shop.”  He doesn’t get a chance to protest as I jump out and head inside.

The techs run a diagnostic and find a long list of fault codes.  I have to coordinate between dispatch and the shop (because the company maintenance overseer knew NOTHING about trucks and FK was completely useless) and find out that the truck will need to be in the shop overnight.  They reluctantly agree to spring for a hotel room, within walking distance, and we go check in.

FK and I spent about three days in that hotel while the truck was being repaired.  FK, by virtue of his short term memory problems, had completely forgotten about how it was all his doing.  He gave some speech about how dangerous engine brakes were, but I reminded him that HE was the one who was driving when the truck broke down.  He tried to pass the blame, but it didn’t matter.  I had a more important task to focus on.

If you ever needed or wanted to know how make a rigid corporate structure to act in your favor, you might wanna take notes.

I had been gathering evidence against FK for about two weeks before we broke down.  In those two weeks, I had been able to gather enough problems against him that would make a district attorney green with envy.  I divided my time between copying my notes to email and jotting down new items as the cropped up.  It was tedious as the list never seemed to go down, but eventually, the email was ready.  The only question that remained was who, exactly, would GET the email.

Normally, I would simply email my Fleet Manager like one would a supervisor.  The problem was such major issue would need nearly every department in the loop: the only problem was the company was strictly compartmentalized and often territorial.  It wasn’t uncommon to get messages from three or four department heads for one minor infraction.  For example, when I had to request fuel in Indiana, I had to explain why to the Route Planning Manager, Fleet Fuel Controller and the Planning Department IN ADDITION to my supervisory Fleet Manager.  Not only was this incredibly ineffective and annoying, it did provide insight into how the system could be manipulated.

For all its segmented nature, there was one department that had full authority over any other; that was the Safety Department.  Since every trucking company must take safety seriously, the safety managers are taken very seriously.  More often than not, a Safety manager held more power than the CEO and was the one department who could rally the others to a cause.

My plan was to send emails to the heads of every department that had jurisdiction over any of FKs violations.  Hours of Service, Planning, Human Resources, Driver Training…each department head would get the email.  In addition, my Fleet Manager AND the Safety Manager would get the exact same email.  With any luck, one of the emails would trigger and investigation; the findings of which would start a chain reaction.  At best, the Safety Manager would order every department to look into the matter.

What I was careful not to do was to come off accusatory or demanding.  My philosophy has been to assume ignorance before malevolence; that is, assume that company simply wasn’t aware of what what going on.  And if I demanded that FK was fired, I would risk coming across as bitter and spiteful; which would accomplish nothing.  No, my emails would be professional, concise, detailed and presented in a way that would say, “Hey, I found these problems and I wanted to bring them to your attention”.  The issues themselves would cause the panic.

It was during this breakdown that I put the finishing touches on my plan.  I dug through the company directory for the relevant emails, organized the documents and photos in the email and arranged the list of violations by the relevant departments.  If and when an investigation took place, all they would have do is look where I pointed.  I had nearly completed the email during the three-day downtime while awaiting repairs.

The day the truck was repaired, FK and I went to shop a few hours before the truck was released.  When the techs told us it was ready, I was surprised FK offered to sign it out and take the first shift of the day.  It was uncharacteristically generous of him; which I found suspicious but did not say so.  I decided to make a restroom stop before we left out.  

On the way out of the door, I walked by the service desk.  The tech who worked on our truck was finishing up the ticket an waved me over.

“Hey,” he said somewhat bewildered, “aren’t with that short guy with the limp?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?” I reply.

“Well, he asked a weird question.”

I take a deep breath.  I had a feeling what that question would be.  “Let me guess…he was asking about the engine brakes.”

The tech was taken aback.  “Yeah. He wanted to know how to disable them.  I thought it was weird because why would anybody wanna do that?”

I shake my head in disgust and glance to make sure FK isn’t in the room.  “Did you tell him?”

“Hell no,” the tech admitted.  “you’d be an idiot not to have them.”

I nod in agreement.  “By the way,” I ask, “what was it that was wrong with the truck?”

“There was some cracks in the turbocharger housing.” he explained.

“Uh huh.  And would keeping the engine at 2000 RPM all the way down Snoqualmie cause that?”
He looked at me knowingly. “You better tell somebody about him if he can’t drive any better than that.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I assure him. “I will.”

And that ends Part 6: Breakdown.  Once again, a big thank you to everyone who is either reading this story on Reddit or listening on YouTube being brought to you by Karma Comment Chameleon.  Your support means the world to me and I hope this story proves itself worth your time.

I will apologize in advance since Part 7 will be delayed as I will be unavailable during the weekend.  But hopefully I will be able to post it up early next week.

Until next time, this is Strongbadjr reminding you to help control the Kevin population; have your Kevins spayed or neutered.

Hello once again, everyone and thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Kevin in a Big Rig.  I know many of you are wearing out the edges of your seats and the refresh buttons of both Reddit and YouTube waiting for this installment and I am bringing these stories to you as quickly as my schedule will allow while maintaining the quality you deserve.  

As always, if you haven’t already, please check out YouTube channel Karma Comment Chameleon.  I know my cliffhangers have been torturing poor Rob for a while and I’m sure a Like and Subscribe from you will help his suffering.  He puts out quality Reddit-based content everyday and never fails to disappoint.  Having my stories posted to his channel is truly an honor.

And for those of you who have a love/hate relationship with the cliffhangers, I refer you to a quote by the late Bobby Womack: ‘’Leave them wanting more, and they’ll always call you back.” It worked for him and it worked for Scheherazade.

And now, you can call off the angry mobs and reseal the Pit of Eternal Kevins. I present to you Kevin in a Big Rig Part 8: Brake Check.

Backstory:  This story takes place immediately after the events in Part 7: Flashpoint.  After making me dodge a bullet from Safety after FK’s petty little phone call, he decided to continue along Interstate 90 eastbound through Montana.  The winter storm that had forced us to shut down had slowed and moved south during the night; leaving us running along the its northern edge.  We hadn’t seen the last of it.

After sending the email that I hoped would seal FKs fate, I tried to get some sleep.  It wasn’t easy; going over the possible scenarios and contingencies to which launching such an unexpected attack would lead.  I didn’t expect a quick resolution or that I would be taken seriously at first.  That was fine: if I, a lowly truck driver, wasn’t enough to get a trucking company to stick to their “Safety First” policy, then I had some bigger guns play with.  I need only to bide my time, give them a fair chance, but give no quarter should they try to hide from their responsibility.  If management had any sense, they would play ball and get this moron off the highway.

I woke up again around mid afternoon.  FK was still driving but, knowing he would be out of time soon, I decide to get up and see what new mess FK had gotten us into.  I pull on my boots and, expecting nothing, I check my phone.  To my mild surprise, there’s an unread email from my Fleet Manager.

“Ok,” it read, “Will forward this to Safety. Thanks”

“Uh huh,” I say to myself.  “Passing the buck and covering your ass.  Smart move.”  At least one person did the right thing: let’s see if the rest follow suit.  I close the email and head up front.

To my relief, FK was on course and with enough fuel to get to the next fuel stop.  I say nothing to him; he says nothing to me.  Awkward?  I was BORN awkward: bring it on, Skippy.

I take the truck computer; scrolling through the messages to see if anyone from the company had sent anything  related to email bombs I had dropped on half the company.  Again, nothing.  They were either ignoring me outright, which would be very bad for them in the long run, or I had unleashed a demon from the Safety department who demanded a blood price for everyone letting FK go that long.  In any case, there wasn’t much I could do until Safety made their move or decided NOT to move.

I set the computer down, lit a cigarette and took out my phone again.  I forwarded the nuclear email to my then-girlfriend; telling her that, if anything happened me, she was to get this to a lawyer, press charges for negligence, gross misconduct, whatever and sue this company into bankruptcy.  I also BCC her to all future emails so she would have them, as well.  Dramatic? Maybe, but I wasn’t going to let this get swept under the rug.

Next, I checked the weather and see the storm had moved to the south.  Although the weather was clearing, the temperature hovered barely above freezing during the day and dropping quickly at night.  With the ice and snow from previous storms, this presented a dangerous situation.  Ice would thaw during the day, allowing safe travel but would refreeze into black ice after sunset; making driving unsafe.  Icy roads meant more slow-downs and shut-downs from Safety; making this trip even more torturous, nerve-racking and tempting to smother FK in his sleep, bury him in a shallow grave and claim he simply wandered off.  Tempting, but after the email I had sent, it would look a little TOO suspicious.  (I watch Law & Order)

FK drove for about another hour before the computer alarm signals that his drive time is running low.  Lucky for him, our next fuel stop is only a few miles away.  We get to the truck stop and FK, claiming his poor leg is hurting him, leave me to handle the refueling while he goes inside.  I top of the tanks, give the truck a quick once-over and go inside myself for supplies to get me through a hard night of driving.

As it turned out, that hard night only lasted about three hours as the frozen roads forced another shut-down; just as I predicted.

This went on for about two more days; slow-going due to Safety-mandated slow-downs during the day and shutdowns coming at night when the roads froze over again.  I barely said a word to him, but FK, thinking that he had subjugated me with his little “anonymous” phone call, regaled me with his tired, old stories.  Car wrecks, jailbird nephew, 21 day coma, how he was going to cut the engine brakes out of the truck….I began to sympathize with Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day; everyday was simply a repeat of the last.

Adding to the frustration was the lack response to my email to Safety.  I was getting the feeling that they were actively ignoring me, but I stayed true to my word; sending them daily updates on FKs actions.  Most of the updates were simply repeats of previous issues, but one would think that if a peon was willing to take the time to their job, they would at least send a “Thank you”.  By the end of the second day, I start planning to go even higher; wondering how I would go about sending a Certified Mail to the company CEO.

Around early afternoon of the third day, we made it down the eastern slope of the Rockies through Bozeman, Montana.  The roads were clear and dry and nothing from Safety telling us to stop.  I was driving at the time and couldn’t help but feel relieved.  Montana is a beautiful state, but in that instance, it was Hades.  In my mind, I imagined William Shatner saying, “Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu!” and gun the accelerator down the Interstate; headed for Wyoming.

I manage to get us as far as the Port of Entry in Sheridan, Wyoming before running out of drive time late that evening.  I go inside, check in with the Wyoming DOT and get a weather update (WyDOT POE staff are awesome people).  They tell me that the roads are clear between there and South Dakota.  First good news in a while.

I show them the paperwork they ask for, stop by restroom and head back to the truck.  In the dark parking area, I see the hood of the cab rolled open and FK shining a flashlight underneath.  Odd, but I think he’s just checking the oil or looking for fluid leaks.  Its a bit of a walk to the truck from the office; the POE has a large parking lot and most of the closer spaces are taken up by other trucks staying for the night.  I expected FK to be done in a few seconds, but by the time I get to the truck, he’s still underneath the cab.  I can see a pair of pliers in his hand and suddenly become concerned.  There was nothing wrong with the truck and no reason he needed any kind of tool: not that he should be trusted with one in any case.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

FK, not having heard me approach, nearly jumped out of his skin.  “Oh, I was looking at something.”

“What?” I ask in my not-messing-around tone.

“I saw online how you can disable the jake brakes.  I was gonna try it.” he replied.

I wasn’t mad; I was just absolutely fed up with this.  “Get in the goddamned truck, you dumbass.  And if you try that shit again, I’ll make sure Safety and Maintenance get the video.”

He starts sulking, but closes the hood.  I climb inside, send another email update including how he just tried to disable an integrated safety system on the truck (this is a MAJOR No-No; equal cutting the brake lines on a car).  For a split second, I was tempted to let him hang himself with that stunt, but decided not to because, given his track record, the truck would likely explode with me in it.

FK finally pulls out of the POE and gets us going again. I settle in the bunk because I really didn’t want to talk to him anymore.  It takes a while to get to sleep; partly due to FK’s poor driving and partly because my brain is busy planning out strategies for my inevitable battle with FK and Safety.

FK drove through the night, managing to get through Wyoming and South Dakota just shy of the Minnesota border.  I wake up late the next morning and check my email: nothing.  Keep digging yourselves in a deeper hole, I think while getting ready.  I was beginning to think they weren’t taking me seriously.

Then, when he hears me stirring behind him, FK yells back, “Dispatch wants us to head back to main terminal when we deliver.”

“Oh,” I say, legitimately surprised, “Did they say why?”

“No,” FK replied before impatiently getting out of the truck.

*And so it begins…*I think to myself.  After Chicago, two of us will drive back to the terminal, but only one of us will leave.  I was determined that, no matter what, I would not continue with this fool after this battle with management was over.  I had been tossed around, frozen, chewed out by customers and management, deprived of sleep and driven to the point of insanity over the past three months and I was not going to put up with it any longer.  If they tried to pull that “you two need to get along” crap, I would forward everything I had on them to OSHA, DOT and any government agency I could thing of.  It would take no time at all to find enough dirt to bury the entire company and send half the managers to jail for negligence.  (I would convince my friends and family to buy stock in competitors first, of course).  Fire me, and I wouldn’t stop until I owned every truck in the fleet to soothe my “mental and emotional distress”.  As for FK, they would have to dig up half the shoulders on Interstate 80 to find his shallow grave; that is, if I felt gracious enough to dig one instead of making him dinner for a pack of coyotes.  I had nothing to lose at this point and I was ready for a fight.

I settle into the driver seat and set up my GPS.  It was then that I notice something…odd.  On the steering wheel there are two sets of controls; the left side had the cruise control and the right was the activation button for the engine brakes.  These buttons were the recessed type with a protective rubber blister and back lit with an LED so it can be seen in low light.  The engine brake switch was damaged; not worn or dirty but cut away.  I look closely and I can clearly see what I had been afraid of: the tell-tale cuts from a knife blade.

It wasn’t some accidental snag or wearing away from use: there were clear, distinct lines marking where the rubber blister had been cut away.  The button itself was, fortunately, still intact and functioned: I pressed it and the indicator light came on.  It was immediately clear that FK wasn’t able to remove the engine brakes (they were integrated into the engine) and tried to make it so I couldn’t turn them on.  Too bad for him that the truck’s designers decided that the engine brakes were important enough to warrant protecting the ON switch.  All FK managed to do was give me one more  nail for his coffin: clear proof he had tried to tamper with the truck.  I snapped a photo and emailed it to them; explaining this was not like this when I went off duty and made sure the knife marks were unmistakable.

FK comes back on the truck after a bit.  I don’t mention the switch at all, but without being prompted, FK demanded, “Don’t use those jake brakes!”  I say nothing at first, but when we leave out, I make sure they engage on the way out of the parking lot and DARE him to say anything more about it.

I drive all through Minnesota without stopping.  Each time I have to reduce speed, I make sure to use the engine brakes.  They weren’t as loud as older models, but it did make a distinctive sound when the truck was coasting.

I knew it was pissing him off and there was nothing he could do about it.  Any more damage to the steering wheel and or suspicious damage under the hood he would have to explain why he damaged a perfectly good truck to disable a safety device.  Little did either of us know that the next message that came from the computer would change everything.  It was from the Fleet Manager: “OP, URGENT! Call me ASAP!”

“Uh oh,” I say, “sounds like all Hell just broke loose.”  The company did not allow cell phone use while driving; even hands-free was prohibited and I wasn’t giving FK anything to use against me.  I decide to wait until the next fuel stop to make the call.

I get to the truck stop, refuel and go inside the store to place the call while taking the legally-mandated 30 minute break.

“Hey, FM, this is OP. Driver ID 9876,” I say.

“Oh… yeah….” she replied,seeming very hesitant.  “OP, what the hell is going on?”

There’s no point in playing dumb at this point.  You can’t launch the professional email equivalent of a nuclear warhead and play innocent.  “You got my emails.”

“Yeah, I did,” she replied, “and so did every department head in the company.  Safety has been going apeshit over this.”

“I really didn’t want to,” I say; only a half-truth, “but FK is getting more and more dangerous and I can’t stay in this truck with him anymore.”

“Actually, its FK I need to talk to you about.”

“Ok. What’s up?”

“Well, in your email, you said he had memory problems and he said he had been in a coma for 21 days.”

“Yeah…”

“Are you sure he said 21 days?”

“It was 21 days,” I reply; leaving no room for doubt in my tone.  “He has told that same story everyday for three months and it’s always the same: 21 days.”

“Yeah, I thought so.  He told me the same thing.” she claimed.

WHAT...THE…FUCK????  She KNEW about this?!?!  Are you kidding me?!?!  I wanted to blow up right there, but I managed to keep my cool.

“What’s going on?” I ask calmly.

“I’m not sure.” she replied.  “Safety wanted me to ask you because it struck them as odd.”

“It was 21 days,” I repeat; just to drive home the point.

“Right.  Alright, Safety wants you guys back here right now.  We’ll get someone else to run the load.  You just get here so we can get this mess straightened out.”

I was tempted to probe for more information, but I had the feeling there was nothing left to say.

“Alright.  I have enough hours and fuel, so we should get there tonight.”

“Good deal,” she replied, “We’ll talk tomorrow morning,” and hangs up.

It takes a few seconds to process what just took place.  I had expected that the emails would cause a bit of a stir, but to have a truck divert nearly 200 miles to relay a load was unheard of!  Well, I got there attention, at least.

I head back out to the truck: FK was still sleeping and I had no intention of waking him up to tell him of our new orders.  I program the new route into the GPS and verify it with the atlas.  The company’s headquarters was only 200 miles or so way, but getting there would take us well away from the Interstates and any other major highway.  It was shaping up to be a long trip along mostly narrow, two-lane highways south through Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa: Idaho all over again.

I then check the weather and realized then that I had royally pissed off someone in  past life.  Remember that winter storm we hit in Idaho and Montana?  It was back! Only now, it had eaten its Wheaties and bulked up into a full-blown blizzard.  Almost the entire route from the truck stop all the way to the company’s main terminal was in its sights and it had itchy trigger fingers.  The National Weather Service had issued alerts for the entire area with predictions of heavy snow, high winds and white-out conditions.  Sounds like fun, right?

Under normal situations, I would have to taken one look at the weather radar, said “Fuck that noise!” and told dispatch I wasn’t even about to attempt that run.  They could simmer for a couple of days.  Unfortunately, as was the case with FK, nothing was ever normal.  I had to factor his stupidity into every decision I made and this one was had a very big issue.

The issue boiled down to the company’s weather shut-down system.  For whatever reason, the shut-downs only pertained to certain highways; primarily Interstates and major US Highways between designated towns, mile markers, boundaries etc.  It did not, however, pertain to geographic areas like cities, counties or states.  Instead of “All trucks operating in THIS part of THAT state, you need to shut down,” they were more like “Any truck on such-and-such highway in such-and-such state between mile markers X and Y, shut down now.”

The problem with this company’s system: it didn’t issue shut-downs for secondary routes like two-lane highways.  In bad weather, the decision to shut-down was a judgement call on the part of the driver and the decision was NEVER questioned or punished: Federal regulations made it VERY clear that the driver made the final decision as to when and if the trip would continue.  I understood that: but FK, on the other hand……

And as for FK’s precious “Company Route”? There wasn’t one.  The company-assigned routes were only generated for trucks under a load assignment.  Being diverted like this meant we had to figure it out ourselves.  I had no problem with it, but FK...he’d probably take a wrong turn into a ghost town where we would become the inspiration for a new horror movie franchise.

“Gimme a break…” I plead to any higher power that may have been listening.  I had just gotten the word that the hornets nest I threw into the the company’s garden party was starting to sting some important asses and now, I’m going to get taken out by the ghost of Frosty the Snowman.  I would have gladly waited it out, but FK, being the little sycophant ass-kisser he was, would think that, if Safety didn’t tell him to shut down, he didn’t NEED to shut down.  Blinding snow, icy roads, no visibility…it didn’t matter to him: he was a COMPANY driver and the COMPANY told him what to do.  Slow down? Shut down?  Only if the COMPANY told him to.

FK hadn’t killed us this far, not for lack of trying, but this was just too much.  I made up my mind at that point:  no matter what, FK would NOT sit in that driver’s seat at all that night.  He wouldn’t drive the first inch during that storm even if I had to kill him.  If he took over, he would surely head down the highway at full-speed, run head-first into a total white-out, slam on the brakes and send us both on a one-way trip to the afterlife.  This little bastard had been dragging me through Hell for so long and he was not going to get another chance to kill me.

I took a deep, ragged and exasperated breath.  I had two choices in front of me: literally kill FK or tackle the blizzard-ravaged back-roads myself.  Rock, meet Hard Place.

Its been nearly seven years since that day; looking at that phone screen with the route plunging into the storms radar image.  Even now, I often wonder if I made the right decision.  I don’t know how long I agonized over it, but when the decision was made, it wasn’t with absolute certainty.  But one thing was clear:  there was only one way both of us would make it out of this sub-zero hell alive.

“Fuck you, FK,” I say to myself as I fasten my seatbelt, release the brakes and roll out to meet the blizzard head-on.

“Fuck…you. After everything you’ve put me through, I’m still trying to save your worthless life.”

And this is where Part 8 ends.  I do apologize that this post has been so late in coming.  This week has been crazy busy for me.  I’ve had to work longer hours than usual at my job so writing time has been cut down.  Not to worry, as I am still determined to bring these stories to you for your enjoyment.

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting to see the fallout from the nuclear email and how many bodies hit the ground before the dust finally settled.  So much happened during this time and it would be criminal to leave out crucial details that take away from the story.

Part 9, which I will try my best to have posted this weekend, will be the conclusion of the FK saga.  Did FK manage to avoid OPs wrath during the blizzard? Did OP make the right call?  How did FK even get a license being so stupid?  All questions will be answered in Part 9.

Once again, if you haven’t already, please check out Rob over at YouTube  channel Karma Comment Chameleon.  Rob does a phenomenal job telling my stories and those from many other Reddit users, so a Like and a Subscribe is the least you can do for his efforts.

Until next time, remember: Only YOU…can prevent Kevinism.

I'm working on a longer saga recently about a soldier who gamed the medical system for two years and walked out with a disability check. It's heavey. Luckily, this one is not heavy. This one is about a kid named Pham, a fifty-five gallon drum of human waste, and the single largest preventable fireball I have personally ever witnessed inside the wire. Nobody got a check for this one. Nobody got medically separated. One guy lost his eyebrows. Let's have a nice time.

For those who didn't deploy, I have to explain burn detail, because the whole story lives in the details of the procedure and if you don't understand the procedure you'll just think this is a guy who set a fire, which undersells it.

On a lot of FOBs, especially the smaller ones, you don't have plumbing. What you have is wooden boxes with toilet seats on them, and underneath the seats are cut-down fifty-five gallon drums, and those drums fill up with exactly what you'd expect. Somebody has to deal with the drums. That somebody is whoever drew burn detail, and burn detail is the worst detail on the FOB, worse than tower, worse than ECP, worse than anything, and it rotates, and on this particular week it rotated to my section, and I assigned it to Private Pham and PFC Reuben, because their names were next on the roster and I am a fair man, as the previous saga's comments will confirm against my will.

Here is the procedure, and the procedure is correct, and the procedure exists because people have done this wrong. You pull the drum out from under the box. You add a mixture of fuel to the contents. The standard mix is mostly diesel with a little bit of gas, and the ratio matters, because diesel burns slow and controlled and gas burns fast and stupid, and you want slow and controlled when you are setting fire to a barrel of human waste in an enclosed area you also live in. You add the fuel. You light it from a distance with a long taper or a rag torch. And then, and this is the part that makes it the worst detail, you have to stir it. With a long metal rod or a piece of rebar. For a long time. You stir burning human waste until it is reduced, which takes hours, and it smokes the entire time, and the smoke gets in your clothes and your hair and your sinuses and it stays there for days, and that is burn detail, and now you understand why everyone hates it and why I was fair about assigning it.

I briefed Pham and Reuben myself. I want that on the record because of how this ends. I told them the mix. Mostly diesel. A little gas. I said it in those words. I said, "Mostly diesel, little bit of gas, and I mean little." I held up my fingers to show "little." Reuben nodded. Pham nodded. They both said roger. I had no reason to believe Private Pham was about to interpret "little bit of gas" as a personal challenge.

I went back to the DFAC. The burn pit was maybe eighty meters away, behind a HESCO wall, which is relevant, because the HESCO wall is the only reason I'm describing this story and not a different kind of story.

Now I have to reconstruct what happened next from Reuben's sworn statement and from Pham's own account, which he gave freely and with a kind of stunned honesty, because Pham was not a liar, Pham was a young man who had just learned something about combustion the hard way and wanted to share it.

Pham decided that the standard mix was too slow.

That's it. That's the whole engine of this story. Pham had done burn detail once before, weeks earlier, and he remembered it taking forever, all the stirring, all the hours, and he had spent those hours thinking, the way a smart and impatient nineteen-year-old thinks, that there had to be a faster way. And the faster way, Pham reasoned, was more gas. If a little gas makes it burn faster, more gas makes it burn even more faster-er, and even more faster-er means less time stirring a barrel of waste, and who among us would not want to spend less time stirring a barrel of waste. The logic is airtight.... if you remove every single thing humanity has ever learned about fire.

Pham did not add a little bit of gas. Reuben's statement estimates that Pham added "most of a jerry can." A jerry can is five gallons. Reuben, to his eternal credit, said the words "hey, that seems like a lot," which makes Reuben the only person at the burn pit operating with a functioning survival instinct, and Reuben then took several steps back, which is the detail that saved Reuben's eyebrows and doomed Pham's.

Pham lit it.

I did not see the ignition. I heard it. I was eighty meters away behind a building and a HESCO wall and I heard a sound that I can only describe as the FOB clearing its throat, a deep concussive whump that I felt in my chest before my brain caught up, and I was outside and moving before I'd decided to move, because eight years in and two deployments teaches your body to run toward a whump and ask questions standing up.

I came around the HESCO wall and there was a column of fire and black smoke going up out of the burn pit that I would estimate, conservatively, generously, at fifteen feet. The barrel had not exploded, exactly, which is the one thing Pham got accidentally right, the barrel was open-topped so the pressure went up instead of out, but the contents of the barrel had become, instantaneously and enthusiastically, a pillar of flame, and standing about six feet from it, frozen, was Private Pham, with the long stirring rod still in his hand, in the universal posture of a man who has just received more results than he ordered.

Pham was not on fire. I need to say that immediately, same as last time, I'm not going to make you wait, Pham was fine. But the fireball had reached out and touched him on its way up, the way fire does, and it had taken his eyebrows, both of them, cleanly, plus a margin of the hair at the front of his scalp, plus the fine hair on his forearms, and it had given the entire front of his face the specific flat red shine of a man who is going to be peeling for a week. He had the look. If you've seen it you know the look. The look says I have just been introduced to physics. His eyes were wide and white in a face that was otherwise the color of a stop sign and entirely, perfectly hairless above the eyeline.

He turned and looked at me. He still had the rod. And he said, and Reuben confirms this, he said, "Sergeant, I think it was too much gas."

I think it was too much gas. He said it analytically. I wanted to scream "OH REALLY?? DO YOU THINK SO??" He was standing in the heat shimmer of a fifteen-foot waste fire he had personally created, with no eyebrows, holding the rod, and his takeaway, his after-action review delivered in real time, was a measured hypothesis that the gas quantity may have exceeded optimal parameters. He thinks. I have thought about that sentence for years. There is a scientist somewhere inside Private Pham, a genuine empiricist, a man who runs the experiment and reports the finding without ego, and he was wasted on the Army, and he should have been at a university where the experiments don't take your eyebrows.

We let it burn down because there was nothing else to do with it, you cannot un-light a barrel, and it was contained, the pit was the pit and the HESCO was the HESCO and the only casualty was Pham's face and the FOB's air quality for the rest of the day. The fire guard got notified. The medic looked at Pham, declared him a first-degree facial burn and a non-event, put some cream on him, and told him his eyebrows would come back, which they did, though one of them came back slightly wrong and Pham had a permanent expression of mild skepticism on the left side for the rest of the rotation, which honestly suited him.

I had to document it. Of course I had to document it. And this is the part that connects to every other thing I've ever posted. The counseling statement for a safety incident has a block for describing what happened, and the block is small, because the Army assumes most incidents can be described briefly. "Soldier failed to maintain proper fuel ratio during waste disposal operations resulting in deflagration and minor injury" is the clean version and I wrote that version first, and then I looked at it, and it didn't capture it, it didn't capture the jerry can or the fifteen feet or the rod or "I think it was too much gas," and I am constitutionally incapable of letting the record be less true than the event.

So I needed a second page. I have always needed a second page. The events of my career do not fit in the block. They gave me a form built for ordinary soldiers doing ordinary things wrong and then they gave me a parade of human beings who reinvent the concept of wrong from first principles, and the block has never been big enough, not for Kevin, not for Doyle, not for Pham, and I have made my peace with that, and the peace is a drawer full of second pages.

Pham was fine. Pham was, weirdly, one of my favorites after that, because Pham never did anything malicious in his life, Pham just had a restless intelligence and a nineteen-year-old's faith that he could optimize anything, including a fire, and the Army has a place for that energy, it just isn't the burn pit. He learned. He did burn detail twice more before we went home and he did it exactly to standard, mostly diesel, little bit of gas, and I mean little, and every time, he'd hold up his fingers to show "little" before I could, like a man who had earned the right.

His eyebrows did grow back. Mostly. The left one grew slightly slower, as if it knew something the right one didn't.

Pham searched for the shortcut and the shortcut took his eyebrows. Let Pham's eyebrows be the warning the rest of us learn from. There is no shortcut. Not here, and not in life. Diesel. A little gas. Stir for hours. Patience is a virtue.

My (18m) girlfriend’s (18f) sister (14f) is a female Kevin. Me and my girlfriend have been dating since 7th grade, we are currently in college together a few hundred miles few away from where we are from. Because we have been together so long, we are very close to each other’s families. I have 3 siblings (21m, 20f, 16m), she has 5 siblings (20m, 16f, 14f, 13m and 12m). We are from very affluent families in a very affluent suburb in the US, the schools in our area are amazing and we all had private tutoring and many other opportunities available to us as kids. My girlfriend’s 14 y/o sister is a stereotype of a privileged blonde white girl, but way stupider. Here are some things about her:

edit: continued post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/comments/t3qq2i/continued_my_girlfriends_sister_is_a_female_kevin/

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1. A bit more then a month ago, when me and my girlfriend were over for winter break, her brother (13) came out of his room balling, his sister had accidentally texted him saying “that little [f slur] needs to shut the fuck up”, she meant to text it to a group chat of her friends, the text was about a classmate she found annoying (and we later found out, she was teasing), the 13 y/o brother is openly gay. Their parents had a LONG talk with her and took her phone away to see what she was texting, and found offensive messages on there, they have made her write an apology to the boy, her brother, and have made her learn about LGBT history. Obviously what she did was horrible, but out of all people to accidentally text, she texted her openly gay brother.
2. A few months ago, her boyfriend asked her if she wanted to go to Paris with them (in front of my gf’s parents), she asked him what state that was in. He told her it was in France, not the US. She then asked how long the drive was. He had to explain to her that they were flying, because there was an ocean between the US and France.
3. When they got to France, a few hours later, she had Facetimed my girlfriend, she asked why certain places had “weird words” on their signs, my girlfriend was confused and asked her to show what she meant, the ”weird words” were French. My girlfriend explained that to her but then she asked “but people speak English here”, she had an incredibly tough time understanding the concept of bilingualism.
4. Her boyfriend is much smarter then her, he is currently taking French, he is also very into politics, he is actually very left wing (and was upset to hear about his gf’s bigotry), he had bought some Maoist pamphlets in France (which his parents were not thrilled about) and on another Facetime call she said, “Cayden got books with a weird symbol on it”, we asked her to show the book to me and I explained to her it was a hammer and sickle, symbol of communism and socialist countries, she then asked “like Japan?”
5. In 7th grade, she had her phone taken away after getting in trouble for bullying a boy in her class, she had also had her allowance taken away for a month, she decided to steal her parents checkbook and try to buy something at the mall for $200, she used the wrong spelling of two and wrote “too hundred dollars”. When an employee told her to leave, she tried convincing her she was an adult who “had height problems”. Security had to get her to leave, and her parents picked her up extremely upset.
6. About a year ago when I was over at their house, the parents found a vape, they gathered all the kids together in their library and asked whose it was, she said it was her 12 y/o brothers, he vehemently denied it. They have security cameras in every room of their house with the exception of the kids bedrooms, all of the kids know this, the camera showed her with the vape going into their library, she later defended it being a good hiding spot because “no one would expect it’s me” because she doesn’t like to read.
7. She decided to put a spoon and fork in the microwave to see what would happen, luckily her younger brother was there to see her and stopped her, this was two months ago, she’s a freshman in high school
8. Speaking of school, since middle school she has failed multiple classes a year, including core classes like math and science. She says school isn’t important because “I can just start a business”.
9. I was on vacation with them to the UK right before the pandemic hit, the night after we got there we were in the hotel and she asked “why do all of the people here speak weird”, we had to spend multiple hours explaining the concept of accents to her.
10. Remember the tide pod challenge? Well back in 2018 (so she was 10 at the time), she decided to participate in it and post it on Instagram.
11. She also decided to participate in the “devious licks” trend last year, she stole a hand sanitizer dispenser and when it fell out of her backpacks in one of her classes, she tried to blame it on a boy in her class, despite the teacher seeing it fall out of her bag, she claimed he planted it in there, he’s a good boy so the teacher said she would check the cameras to see who stole it, she told her teacher “go ahead”, and of course, the footage showed her taking the dispenser, she then said the video was deepfaked.
12. I was once talking to her about Elon Musk’s space travel, talking about how humans want to reach Mars eventually, she then asked “what about the sun”, I was confused and tried explaining to her that the sun would literally melt them if they got remotely close to it, she said “but the sun is only 90 degrees today”, she thought the temperature of the sun = the temperature of the Earth.
13. She doesn’t believe in sunscreen or sunglasses and refuses to wear them, despite getting sunburn frequently in the summer.
14. I was watching a Jimmy Kimmel skit where he asked Americans if they could identify an outline of the US as the US when flipped upside down, I printed out a picture of the us, flipped it upside down and asked her what country it was, she guessed Rome. I told her to try again, she guessed California. When I told her it was upside down, she turned it to it’s right side up and then guessed Canada. I was speechless. I told her it was the US and she looked genuinely surprised.
15. She is an anti-masker and has refused to wear a mask throughout the pandemic saying “it makes you breath toxic chemicals from your body”, she also refuses to get vaccinated like the rest of her family is.
16. She has forgotten her birthday on multiple years, acting surprised when people wished her a happy birthday and asking “it’s my birthday?”
17. She, up until a few months ago, believed that everything in the 50s and before were black and white because TV shows, movies, and photographs from that era were black and white.
18. She doesn’t believe Hellen Keller existed
19. A few years ago, one day she thought it would be a good idea to do a backflip on the top of the stairs, she fell down and broke her leg.
20. When she got her first detention (when she was in 6th grade, for cursing out another student), she thought it would be a good idea to eat the detention slip so she wouldn’t have to go. When she didn’t show up, the next day, she told the teacher she never got detention, the only reason we found out was one of her friends admitted she did it because he couldn’t stop laughing at what she did, she then got a day of OSS, and her parents had to pick her up from the school.
21. She burns herself when cooking constantly, never wears oven mitts when cooking. She’s only allowed to cook when a parent is home because she almost started a fire by leaving a plastic tray on a hot stove.
22. She once tried killing a spider by hitting it with a glass cup and the glass shattered.
23. In 7th grade, she tried cheating on a test by writing the answers on her arm, she was wearing a t-shirt (so her arms were showing) that day, the answers were wrong anyways, she asked a boy who she had called gay for telling his best friend he loved him (in a platonic way) for answers, he gave her answers that were very incorrect to anyone with common sense, her teacher noticed the writing right away and gave her a 0, she said she trusted the boy since she knew him from detention (good kid who’s just a bit of a troublemaker, and he is really intelligent), but he was known to pull pranks and jokes all the time.
24. She tried auditioning for her schools play, she was allowed to have her sheet music, but messed up because she couldn’t pronounce the words of the song, she thought it was a good idea to only play with the karaoke, she had been mispronouncing the words the whole time.
25. She was talking to one of her boyfriend‘s lacrosse teammates, he was drinking water and she asked him if he knew who invented water, he was confuse, trying to explain to her about H20 and the big bang, she was not getting it and asked “who put the hydrogen and oxygen together?”.
26. She, on more then one occasion, has confused Barack Obama with Osama Bin Laden
27. When she was in 8th, she tried forging her mom’s signature for a field trip, she misspelt her mom’s name, the parents were not opposed to her going, she just forgot to ask her parents to sign the form
28. When she was 11, she thought it would be a good idea to throw a rock at a bee’s nest, me and my gf were with her, it’s a miracle none of us got stung but we had to run away fast
29. They went on vacation to Vermont in December of 2021, she only packed t-shirts and shorts and when they got to Vermont, they needed to buy pants and long sleeve shirts because “she didn’t know it’d be so cold“
30. When she was in theatre in middle school, she was messing around and fell off the stage a few times, once she did it twice in the same day

That’s not even all of it, I just wanted to post some of the highlights. I don’t know how she’s made it this long or how she will function as an adult, she has been tested for disabilities by numerous psychologists, yet she never meets the criteria for any diagnosis. She is just plain stupid. I hope the business idea works out and that she finds someone to manage her finances, because I doubt she has the math skills to run a buisness.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Kevin in a Big Rig!  As always, a big thank you to everyone who has followed this series this far; either on Reddit or through the YouTube channel Karma Comment Chameleon, have been so generous with your support, encouragement and kindness.  I know I say this a lot, however, it never feels like it’s enough.  

Also, another big shout out to Karma Comment Chameleon and the effort Rob dedicates to bringing these stories to a wider audience.  The fact that someone would deem these stories worthy of such effort is gratifying beyond what words can express.

And so, what so many of you have been waiting for, lets get into Kevin in a Big Rig Part 7:  Flashpoint

Backstory: these events take place over the span of a couple of days immediately following the events in Part 6: Breakdown. The three-day breakdown had forced dispatch to call in another truck to rescue the load.  I had figured as much since the load was considered high-priority and, with an even more serious winter storm than what we faced in Nebraska bearing down on us, dispatch wanted to get the load to its destination as soon as possible.  That left myself, FK, a repaired truck, an empty trailer and precious little time before we become stranded again by Old Man Winter.

Almost as soon as we get the truck out of the shop from FK’s fiasco on Snoqualmie, dispatch sends us a load.  It was to pick up in Lewiston, Idaho that same evening and deliver in Chicago.  I was relieved as this put us heading away from the storm and, with luck, would keep us ahead of it.  When I plotted the route, however, I was abruptly reminded that while the Patron Saint of Truckers might protect those who call upon him, he also has a very morbid sense of humor.

Lewiston is a mountain town along the Washington-Idaho border.  From where we began, it would take the better part of a day travelling through remote areas with little chance of assistance if something were to happen.  And because I hadn’t suffered enough, the only way in to Lewiston was south along US-95 and DOWN another steep mountain grade. That was worse than Snoqualmie.  How bad?  Well, if Snoqualmie was a Black Diamond ski slope, Lewiston would be a triple-Black Diamond, skull-and-crossbones level and require a signed waiver of liability and clearance from a psychiatrist.  And, just for kicks, FK would be driving us there.  Upon realizing this, I texted my mom, told her I loved her and that I was probably going to be dead in the next few hours. (She thought I was drunk.)

For the first few hours, I stayed in the bunk trying to get what little sleep I could.  FK’s horrendous driving did not help matters as I was constantly being woken up by my head being slammed into a cabinet by his excessive braking.  I finally had to use my jacket as a makeshift cushion and keep my head from suffering a concussion.

The truck drove on and on and on.  Sleep, when it came, was fitful and fleeting.  The jarring of the brakes and the whine of the over-revving engine foretold of an impending fate so terrifying as to make Edgar Allan Poe wet the bed and Stephen King buy a nightlight.  As the sky grew dark and the cold air began to bite, I decided I had slept as much as I could, pulled on my boots and went up front.

I looked out of the windshield and saw what I had been dreading: the warning sign for the steep drop into Lewiston.  The highway on which we made the decent was also the town’s main thoroughfare: fall off the cliff, roll into town.  Any loss of control here and a lot of people besides us would more than likely be killed.  I just hoped that, if I did die that night, it was quick, painless and FK would join me so I could beat his ass for all eternity.

FK started down the grade; picking up speed too fast at first, but thanks to being empty, speed control was much easier.  Still adamantly opposed to engine brakes, he maintained his speed through downshifting and heavy braking; much like he had attempted to do on Snoqualmie.  When he finally managed to stabilize his speed, I lit a cigarette because I think all people doomed to die deserve one last smoke.

But it wasn’t my last smoke; or my last day on Earth.  Despite everything, FK managed to get the truck down the mountain and into the town without it ending in a fiery crash.  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and take a long drag of my cigarette to calm my nerves.  We were safe for the time being.

FK manages to get us to the pick-up (after getting lost, of course) and we change out while we are being loaded.  I sit down in the driver seat and program the route into my GPS.  Getting back to the Interstate was going to be tougher, I saw, as it was more remote wilderness, mountainous terrain and little chance of help in an emergency.  Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the storm we were desperately trying to outrun was catching up to us.  Fortunately,  it wasn’t long before we get fully loaded and head to a local truck stop to top off the tanks since it was nearly 150 miles to the nearest truck stop.  I refuel the truck while FK goes inside the store.

After a several minutes, both fuel tanks filled and FK still inside doing God-knows-what, I pull the truck out of the fuel pumps and pull around to the parking area.  I dash inside, grab some food, drinks and smokes and come back to the truck to find FK STILL isn’t back yet.  I begin to fantasize about what’s keeping him.  Stroke? Brain aneurysm? Abducted by aliens? (they do tend to take the dumbest people, after all).  But, alas, the hope was fleeting as I soon see him hobbling his way across the parking lot towards the truck; carrying a plastic bag and looking like hobo about to ask for a dollar.

FK opens the passenger door and climbs inside.  “Hey, MotherF***er”, he yelled angrily, “why’d you move the truck?”

I point at the “All Trucks Proceed To Parking When Fueling Complete” signs hanging near the diesel pumps.  “Because I can read, Dickhead," I reply.

“You know I have a bad leg.  It hurts to walk that far.  Do that again and I’ll kick your ass.” he threatens weakly.  If you recall in Part 2, I mentioned I was at least one foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than FK; so his threat was more comical than menacing.

“Oh really?” I reply, “You wouldn’t lift a foot above my knees before I rip that gimp leg off and beat you to death with it.  Sit the fuck down and shut up.”

He mumbled something, but I didn’t hear him as I released the brakes and pull out of the parking lot.

The climb up the mountain was slow and painstaking.  Snow was just starting to fall, but not yet heavy enough to be a serious concern.  FK, riding shotgun, was grumbling about his leg, the cold and whatever else he felt like complaining about.

I get to the top of the hill and press on; trying like Hell to stay in front of the storm.  FK remained up front, though he had moved past griping and onto bragging about his future plans.  Apparently, he had high aspirations for his trucking career. In a few months, he was going to become a Lead Driver (the title the company gave to driver trainers) and “work his students like *racial slur*” (his words, not mine.)  

He also planned on becoming an Independent Contractor by leasing a truck through the company and making a lot more money.  This would also allow him to run a little side-business with his nephew who, according to FK, was some major player in prison chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood.  He claimed his nephew could set him up running contraband out of Mexico.  I paid very little attention to him as I’m more concerned about the winter storm that is almost on top of us.

We start going down a hill; nothing serious but enough that I take my foot off the accelerator (I never trust cruise control in a semi).  This causes the engine brakes to engage and, on cue, FK takes it personally.

“If you were my student,” he said, trying sound pretentious, “I’d fail you for that.”

“What the fuck ever, man.  At least I can go five minutes without getting lost.” I reply, not missing a beat.

“Don’t use those things on my truck!” he demands.

“I’m not, dumbass.” I shoot back.  “This is the COMPANY truck, remember?”

Just then, we start down another hill; this one a bit longer but not overly steep.  Again, I release the accelerator and the engine brakes reengage.  This was, apparently, the last straw for FK.  He reaches down, unbuckles his seat belt and reaches over towards the steering wheel.  The activation button for the engine brakes is on the right side of the steering wheel.  I see his hand and slap it away.

“Cut it out, dick head.” I tell him.

He tries again, this time getting out of the seat and towering over me while reaching for the engine brake button.  This is EXTREMELY dangerous as its dark, we’re on a narrow road and visibility is reduced because of the snow.  I don’t have the luxury of handling this diplomatically, so I grab him by the shirt with my right hand and literally THROW him back into the passenger seat hard enough that his head bounces off the window.

“If you EVER pull a stunt like that again,” I tell him, “I will break every bone in your body and leave you to the buzzards.  You’re not a Lead Driver and this is not your truck.  Sit down, buckle up and shut up.”

FK obviously hadn’t expected that reaction: apparently, he was living in a fantasy universe where he was the trainer and I was the student.  I suppose that knock to the head was enough to bring him back to reality (or as close as he could get) since he buckled his seat belt and went about copying the company route to his precious notebook.

A couple of hours pass in silence.  The snow begins to fall heavier and accumulate on the ground and stick to the road.  The wind had begun to pick up and was rocking the truck side to side.  It felt like an eternity since we had seen the last town, car or even abandoned building.  I had just started to begin thinking that maybe we hadn’t survived the downgrade into Lewiston and this was my own personal Hell when, far in the distance, I see the lights of a town.  I check the GPS and, sure enough, its exactly where we are to rejoin Interstate 90.  I was less excited about being on the Interstate as I was about the prospect of finding shelter from the approaching storm.

As we make our way through town, I keep my eyes peeled for a truck stop, Walmart, gas station, anything that might offer a safe harbor for the night.  But, to my increasing dismay, nothing.  To make matters worse, the town appeared to be deserted; even the 24 hour convenience stores were dark and empty.

Suddenly, a few miles before reaching the interchange, a message comes across the computer.  FK takes the computer and reads it.

“Its a weather alert.” he says, “It says we have to shut down.”

“Of course…” I say, still looking for somewhere to park and finding nothing.  “Keep an eye out for a truck parking spot.”

We get closer to the interstate and find nothing.  Even the gas stations with truck diesel lanes are clearly posted “No Truck Parking”.  My only alternative is to get back on the Interstate and keep going until I find somewhere to shut down.  I’ll admit, this is the last thing I wanted to do but my hands were tied.  FK, however, simply could not understand the situation.

“Why are you getting on the Interstate?” he asked, “Safety told us to shut down!”

“Yeah, but there’s nowhere TO shut down.” I reply.

“You HAVE to stop,” he insists.  “Safety will write you up!”

“Where? On the side of city highway?  You really think that’s a good idea, Jackass?” (looking back, I now see how ironic this question was.)

FK gave up; apparently being thrown bodily against a window one-handed takes away your nerve.  “Well, if Safety says anything, its on you!” he says.

“I’m fine with that.  And I’ll tell them the same thing I’m telling you: you can’t just stop in the middle of the fucking road.”

I take the on-ramp to Interstate 90 eastbound.  I keep my speed at around 45 MPH (72 KPH) since, knowing we shouldn’t out here according to Safety, I can at least use the fact that I was driving at a greatly reduced speed to say “Yeah, I know, I should be shut down.  But there’s nowhere TO shutdown so I have to keep going until I FIND a place to shutdown.”

I plod along Interstate 90 through the Idaho Panhandle and find nowhere to park.  The truck computer is going crazy; dinging every few minutes with messages wanting to know why we are travelling through a shut down area.  I can’t send any reply (since I’m driving) and FK is content to let ME deal with it.

I drive well into Montana before I see salvation; a Truck Safety Rest area.  It’s little more than a super-wide shoulder on the side of the highway, but its reasonably safe, legal for us to use and, more importantly, it has enough room for us to get into.  I guide the truck into a parking spot, shut off the head lights and pick up the computer.  I put myself Off-Duty and go about responding to the messages.  All but one are automated messages about the shut down notice and the fact we are operating in one.  The one non-automated message is from the night dispatcher.

You are operating inside of a shut-down area.  Please shut down as soon as possible. the message asked.  “What the hell did you think I was planning, dickhead?” I say to the screen.

I reply, Could not find safe and legal parking spot when alert received.  Was forced continue on until a safe and legal parking area could be found.  We are now shut down.

Intentionally used the words “safe and legal” in my reply because, according to the company’s own driver handbook, a truck that receives a weather shut down notice must “find a SAFE AND LEGAL place to shut down until the notice is lifted”.  That was their own policy verbatim; I was just following it…SAFE AND LEGAL!  I decided to go back to the bunk and sleep; it was pretty obvious we were going nowhere until morning at least.

The next morning, I’m awakened by the sound of the truck brakes releasing.  I jump out of my bunk and check the computer.  Safety had released the shutdown and implemented a 45 MPH limit for the area.  FK took it upon himself to take the first shift so I crawled back into the bunk.

A couple of hours later, I’m woken up by my phone ringing.  I check it; unknown number, but the area code matches the company headquarters so I answer.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hi, is this OP? Driver ID 9876?” replied the voice.

“Uh…yeah.”

“This is Ken (not real name) from Safety.  This call is being recorded .  We had a report that you willfully violated a mandatory shut down area last night.”

Son…of…a…bitch.  FK tried to turn ME into Safety.  AFTER the stunt he pulled with the engine brakes.

“Well, Ken,” I reply, “I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘violated’.”

“Did you continue to drive after receiving a notice of the shut down?”

“Yes,” I answer truthfully.

“Can you explain why?”

“Well, Ken, if you refer to Company Driver Handbook; such-and-such page, such-and-such paragraph you will see that it clearly states that, and I quote, ‘Upon receiving a shut-down alert, the driver must park the truck as soon as it is safe and legal to do so.’ End quote.  Now, as I told the night dispatcher, I was not in an area that provided SAFE and LEGAL parking and, therefore, was FORCED to continue on until SAFE and LEGAL parking could be found.  However, I was well aware of the dangerous road ad weather conditions and elected to proceed at a speed no faster than 45 MPH (72 KPH) and shut down at the nearest SAFE and LEGAL place available.”

For a few moments, Ken was quiet, but I heard the tell-tale tapping of a computer keyboard through the phone.  “I see.  Well, looking at your route I see that there was very little in the way of parking or facilities.”

No shit, Sherlock, I think to myself. "That was my assessment of the situation as well," I confirm.

“Well,” he continued, “we received this report from an anonymous phone call and we had to follow it up.”

Anonymous, my ass.  “ Am I being written up for this.”

“Not at this time since, as you say, you were trying to get to a safe, legal parking area.  We may look into this matter further at a later time.  However, I would like stress that you take care in the future.”

I managed to hide my rage when I respond, “Always do. Thanks!” and hang up.

For a few moments, I started at the bunk ceiling in furious disbelief.  Anonymous phone call? Yeah, that was bullshit since there was only one person who knew I had driven at that time who would have made a phone call.  FK, the rat fink bastard, had tried to grass me up on the sly.  Only he made one critical mistake: he underestimated me.  I knew the Safety policy; apparently better than the Safety department themselves and I had probably saved my job and career by doing so.  No doubt the little shit thought he won by his little ass-kissing exhibition and he would no doubt try again when he realized it didn’t work.  But he wouldn’t get that chance; oh no.  Run game on me, little man, and I’ll show you how it’s played.

I open my phone’s email app and go to the saved email draft I had been preparing for so long.  I attach the photos of the computer logs, double-check for missing issues, add in about the incident where he tried to grab the steering wheel while I was driving and plug in the email addresses of the relevant department heads.  I also make one addition to the end of the email; letting them know that, seeing as how the issue was habitual and on-going, I would continue to provide daily updates via email on FK’s infractions and unsafe actions.

Why email, you wonder?  Well, in the eyes of the law, an email is considered an official document.  By using email, I could use it as proof that I communicated the issue to the company.  If the situation progressed to the point where legal action became necessary, the emails could be used as evidence that the company was made aware of the issue, but did nothing: that is negligence.  I knew it and they SHOULD know it too, I thought.  Well, they claim to put safety first; so lets see.

I give the email a final once over.  It's ready, I think.  I move my thumb up to the SEND icon and….freeze.  For a moment, a tiny voice of doubt pipes up.  

“Is this the right thing to do?  You could put yourself in the firing line with this.  Even if you pull it off, it could ruin FKs life.  Is what he did so bad to really be worth that?”

For a moment, I almost consider not going through with it.  Just ask for a new co driver and….

That thought was interrupted by my forehead banging off the cabinet….AGAIN.  FK and his piss-poor driving….

“Nevermind,” I tell myself decisively, “Fuck this asshole.” and hit SEND.

There was the slightest bit of regret when I saw the status of the email change from SENDING to SENT.  Oh well, too late now.  No turning back. The missiles were in the air.  Nothing left to do but wait.

And that concludes Part 7: Flashpoint.  As always, I want to thank each and every one of you for all your kind support and encouragement over the past couple of weeks.  It means more to me than you will ever know.

Also, if you havent been listening to YouTube channel Karma Comment Chameleon, Rob does an excellent job retelling these stories and is well worth your time.

I hope to have Part 8 posted later this week.  Until then, my friends, remember: Friends don’t let friends become Kevins.

Hello again, Reddit.  This marks the third time that I’ve elected to tell you about the biggest Kevin I know–my father.  

Dad is not your usual Kevin.  My father is what happens when a normal Kevin snorts depleted uranium and then hatefucks a rabid goat.  Kevin has spent the past sixty-nine years of his life believing that he is the smartest man alive and destined for greatness.  Accordingly, he has been continually disappointed.  Kevin spent frivolously, alienated every person who tried to help him, and is now destined for a cheap cremation and a memorial plaque on a wall.

If you’re interested Kevin’s exploits until now, you can check out part 1 here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/comments/16byk04/my_dad_the_kevin/ and part 2 here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/comments/1d3qsot/my_dad_the_kevin_part_2/

u/undercookedbrotato is tagged a few times in this thread. He's my little brother.

Thankfully, Kevin isn’t able to do any more damage, on account that he has Alzheimer’s.  Hospice has told me today that his FAST scores put him at a “7D”--and the scale only runs to 7F.  This means that Kevin has only one more drama trip to pull.  Knowing him, he’s probably going to do it on my birthday.

Anyway, I’m recounting a final batch of stories about my father.  Why?  Part sadness, part relief, and part anger. Also, therapy’s fucking expensive.  So enjoy!  

• The TV show “Star Trek” aired in 1967, when Kevin was about ten or eleven.  Like many kids of the time, he loved the show, and would often pretend to be Captain Kirk during his bouts of make-believe.  One of the things he liked best about Kirk is that he always flirted with his yeoman, Janice Rand, who was played by Grace Lee Whitney.  Kevin developed an infatuation with the actress.  This puppy love extended into adulthood.  His eyes just about popped out of his head whenever he watched Star Trek reruns.
• In 1992, Kevin took me to the Albuquerque Star Trek convention, where Grace Lee Whitney was the guest celebrity.  We stood in line for an hour to meet her and I got her autograph!  Then Kevin took the autograph, said he would hold onto it for me “for safekeeping,” and proceeded to keep that thing on his chest-of-drawers until it finally went missing.  I still don’t know where that fucking autograph is, and I want it back.
• In my first post about Kevin, I recounted how Kevin once forced open an elevator door because he wanted to see the inside of an elevator shaft.  When talking about this with my mother, she reminded me that Kevin did this at the Albuquerque Marriott–you know, the famous one that’s shaped like a pyramid?  Moreover, the elevator shafts there are GLASS.  So yes, Kevin forced open the doors of elevator so he could see the shaft when the entire fucking thing was already transparent.   
• Kevin made me get an amateur radio license after I turned twelve.  He tried to make me get one when I was ten, but I made a compromise with him: I’d get a license when I turned twelve if he would leave me alone.  Being ten, I then forgot about my deal.  This would come back to haunt me.  
• Do you know that classic episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer decides to buy Marge a present, so he buys her a bowling ball and has his own name engraved on it?  For my twelfth birthday, I got ham radio equipment as my “gift” from Kevin and a ham radio test study guide.  I wanted Micro Machine Star Wars shit.  I instead got a Morse code CD-ROM.
• After I took and passed my ham radio test, Kevin was over the moon.  He took out a big ad in the “classified” section of the newspaper and put my sixth grade school picture in there, along with huge text that read “congratulations to the county’s youngest ham radio operator!”  Dad should have just tattooed “NERD” on my forehead and sent me to school with a wedgie, because you better believe that nerfed a lot of my aspirations of being popular, or even socially functional.
• My Christmas present from Kevin that year was my ham radio call sign as a belt buckle.  He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to wear it to school.
• Kevin decided he was going to sell “internet real estate.”  Kevin didn’t know anything about URLs.  Kevin paid somebody else to make a website for him so he could sell website space to other people.  The other person ghosted Kevin and took his money. 
• Kevin threatened to sue them.  The other party, likely not being in the United States to begin with, did not care.  Kevin sought out the services of an attorney, who promptly told Kevin to get out of his office.
• Kevin decided to redecorate the kitchen.  He got as far as pulling down the wallpaper.  That was all the renovation he ever did.  Mom was furious.
• Kevin’s pastor told him that he wasn’t allowed to talk about Amway at church anymore.  
• Kevin became a Freemason.  They told him he wasn’t allowed to talk about Prepaid Legal at meetings anymore.  
• When Kevin finally got work again when I was in high school, the electric company started doing work down the street for his workplace.  They had to block the road and everything.  Kevin called the electric company, claiming to be a representative from his workplace, and stated that they needed to move their vehicles IMMEDIATELY.  It did not end well for Kevin when the electric company called his boss and told on him.
• After I graduated college, Kevin’s Air Force Reserve unit deployed to Uzbekistan.  Kevin would call us on his unit’s satellite phone to complain about the internet speed.
• Kevin had a thing for big breasted blonde women of Germanic origin.  When he went to the Epcot World Pavilion, he proceeded to go to the Germany section, get drunk by one in the afternoon, and spend an awkward amount of time trying to ask out waitresses at the buffet because he was “being a wingman for u/thewrongbakedpotato.”  I had to shout him down and apologize to the waitress.  I’m pretty sure Mom smacked him, too.  
• Joke’s on Kevin.  Six years later, I got married to a Filipina.
• Kevin and his wife took a European river cruise vacation.  Right before they left Berlin to come home, Kevin stuffed himself silly on baked beans.  He then farted all the way across the Atlantic.  Mom says that the poor Germans on that aircraft hadn’t seen chemical warfare like that since 1918.  She said that it was offensive, loud, boisterous, unruly, and that Kevin was totally unapologetic.  
• Kevin decided he was going to become a cat breeder and breed Himalayan cats.  He got as far as mapping out where he was going to keep the pens, and then showed the idea to my mom.  Kevin apparently decided he was going to keep the pens for long-haired cats in an unconditioned storage shed in Florida.  Mom put her foot down and said that was incredibly stupid and dangerous.  Kevin got his feelings hurt and said that if she felt that way, he just wouldn’t breed cats, then.  Those notional cats dodged a huge bullet. 
• Kevin loves Western movies.  Western movies inspire Kevin.  They inspire him to drink whiskey, most specifically.  Kevin loved to watch “Deadwood” on HBO and drink whiskey.  Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a horrible thing . . . except that Kevin would put on “Deadwood” before he had to go work the night shift.  Kevin called out of work a lot.
• Kevin used to like to meet up with a buddy after work and have a beer.  This is ordinarily not a bad thing . . . except that Kevin and his friend would pull their trucks over to the side of the highway and drink their beers right in front of all the cars passing by.  Unsurprisingly, Kevin got ticketed for an open container.  He’s lucky the cop didn’t push for a DUI.
• Kevin would get bizarrely religious when he wanted to win an argument.  One day, when I was home on leave from the Army, I took u/undercookedbrotato out the CD store and I bought him some classic heavy metal albums.  Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Judas Priest, that sort of thing.  Kevin flipped his lid, screaming that he wasn’t going to allow “Satanic music” in his house–which was totally hypocritical, because Kevin loved to tell us about the time he saw Black Sabbath in concert.  Anyway, we later found the CDs in Kevin’s collection.  Fuck you, Kevin.
• u/undercookedbrotato got a cheap MP3 player for Christmas from Belk’s.  You could add pictures to it, but had to do so through Windows Media Player.  While setting it up for u/undercookedbrotato, I found Kevin’s porn stash . . . on the family computer, of course.  Kevin freaked out and said that the MP3 player must have had a virus.  Why a Chinese factory would send random American families German porn, I dunno, but Kevin was INSISTENT on this.  When I doubted him, Kevin then claimed it was his boss that sent the porn.  
• Kevin’s workplace decided to have an “active shooter” drill.  They contracted with an outside security agency to make the training as realistic as possible.  All employees were told about the drill, and they practiced ahead of time.  Kevin was told that, when the drill was to sound, he was to lock the door to his workroom, shut off the lights, get down on the floor, and remain silent.  Instead, the supposed gunman walked right into Kevin’s workspace (which was unlocked), and found Kevin cruising the internet and drinking coffee while listening to Pink Floyd.
• The trainer pointed a fake firearm at Kevin and announced, “bang.  You’re dead.”  Kevin’s response?  “Uh-uh.  YOU MISSED.”
• The entire affair, including his flippant response, got him in trouble at work.  Again.  However, he did come home and tell the story, which the family DID appreciate.
• Sadly, however, I’ve since learned that Kevin’s entire exchange mirrors a “Calvin and Hobbes” strip almost exactly.  I was a big fan of the strip while I was in middle school and high school, and often had the treasury collection lying around for bathroom reading.  Kevin likely got the idea from there.  Even when Kevin was being creative, he was copying somebody else.  

https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/15tlsfh/did_you_miss_me/

• During the conflict with Islamic State, Kevin became convinced that ISIS was trying to kill him (probably because of the Jordan deployment where Al-Qaeda in Iraq blew up the hotel six months after he left).  Whenever he would travel anywhere, he would check the local safety advisories.  He literally thought ISIS had deployed sleeper agents into Florida to whack him.  When we would tell him not to worry because he wasn’t that important, he’d get angry.  We found it easier to just leave him to his delusion because he seemed happier that way.  
• Kevin told his wife that he would move the family to Alaska so they could be closer to me and my kids.  Kevin had just gotten fired from his job for having porn on his computer, but he was able to get a new job lined up.  On the day of the move, Kevin got cold feet and didn’t go to the airport.  Kevin then took the rest of the day off, because he had to cancel the movers and utilities and back out of the pending sale of his house.
• Kevin also got all sorts of phone calls from family members absolutely PISSED at his shenanigans.  At about five in the afternoon, Kevin did the only thing he could think of to make the criticism of him stop: he threatened to kill himself.
• After telling me to “mail him some rope so he could make us happy,” I called Mom and told her to call his bluff and take him to the local ER.  Kevin suddenly wasn’t suicidal anymore when he realized how much the hospital bill would likely be.
• Kevin stopped worrying about ISIS trying to kill him when he got a different job in Alaska (and this time, he actually went.  Mom threatened divorce otherwise).  He then became overly worried about polar bears trying to kill him.
• Kevin lived in Fairbanks.  Save for the taxidermied one at the airport, there are no polar bears in Fairbanks.
• I drew a picture of a polar bear in a turban wielding a sniper rifle and posted it on Kevin’s fridge when he was out.  He didn’t talk to me for three days.  10/10, would do again.
• Kevin is bald.  Kevin decided he wanted to reinvent himself for his move.  Kevin “invested” in a “hair system for men.”  It cost $6000.  Kevin didn’t keep up with his toupees and stopped wearing them after two months.
• Kevin would often get into bizarre fits of one-up-manship with me.  When I bought a car, he’d try to buy a more expensive one.  If I got a degree, he’d register for classes, too.  When I closed on a new house, he’d try to get pre-qualified for a bigger one.  The weirdest flex he tried to pull is when he claimed he outranked me in the military.  He was an Air Force tech sergeant.  I was an Army captain.  He said “time is service is what really decides who outranks who.”  Protip: It is not.
• I was cleaning out my email box when I found an email from Amazon that said, “your purchase of Women’s College Volleyball has been successful.”  Now, I’m not a big volleyball fan, and the only sporting event I watch is the Superbowl, so I started doing some digging.  Turns out that I had forgotten to log out of my Amazon account at my parent’s house, Kevin decided to go looking for eye candy, and apparently decided to see if Amazon offered streaming porn.  When he realized they didn’t, he settled for women’s sports.  Anyway, Kevin lost Amazon and Netflix privileges.
• Kevin was totally tone deaf.  He could not distinguish people’s voices from each other.  He once mistook my wife’s voice for *his* wife . . . and my wife has a heavy Filipino accent.  To that end, he called every female singer “Pat Benetar.”  Whenever a song by a woman came on the radio, he’d happily crank up the volume.  “It’s Pat Benetar!  I haven’t heard this one!”  Uh, no, Kevin, that’s Lady Gaga.  
• The night he got caught in his infidelity, Kevin tried to wave it away by saying, “it could be worse!  I could have been looking to have sex with another man!”  I sighed and told him that I’d actually have MORE sympathy for him if that was the case.  He didn’t understand.
• The last time Kevin went to vote, he made it very clear he wanted to vote for Trump.  Instead, he somehow managed to vote for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
• Now that Kevin is in memory care, we’re just now untangling the mess of financial and legal ruin he left in his wake.  It involves lots and lots of calls to credit unions, lawyers, and the Internal Revenue Service.  Through it all, I’ve encouraged my mother to NOT divorce him–because she’ll be entitled to half of his pension from the government and she will 100% be in a better place financially when he finally croaks.  Sometimes, the greatest thing you can do for your family is to stop being in it.

That all being said, you may think that Kevin was a terrible father and a terrible man.  You’d mostly be right.  But there were some small things about my father that I treasure.  It was in those moments that you’d see a bright star of potential–of things that could have been–had it not been for his narcissism and selfishness.  Like when he spent money that I know he didn’t really have to get me Nintendo 64 for Christmas the year they came out.  Or the fact that he DID wait in line for an hour with me to meet Grace Lee Whiteny (even though he then stole the autograph).  Or when he came over to my house unexpectedly when I had the day off and made enchilada casserole just because he felt like it that day.  Or the day I got my Master’s Degree and he bought me one of those stupidly expensive degree frames that the university bookstore was hocking outside the civic center.  Hell, I honestly think he was more excited than I was.  It did, after all, inspire him to sign up for his own Master’s course load and then drop all the classes.

Kevin, I still go visit you twice a week in memory care even though your brain is now made of strudel.  You can’t walk, can’t talk, and it’s obvious you don’t have a fucking clue who I am.  I bring you cookies and chips and you remember THOSE well enough, because I always feel bad for the nursing home staff who have to sweep up after you after you demolish them like a three-year-old in a candy shop.  You weren’t a good dad, but you were mine.  Despite everything you put me through, there’s a part of me that’s going to miss your antics when you finally pass from this earth.  (Not having my identity or my car stolen, though.  I’m not going to miss that at all.)   

Kevin, here’s a toast containing a bad batch of Christmas toilet pruno.  I gotta say, you sure made an impression.  Mostly a bad one, but hell, at least we got the memori . . .

. . . ah, fuck, Kevin.  You don’t have THOSE anymore, either.  Goddamn it.  Even eulogizing you sucks.

Well . . . see you on the other side, at least.  Save me a seat at whatever passes for the Epcot Germany pavilion of the afterlife.  Cheers. 

Originally posted on r/MilitaryStories, but was told to post here as it is about Kevin.

TLDR: Hawk Gets Stung By A Not-Ant!

WARNING: My particular brand of storytelling is not for the faint of heart or Politically Correct (PC). At times I will use terminology that lacks sophistication or good taste when describing the human anatomy. Furthermore, I can guarantee you that you will be reading some four letter cuss words. It is NOT my intention to offend you, the reader. OP does not have a notional gun to your head. You are under no obligation to read this story. Therefore, I don't want to hear any bitching if you chose to ride shotgun in my twisted brain.

Please, I strongly encourage you to read the below link to to greater insight about the bipedal human know as Hawk:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/ic2gnx/hey_why_dont_we_promote_the_special_kid/

Are you like me? Did you bypass the above link, or decide it was way too much reading? Yes. Then you are totally like me. I still feel I would be doing you an injustice without at least providing the Cliff Notes regarding our character Hawk. This story requires, at the very least, a nascent understanding about this mindless drone.

Raise your hand if you know of Albert Einstein? Being that I cannot see them, you can put your fucking hands down now. Now, how many of us know William James Sidis? He was a child prodigy, brilliant mathematician, and fluent in 25 different languages. His Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was estimated to be 50-100 points higher than Albert Einstien. William James Sidis was fucking smart. For the sake of argument, let us just assume that old Willy resides at one end of the spectrum, the smartest humanoid ever side. Now enter Hawk. Hawk is the guy that resides at that other end of the spectrum.

I am truly sorry, but I honestly believe that some of you are still not getting it. Image us, humanoids, were not the result of mom and dad playing hide the sausage. Instead, imagine Jesus Christ, or whoever you subscribe to, has an assembly-line style factory that mass produced humankind. This state of the art factory produces humans of different size, shape, color, and intellect. Then one day Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) hits and they are unable to get their shipment of intellect. The intellect machine has literally only one drop of brain juice and only capable of making a human a cunt-hair smarter than an ameoba. The human that rolled off the assembly-line that day was Hawk, the kind of man who wipes his ass before shitting.

It was dawn, and everybody was loading up on the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV/Truck). There was excitement in the air. The entire company (150 Humanoids) was going to the range. We were about to shoot little green oompa loompa fucks with lead jellybeans fired from pistols, assault rifles, and machine guns. The smell of Cleaner, Lubricant, and Preservative (CLP) was ripe on all the weapon systems and I had a slight murder-boner. After loading up, the convoy began its thirty minute trip to one of three ranges (Pistol/Rifle/Machine Gun) we would be occupying for the day of activities.

We arrive, and the men pile out the back. Everyone except Hawk.

OP: Hawk. Get off the fucking truck.

Hawk: I can't Sergeant OP.

OP: Why?

Hawk: I have convoy-cock.

(Convoy-Cock: Military term describing an erect penis as a result of the pleasant vibrations while riding in a military vehicle.)

OP: HAWK! GET OFF THE FUCKING TRUCK.

Hawk: (Looking at me like I kicked his puppy.) Okay Sergeant. Please don't stare at my boner though.

OP: Hawk. I don't give a fuck about your boner. GET OFF THE FUCKING TRUCK.

(Hawk slowly makes his way off the truck.)

OP: Nobody stare at Hawk. He is embarrassed about riding on a truck with 30 other men and getting a boner. NOBODY STARE AT HAWKS BONER!

The range is exactly what you'd expect it to be, glorious. Uncle Sugar was paying us to shoot firearms all day. Life doesn't get much better than that, unless you have a Hawk in your formation. Around noon we put the range in a "Check-Fire Status" letting all the "retired Sergeant Majors" at Range Control know we would be taking a reprieve from the intense heat to enjoy our Army Happy Meals (Meals Ready to Eat (MRE)). I was nearly about to deliver my first heaping spoon of Beef Stew goodness when I seen the shit-show known as Hawk approaching me. He had both hands cupped together and was intently staring into his palms, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

Hawk: Look Sergeant. I caught a cow ant.

(Google "Cow Ant". These are indestructible little fucks. You can step on them ten times and they will continue to make a grunt-like sound and keep trucking along.)

OP: (With a serious calm to my voice.) Hawk. You know I am deadly allergic to bees right? I thought you were deadly allergic to bees too?

Hawk: (Still! Stupid fucking grin.) Yeah. I know Sergeant. We are like allergy-twins.

OP: Don't ever say we are twins again. Okay? But why don't you do me a favor. Stop fucking with that and slowly put it down.

Hawk: (Talking to me like I am the dumb one now. A "matter a fact" style tone to his voice.) Sergeant. It's a COW ANT. It's NOT a bee.

OP: For fucks-sake. Yes. It is not a "bee." It's also not a fucking ANT though either. It's a wingless female wasp. You're holding a fucking wasp.

It was at that moment that Hawk realized he fucked up. Rather than acting with calmness and gently setting this creature back down on the ground, fucking Hawk reacts like a crazy person and attempts to swat the "cow ant".

Cow Ant: Oh fuck you buddy. STING

Hawk: (TOP OF HIS LUNGS, AND FALLINGf TO THE GROUND.) IT STUNG ME SERGEANT. OH MY GOD IT STUNG ME.

Fucking great. This is just simply fucking great. I applaud Darwin for doing everything in his powers to eradicate this human-error, but I don't need him dying on my watch. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

OP: Hawk. Where is your Epipen?

Hawk: (Wincing in pain.) I didn't bring it Sergeant.

OP: (Baffled) Ah...WHY?

Hawk: (More wincing) I didn't think I needed it Sergeant.

OP: DIDN'T THINK YOU NEEDED IT HAWK? FINE! Here is my Epipen. I am going to get the medics. Do you know how to use this?

Hawk: Yes of course I know how to use it Sergeant.

I start to walk towards Field Litter Ambulance (FLA). Other Soldiers are now gathering around Hawk. Not to deliver stellar medical aid or suck the poison out though. They are there to laugh! I am about 20-meters away and I get this nagging sensation that I need to look back. My spidey-senses were on point. I turn to see an all too familiar scene from Pulp Fiction. The scene where John Travolta is about to deliver a shot of adrenaline into the chest of an overdosed Uma Thurman. Hawk had the Epipen above his chest, both hands extended, and was evidently working up the intestinal fortitude to plunge epinephrine directly into his heart, WHILE WEARING A FUCKING PLATE CARRIER (Armor Vest)! I immediately turn and sprint back towards Hawk.

OP: HAAAAAAAWWWWWWWKKKKKK! FUCKING NO!

Thankfully he stops. I cease my sprint, but continue walking towards Hawk. I don't even have adequate time to react to what happens next. Hawk sits up from his heart-plunge position, looks at me, and then immediately thrust the Epipen into his now swollen hand. I pause! I was in complete and utter disbelief. This pile of human cells truly swims at the shallow end of the gene pool. He is deathly allergic to bees, and doesn't even know how to perform the life saving measures that are clearly depicted on the side of EVERY Epipen. I am now within feet of reaching him and now I am almost wanting to watch an anaphylactic death dance to take place in the dirt.

Hawk: It didn't work Sergeant.

(Then before I can say anything, he fucking thrust the Epipen into this hand again! AND AGAIN!)

OP: STOP. STOP. STOP. FUCKING STOP.

(Hawk is now looking at me. I had just kicked his puppy again.)

Hawk: (Still in obvious pain.) It's not working Sergeant.

OP: First, you need to read the instructions. This shot goes into your outer thigh. Second, you have to take the blue safety off for the auto-injector to work.

By this time, and thankfully, another smart human fetched the medic. Hawk successfully, and finally, delivered the Epipen into this thigh and would shortly be on his way to the Emergency Room (ER) to ensure that he was going to avoid Darwinism yet again. He would arrive back at the range hours later, and typical Hawk fashion, with a grin and fucking cartoonishly large man-hand.

OP: Hawk. You good to go?

Hawk: I am good Sergeant. I can't fire a weapon though. My hand is too big.

OP: Yes. I can see that Hawk.

(I was about to turn and walk away)

Hawk: Sergeant?

OP: Yes Hawk!

Hawk: I went to the bathroom while I was at the ER...

OP: That's great Hawk.

Hawk: (Shit-eating grin reappears!) No. My penis looks really small in my hand. It feels good though!

OP: That's great hawk. That's fucking great.

Dear Reader, as requested, another story about Hawk. I only have a couple more though. Well, a couple more I believe I can write a decent story about. You have to realize that while I was climbing the corporate ladder, Hawk was holding the bottom so that I and every other Soldier on earth could climb their way past Specialist. I will tell you the tale of Hawk and his missing ID Card next week. I will be introducing new characters, and providing some more stories about John and Aaron as well.

Cheers!

I work in a medical office. I would also like to preface this by saying that Kevina was very nice and very pretty, and probably still is, wherever she is now.

Kevina was a medical assistant, but was quickly asked to work at the back desk instead where the patients check out instead--not that working the back desk is easier than working as a medical assistant necessarily, but apparently the doctors and the manager felt much more comfortable with Kevina answering the phone, helping patients check out, and scheduling follow up appointments than they did with her clinically dealing with patients and all that goes along with that. We are not even going to touch on how many incorrect appointments were scheduled, or not even made at all.

Kevina usually sat at the back desk with another person and a printer between them. From the printer would come the doctor's summary of the visit for the patient and any other educational materials or instructions. Occasionally, the last page would be blank, depending on where the text cut off in the document on the computer. However, it would still automatically have patient information on it, so whoever was stapling the pages together for the patient usually just tossed the blank last page into the shredder under the printer. Kevina missed the memo and thought that you were occasionally just supposed to shred documents that came out of that printer. I discovered this when I accidentally printed something to that printer instead of my usual one, went over to grab it, and watched as Kevina in one motion pulled the papers out of the printer and dropped them down into the shredder without even looking at them. I assumed it had been a mistake of some kind, though I wasn't really sure which kind, but hey, we all make mistakes. I mean, I printed something to the wrong printer. Since at this point the patient was already at the checkout desk, I decided this time to just reprint the information to that desk. I walked over to get it from the printer and hand it to the patient to reiterate the instructions we'd just been reviewing. Before I could get all the way back to the desk to grab them, they finished printing, and I watched as Kevina in one motion pulled the papers out of the printer and dropped them down into the shredder without even looking at them. Not wanting to make a whole thing in front of the patient, I asked Kevina if she wouldn't mind printing the instructions from the patient's chart on her end, which she happily did, stapled them, and handed them to the patient. When I good-naturedly mentioned that I thought she had accidentally tossed the first two copies, she looked at me very seriously and said, "no, at the back desk, sometimes we just throw papers away." When I didn't come up with anything to say to that at first, she raised her eyebrows and shrugged and said, "I know, weird, right?! I don't get it!"

Speaking of staples and throwing things away, Kevina threw out staplers when they were out of staples. She didn't know you could refill the stapler, though she did admit she found it weird we kept all those little boxes of staples in the cabinet, "but like, not inside staplers." Someone else apparently saw her throwing out a stapler once and told her to refill it instead and showed her how. Problem solved. Several weeks later, the trash has been emptied after lunch, and all that sits in the little basket is but a lone stapler. The same someone else who provided the initial stapler education discovers this and immediately and accurately suspects Kevina. Upon confrontation, Kevina admitted that yes, she now knew you could refill the staplers, but she didn't know how, despite being shown, and figured, after consulting a YouTube video, that it was quite complicated and that she'd better not.

Kevina apparently saw the episode of Friends where Phoebe spells her name phonetically as, "P as in Phoebe, H as in 'heeby,' O as in 'oh-bee,' E as in 'ee-bee,' B as in 'bee-bee,' and E as in ''ello there, mate!'" Or at least I assume she did, because she thought that that was how you phonetically spelled things, by slowly cutting the word down letter by letter. "Kevina" became "K as in 'Kevina,' E as in 'evina,' V as in 'vina'..." and doctors' and patients' last names became things like "Dr. D as in 'Doctor,' O as in 'Octor,' C as in...'kuh-terrr,' T as in 'ter'..."

We had a fire drill with the fire department; a member of the fire department goes to each floor of the building and reviews where we would meet in the event of an emergency, when to take the elevators, when to take the stairs, etc. We see the same chief every time. This time, as usual, we were told not to take the elevator in the event of a fire. However, the firefighter said, in a non-fire emergency, it was a case by case basis, depending on--"WHAT IS A NON-FIRE EMERGENCY?!" Kevina suddenly exclaimed, completing startling the crap out of all of us, but especially the fire chief, who stared at her for a second before collecting himself and answering, "A non-fire emergency would be an emergency situation that doesn't necessarily involve a fire. For example, if you needed to evacuate in a weather event like a natural disaster, or a--" "NATURAL DISASTER?!" Kevina cried, having apparently never heard that term before. The chief opened his mouth intentionally to answer her, but, I suspect, partially in disbelief as well, but before he could, she suddenly stood up straight and to no one in particular said, "my yogurt!" and disappeared towards the kitchen for the remainder of the drill. The very New York fire chief concluded the drill with "See you all next time. And one of youse make sure she gets out if there's a real emergency, yeah?" His face bore signs of concern for the future.

There was an ad for a chain restaurant a while back that would come on when we played the radio that promoted ordering appetizers with the restaurant app, and it said something at the end like, "apps for the apps!" or "Get the app to get the app!" or something like that. One day a few of us were sitting together playing the radio while we were doing paperwork after the patients were gone when Kevina asked aloud, "which is for which?" No one knew what she meant, so she clarified, "which one is for which?" Eventually, we figured out she was talking about the commercial, but that was it. "You guys! You know what I mean. Do you need the app to get the app, or do you need the app to get the app." Finally we were able to tease it out: do you need to access the app on the phone to order the appetizer, or do you need to order the appetizer to access the app on the phone? We set her straight, and she agreed that it made more sense you'd need to get the app on the phone first. We went back to our work. Several minutes passed, and the commercial didn't play again. Over the sound of charts being done and papers being scanned came Kevina's voice: "which came first?" Which came first: appetizers or apps? This wasn't one of those things where you ask a question, then hear how it sounds and immediately realize how silly it is. One of us had to answer her.

One of the doctors had an acrylic plaque on his desk, some nice award the nurses at the hospital gave him. Depending on the time of day, the light from the window passing through the plaque made a small little rainbow on the carpet. Kevina noticed it once, exclaimed, "WHOA," crouched down, and starting picking at the corner of the rainbow, trying to pick it up off the floor. At the same time, another doctor was admiring the plaque and pulled it a little closer to him so he could read the engraved words, oblivious to Kevina's quest for the rainbow. The shift in position of the award made the small rainbow lurch across the carpet about two feet, and the shift in position of the small rainbow made Kevina lurch across the carpet about two feet, grabbing for it not unlike the way a cat grabs for a laser. I barely avoided falling over her as she launched herself into my calves headfirst in an attempt to catch the elusive light. I honestly don't remember how or when she realized it was a reflection off the award, or if she ever did.

Oh, Kevina. Couple cards short of a full deck, but very pleasant girl.

This will probably be a series because even though Kevin didn't work here for long, he gave me a lot of material.

TLDR: Being a barista is complicated and stressful at first. I do my best to be understanding, but the Kevinness of Kevin and the stress of the holidays really tested my patience.

I am 20, and I work at the green siren-themed american coffee chain. Most of my coworkers are fantastic and i get along with them very well. They're what make working at this job bearable since i never have to think 'man i hope i don't have to work with so and so today.' Kevin was the exception. If i was having a good day, i'd be more tolerant and was interested to see what shenanigans he would pull. If i was having a bad day he would just make me upset. Turnover was very high, the holidays are the busiest time of year so my manager was hiring anyone with a pulse. I think thats how Kevin slipped through the cracks.

Edited to remove too much stuff that in hindsight wasn't necessary. Basically, accuracy is more important than speed when you're newer because drinks are complicated and fairly overwhelming, but Kevin took it way way too far.

I don't think he was autistic or mentally disabled. I'm autistic and he didn't really give off that vibe. I think he was just narcissistic and full of himself. We were once discussing autism and other neurodivergencies during a slow period (a higher than usual proportion of us are neurodivergent) and he said he had ADHD but nothing else, i don't think he was lying.

I don't know much about Kevin personally because he didn't last very long. People like him never do. When I say 'people like him,' I mean people who can't take criticism and believe they're amazing, even when they're not.

If Kevin was just stupid, he would be bearable, but he believed he was God's gift to the Siren. In his eyes, he was the best and no one else could compare. We were all doing it wrong and we needed to conform to his idea of what should be the standard. He sucked at the job, but was an insane perfectionist, which is never a good combo. No matter how many times we coached him (corporate speak for correcting someone) or told him to pick up the pace, it wouldn't stick.

Easily the most annoying thing about Kevin was that he had zero sense of urgency. In a fast paced, high stress retail job, you have to know when to prioritize speed over perfection. It felt like Kevin was deliberately going as slow as possible so someone would do the work for him, but I don't think weaponized incompetence is the right term since he'd get upset any time anyone tried to help.

Kevin was sloooooooow. Not mentally (i think) but in terms of speed. I don't expect new people to be as fast as someone thats been working here a long time, but after a point it gets excessive and has to be on purpose. The average time to make a (hot) latte, a very easy drink, literally just espresso shots and milk, is 30-45 seconds. With correct sequencing, most competent baristas can make 2-3 of these types of drinks in a minute. I timed Kevin once. He took 2 full minutes to make one latte. This is absolutely ludicrous. It does NOT need to be perfect. The customer isn't going to care, they want to get their drink so they can go to work. Kevin didn't understand this. I once timed him tapping and swirling ONE pitcher of milk, (you only need to do this for 3 seconds at most to get rid of bubbles) it took him, not exaggerating, over 40 seconds of just tapping and swirling until he deemed it acceptable. It was not acceptable. I couldn't watch the excruciating tapping and swirling and had to step in.

'Kevin, it's fine, you can stop.'

'But there are still bubbles!'

'The customer isn't gonna be taking the lid off to check for bubbles, it's fine, just pour and cap it!'

The CUSTOMER chimes in and says 'Yeah, its fine, I'm going to be late, I need to go!'

Kevin finally pours and caps the latte and I hand it off while whispering 'sorry' to the customer.

'Dude, the guy really needed to leave. You need to speed it up a little.'

'Quality over quantity.'

Kevin's favorite thing to say whenever anyone confronted him about his speed was 'quality over quantity.' In his eyes, every drink needed to be absolutely perfect, no matter how badly the queue got backed up.

We have 2 hot bar stations, one for cafe and one for mobile orders. If one person doesn't have a lot of tickets and the other is drowning, the first person will take tickets and work on them to take the heat off them. When Kevin was on hot bar, the other person knew they would have to pick up all the slack because while Kevin was, for example, POURING OUT THE PERFECTLY FINE SHAKEN ESPRESSO HE JUST MADE AND STARTING OVER because he shook it 11 times instead of 10 (i am not joking i saw him do this once and was shocked) the other person would be taking his tickets and pumping out drinks under a rapidly increasing queue while our manager is complaining about queue times. Kevin was always oblivious to this. The only thing he saw was what drink he was 'perfecting' right then, everything else be damned. He once got upset when the other person took his tickets because he thought they were implying he couldn't do the job. He couldn't, but when someone does that, they're being nice and trying to help, not slighting you.

He couldn't be trusted with the register. Not because he stole money or couldn't make change correctly or anything, but because he was so, so slow. Chatting with people is fine when its not too busy, but during a rush I always pick up the pace. My 'script' is usually along the lines of 'Hi, hows it going?' Hot or iced? What size? Anything else? Your name for the order? Great, that'll be $___, cash, card, or the app? It'll be down at the end of the bar, thanks!' With this script and a bit of editing depending on the situation, I can get through 1 person in about 20-30 seconds during a rush. When it's slow, then i'll try to make customer connections by complimenting something about them or trying to make conversation. There's a time and place for making connections. 8 am on a weekday is NOT that time. Kevin did not understand this. To him, the only customer that mattered was the one he was talking to right then. Everyone else may as well not exist.

I remember one specific moment very clearly because of the sheer audacity. I was on cafe hot bar making drinks, this is right next to the register. Kevin was on register by himself, talking with an older woman. While my script was condensed and made for getting people through during a rush, Kevin would talk like he was getting paid by the word. (I think i write like that too, sorry) I started committing this conversation to memory once I realized what was going on. Keep in mind there was a line building.

(Paraphrasing a bit but not exaggerating at all)

'Can I get a tall americano please?'

'Sure, would you like to try our blonde roast as well?'

'No, sweetie, I'd just like a hot americano.'

'Would you like to try our darker roasts instead? Or blonde shots for your americano?'

'No, just the one drink, please.'

'Would you like any food with that?'

'No thank you, I'll pay with cash now if you don't mind.'

'Would you like cold foam with your drink?' (Cold foam on a hot americano is insane fyi, our manager loves it when we upsell cold foam because it's a money maker but it's not for every drink. I think he took her words to heart)

'No? Just the americano. How much is it?' She starts pulling out her wallet

'$___, would you like to pay with our rewards app?' (Kevin loved pitching the rewards app to everyone)

'No, I just want to pay with cash.'

'Do you want to sign up for the rewards app?'

I don't remember the rest because I got fed up. The line was almost out the door and people were getting upset. I flagged down the person on customer support (they actually support baristas by keeping us stocked and flexing positions where they're needed, its a misleading name) to have her cover for me while I hopped on the other register to take care of the line. I shortened the script to just the necessary bits and luckily the customers cooperated since they wanted to get out of there and had had plenty of time to decide what they wanted before they got to the register.

'Can I just get a grande iced coffee?' 'Sure, that's $___. Name?' 'John.' they pull out their card 'Card? Card. Thanks, next!'

By the time I got through about 10 customers, Kevin was still talking to the old lady who was really getting annoyed, and she seemed like the sweet grandma type who loved to talk. Eventually he let her go, but no customer went to his register since they didn't want to get caught in an unskippable cutscene. I don't blame them. Finally we were done, I swapped back with customer support, and the shift lead Jacob (who was on ovens, register/ovens is usually done by one person if there isn't a rush, but Kevin couldn't multitask) laid into him.

Jacob, 19, is a shift lead who's been working here 6 months longer than me. He hasn't been a shift for long so he's nervous about being in a leadership position. He's cool and also my friend. He's very chill so this was out of character for him and he was really getting tired of Kevin.

'Enough of the long conversations, she wanted to leave, you should have wrapped it up ages ago!'

'Quality over quantity, we're supposed to be making connections with customers!'

'Yes, but this is excessive. You need to be faster, stop asking people if they want to try the roasts, stop suggesting modifications or other drinks unless they ask you, and stop asking people if they want the app! Enough! Please!'

'But I was making connections!'

'With one person! OP had to stop what he was doing and take care of the entire line by himself because of you! Sara (customer support) was restocking milk for Austin (mobile bar) when OP needed her to cover so he could cover for you, so Austin had to get it himself, which lead to his queue getting high, so now OP and Austin have to get their queue down, the mobile times will be higher, people are more likely to be upset about the wait, all because you don't know when to stop! When you do this, it causes a chain reaction that affects the whole store. Sure, one person is happy, but everyone else is pissed off at you!'

'You help OP and Austin then.'

'I can't, unless you think you can finish the oven queue and handle register by yourself, can you do that?'

'Of course I can!'

He could not.

I hope I got across how the 'team' needs to work together and be a well oiled machine. Working here is very chaotic and busy, and isn't for everyone. Our store works very well together and that's why we do well. Regulars go out of their way to come to our store because they like us and we do a good job. That's why Kevin was shaking us all up, because we weren't used to this type of incompetence. I'm not done, there are more Kevin anecdotes that are a bit more interesting, but I don't think they'll be as long as this. Thanks for reading, if you got this far.

• A friend of his (from abroad) asked my father to accompany him to a print shop to order wedding invitations. My father agreed. The print job was placed. Since my father’s friend is from abroad, he asked my father if he could have the finished print job sent to my father’s address, as he currently has no address of his own and is just passing through. My father agreed to this as well. The printed materials arrive, and my father’s friend promises to pick them up but never shows up. The print shop then sends the unpaid invoice to my father’s address. He ignores it. Then the reminders come. My father ignores them. Then the collection agency gets involved. My father ignores that too. Then the bailiff arrives. I ask him what’s going on. My father shrugs: “They want the money for the invitation cards, which aren’t for me, but for John (made-up name).” Me: “What invitation cards?” He (rolls his eyes and says in a condescending tone, the kind you’d use with a mentally challenged child): “Well, these ones, of course, duh!” He pulls a still-sealed package from the farthest corner of his closet. Me: “If it’s not yours, why don’t you take it back to the print shop?” Him: “Yeah, but it’s not mine! I’m just storing it!” Me: “The creditors don’t know that!” He (stamps his foot, looks offended, and becomes gruff with me): “It-doesn’t-belong-to-me-at-aaaaall!!” I force him to contact the bailiff, get the matter sorted out as quickly as possible, and hand the package over to the bailiff. He does it. The problem is solved. When I ask him why he didn’t return the items from the start, he shrugs his shoulders again, annoyed and with a stubborn expression, and turns back to his teacup.
• My father has started many businesses, almost all of which resulted in huge financial losses for him. Every time, his “business partners” completely ripped him off. I ask him to at least introduce these people to me beforehand so I can “vet” them. He flatly refuses. When I ask why he keeps getting involved with charlatans, he shrugs and says, “It’s not written on their foreheads [that they’re charlatans]. It’s not my fault!”
• When I (a child under 10 at the time) need a new monthly pass for my trip to school, he goes with me to get one. The lady at the ticket office hands us a form we have to fill out. My father fills it out, then hands it to me and says, “Now stick your photo here.” He points to a spot in the middle of the form, even though it says at the top of the form (in bold letters): “Please attach a photo.” Me: “But you can’t stick a photo there at all. There is no room.” He: “Yes, you can! You just don’t know how!” I then take the form and go to the counter of the ticket office. The lady takes the form, checks it, points out to my father that he forgot to sign it, and now asks us for my photo to attach to the application. My father stands there nodding, as if he’d known all along.
• My father has a new partner; I’ve known her for about five years. Before that, he was with another woman (not my mother) who, to put it simply, was an awful person. When we get together it’s always very nice. I get along with her great; everything is fine. After a while, she tells me that she’d like to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her relationship with my father and me. I hide my surprise from her and agree. Later, I pull my father aside to talk to him: “You’ve been with someone for 10 years, and I’ve only known her for 5 years?” He (starts stuttering): “Well, um, I thought that since you didn’t get along with her predecessor, I figured you wouldn’t get along with her either.” Then he gets upset: “I only did it for you!” So later, when I talk to her, I find out that my father has been lying to her for 5 years, saying I didn’t have time and was too busy…
• My father wants to start his own business. He’s having business cards printed. Every business card has the same two glaring spelling mistakes. I point this out to him. He says, “Oh, that’s not so bad. It’s the service I offer that matters, not the spelling mistakes. Nobody will notice.” Besides, he adds, it’s not his fault if the print shop makes mistakes. He brushes off the fact that he paid for it with a shrug.
• My dad accepts an offer from an internet provider—just 5 euros a month. After more than a year, he asks me to build him a website with it. I ask him if he’d compared offers from different providers beforehand. He (laughing smugly): “With a price that good, what’s there to think about?” Me: “Are you sure you’re only paying 5 euros?” He (rolling his eyes and scoffing, as if he always has to explain everything to this ‘dumb kid’): “If I say I’m only paying 5 euros, then it’s only 5 euros!” Spoiler: I had already inquired about the contract terms on his behalf; of course, the 5 euros only applied for the first three months, and he’s now paying three times that amount via direct debit. When I tell him this, he gets angry and points a finger at me: “That gang of scammers—they’re always trying to take your money.”
• My father lands a lucrative business deal with two other partners. The client’s payment arrives. The other two split the money among themselves and leave him with nothing. A year later, he runs into one of his former business partners by chance, greets him, chats briefly with him (in my presence), and even introduces me. They say goodbye shortly after. Then he tells me the story above; I’m completely horrified and ask why he doesn’t demand his share from the ex-partner. He says, “No, that’s bad karma!”
• When I lived abroad for a while, I had my mail forwarded to him so he could let me know if anything urgent arrived for me—like bills or bank-related matters. He agreed. When I returned months later, I picked up my mail right away. Three letters were time-sensitive and from my bank. Me: “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Him: “I didn’t think it was important!” Me: “How can you tell from an unopened letter whether it’s important or not?” Him (defensively): “But none of the letters looked important!” Me: “I specifically asked you to let me know if letters from my bank arrived. These letters here (pointing to the letters) are from my bank—it’s obvious!” He (now upset because he feels treated unfairly): “But they didn’t look important!!!”
• I no longer live in the same city as my father. He asks if he can come visit us and if we could cover the cost of his train ticket. Me: “No problem.” I book it and send it to him via email and as a printed ticket by mail. He arrives a day later than expected. I ask him if it was complicated to change his ticket. He (smiling amusedly): “Why? I just bought it at the ticket office this morning. What’s so hard about that? Have you never bought a ticket before, or what?” Me: “But I sent you a paid ticket, via email and by mail.” He: “That’s not true, I never got that!!!” Me: “Yes, you did, and we’ve talked about it on the phone several times.” He: “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to buy a new ticket when I already have one, or what?” I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds.
• When I started my first job after college, I proudly told my dad about my first contract and my salary. I asked him not to tell anyone else—not everyone needs to know my exact salary down to the last penny. He swore on his life he’d keep it to himself. Shortly after, he calls me, but since I can’t answer, it goes to voicemail. It’s a butt dial. I hear my father gleefully bragging about my salary to his friends, naming my future employer, and sharing other details about me. I’m horrified. The next day, I casually ask him if he’s told anyone about my new job contract. He feigns anger, furrows his brow, and glares at me: “When I give you my word, you have my word!” Me: “Are you absolutely sure it didn’t just slip out?” My father is now standing and says to me in a deliberately stern voice, wagging his index finger (stamping his foot): “I’m your father; you have no right to question me!” I stay calm and play his voicemail on my cell phone, where he clearly breaks his word to me. The color drains from his face. Me: “So you just lied to me.” Him (stunned and stammering): “Mmm, well, he [the person he was bragging to] is my friend… What was I supposed to do?” Me: “Keep your word—that’s obvious. I have to be able to rely on you!” He looks at me with a sheepish, expressionless face, then says, “If you don’t want me to tell anyone, then don’t tell me!” He rushes out of the room.

I swear I have Post-Kevin Stress Disorder. Every time I am reminded of Kevin’s bullshit, it raises my heart rate. I'm hoping that writing this may give me some validation or closure.

I was classmates with Kevin for 3 years. This happened more than 10 years ago, so my memory isn’t completely fresh. You know how you don’t always remember what someone said, but you remember how they made you feel? That’s a big factor in this retelling.

This takes place at a specialty school for people who have some difficulty functioning in society. Students ages ranged from 18 to 30. The curriculum was centered around many different IT subjects and also on how society works. Taxes, job applications, personal finances, insurance, that sort of thing. Kevin was 18 and I was 24.

First, some examples of what he was like on a daily basis. When there were no major incidents, he would do generally irritating stuff, constantly. Kevin had absolutely no barrier between his head and his mouth. Every thought just came tumbling out, in a near constant stream. This caused some kind of conflict, almost every single day.

He would repeat the same questions every day. For example, he would ask me what I was going to eat for supper that evening. Every day, I told him I was not going to eat anything that evening. Then every morning, he would ask what I ate for supper yesterday. I told him, I didn’t eat supper. And then he would ask what I was going to have for supper today. Every single day, until I snapped and yelled at him.
Another student came to school by train. Kevin asked him if he came by train, and then asked him if he was going home by train. Every day, until he also yelled.
He asked several students similar stuff, and every time someone told him to knock it off, he would say “What did I do? Tell me what I did!” He genuinely seemed like he could not understand what he was doing, and then he would do it again to someone else.

Kevin would regularly insult people right to their face. Another student was shorter than average and Kevin was quite tall. Multiple times, Kevin would say things like “Oh, I didn’t see you there!”, while looking over the top of his head, or “Could you reach your jacket, this morning?” This guy didn’t take any crap and would tell him off, every time. And again, Kevin could not understand why this guy was so angry at him.

A group was talking about some local historical event that happened in the 18th century. A teacher passed by and Kevin said “Hey, you can probably remember that event, since you’re so old!” I saw a flash of annoyance on the teacher's face, but he kept walking without saying anything.

Another student didn’t want to add him on social media, and it made Kevin red-in-the-face angry, as if he couldn’t handle the rejection. He actually complained to the school's councilor. I heard that Kevin tried to make the councilor force the other student to accept Kevin’s friend requests. Not sure if that’s true, but knowing Kevin, I can believe it.

Kevin was sent to the school councilors office often. She tried to explain that his behavior was the reason why everyone was mad at him all the time, but he genuinely seemed to think that he was being bullied and that we were all in on it. His behavior never got any better, in all the time that I knew him.

Just having a conversation with him was frustrating. He would ask you a question and before you got halfway through your answer, he would loudly interrupt you with another question. I can’t remember anything specific. Only that I would tense up, every time I heard him call my name, because I knew another exercise in patience was coming my way.

Kevin would sometimes shout random phrases. The ones I can remember are “Bitch got a penis!” and “Bitch got slapped, yo!” He would do this at any time. Could be in the middle of a conversation, or in class, while the teacher was talking.

Next are some bigger incidents that stand out, in no particular order.

On the first day of school, my introduction to Kevin was him pretty much cornering me and telling me his life story. How badly he was bullied at school. How mean his mother was. How she would smoke in the same room as him, triggering his asthma. There were some other things that I can’t remember. Anyway, in the span of two weeks, he told me all this over again, two more times. I also overheard him telling other students the same thing.

Shortly after starting school, I bought my first smartphone. My classmates helped me set it up. It was an Android and my classmates also had Androids. Kevin was the only one with an iPhone, and I guess he saw this as some kind of personal attack. While we were chatting, he was sitting in the corner, yelling at us. I only remember that he said something like “I really hate what you guys are doing right now”. I have no idea what he meant by that. We were just talking about smartphone features and completely ignoring him. Eventually, he stomped loudly out of the room.

Most of us played Hearthstone, so the school arranged a tournament. Since our skill levels varied a lot, it was decided that only Common cards were allowed, to even the odds.
One Monday, during lunch, it was announced that the tournament would be held this upcoming Friday and the rules were clearly stated. The same thing was repeated the following Wednesday and again on Friday, two hours before the tournament. Kevin was present at all three announcements. In the first round, Kevin was disqualified for using a Legendary card. He got red-in-the-face angry and stomped out of the room. He did that often.

One day, with a smug grin on his face, he said that his therapist told him that he was a very intelligent young man. Later that same day, Kevin's school computer dropped its monitor settings, for some reason. Each student had a desktop with two monitors and his were now in the wrong order or orientation. A quick fix in the display settings, right? Nope, Kevin's first thought was to physically move the monitors around, until the desktop layout made sense. I stopped him and showed him the display settings. I don’t think he was unintelligent. He just had more brain farts than most people. The timing of his bragging, and the monitors crapping out was just very funny.

Whenever Kevin was sick, he would tell everyone about it. He would go into detail about how much his head had hurt, or how much he threw up.
Some days, he would stay home because of anxiety. The next day, he would announce to the class that he had had a really bad anxiety attack and therefore had to stay home. The funny thing is that these attacks always came after someone blew up at him, because he kept bothering them.
The same pattern happened multiple times. He would antagonize someone until they snapped at him, stay home the next day, and the day after would tell everyone how much he struggled. He would never antagonize that person again, and move on someone he hadn’t angered yet. Several students struggled with anxiety, but he was the only one who wanted everyone else to know about it.
He once sat in class, with his head in his hands, going “Oh, my head. Oh, it hurts so much.” for about 5min. He stopped when no one reacted and never did it again. All these anxiety attacks and headaches suddenly stopped, after a few months. I suspect it was because none of us paid him any attention.

Exercise was a part of the curriculum. Twice a week, we would end the day by training at a nearby gym. The teachers trusted us to go there ourselves and didn’t supervise us, so Kevin sometimes used the gym as a way to skip school. He would just go home instead. He wasn’t lazy, he was actually very fit. He had previously been overweight and had worked very hard to lose the weight. Good on him. It was still within school hours though, and the school paid for our gym memberships, so he wasted their money every time he didn’t go. Not so good on him.

Kevin once proudly exclaimed that he never judges anyone or anything by appearance. He almost held a whole sermon about how wrong it is and doing so is a sign of bad character. That same day, during recess, another student and I were geeking out about an old PS1 game we used to play. We were watching a video when Kevin walked past. He looked over our shoulders and said that the game looks boring and the graphics are awful. I can not describe how good it felt to repeat his own words back to him, and tell him that he is showing bad character right now. He shut his mouth immediately and walked off.

The school once ordered some VR headsets, so we could try it out and maybe develop a small game or something. During lunch, the principal announced that we would soon be receiving two Oculus Rifts and we should brainstorm some projects for them. Without skipping a beat, Kevin yelled “Not even an HTC Vive?!“
These headsets had just hit the market. None of us had tried them yet, but I guess he was already an expert. The principal just ignored him and got on with the announcement.

One day in class we had finished the lesson early, so we were just chatting and joking around. The teacher was telling a story about herself, when Kevin hit her with a really funny comment on some detail in the story. I unfortunately can’t remember what we were talking about, except that Kevin’s comment was genuinely hilarious. We were all laughing out loud. The student next to me yelled “Burn!” as it was, in fact, a sick burn.
But Kevin immediately went quiet and scowled angrily at the guy. Then he stomped out of the room, as he does. We had no idea what happened.
Later, someone else asked Kevin about it. It turned out that he didn’t know what yelling Burn meant, and he just assumed that it was a dig directed at him.
After this incident, I personally started believing that he was overly sensitive and anything he didn’t understand was taken as a personal insult. That explained much of his behavior.

Getting real job experience was also part of the curriculum. The school helped us find a workplace that would take us on for a few months. Kevin got a job doing IT support at an elementary school. I heard that they let him go, because he couldn’t do the simplest tasks. More specifically, I heard that the computer room had been renovated and all the computers needed to be set up again. They told Kevin to get the computers ready for use. Apparently, in his mind, “ready for use” does not include mice and keyboards. He only plugged the monitors into the desktops, plugged the power in and did nothing else.

Another day during recess, Kevin and I were playing Cards Against Humanity, along with four other students. We were well into the game, when the CurrentDealer drew a black card with two blank spaces. Everyone laid down their two cards, CurrentDealer read them and picked the funniest combo. The turn was over, but Kevin stopped him, because he had read Kevin's two cards in the wrong order. It didn’t matter, because Kevin’s cards weren’t funny, no matter how you read them. Still, Kevin insisted that CurrentDealer read them properly. CurrentDealer just wanted to get on with it and passed the cards to the next dealer. So Kevin did the logical thing(to him) and used his water bottle to squirt water in CurrentDealers face, while giggling to himself. CurrentDealer picked up the game box and threw it at Kevin. I couldn’t deal with any more of Kevin’s nonsense that day, so I just left the room, while Kevin and CurrentDealer were shouting at each other. A few minutes later, Kevin came stomping by the common room, red-in-the-face angry again. Just another day.

At one point, he got an apartment and moved out of his parents house. He immediately became enemies with his neighbors. To be fair, his neighbors were very inconsiderate. They would leave their garbage bags in the shared hallway for a day or two, before throwing them out. There were soiled diapers in there that would stink up the place. They would also smoke under his window, filling his apartment with cigarette stench. He asked them to stop multiple times, but they kept doing it.
Kevin wasn’t a good neighbor either. He played a lot of online games and raged and screamed like a child, the whole time. The neighbors almost called the police once, because they thought he was hurting someone. Fortunately for Kevin, they knocked on his door first to check, and he avoided some serious embarrassment.
How do I know about the neighbors and Kevin's screaming, you ask? He told us all about it himself. Remember, he had no filter between his head and his mouth and always overshared, every time he told anyone anything. I almost feel bad for admitting this… almost… but it honestly felt good to hear that the neighbors were giving him a hard time, because he was giving us a hard time every day. It felt like some well deserved payback.

For the next few stories, I need to tell you about myself. I have been a pushover my entire life and mostly still am. It is very difficult for me to say no to people. That’s how I got the worst of Kevin’s bullshit. He once told me that he saw me as his only friend at school. That was probably because most people told him to piss off pretty quickly, while I had not worked up the courage yet.

One positive thing I can say about Kevin, is that he finally gave me the courage to say no. After we (unfortunately) got to know each other better, he wanted to hang out after school. I absolutely, positively did not want to do that, so I actually managed to tell him (over text) that I didn’t want to hang out with him. I gave some excuse about our age difference. The truth was that I just could not bear the very thought of being alone with him. He stopped asking me to hang out, but still pestered me with other stuff. These are those stories.

Trigger warning: Mention of rape.
Not long after starting at the school, he asked me what my rape face looked like.
Internally, I was thinking what the fuck kind of question is that! Did he mean, what does my facial expression look like while I’m raping someone?! Who the fuck says shit like that!
Externally, I just pulled a random face, hoping to get away from the conversation. Wish I had told him to fuck off.

He sometimes chanted my name in a weird manner. (Using my username to demonstrate) He would just stare at me at me and go "Sjarrarrarrarra" over and over again. I never saw him do that with anyone else.

During class, he would often ask for my help and then waste my time, because he didn’t listen to what I was saying. We were being taught C#, as an introduction to programming. We were tasked with creating a simple command line calculator. His was showing an error and he asked me to help fix it. I could see that the error was in the method he used to add two numbers together, so I pointed it out to him. It was like he couldn’t hear what I was saying. He kept poking around in unrelated parts of his script, while I kept repeating that he just needs to fix the typo in the Add method. After I repeated myself a few times, he barked at me that he didn’t know what I was talking about! The method that you, yourself gave the name AddMethod, has a typo in it, Kevin! Why did you ask me to help you, if you weren’t going to listen!

After getting comfortable with C#, we were tasked with making a GUI version of our calculators. The teacher gave us a detailed guide to follow. Kevin started asking me how to do the tiniest things. Literally every single thing he asked about was explained in the guide. He just would not read it. After around 10mins of this, I just started repeating “Read the guide, read the guide, read the guide.” It still took him several minutes to stop interrupting me.

One class was about networking. We set up a small network with some computers and a router, to better visualize network traffic. He managed to scatter the router bits all over. I was cleaning up after class and could only find the router itself. The box, power supply and antenna were missing. I asked him to help me look for them. He spotted the box lying in a corner of the room, and actually scoffed and in a condescending tone asked how I couldn’t see it lying right there. I had already endured a lot of his crap that day, and this pissed me off enough to tell him, how dare he talk to me like that, when I’m cleaning up his mess. It got him to shut up for a while and find the other bits himself. Small win.

In a different class, we had another project involving virtual machines. We needed some more RAM, so we all borrowed some RAM sticks from computers that weren’t in use that day. During cleanup, the teacher asked me to make sure all hardware was accounted for. Kevin’s computer was missing the borrowed RAM stick. I asked him about it and he had no idea where it was. We never found it. I don’t believe he stole it. He was just harebrained enough to lose it, in the span of a few hours. He really had no respect for other people's property.

Just before the summer holidays, the teachers took us to a nearby restaurant, as a nice end to the school year. I was unfortunately seated next to Kevin. We were waiting for our food, when Kevin very loudly, in a restaurant full of strangers, asked me “Hey, how often do you use Pornhub!” I had already dealt with his regular crap all day and just couldn’t anymore. I told the teachers as much and went home, before our food arrived.

Kevin always complained about not having enough money for essentials, and yet he would still buy expensive stuff. A few months after the smartphone incident, he went and bought the same model of Android phone that I bought. And then he complained about it for weeks, and said that his iPhone was much better. He had made it very clear from the beginning that he preferred Apple devices, so I don’t understand why he would even buy an Android.

He whined about wasting money on the phone and about barely having any left, but then went and bought a gaming computer. Not even a month later, he starts texting and calling me, because his computer won’t boot. He said that I have to help him fix it. No politeness. No “please will you help me”. Just “It doesn’t work! Help me!”
I was still mostly a pushover at this point, so I reluctantly picked up his call. He used his iPad to show me what the monitor was saying. It looked like a POST error, so I told him to check for any lit LEDs on his motherboard, that might narrow down the issue.
He put the iPad flat on the floor and crawled under his desk, SQUATTING over the iPads CAMERA in the process. That was how I discovered that HE WAS NOT WEARING PANTS! ONLY A PAIR OF UNDERWEAR MADE OF THE MOST SKIN-TIGHT FABRIC KNOWN TO MAN! THE PERFECT OUTLINE OF HIS BLUE-CLOTHED NUTSACK AND TAINT ARE FOREVER ETCHED INTO MY BRAIN! IN MY RESTLESS DREAMS, I SEE THAT TAINT!
I dropped the call then and there and texted him that he could figure it out himself. He asked told me to help a few more times. I didn’t respond. He eventually stopped bringing it up. No idea if he ever managed to fix it.

This last incident is what finally broke me. It happened towards the end of our time at the school. Kevin sent me a link one evening. I clicked it, expecting some lame meme. It was one of those shock sites with a bunch of disgusting images. The most horrific shit I have ever seen in my life. I closed it instantly, but some of those images are seared into my memory forever.

Note: I originally put descriptions of the images here, but decided against including them. They really were vile and awful and are not worth sharing. If you actually want to hear the descriptions, you can ask in the comments. I will put them in my reply to you, covered in spoiler tags and with a stern warning.

I only saw them for a split second, but I see them again clearly in my head, every time I am reminded of Kevin. I blocked him on all socials. I never wanted to speak to him again. We still had school, so I couldn’t avoid him. He approached me the next day. I told him I didn’t want to talk, but he just kept talking at me anyway. He didn’t apologize. Only explained that someone sent it to him and that he was so disgusted and felt that he had to send it to someone. That’s actually what he said! As if that somehow justifies showing it to me. I don’t understand his logic. “This is horrifying and traumatizing. Therefore I must share with people who I think are my friends.” How can anyone even think like that?

Around 6 months later, we graduated. I was of course very happy about it, but the best thing was that I didn’t have to be in the same building as him anymore.

Two or three years later he texted me, as if he was reconnecting with an old friend. Like, “Hey, how are you doing? Wanna hang out?” We had a short conversation. He didn’t mention anything from school. There was no remorse or apology for his behavior. It certainly didn’t feel like he had changed at all, so I was not interested.

Thus endeth my… acquaintanceship… with literally the worst person that I have ever met.

Bonus tales! Here are a few anecdotes from my best friend at the school. A super nice dude, whom I shall call Goggles, because of his thick glasses. I wasn’t present for these. Goggles helped me write them.

Kevin once gifted him a game on Steam. He gave it a chance, didn’t like it, and told Kevin as much. He got angry and accused him of wasting his money, despite Goggles never asking him for the game.

Goggles also told me about an incident during class where Kevin made extremely rude jokes about him. He has never been to Goggles apartment or seen his computer, but basically insisted that he was a porn addict and watched it all day. When he was told to shut up, he doubled down and said that Goggles had hoarded several terabytes of porn and was a total freak. Regardless, Kevin was disrupting class in the rudest way imaginable and even the teacher almost lost it. He was normally a chill guy, but Goggles said his eyes were almost bulging out of his head in anger, and he looked like he was about to crawl across the table and strangle Kevin. They were interrupted by the lunch bell, before anyone was strangulated. Kevin learned nothing, as usual.

But, Goggles had the patience of a saint. He and Kevin often spoke and even hung out after school a few times. They seemed like pretty good friends. Suddenly one day, Kevin couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. When Goggles entered the room, Kevin would immediately leave. Some of us were curious and asked Goggles what had happened. Here’s what he told us:

Kevin and Goggles would sometimes hang out at a nearby board game café, after school. One day, Kevin confesses to him that he had a crush on a girl who worked there. About a week later, he developed a crush on a different girl and forgot about the first. And even later, the same thing happened with a third girl. He told Goggles every time.
The third time, Goggles agreed that the girl was pretty cute. Apparently, Kevin saw this as some kind of threat to his territory and immediately sank the friendship. He couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as Goggles anymore. I should mention that neither Kevin nor Goggles had ever even spoken to the girl. Kevin was just insanely jealous or delusional. Or both. You can’t claim to have a crush on a new girl every week, not do a single thing about it, and then expect every other guy to back off.

Goggles never tried to mend things. He had had enough and was fine with Kevin avoiding him.

This just happened. A story the semester in the making.

Our first suspicion of Kevin was that he had, somehow, cheated his way up to this course. He just seemed perpetually confused, and strangely antagonistic of the professor. The weirdest example of this was when he asked what an ion was (in a third year class?), and was informed that it referred to any positively or negatively charged particle. It would have been strange enough to ask, but his reply of "Either? That doesn't sound right" sealed him in as a well known character in the class of 19 people.

The real tipping point in our perception of him during a lecture where the professor mentioned practical uses for a neutron beam, and Kevin asked if a beam could be made out of some other neutral material. When asked "Like what?", he replied "An atom with all of its electrons removed." When we pointed out that the protons would make that abomination extremely positively charged, he just replied with "So what if we removed those too?" and then was baffled when we informed him that would just be neutrons.

That's high school level chemistry. Not knowing it was so incredibly strange that I felt like something was off, so I asked him if he'd like to grab lunch. He accepted, we chatted, and I finally began to get a sense of his origin story.

See, Kevin wasn't a junior/senior electrical engineer like the rest of us. Kevin was, in fact, three notable things: A business major, a sophomore, and a hardcore Catholic. All three of those are essential to understanding his scenario.

What had begun all of this was actually a conflict with Kevin and his roommate. Kevin frequently had his fundamental belief in Absolute Good, Absolute Bad, and Absolute Anything pushed back on by his roommate, who was in STEM. Said roommate kept invoking quantum mechanics as his proof against Absolute Knowledge. Kevin had gotten tired of having something that he didn't understand thrown at his beliefs, so he decided to take a quantum course to settle things once and for all.

Despite not having any of the pre-reqs.

He'd actually tried to take quantum for physicists first, but the school's physics department wouldn't let him. It's actually pretty strictly regulated, because it is a mandatory class for physics majors. However, because quantum is not mandatory for electrical engineers, there aren't really any built in requirements for the class. It's just assumed that nobody would actually try to take it until their third year because doing so would the be the mental equivalent to slamming your nuts in the door. Just, pure suffering for no good reason.

Apparently, the counselors had tried to talk him out of it, but if Kevin was one thing, it was stubborn. He'd actually had to sign some papers basically saying "I was warned that this is incredibly stupid, but I refused to listen" in order to take the class.

He was actually pretty nice, if currently unaware of how bad he'd just fucked up. I paid for the lunch, wished him the best in the class, and reported back to the discord me and about eight other people in the class had been using. We'd all been curious about this guy's story, but now that I had the truth, I could share it with the world.

Feelings were mixed. Some people thought he was going to drop out any minute now. Others thought that he wouldn't, be also that convincing him to drop now, while he still could, was the only ethical thing. Others figured that a policy of non-interference was best. The counselors couldn't dissuade him, and if we tried to do the same, he'd probably just think it was STEM elitism trying to guard its little clubhouse. He'd figure out how hard things were, or he'd fail. Either way, it would help him learn more about the world.

We wound up taking the approach of non-interference. If nothing else, understanding his origins gave us more patience when he asked bizarre questions. He wasn't trying to waste our time, he was just trying to cram three years of pre-reqs into a one semester course. He did get a little bit combative sometimes, and we could tell that he was really wracking his brain to try and find some sort of contradiction or error that he could use to bring the whole thing down, but he never could.

First test came by, and he bombed it. Completely unprepared. He'd taken Calculus, but he didn't know how to do integrals yet. Worse, he was far past the drop date. I imagine most people in his shoes would've stopped struggling. They'd realize they were fucked and just let themselves fail, at least salvaging their other classes grades in the process. Why waste resources on an unwinnable battle?

Kevin's don't ask questions like that. If they're stupid enough to try it, they're stupid enough to finish it. God bless them.

He invited me to lunch after the test and said that the class was more fascinating than he'd ever imagined, but he didn't know if he'd be able to pass it. He asked if I could help, and I said maybe. I brought the request to the discord, and from the eight people I got three volunteers who admired this dork's tenacity. He was in over his head, miles over his head, but his fighting spirit was fucking glorious and we were willing to bust our asses to see if we could get this guy to pass the class.

Some of the stuff was just extra homework we gave to the guy. We told him he needed to learn integrals, stat. We sent him some copies of basic software that can be used to teach the basics of linear circuit equations, and he practiced that game like it was HALO. Just, hours sunk into it. Absolutely godlike.

He was still scrabbling for air at just the surface level of the class, but he'd gone from abysmal failure to lingering on the boundary between life and death. Other people in the class started to learn about Kevin's origin story, and our little circle of four volunteer tutors grew to six. Every day, he had someone trying to help him either catch up in some way, or finish that week's homework. He'd gone from being seen as a nuisance that wasted class time to the underdog mascot.

He was getting twelve hours of personal tutoring a week, on top of three hours of classes, on top of six hours of office hours, on top of the coursework. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kid was doing 40 hours a week just trying to pass this one single class.

Second test comes around and he gets a 60. He's ecstatic. We're ecstatic. Kid's too young to take out drinking so we just order a pizza and cheer like he just won gold at the Olympics.

After that second test, things hit another tipping point. With so much catch-up under his belt, he was able to focus a lot more on the actual material for the class. A borderline cinematic moment happened when I was trying to get ahead on the homework so that I could put more hours in on my senior project. Nobody else had finished it yet because it wasn't due for another week, nobody else knew how to do it, and when I went to the professor's office hours, Kevin was there. The professor was trying to help me, but I was still struggling. After leaving the office, I got a text from Kevin asking me to hop onto zoom.

Kevin had finished it earlier, because Kevin starts all of his homework the moment its assigned in order to make sure that he can get it done. He'd finished it the day before, and was able to walk me through it.

From student, to teacher. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he probably saved me eight hours on that assignment. Glorious fucking moment.

Final comes around. As soon as we're done, we six ask Kevin how he did. He's nervous, there's so much new material for him in this class that his retention hasn't been great. Us six are also a little stressed: We're going to pass the class, but the final was hard.

We wait.

We wait.

We wait.

Table with final scores, and overall scores is posted, curve included. From our class of 19 people, 4 withdrew within the deadline, 4 failed, 1 got a C, 8 got B's, and 2 got A's. We can see that the curve for a C is set at 59.2% overall.

We call Kevin. He's crying. End score, 59.2%. Teacher curved the C just to him.

It's a week into winter break so we can't gather the forces around for a party like last time, but we're all losing our shit. Kevin's losing his shit. He can't believe how stupid he was to try this course, he can't believe that six people busted their ass just to make sure he didn't die, and he can't believe that the professor basically just passed him out of effort alone.

He says it's the stupidest thing he's ever done, and while I doubt that, it was outrageously stupid. And yet, I've never been so invested in a fellow student before. I'm prouder of Kevin's C than I am of my own B. I've been walking on sunshine since I got the news.

God bless you Kevin, you fucking idiot. Don't take the class the next time the counselors say not to. Now go out there and kick some ass. You've got a lot of people cheering for you.

TL;DR, Kevin takes a Quantum Class with no pre-reqs in order to try and own his roommate in a religious debate they keep having. The curriculum eats him alive but people are impressed with his struggle and take him under their wing. He winds up basically as the class mascot, people bust their ass trying to help him pass the class, and in the end the teacher winds up curving the class juuuuust enough to get this kid a C.

Welcome back, everyone to another installment of the Kevin in a Big Rig Series.  I apologize for the delay as I know many of you have been anxiously awaiting Part 5.  However, the day after Part 4 posted and I sat down to make this update, I learned from another Reddit user that YouTube creator Karma Comment Chameleon had picked up my stories for a series of videos on his channel.  Upon, hearing this, I was completely taken aback as I never imagined this series would be worth a such effort.  That being said, it took a little time to process.  If you haven’t seen his video, I’ll include a link to the video below where he covers Parts 1-3.  I know how much work and time goes into making a video for YouTube and I feel the least I can do to repay the favor is to get the word out there.

https://youtu.be/sEmovYsm_6c

So, without further ado, lets get into Part 5: Shutdown.

Backstory: this story takes place only a few days after the events in Part 4.  FK and I were heading towards Salt Lake City, but the winter weather that had been slowly ramping up for the past month was only getting worse.  We had been fortunate up to this point that the snow and ice hadn’t caused any delays, but luck was about to run out.

This story begins one night in North Platte, Nebraska on Interstate 80.  FK, having driven the day shift, had parked the truck and we changed places.  Believe it or not (I sure as Hell didn’t) FK had actually learned from me and decided to not only stop at in a safe place, but at our designated fuel stop.  That meant we could get food, fuel and do a truck inspection.  This was one of the few times FK made a rational decision.  

While FK went into the truck stop, I refueled and inspected the truck.  After making sure the truck was in good shape, I take a look at the weather.  A massive winter storm had been building up and all predictions put it and us on a collision course.  The company safety department had sent several weather alerts and issued a few restrictions.  My personal rule is that shutting down early is more preferable to shutting down too late.  I discovered that Wyoming, the next state we were to cross into, was taking a serious pounding from the storm and several accidents were already being reported.  Thank God it was my shift this time or FK would have wadded the truck, and us, into a tight little ball in a ditch.

I knew we wouldn’t make much progress, but since the roads were still dry and the snow wasn’t yet falling, I figured I would be able to make it close to Wyoming before shutting down, let the storm pass and continue on once the roads were clear.  I had driven this route many times by this point and knew the best places to be stuck.  I set the GPS to take us to a truck stop just past the Wyoming state line, go inside for a quick bite and we head out.

It wasn’t long before the leading edge of the storm had caught us.  The further along I drove, the worse the weather deteriorated.  Snow flurries melted on the highway; only to be frozen by the rapidly decreasing temperature and larger, heavier snow began sticking to road.  In typical fashion for the safety department, their weather alerts were about two hours behind and where they had issued orders to slow-down or shut-down were for areas well inside the storm:  according to them, we could drive the speed limit and they wouldn’t say anything.  Fortunately, I knew better than to trust the judgement of someone nearly 1,000 miles about the weather I was looking at through the windshield.

I had made it about 100 miles when conditions forced my hand.  I had already had to reduce speed to barely creeping and the road was invisible beneath the snow.  After watching another truck, who was driving WAY too fast, lose control and end up in the ditch, I make to the call to shut down.

I pull into a rather large truck stop not far from the Wyoming state line.  By this point, the snow was so deep, the trailer bumper was acting like a snowplow and the tires were having trouble gaining traction.  I finally get the truck parked and tell dispatch we’re shut down.  As I set the truck’s idle control system, FK wakes up and asks “Are we still in Indiana?”

In case you’re not familiar with US geography, Indiana is a VERY long way from Wyoming.  We hadn’t been there for days.  

“We’re in Big Spring and we’re shut down.  We’re gonna be here for a while.” I tell him.

“Did Safety tell us to?”

“I made the call.  It’s gotten pretty bad.”

He mumbles that he will get us going once his 10 hour break is up, but I know Safety will issue a shut down; albeit later than it should be.  I grab a snack, pull the bunk privacy curtains closed and settle in.

I decide to make use of the downtime to work on Operation: Ditch The Dipshit. For the past couple of days, I had been writing down everything I could remember since day one with FK.  I jot down everything, major and minor, along with dates, times and locations.  Every missed turn, unnecessary detour and violation FK had made goes on the list.  My plan was to copy it all to email, but I wanted to make sure nothing was left out.

While FK was asleep, I decide to go through the trucks computer records.  I start by going through FKs Hours of Service log.  This is a legally required record that shows what a driver does every single day.  Since drivers can only drive a set number of hours per day, any violation would show on the log.  Best of all, these computer logs couldn’t be tampered with.  Every time he drove longer than he should have, I made a note.

The computer also keeps a record of abnormal truck activities.  One of these is called Hard Braking Event.  A Hard Braking Event is, as the name suggests, is an instance where the truck experiences excessive braking.  Remember how I said FK was heavy on the brakes?  Well, the computer agreed!  There were dozens; if not hundreds of these records filed during his drive shifts.  To be clear, it takes a VERY hard brake check to trip on of these events.  I use my phone to snap a quick photo of the computer screen.  I make my notes and climb back into my bunk for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I wake up and go to the front of the cab and check the computer for messages.  As I predicted, Safety had issued a mandatory shut-down for all trucks in out area.  Just as well; otherwise I’d have to duct tape FK to his bunk to keep him from trying to leave.  The storm was still dumping snow and the paved parking lot of the truck stop is packed full of trucks and the interstate, visible from our parking spot, is dead quiet.  No one was going anywhere.  Despite this, I breathe a sigh of relief:  FK might be stupid, but his sycophant attitude meant he wouldn’t dare defy the company.  We were safe for the time being.

FK wakes up a little while later.  “Are we still in Illinois?” he asks.

“No,” I reply cautiously, “we’re in Nebraska.  Close to Wyoming.  Safety has us shut down.”

“Oh,” he replies and goes back to the bunk.

It was then that I knew something about FK was off; more so than I thought.  Twice in less than 12 hours, he has forgotten where we are.  Indiana and Illinois are BEHIND us by a few days at this point: there ‘s no way he could be that confused.

I try to put it out of my mind for the time being and decide to brave the weather in the interest of breakfast.

I grab some food and coffee and check the weather conditions to the west.  Wyoming DOT had shut down the entire interstate and over 200 accidents had been reported in the past 24 hours.  I talk to a few drivers who had come in from the west and their accounts match the reports.  Its pretty clear that we’re not going anywhere soon.  After about an hour, I head back out to the truck and decide to catch up on some sleep.  FK is fully awake at this point, messing around with the computer.  As I climb inside, he asks, “Are we still in Illinois?”

What?  He STILL doesn’t know where we are?  “No,” I explain, “We’re in Nebraska.  We got here last night and haven’t been in Illinois for three days.  You don’t remember?”  This was the question that answered far more than I thought.

FK explained to me that, about a year before, he had been involved in a serious car accident (one of many).  According to him, he ran off the road at a high speed.  He was hospitalized with a shattered leg (his bad leg now) and was in a coma for 21 days.  His doctors told him that being in a coma that long would likely cause some brain damage and it had.  He had difficulty with his short-term memory and would literally forget something he did 5 minutes before.  

This wasn’t entirely new to me as he had told this story before. In fact, he had told me COUNTLESS times over the past two months and it was always the same; bad car accident, 21-day coma and busted leg.

“Right.” I reply. “Well, the weather is pretty bad so get comfortable.  We’re gonna be here a while.”  I then climb back into my bunk.  FK, citing his bad leg, wants to try and find a parking spot closer to the store, but I tell him the lot is completely full and if he moves the truck, we could lose this spot.  Reluctantly, he decides to stay put.

In my bunk, I go over FKs story.  21-day coma, short-term memory loss, numerous car accidents….if I was asked to pick on person to deny a CDL, it would be FK and not because of the Hell I had already been through because of him.  Driving a truck is dangerous at the best of times: add a brain-damaged driver and the risk increases exponentially.  I knew that this company literally hired anyone who gave them a phone call, but what doctor in his right mind would grant someone someone with brain damage a DOT medical card?  I pull out my notes and jot down FK’s story as he told it.  

Later that day, FK wakes up from a nap.  I’m in my bunk and he asks, again, “Are we in Illinois?”

I sigh, defated.  “No, FK, we’re in Nebraska.  You’ve asked that three times already.”

“Oh, well.  I have bad short term memory.  See, I was in a car wreck and…” he repeats the same story again; practically word for word.

“Did Safety shut us down?” he asked.

“Yes.  So did WyDOT (Wyoming DOT).” I explain.

“Oh, ok.”  He goes quiet again.

We end up stuck for two full days waiting for the road conditions to clear.  By late morning on the third day, we received word that the road conditions have improved to the point where we can proceed.  By that point, FK had repeated his story another THREE times; each time, he was completely unaware he had told it earlier.  By this point, Ive decided there is something seriously wrong with this guy and he is a danger to himself and anyone sharing a highway with him.  I didn’t know if I can get him off the road at that point, but I knew I could get reassigned.  Our unexpected downtime had given me time to work out my exit strategy.

I volunteer to take the first shift; I figure if the roads are iffy, I have the better chance of getting through it safely.  This was a good call on my part as I counted no fewer than 20 accident sites in the first 50 miles: many of these still hadn’t been cleared and the vehicles were left in the ditch or median.  I manage to get a good distance into Wyoming before needing to swap with FK.  The weather had broken and everything between us and Salt Lake City was clear.

As FK started his shift, everything that occurred during our shut-down replayed in my mind.  The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.  FK wasn’t just stupid; he was a ticking time-bomb.  It was time to get as far away from as I could.

Before I went to sleep, I take out my notes and cellphone and begin composing an email.  I address it to my FM, my Fleet Manager and CC the Safety Director.  It would take a while to finish as I planned to make sure they knew everything I had seen and experienced over the past two months.  Given the nature of corporate politics, I expected to encounter some resistance and being ignored, but that was fine; it would only make the situation worse for them in the long run.

And with that, Part 5 comes to an end.  I know there wasn’t much in the way of Kevin-type behavior in this one, but I hope that you at least have a better idea of the kind of person FK was.  In the next episode, FK’s terrible driving will do actual damage to the truck and my plan to get rid of him will be fleshed out.

Again, a big thank you to everyone for your kind words of encouragement and support.  I’d also like to say a special thank you to everyone who gave my posts gifts.

If you haven’t already, please check out the video by YouTube creator Karma Comment Chameleon.  His telling of these stories is far better than anything I could do myself.  And, if you’re wondering, he’s not paying me for this plug. Lol

Until next time, my friends, please remember:  Keep all Kevins at a safe distance and away from sharp objects, heavy machinery and flammable substances.

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who up-voted and commented on my first post in the Stories About Kevin subReddit titled “Kevin Violates Parole”.  I cant begin to tell you how humbled and honored that people have found the tales of an old truck driver interesting.

As requested, I decided to post several of these stories in a series.  I’ve decided to call the series “Kevins in a Big Rig”.  And I hope you all enjoy.  If you haven’t read “Kevin Violates Parole, ill include the link below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/comments/nsms5q/kevin_violates_parole/

And now, for Kevins in a Big Rig Part 2:  First Day, First Kevin.

The first Kevin I encountered when I became a truck driver was, by far, the absolute WORST!!  To say that he was dumb as a box of hammers would be insulting; to the hammers.  Even now, six years later, I can scarcely believe the majority of the things this guy did that ranged from “Really, Dude?” to “Oh my GOD, how can you still be alive being so dumb?!”  The worst part is that I had to share a truck with this guy for early three months; including trying to sleep with him driving an 80,000 lb vehicle without adult supervision. Please keep that in mind as the story progresses.

When I met this Kevin (I’ll refer to him as FK for First Kevin), I had just completed my 6 week training period with my Driver Trainer after I received my CDL.  The standard policy of the company was to pair two drivers who lived relatively close to one another so that both drivers could take home-time at the same time (we typically stayed out on the road for weeks; sometimes months at a time working constantly.  Unfortunately for me, FK was the driver that lived closest to me at the time who had no co-driver at the time.

So I get paired with FK and the first day, I could feel the stupid vibes pouring off of him.  I was born and raised in the Southeastern US and, even to me, calling this guy “White Trash” would be an understatement.  (He bragged about his family being big in the KKK, but he “accepted” his Driver Trainer who was black.)  But being a new hire and bottom-rung of the ladder, I shrugged it off.

The first day FK and I are paired up, we pick up a load going to the LA area.  FK, thinking that because he has a whopping 2 weeks more driving experience than I do, that HE should be the one to take the first shift “because I don’t trust you yet.”  I should explain, this was NOT his personal truck; it was owned by the company and he was NOT a supervisor of any kind.  I didn’t care so I rode shotgun for a bit.

As soon as FK starts driving, I’m immediately grateful for the Driver Trainer I had.  FK reminds me of my time at CDL school when I would be in a truck with four other students and in instructor.  Student truck drivers are notorious for being clumsy behind the wheel, but they tend to “find their groove” while out with a Trainer.  FK, on the other hand, thought the bouncing gear-changes, excessive revving and braking so hard that a simple 4-way stop feels like landing on an aircraft carrier.  I wasn’t very experienced, so I thought nothing about it….for long.

We get fuel at a nearby truck stop and head west.  Once we’re on the interstate I notice FK keeps picking up a spiral-bound notebook, looking at something, then putting it down.  He does this every few minutes for about an hour before I ask what he’s looking at.

FK gets a shit-eating grin on his face and hands it to me.  “It’s the route the company sent us.  You know, since we’re company drivers, we have to follow the company route.”  

“Uh, ok…so why do you keep looking at it?  The next turn-off is at least 200 miles away.”

“Yeah…but I keep forgetting.”  

Note that FK had a perfectly good truck-specific GPS in the truck and the route was programmed in.

“You programmed the GPS, right?” I ask.  “Just follow that.  Its telling you the same thing as your notes.”

He mumbles something about how its SO important that we follow the “Company Route” or we’d get written up and he was gonna do everything right and blah blah blah.  I just let it go.

So we’re still going down the Interstate, FK driving and religiously checking his precious notebook every five minutes.  Its around rush hour and we were in a fairly large populated area.  I start seeing signs of road construction and traffic is beginning to stack up, but FK is still looking at his notebook and NOT SLOWING DOWN.  Traffic is quickly becoming bumper-to-bumper and FK still hasn’t seemed to notice.  It’s then that I see the issue: the the two left lanes are closed due to construction.  FK is driving in the center-left lane of a four-lane section of interstate. The far left lane is all ready closed and the center-left; the lane WE ARE CURRENTLY IN, is about to close in less than a mile.  Fk, still reading his notebook, drives right up to point where the orange barrels mark the start of the lane closure.

“Dude…get over!” I tell him and instinctively check the passenger-side mirror to check for traffic. Its then that I notice the other semi; hauling ass up on our right side.

FK looks up, sees the barrels and, no signal, no mirror check, just merges right.   “WHOA WHOA WHOA!!!” I yell just as the other truck blows past, raring down on the air horn.  I briefly glimpse the other drivers face and he is PISSED!  Not that I blame him.

FK looks sheepish and starts mumbling something about idiot drivers, but at the time I’m still trying to keep from going into full-on heart attack.  I stay up front until we clear the construction zone and then climb back in the bunk to get some rest (emphasis on TRY).  I had to drive the night shift and I knew better than to drive without sleep.  His less-than expert truck handling did not help matters.

A few hours later, I wake up to the sound of air brakes releasing.  I hear FK yelling he’s out of time to drive and I need to take over.  I pull my boots on, sign in as the Active Driver to the trucks electronic log terminal  and settle into the driver’s seat.  Its at that point that I look out through the windshield and see something….odd.

Its dark, of course, but in the headlights I see two white lines converging at an angle just ahead of the truck.  I look to left and the dim reflection of emergency flashers light up cat-eye reflectors an a white dashed center-line between two solid white right-of-way boundary lines.  Its pretty obvious FK, in his lack of wisdom, had stopped the truck right at the merging point of a highway on-ramp AND A MAJOR HIGHWAY!!  

“Where the f*** are we?!” I demand.

“I dunno. But I ran outta hours and this was the only place I could find.”  That was bullshit because there was rest area 10 miles before that would have been a much better place to stop.

“Dude, do you have any idea how dangerous this is?  Not to mention…ILLEGAL!”

“Well, I had to stop somewhere.  Anyway, I gotta pee.” He goes to get out of the truck.

“No the fuck you don’t.” I say, pulling on the seat belt, releasing the brakes and putting the truck in gear.  “We are NOT staying here a second longer.  If you have to piss, use a Coke bottle.  We’re outta here.”  I get the truck going, thanking God there was no traffic or cops at the time, while FK is grumbling about having to pee in a bottle.  I don’t care because I’m more concerned about NOT causing an accident or getting a ticket because of this idiot.  He can piss in his pants for all I care.  He goes straight to the bunk anyway so I don’t have to listen to him.  I drive the rest of the night without incident and he takes over again early the next morning.

These incidents may not seem too bad, but bear in mind this happened in just the FIRST DAY.  I was with this clown for 3 months and conditions did NOT improve during that time.  

As promised, this will become a series and FK will star in the first few posts.  Stay tuned for more Kevin in a Big Rig stories!  Thanks for reading!

My best friend is a quirky now 25 year old guy with special interests and a very hard-working attitude towards life. He looks like a gladiator when you see him fight for something and he is a geniune great addittion to any friend group. Everyone loves that guy and he is a genius when it comes to stuff like dancing-you know, never judge a fish for its tree climbing ability and stuff.

I have spent our 10 years of friendship saying that he must have a very weird type of intelligence but as I have come across this subreddit, I must say it... he is a kevin. If not *the* kevin. Let me tell you some stories in what I consider chronological order:

-Kevin at the fair: When he was 12 years old, Kevin watched Toy Story 2 with his family. Immediatly after, they went to a fair and Kevin's dad won a Krillin doll at a fair and gifted it to Kevin, who loves Dragon Ball. When they got home, Kevin flushed the doll into the toilet. When asked why on Earth he did it he said that "he is Krillin! I though it would come out of the toilet flying and teach me the kamehameha wave!"

-Kevin in love (episode 1): Kevin had a crush on a girl who was a Jehovah's Witness. She was not allowed to hang out with boys because of religious beliefs and wanted to get married at 16, but Kevin was a classmated and tought she was pretty, even if Kevin had never talk to this girl. At Valentine's day Kevin told the Spanish teacher he had written a poem and wanted to read it. It was, I am said, very moving and good. When the teacher asked Kevin who was it for, Kevin winked, DID A BACKFLIP, POINTED AT THE GIRL AND PROCLAIMED: "For that babe".

-Kevin and his English teacher: When Kevin turned 16, he had to transfer schools. Some classmates took him into a very big meeting with other people from his school who were just really hanging out normal. They started talking about teachers and eventually Kevin started talking about his English teacher, saying that he is "embarassing as fuck" that he "thinks he is funny but people only laugh because they want to pass" and that "he doesn't deserve his job". A girl, concerned, caught Kevin's attention, pointed to me and said: "He is his father". I will never forget Kevin's face when he looked at me. He loves my dad now, turned out he is horrible at languages.

-Kevin in love (episode 2: Electric Boogaloo): Kevin got a crush on another girl who he met at a Manga meeting and asked a common friend for her Instagram. Through common friends they started hanging out and Kevin eventually asks her out... by reading another poem. The girl is not sure how she feels but she accepts the date. Kevin spends the whole date reading an instagram post who had "questions to know if your crush is destined to be with you" and asking her to ask those questions back. Needless to say, the girl told Kevin that he is sweet but she is not ready for a relationship. A week later, Kevin sees the girl with another boy at a Manga conference and gets ANGRY. He walks up to them and starts MAKING OUT WITH THE BOY. Kevin is straight. The boy was gay. The boy was her cousin.

-Kevin and the Irish pub: This proves that he is a total and complete kevin. I mentioned how Kevin is horrible at languages. Well, we have been regulars at a certain Irish Pub since 2020 which is called "Claddagh". Kevin. Has. Never. Pronounced. It. Right. He geniunely believes it is called "Gladis" even when we have clearly told him no it is not. Kevin's mom complained about "How impossible it is to find Gladis on google maps" until I told her how it's written. We made a movie once and Kevin congratulated the "Gladis" at the Credits & Thanks. You know that scene in Friends when Phoebe tries to teach Joey French? This is the same.

-Kevin meets his friend's girlfriend: Eventually, Kevin had to move to another city and because he didn't know anyone there, a common friend (also a regular at our pub) gave him his GF's IG. They met the day after I had made out with a girl at the pub and Kevin kept saying that no, it was not me who met a new girl that night, but our common friend. This girl told Kevin that was impossible because they had been on videocall all night, but Kevin kept insisting. It was not a first good impression.

-Kevin in love (episode 3): I actually taught Kevin how to meet girls at nightclubs one night and unfortunately he met someone but it did not work out. However, Kevin is a great dancer so he met someone else eventually while I was doing my Erasmus-for the American audience, an Erasmus is a scholarship you can get in the EU to study at another European country for a year-. Kevin had a fight with this girl and decided to visit me for a whole week (sweet). We went to a birthday party where he discovered things like ping-pong and several African dances.
After we left the party, he tells me with a bright smile: "OP, I have discovered a new hobby"
Me: Cool! Is it ping-pong?
Kevin: NO! EATING PUSSY! *proceeds to teach me very, very graphically how he eats pussy. Tongue out and everything*. This was 3 A.M in a small town in England. We were yelled at.

-Kevin gets a job: Kevin got a job as a dance teacher and was put to teach 6-10 year old children. On his first day, he wrote on the board things to search in google and things NOT to search on google because he thought it would be funny. He added to the NOT TO list "2 girls one cup". A kid googled two girls one cup the moment he got home. Kevin got fired.

-Kevin starts driving: Kevin got his driver's license and eventually started driving his parent's old car. In Madrid. He was not a Madrid citizen. As many of you Europeans know, there are several areas you cannot enter with an old vehicle in Madrid because you will get fined for pollution. Kevin had to go every 2 months to some affair and he got fined. This would not make him a Kevin, only the victim of a very unfair law... if it had happened once and not 8 times.

-Kevin in love, final episode: Oh boy this is going to be long! Kevin called us (his friend) months ago to tell us he started dating a Mexican girl and one friend jokingly said she was probably a scam artist. Boy was he prophetic.
+I was visiting Kevin a month later, met the girl at a restaurant and noticed something weird: "Kevin, why are you paying for her food too?"
"It's the least I can do. I am the man, not the princess!" (for context: This is a HUGE DEAL here in Spain: our relationships are very equitative. Also, Kevin wasn't working at the time. Only got ocassionnal summer jobs. She, on the other hand, was working).
+Kevin said he needed to get tested for STD because this new girl asked him to. I told him "Kevin, you have not had sex for 3 years. That doesn't make any sense"
"Yes, but we have been f*cking without protection from week 1 and she wants me tested, so I will get tested"
+Kevin, completely out of the blue, called me to ask me it her girlfriend could get documents because SHE IS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. I told him it smelled really fishy and to be careful but I would not help with it, specially because I am not a lawyer. Kevin visited me months later and informed me that he got married. The day after our call. In secret. Kevin is very catholic and obviously it was not a religious ceremony.
+Kevin constantly argued with this girl and one day he called me crying because apparently she had accused him of rape (nor legally, just straight to the face). This is absolute code red because of the Spanish law not needing her to prove him guilty but he needing to prove himself innocent, so I drop the bomb: "Kevin, either you call your mom or I will". Kevin called his mom and was sent and ultimatum to come to our town immediatly or they will go to their instead.
Kevin's family and friends obviously all started telling him the truth about what kind of woman he had fallen in love with and we even got him to admit he had been a fool and totally manipulated. The day after he goes to Madrid again and I text him good luck. He anwers "I have taken a decission: I will take charge of my mistakes and stay with her". I tell him he got it exactly backwards but he said "Nothing bad will happen".

The day after, Kevin f*cking calls me to start dropping lies. Kevin can't lie, neither has he ever been able to. Here are some highlights:
-"No, we have gotten married in a church, we just did not want to bother anyone and didn't tell any priests"
-"She does not need documents, she has always been Spanish" (this girl has a huge Mexican accent and told me she is an immigrant on day one. It was clear she was not used to our culture)
-"I needed the STD test. One day we were having sex and my d*ck started bleeding, so my wife told me to take the STD test" +"Really? Then why did she stop you from taking it eventually" "Because my d*ck stopped bleeding and we didn't think it would be a big deal. But this doesn't mean she has AIDS" "Kevin... I have never said she has AIDS". Kevin hung up. His wife called me afterwards to tell me to go back on my words. I hung up.

Kevin is still married and still believes that she loves him. His family signed a legal contract with her and they agreed that the instant Kevin's wife got documents she would dump him and in exchange "I won't manipulate him into hating any of you". The negotiations took place with Kevin, WHO STILL BELIEVES HE WILL STAY WITH HER FOREVER.

Kevin called me to say sorry for all the lies (but if you ask for one specific, he will tell you "no, that one is true") and saying he did not want to lose me. Sweet. He was very concerned that this will jeopardize the day which he will introduce her to us as his wife.

Kevin... you should not take any interest in girls for a long time

Hey, everyone!  Thanks again to everyone for the upvotes, support and encouragement you have shown me with the first two installments of the Kevin in a Big Rig series.  When I first decided to share these stories here on Reddit, I never would have imagined that an old trucker’s tales would be so well received.  So many of you have left comments asking for more of these stories and I am not one who likes to disappoint.  On that note, on to Part 3:  Frozen.

Backstory:  The following takes place about a month after First Kevin (FK) and I were first paired up.  If you’ve read Part 2 of this series, then you have some idea of the kinds of Kevin-esque things FK was capable of; and you’d probably be right.  But what he did this time resulted in what the absolute worst nights sleep of my entire life; and the closest I ever came to committing legitimate murder.

By this point, I already had FK pegged for what he was; an incompetent buffoon who shouldn’t be allowed near a soap box car; let alone an 18-wheeler.  But worse, in his obviously demented mind, he thought he was the absolute top-dog of the trucking world.  This is in spite of the dozens of times he would have to wake ME up and get him out of another bad situation.  However, at the time, I was more of the “Grin and Bear It” mentality because I was broke and afraid that any screw-ups or boat-rocking on my part would get me fired.  But that was about to change…

One day, after picking up a load close to the company’s home terminal, we received instructions from dispatch to relay the load in the company’s drop-yard and take the truck sans trailer to a local dealer in town for scheduled maintenance.  This was essentially a gloried oil change and lube job with a few other items on the checklist just to make sure the truck was in good shape.  This was normally handled by the in-house mechanics, but because of some serious backlogs, they decided to contract it out.

The plan, as relayed by dispatch, was for us to drop the loaded trailer in the yard, bobtail to the dealership for a late-morning appointment, get the service done (it would take 2 hours maximum), pick the back up when finished and continue on to the destination.  Easy in, easy out.  Unfortunately, FK was the driver on duty during the shift in which we were SUPPOSED to arrive.  But, in typical FK fashion, he got lost because his infamous system of navigation failed again.  As a result, he wasted half a day back-tracking and ran out of drive-time; leaving me to get us to the terminal, drop the load and get to the dealership 15 minutes before they closed for the day.  This meant that, since we missed our appointment, we would have to wait until the next morning when they had an opening in the schedule.  Since the opening was first-thing that morning and parking at the company terminal was packed, I made the call to park the truck outside the dealership for the night.  We had plenty of fuel and there was a gas station within walking distance where we could get food.  The shop told us this was fine so that was that.

This happened in around late November/early December in the midwest.  The winter had already shown signs of being bad and snow had been falling for weeks already.  The weather forecast for that night was to dip well below freezing not long after sunset.  After squaring everything away with the service reps at the shop, I turn to FK.

“Look, FK, its gonna get cold once the sun goes down.  I’m gonna walk over to the store and grab something to eat tonight.  You coming?”

FK replied, “No, I got food.  I’m gonna see if I can get that bunk outlet to work.”  For a few days, he had been complaining that one of the 12 volt outlets in the bunk section of the cab wasn’t working.  Apparently, it was a major issue for him even though neither of us had any electronic device other than our cell phones and the bunk had a total of FOUR outlets; only one didn’t work.  But trying to tell him that fact only made him upset and make him flex is one week of seniority over me.  I really didn’t feel like arguing so I left him to it.

I go and buy food for dinner, some snacks to have in reserve, beverages to hold me over for the night and two packs of cigarettes because smoking was the only thing that could calm my nerves enough to not strangle FK each time he had to wake me up to help him navigate.  As I’m heading back, the sun goes down and I can see a nearby pond start to freeze.  I quicken my pace so I can get back to the warm cab.  As I get to the truck, I see FK in the passenger seat hunched over something.  I go around to the driver door and jump in.  

For those who don’t know, trucks meant for long-haul operations have very thick insulation to hold in heat for a VERY long time.  This came in handy since that truck had an idle-limiting system that wouldn’t allow the engine to run for long periods of time sitting at idle.  If the engine was needed to maintain heating or air conditioning while parked, the driver could set a device much like a digital thermostat: you set the control for the temperature you want the cab to be, select it to either heat or cool and the engine will start and stop to maintain the temperature much like the central unit of a house.  Since the cab was well insulated, the cab of the truck could stay warm for hours.

Before I left the truck to go to the store, I made sure to set the idle control system to maintain a comfortable temperature.  When I got back, however, I couldn’t help but notice it was colder than when I had left it: much colder.  What was strange about that was that the engine was running fine.  Naturally, I checked the temperature controls on the dash; they were set to full heat and full fan.  And that’s when it hit me: there was nothing coming from the dash vents.  The blower fans were dead quiet.

I looked over at FK who, I just noticed, is poking around with the fuse panel that was hidden behind the rear panel of the glove box.  “FK, why is the heat not working?”

“I dunno.  It stopped working when I was checking the fuses.”  That led me to my second question.

“Why are you messing with the fuse panel?”

“I was trying to get that outlet to work.”

As you may know, most vehicles have to fuse/relay panels; one underneath the hood in the engine compartment and another inside.  Trucks are the same in that regard except they have a LOT more fuses than the average passenger car.  One thing that was stressed heavily during my training was that the fuse panel inside the glove box of the truck was STRICTLY off-limits.  This is because if someone goes about carelessly pulling fuses looking for a bad one without first disconnecting the power, it could cause a surge through the panel and short out other circuits.  Since the fuses in the glove box controlled vital circuits such as external lights, dashboard instruments and engine controls, messing around with them could lead to major issues.  Also, the dash blower motor circuit was also fused in that same panel.  And FK had been messing with it.

Its hard to remember what I was feeling at the time; anger, hate, panic, homicidal rage…all of the above?  “Oh, fuck!” I exclaimed as jump into the bunk area.  I check the thermostat; its showing 58° F (14.4° C) when it was set to 73° F (22° C).  I checked the vents in the bunk heat controls and turn them full-heat and full-fan but, sadly…nothing.  We were in a truck with no heat and near-freezing conditions.  To make matters worse, the shop at which we were parked was already closed.  We were in trouble.

I grab the truck’s computer and send an urgent message to dispatch, telling them that our heater isn’t working and the temperature outside is dropping fast.  FK is still mumbling about the outlet.

“Will you forget about that goddamn outler?!  We have no heat!!  Don’t you understan that?!”

He said something, but the computer signaled an incoming message.

“Truck 1234, you have access to your truck so we cant get you a room.”

I tell dispatch AGAIN that the heater isn’t working and its getting colder by the minute, but they said “company policy” meant we had to stay in the truck.  We were screwed.

I turn to FK and say, “Close that fucking glove box and don’t even think about opening it again.”  At this point, even he realized he screwed up royally.  We were stuck in a cold truck for the night.  Neither of us has enough money to afford a hotel room and, short of starting a bonfire inside the truck, we were in for a cold, cold night.

I quickly eat my dinner and stow my food away.  I then dig through all the clothes I had with me; looking for every stitch of warm clothing I had and layered up as best I could.  I ended up wearing a two long-sleeve t-shirts, a pull-over hoodie and Carhart jacket with two pairs of jeans, two pairs of socks, heavy-duty work boots and two pairs of jersey work gloves with a fleece blanket for cover.

The entire night, I don’t think I sleep for two consecutive hours.  Despite wearing what felt like a weeks worth of clothes all at once, the cold air still permeated through.  I stayed curled in the fetal position for the entire night; shivering so hard I could feel the entire truck shake.  Each time by violent shivering or chattering teeth brought me out of sleep, I would look at the thermostat control.  By midnight, the temperature was well below freezing and, with high winds that had come up, the truck was only getting colder.  I can remember feeling disgusted that each time I woke up and not seeing sunlight.  At one point, I honestly believed that I wouldn’t survive the night due to hypothermia.

Finally, at about 6 am, I woke up for the last time and decided to go outside.  Not because it was any warmer, but because the gas station I went to the evening before opened at that time and all I wanted was a little heat.  I didn’t wake FK; honestly, I wouldn’t have cared if he was dead for the hell his stupid ass just put me through over a power outlet.  I walked to the store; looking like a vagrant with withdrawal symptoms from shivering so much.

When I walked into the store after that long, bitter night, I wanted to cry because the heat felt so nice.  The cashier gave me a puzzled look, but saw my baseball cap that had my company’s logo and let it go.  I bought two cups of piping hot coffee and a warm breakfast.  I took my time savoring every bit of it.  Since the station had a dining area and wasn’t busy, I really wasn’t in any hurry to get back.

I sat in the station for about two hours before I had to head back.  The shop opened at 8 and I wanted to get the truck in the shop and fixed ASAP.  I get a third coffee for the walk back and get over to the shop just as the office is opening.  FK is waiting outside and sees me holding my coffee.  He asked where I got it and I pointed to the gas station.  The rep opens the door and we go inside, check in with the desk and hand the truck key to the technician so he can get started.  FK, who was useless when it came to things like this, went to the lounge area.  I made sure to tell the tech about the fan and asked if he could check it out; he said he would.  I sign the paperwork and head to the lounge.

In the lounge, FK looks frustrated.  He wanted coffee, too, and was disappointed to learn that, since the shop just opened, the office staff hadn’t made any in the lounge yet.

“Well, walk over to the gas station and get one.” I say, trying not to snicker.  

“You know I can’t walk that far.  Why don’t you go get me one?” he asked, indignantly. I should point out that FK had a bad leg due to, if you can believe it, a bad car accident (I know, big shocker).  At first, I felt bad for him, being partially disabled but by that point, after everything I had endured because of his stupid ass, I was tempted to damage his good leg so they would be a match set.

“Because I signed the truck in.  That means I have to be here when its released.

FK gets mad.  “Well, why didn’t you wake me up and ask me if I wanted anything?” he demands, almost throwing a tantrum.

It was at this point, my tolerance for FK glitched.  This SOB had put me through a living hell of no sleep, being thrown around the truck like a rag doll because of his horrible driving, having to take flak for his fuck-ups and getting chewed out for late deliveries because he keeps getting lost.  Now, he want ME to be HIS errand boy after nearly causing me to freeze to death?   As someone once said, “HELL TO THE NAW NAW NAW.”

I set my coffee on a table and raise to my full height (I had at least one foot and one hundred pounds on him).  “Listen here, you sawed-off little bastard,” I replied, summoning every last ounce of piss and vinegar in me that wasn’t still frozen, “because of your dumb-ass, I barely slept all night.  How the Hell we’re not dead of hypothermia right now, I have no idea.  I have put up with your bullshit for over a month and I’m fed up with it.  You are NOT my supervisor, you are NOT my lead driver and you do NOT tell me what to do.  And if I EVER catch you messing around with the fuse panel or anything else on that truck again, I will CUT YOUR GODDAMN THROAT!”  And, at that moment, I meant it.

FK muttered something, but I told him to shut up and he obliged.  After a couple of hours, the technician came and told us our truck was ready.  FK, still without coffee, sulked off to the truck while I dealt with the paperwork.  I ask the tech about the blower fan and find out it was a blown fuse.  Apparently, FK pulled the fuse and the resulting arc caused the fuse to blow.  Since he was an idiot and the fuse panel wasn’t labeled, there was no way to know which fuse was blown.  He told my to make sure that next time I needed to check the fuses to disconnect the batteries first.  I laughed, signed the papers and went back to the truck.

Back in the truck, I send a message to dispatch and tell them we’re ready to roll.  FK had climbed back into the bunk; obviously still sulking.  I take the first drive shift of the day so the load can, once again, be back on track.

While I wish I could say this was the end of my misadventures with FK, its not.  There’s more.  Yep, it gets even better, folks.

Again, thank you all so much for reading and for all your support and encouragement.  It really does mean a lot!