Swept Under The Carpet
Words and photos by Cliff Gromer
9/8/06
abor unions crack me up. There was a recent news item about a contest sponsored by Working America, the AFL-CIO union federation’s affiliate for non-union workers, to send in their best horror stories about their worst bosses in its “My Bad Boss Contest.”
Voting for the best worst-boss stories are supposed to be done by Web readers over a 6-week period. Each week's top vote-getter will be eligible to compete for the grand prize, a seven-night vacation getaway and $1,000 for a round trip air fare.
Okay, so first of all we have a union for non-union workers. That’s cool. I mean with union membership on the decline, they gotta get dues from someplace. Using that philosophy, I should start a magazine, or better yet, a website for illiterates, considering there are more folks in the world who can’t read than those who can. So, if Jeff Burk doesn’t beat me to it, look for “Illiteratemax.com” coming soon.
So what does all this have to do about cars? I’ll tell ya. This whole “bad boss” thing got me thinking about why shouldn’t corporations in general, and car companies (see?) in particular, have a “bad worker” contest. I’ll bet there are a lot more bad workers than bad bosses out there.
A buddy of mine who visited one of the Chrysler assembly lines back in the ‘60s, saw first hand a line worker flip his cigarette butt into an intake manifold on a car as it moved down the line. While bad worker stories could fill volumes, I’m going to mention just a couple relating to carpeting. More specifically, what was covered up by the carpeting by workers on the assembly line. 
“Maggie,” a ’78 Dodge Magnum GT came from the factory with a few “extras.”
Case in point is a 1978 400-cube Dodge Magnum. It was one of 861 built and it came with T-tops and the Chrome Rallye GT package. The original owners were a young couple who named the car “Maggie,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with the point of this story. The couple drove the car for years, and then parked it for 13 years. Since Maggie had become part of the family, so to speak, they were reluctant to sell it.