You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 252 Complaint Meeting

After the drilling stopped, all that remained in the psychedelic cat's first-floor dance floor was the smell of hot mutton soup mixed with raw gypsum.

The steel pipes and broken wooden planks that had been piled up in the corner were cleared out. Several old sofas that had been moved from the private room and two rows of long benches formed a crooked circle, with an induction cooker in the middle. There was some cold soup left in the stainless steel bucket on the cooker.

The old welder threw the last screwdriver into the toolbox, closed the lid, and wiped the sweat from his chin with his sleeve.

He walked to the bench and sat down, took out a half-pack of flattened Marlboro cigarettes from his pocket, didn't light them, just put them in his mouth.

He sat cross-legged on the broken sofa opposite him, wearing a reflective vest, and was picking at a piece of dry cement on his trouser leg with his fingernails.

The man with the screwdriver was standing next to the reflective vest, leaning back against the sofa with his head tilted back, his eyes half-closed, as if he were dozing off.

Elton, a two-meter-tall black man, squatted at the end of the bench, his knees touching his chin, clutching a half-finished bottle of mineral water.

Louis sat next to Elton, his legs stretched out and crossed, his ankles covered in white ash.

Walter took a folding chair and placed it at the edge of the circle. He sat up straight, with his hands on his knees, like a new recruit who had just been notified to attend a class meeting.

Two new construction workers sat in the corner.

He was in his early fifties, with broad shoulders but a severely hunched back. He was wearing a work shirt with a button missing from the cuff. He didn't talk much; I've only heard him say three sentences since he came in.

The other one was younger, probably in his thirties, with poor eyesight and a bruise on his cheekbone, which he probably bumped while carrying bricks a few days ago.

There were a few other people sitting around.

Lyon didn't come over; he was still on duty at the ACU at this time and couldn't get away.

MacArthur pulled a chair over from the podium, the chair legs scraping loudly on the concrete floor.

He sat down, straightened the bottle cap medal on his chest, and glanced around at everyone present.

"The boss told us this afternoon not to leave after work tonight, but to have a meeting."

The old welder took the cigarette from his mouth, tucked it behind his ear, and cleared his throat.

"Yes. The boss called it a 'complaint session'."

"What the hell?" The screwdriver man opened his eyes and lifted his head from the back of the sofa.

"It's just chatting," the old welder said. "Everyone can talk about what they used to do, how they ended up in this situation, just chat as you like, there's no time limit, if you don't want to talk, then don't."

He paused for a moment, then added another sentence.

"The boss instructed me to start with myself."

The young man in the corner looked a bit confused. He nudged the older man in the work shirt next to him with his elbow and asked in a low voice, "What's going on?"

The old man didn't answer him, he just shook his head.

The old welder straightened his back and rubbed his fingertips together.

He took a lighter out of his pocket, placed it on his lap, flicked the lighter back and forth a few times, and stared at the smoldering ember.

"I used to be a welder, as you all probably know."

The moment this profession is mentioned, it seems to trigger some kind of keyword, and everyone associates it with the sweltering afternoons in the factory where people are constantly being called around.

"He worked in a Boeing outsourced workshop for eleven years."

The man with the screwdriver put his legs down from the sofa armrest, and the man in the reflective vest stopped picking at the cement.

"I know what you're probably thinking." Old Han took the cigarette off his ear, but instead of putting it in his mouth, he just held it between his fingers.

"Welding is just about taking a welding torch and poking around a couple of times, sticking iron to iron. What kind of skill is involved?"

"Really not?"

He cut himself off.

Then he looked up at Walter.

"You're a tank mechanic, do you know what a pressure vessel is?"

Walter nodded.

"If there is a one-millimeter pore in the weld of the M1's main gun turret base, when a high-explosive shell hits, the metal will be torn directly through the weld, and then all the fragments inside will explode onto the crew."

"Yes, that's the idea." The old welder put the cigarette back in his mouth, but still didn't light it.

"When I worked at Boeing, I was a senior welder, with full qualifications in TIG, MIG, and TIG welding."

"If you've ever flown on a Boeing 747, there might still be some of the splashes that the inspectors didn't find inside the wing supports or landing gear bays. You can think of splashes as small metal droplets."

"Of course, splashing doesn't affect safety, it's just unsightly, so I never let it cross the red line."

"Later, the controls became increasingly strict. From that time on, the quality inspection manuals for Boeing's outsourced workshops kept getting stricter and stricter, and anything deemed unacceptable was sent back for rework."

"I'm not afraid of inspections, I fucking welcome higher standards."

"My welds have never been burned, never had internal cracks, and never need to be repaired. I'm a craftsman, much better than those who doze off while looking at CNC machine tools."

"So when the new regulations came out, I didn't think they were aimed at me. I thought it was just that those outsourcing company bosses couldn't reach an agreement with the big companies and wanted to make things difficult for them and extort them by checking for compliance."

The man in the reflective vest leaned forward and asked, "And then what? You said they moved the production line to Kansas, why didn't they take you with them?"

The old welder held the lighter in his hand, his thumb pressing on the pulley.

Layoffs.

"It's not because my welding is bad, nor because I was late or left early; the reason is actually quite simple."

"Management felt that senior welder positions were a burden, as a certified level 4 welder was worth much more than three apprentices who had just graduated from technical school."

"After negotiating several large contracts, they said the profit margin was too thin, so HR pulled out the workshop payroll and started laying off people from the top."

"I'm leaving now."

He stared at the void for a few seconds, then suddenly spoke again.

"wrong."

Old Han heard himself say those two words and looked up.

"I did some other things before I left. I finished my last shift before I left. It was a weld on a pressure chamber door, with four curved lines and tricky angles."

"The new foreman couldn't understand it and asked me if I could break it down and start over to save time, but I said no."

"They don't understand. They changed the gas cylinder too early, causing unstable airflow and the gas inlet to get all stuck. They even scolded me for wasting time on meaningless regulations."

"Then I left."

He took the cigarette out of his mouth, put it back behind his ear, and looked at the shadow on the ground swaying from the heat of the induction cooker.

"A month after I left, the young man at my old work station somehow found my phone number and called to tell me that there had been an accident in the workshop. It was possible that the weld of the pressure chamber door had cracked, and the rework cost $1.2 million."

"And then my resume would never pass the review process."

The dance floor fell silent for a moment, and the people gathered around stopped talking.

Louis put down his cup, his voice very soft.

"You've been framed?"

"I think you could say that," the old welder's voice finally changed slightly, "but they call it a process."

"No matter who messed up the weld, as long as that batch of welds was previously done by someone with my employee number, the blame can be shifted, especially since I've already left the company, so it's even easier to shift the blame."

"My resume was put on a verification system, which you can think of as a blacklist. All the companies that came after that screened me out."

.

"High-risk welder, major production error." The old welder sneered.

"I've been a welder my whole life, and in the end I was even rejected for a cleaning job because my education wasn't suitable and I couldn't provide a recommendation letter from my previous employer."

The man in the hoodie lifted his face out of the hoodie.

"So you didn't contact a union?"

"I did contact them. The union representative told me that if I took this to court, I wouldn't be able to beat Boeing, and it would cost a lot of money, so they weren't confident they could win."

"Their suggestion was that I take the blame, otherwise the company would hold onto my severance pay that hadn't been paid yet."

"Damn it, what kind of union is this?" the hoodie-wearing man cursed.

"It's a union where you can drink tea," the old welder said.

"My wife divorced me that winter. She took the house, and I moved to a studio apartment in the city. Then I did odd jobs and sent out resumes."

"Then came pneumonia."

He paused for about three seconds. "It's not COVID-19 from a few years ago, it's an occupational disease of welders, from long-term exposure to manganese fumes."

"I remember I applied for workers' compensation, but the government has been dragging its feet and hasn't issued the funds yet. I don't have money to pay my rent, so my landlord called the police to evict me."

He rubbed his nose with his finger.

"I stayed in a motel for two weeks with two suitcases, and when I ran out of money, I slept in front of the church."

"The people at the church said I could go to the relief station, and I thought it was a good idea. When I got there, I found that there was a queue. I waited for three days before I finally got a spot, but there were no beds available. They just gave me a bowl of soup. There were bugs in the soup."

Then he stopped and looked up at MacArthur.

"Is this considered complaining?"

MacArthur straightened the crooked chair a little, but didn't answer.

Old Welder nodded, took his hands off his knees, and brushed the remaining plaster powder from between his fingers.

"Sometimes I think about my former colleague named Sanchez. He was an idiot, the kind of person who couldn't figure out how much money he had left at the end of the month, considering his online loans, credit cards, salary, and expenses."

"But I'm pretty much the same. Would things have turned out better if I hadn't taken the blame? Sometimes I fantasize about that, even though I know it's pointless."

As he spoke, he pursed his lips, his expression somewhere between mockery and bitterness, as if he were mocking himself for having once held such a fantasy.

The entire room was silent for about ten seconds.

The man in the reflective vest lowered his head and sighed.

MacArthur moved his chair forward.

"That's right."

He gestured for everyone to look at the old welder.

"Did you hear that? It's not because you're bad at cooking, it's not because you don't work hard, it's because that system was designed with a backdoor that can kick people like you out at any time, and then you'll have to take the blame for them after you're kicked out."

"All your welding records over the years can be rendered worthless with a single thought from them. What's the difference between that and being accidentally hit by friendly fire on the battlefield?"

He pointed with his index finger in the direction of the old welder.

Walter sighed and shook his head.

"Have you ever seen someone betray their own people in the army?" MacArthur turned to look at him.

Walter didn't answer immediately. He looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment.

"During one exercise, the base plate of the tank turret rotator malfunctioned, and a bolt got stuck on it."

"At the time, no one in the company could fix it, so I had the whole crew come out, crawled in myself, and pried the bolt off the transmission gear under the high-speed turntable."

"When I came out, my hands were covered in engine oil and blood, and the nail on my right index finger was completely torn off. When it grew back, it was crooked."

""

He showed his right hand to everyone, revealing a raised ridge in the middle of his index fingernail.

"After I finished the repairs, the Marine Corps gave me a certificate of commendation and a month's leave."

"Then the following year, another problem arose during the exercise. Someone connected the hydraulic hoses to the turret backwards, and the gunner's hatch got stuck."

"What the hell does this have to do with me? I wasn't in that crew that day, I was in another crew. This wasn't my responsibility to begin with, but after the investigation, it turned out I was the only maintenance technician in the company."

"I don't know why, even though I'm the only maintenance technician in the company, no one notified me that I needed to handle this. In the end, I was judged to have failed in my training and guidance, and my evaluation was completely downgraded."

Walter's gaze shifted to the tinted glass of the window, which reflected his image and a metal frame behind him, ready to be used to install an air conditioner.

"Then came arthritis, which you probably already know."

"The Department of Veterans Affairs said I could apply for disability benefits, and the set of forms they gave me wasn't complicated, but it took me more than six months to process them. During that time, I didn't receive any response, and there were no phone numbers I could call to inquire about my situation."

"Then another six months passed, and I finally gave up, because no matter how many forms I filled out, the result was the same: no suitable job, and therefore no income."

After he finished speaking, he turned around and returned to his upright sitting posture, placing his hands back on his knees.

MacArthur spread his hands out.

"Look, it's exactly the same. Whether it's welding airplanes or repairing tanks, they're all good people, and their skills are excellent. But what ultimately defines whether you're good or not isn't yourself, but those who can't even use a power drill."

"They only need to change one blueprint, one exercise report, and one line of social security record."

The short, stout Black man suddenly sat up straight on the overturned bucket of latex paint.

"Wait a minute, what did you just say?"

"Change one line of the social security record," MacArthur said, looking at him.

"Damn, that's me, I told you guys before." The short, fat black man clapped his hands, raising his voice, "I was killed by a line of data."

MacArthur had never heard of the experiences of short, stout Black men, and frowned upon hearing this.

"You were killed?"

Social security.

The short, stout Black man stood up and poked his chest with his finger.

"My boss mixed up my social security number with that of a dead guy. He just mistyped one digit, and now my status in the social security system is listed as 'deceased.'"

"From that year until now, I've submitted sixty-seven resumes. Every time the HR called, they said, 'Sorry, the system shows you've passed away.'"

"I told her I wasn't dead, and she said I needed to get a certificate from the social security bureau."

"I went to the social security bureau, and they said that to prove I'm alive, I need the signature of a living relative."

"My only relative is my aunt, who passed away in 2018, and the dead cannot sign documents."

He spread his hands and looked at the people around him.

"So legally I'm a dead man."

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"I can't work, I can't rent a place, and I can't receive welfare because the welfare verification system also shows that I'm deceased."

"I'm still standing here simply because my physical state hasn't synchronized with my legal state."

The man in the hoodie let out a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a laugh from under the hood.

"Damn, you're pretty resilient."

"What can I possibly do? My ex-girlfriend even burned paper money for me last year; she saw my obituary on Facebook."

MacArthur stood up.

"Okay, that's right, not just right, that's the most valuable thing tonight."

He took two steps with his hands behind his back, his boots making a dull thud on the cement floor.

"You've been driven to this point by the country. If you're still blaming yourselves for being stupid, still taking the blame on yourselves, and still thinking it's just bad luck, then you'll only be able to spend your whole life squatting in a back alley, freezing, waiting for the next Ray."

Fong came to make soup.

"From now on, change that thought in your head. Delete all those phrases like 'I shouldn't have signed that document,' 'I shouldn't have had a fever,' and 'I shouldn't have—'"

"The fault lies not with you, but with them."

Walter was silent for a moment, then suddenly spoke.

"Chief of Staff, I have something to say."

"explain."

"What you just said seems familiar."

MacArthur tilted his head.

"Who told you that?"

"Before I became homeless, I went to Texas to visit my cousin, who had been hit by a Mexican car."

"The guy who hit him ran away. There was no surveillance footage. The insurance company refused to pay. He got a leg injury, then the bank foreclosed on his house. He moved to a trailer park where more than thirty expelled veterans lived. A group of them huddled together drinking and cursing the government."

"There was a poster in a Black man's tent. It was from South Africa and it had a word on it. The Black man told me that the word meant..."

He paused.

"Think about us."

After he finished speaking, he turned around and returned to his upright sitting posture, placing his hands back on his knees.

The old man in the work shirt in the corner looked up, his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but then he swallowed it back.

His young companion spoke up for him.

"He doesn't like to talk, so I speak for him."

The young man pointed at the old man.

"He worked as a tile setter for a contractor his whole life, and his knees were completely ruined. When it was diagnosed, bone spurs had already pierced his meniscus."

"The company says this isn't a work-related injury because he walked in the wrong way after get off work. That idiot workers' compensation claims officer even sided with him. Now he's even less likely to have money to hire a lawyer."

The old man lowered his head even further, folded his hands on his knees, and rubbed his thumbs back and forth.

The young man said again.

"He told me before that when he was a teenager, he watched his dad lay tiles and thought it was a good job to do this in his life because if you lay the tiles flat, you lay them flat and you can't fool anyone."

"When he was kicked out, the supervisor made him sign a resignation document stating that he was resigning voluntarily."

"The moment he picked up the pen, he probably knew that nothing would get better from now on."

The old man didn't look up.

The only sound in the room was the low-frequency hum of the induction cooker.

Old Han raised his hand and rubbed the back of his head with his palm.

His voice was very soft when he spoke, unlike his previous flat tone.

"I've never told anyone these things before."

He lowered his hand.

"It's not that I don't want to talk about it, it's that I feel it's pointless. Who can you talk to? The police? The landlord? The people in line for soup under the overpass? After you've said it, life still goes on."

He pulled down his sleeves and looked at his hands.

"But after I finished speaking, I realized it seems a little different."

At this moment, Walter suddenly spoke up.

"I'm starting to understand why the boss made us do this."

Everyone looked at him.

"In the past, if someone in the army was not in a good state, the lieutenant would make him write a self-criticism. After he finished writing it, he would hand it in. Most of the time, the lieutenant would not read it, but the person who wrote the self-criticism would think about it on his own."

"But the boss's approach is different. This isn't about writing a self-criticism and having people figure it out themselves; it's about letting everyone speak out what's been weighing on their minds."

"And then what happens after you shake it out?" the reflective vest asked.

Walter paused, seemingly sifting through the words in his mind.

"Once it's revealed, you'll know the background of the person next to you, and you'll also know that he's not the kind of person who lectures you from a high place; he's been bitten by dogs just like you."

"Then you won't deliberately try to make a fool of him while he's working, nor will you try to stab him in the back when he makes a mistake."

"You might even be willing to lend a hand when he falls, because you know he was kicked down too."

The room fell silent for a while, filled with an indescribable atmosphere.

The old welder lowered his head and rummaged through the lighter in his hand again.

Louis put away his hands, which were covered in white dust.

Then, the man in the reflective vest leaned forward, propped himself up on his knees on the worn-out sofa cushions, and turned his face toward the podium.

He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing on his neck.

"That's right—then, General, it's your turn."

Everyone followed his gaze.

MacArthur had been sitting on the side, leaning back in his chair, one hand on his knee, the other touching the beer cap-shaped medal on his chest.

After the sound of the reflective vest faded, his fingers, which were touching the medal, stopped.

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