Bong Smoke Clouds Judgement of Grand Rapids Press

Ten years ago I worked in the bottle return department at Meijer. The job was disgusting and downright degrading if you really stop and think about it. Every day I would report to work only to spend the next six to eight hours emptying sticky and foul smelling blue bins with a gazillion pop bottles filled to the top. I would constantly be annoyed by a loud beeping nose which either meant the machine was full or jammed by a dented pop can. I would sit and listen to customers whine and cry and piss and moan about everything from failed marriages to crappy weather.

Take your frustrations out on me; I’m only the bottle return guy!

I toughed it out for over two years and finally quitting at a whopping $5.65 an hour.

One day, a couple months before I resigned to seek other employment, a co-worker and I were sitting behind the pop machines on a unusually slow day on the job. My co-worker decided to grab a pop but quickly realized he forgot his wallet in his other pair of work pants. So, like a typical moronic sixteen year old, this guy decided to make out a bottle return receipt from the cash register and then proceeded to cash it out so he could indulge in a cold root beer.

You know how this story ends. This guy was fired a couple days later by our loss prevention team, and rightfully so because he stole from the company and became a liability.

Perhaps this is comparing apples to oranges, but thinking of this (or the time a co-worker with 30 years seniority was fired for walking by the produce department and plucking a grape from the display) really makes me wonder how the hell the Grand Rapids Press columnist, David Mayo, was handed his job back on a silver platter after accepting a plea deal in a marijuana case which forces him to now reside as convicted felon.

I keep hearing all this talk about Mayo being a veteran writer with a clean past or the fact that smoking a little cannabis is a personal choice and because he wasn’t distributing it to other people the whole thing should have been dropped and ignored.

Excuse me, but last time I checked smoking marijuana was illegal.

You know, against the law.

David Mayo should have been fired immediately because his conduct was irresponsible and unprofessional. And the message the Press is sending is flat out hypocritical to everything they supposedly stood for at one point and time. There are plenty of struggling journalists out there looking for work. They are doing things the right way and Mayo is rewarded for acting like a fool.

I sure as hell don’t want to see any more stories in the press talking ill of those who smoke marijuana because your lead sports guy is a pot head.

I guess drinking and driving and stealing are all acceptable acts of conduct for the Grand Rapids Press. By giving Mayo his job back they’ve opened a Pandora’s Box. The next time someone on the staff breaks the law how can you justify firing them? Can you imagine what the morale in the department would be like?

Bill is clearing his desk while staring across the hall to David Mayo, his feet kicked back with a coffee cup in one hand and the latest edition of High Times in the other.

One man’s family suffers, another man writes a column explaining – not apologizing – his situation and is handed his salary with not so much as a slap on the wrist.

Look, I don’t care if you smoke pot. But if businesses are going to make illegal behavior legal, then it’s about time we quit forcing congressmen to resign from offices for having affairs. And while we’re at it, let’s lighten up on drunk drivers throughout the state. After all, just because you act like a drunken fool when you blow .08 doesn’t mean that I will. If we can start placing discretion on the crimes we commit then there is no credibility within the system.
We’ve simply created a crutch for some people to use to their advantage.

And you can bet your ass people will do just that, because we are Americans and there’s nothing better than a free handout.

So hurry up and light off that bong. What do you have to lose?

Certainly not your job.