Oliver George was a reasonably amiable young Dominican who came to work in the hotel. Oliver was tall and fair skinned with a pleasant face and smile. He was bright and courteous and soon gravitated to the kitchen where he learned to cook.
One day the phone rang up at our residence, the Tree House. We called it that, not because we were arboreal, but because it was mostly constucted of trees cut from our land. The call was from Oliver.
“Yes, Oliver?”
“Mr. Brand? We have guests, nuh?” ‘Nuh’ was the universal ending to any question in local colloquial speech. It was not the word ‘now’ and it really just designated the sentence as a question.
“No, Oliver. You can close up the kitchen.”
“Well, Mr. Brand, I want to see you.”
I knew that something was wrong and I didn’t want to ask him to come up to the Tree House. We tried to preserve the small amount of privacy that we had managed to separate from the hotel business.
I figured that Oliver had a complaint against one of his fellow workers, or was asking for a raise.
Sacking a worker, or having one quit, was always a disagreeable business. On each occasion he or she would demand every last cent of their earned pay on the spot, and would not hear of the necessity of calculations for time worked, cash on hand, or withholding of National Provident Fund contributions; Dominica’s equivalent to Social Security.
A substantial number of our employees would steal small amounts if given the opportunity and a reasonable chance of getting away with it. Many workers on the island considered praedial larceny the peasant’s right, rather than a crime. The hotel staff and the workers on our anthurium farms shared genuine conviction and belief in this self-serving rationalization.
When a bartender diddled the cash drawer it almost always contained a slight amount of money over the total of the bar receipts at the end of the night. That alerted us to the probability of inexpert pilferage. Checking the contents of the bottles of alcohol in the bar did not work because water could be put back in to bring up the level. This applied to our housekeeper and our own home supply as well as the hotel bars. A bottle would occasionally gain in content overnight and we did not wish our guests to be given watered drinks.
When an employee was stealing there were two options; give him or her the sack, or make some innocuous comments about how “I must be mistaken, but I’d have sworn that I had X amount of this or X amount of that. I guess I was wrong, but I’ll do a better job of keeping track next time.” This way you would save having to train yet another worker, while alerting them to your knowledge, but it only applied to minor infractions and thefts. Some things had to be dealt with summarily and then there was the inevitable demand for immediate payment of every last cent of pay due.
I descended from the house to meet Oliver. When I looked down toward the hotel I could see that he had come out to the Hotel’s front steps from which he could see the Tree House up the hill. The front of the hotel was a more confrontational place. It would have been more appropriate to meet with me in the kitchen or in the dining room and I suspected that he really intended to quit. He stood there in his chef’s outfit. Several other employees were gathered there with him so it would be a matter of honor for him to stand up to me with his demands.
I walked over to the bottom of the front steps and looked up at him standing at the top of the short flight. The relative position he had seemingly chosen in order to be able to look down at me did not bother me and I smiled to myself at his craftiness.
“Okay, Oliver, here I am. What is it that’s so important?”
“Well, Mr. Brand, you have to give me a raise, or else!” He added the “or else” with increasing conviction. He looked around at the other employees standing beside him for agreement on the competence of his delivery. They failed to indicate their support, which seemed to surprise him. I suspect that although they hoped Oliver could get his raise so they could follow with their own demands, they, none-the-less were probably diffident to be included in any mass firings should Oliver’s request fail.
“So, Oliver, you say that you want a raise, or else?”
“That’s right, sir,” Oliver said.
“Or else what, Oliver?”
There was a long thoughtful pause. He put his head down and shoved an imaginary ‘something’ from the step in front of him with his foot. Without looking up he responded.
“Or else I’ll work for the same pay, Sir.”
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