The Deer in the Headlights

​He was one of the nicest people I had ever met. We had worked together for nearly a decade and through the whole time I had worked with him there was no doubt in my mind that he was a half wit scatterbrain of the highest order. There was nothing physically wrong with his brain but there was something dramatically wrong with his thinking process. The main problem was that there was no process. His name was Terry Chris.

​While we worked together I remember him being called up to the manager's office on many occasions and being screamed at. He would then come out of the office with his face red and looking like a deer in the headlights. This look was something that he had on a regular basis. He was nicknamed the, "Stunned Ass."

On a couple of occasions I had heard him him being hollered at. It was usually about his work performance which was brutal at best. But he was top of the seniority list in the union so as soon as management reprimanded him the union swept to his defense and he kept his job. In my opinion  he was never going to get fired. 

I tried for years to figure out what was wrong with him mentally as the only physical problem he had was he would stutter when he got excited. As for his mental health he seemed to go through mental states of being spaced out. Sometimes I would walk into his aisle while his was working and would watch him as he aimlessly stared at the shelf, it was almost like he was hypnotized by something. I also recalled walking into washroom after he had been in there for nearly 15 minutes. And when I walked in he was staring at himself in the mirror. Another time he was just standing in the urinal examining his genitals. But everytime that I arrived and he was in this trance he would quickly snap out of it.

One day he gave me a ride home and I asked him why he was like that and he said that he did not know and that were times that he felt that he was paralyzed from moving. He said it was like the wires had been crossed in his mind on two decisions and he did not know what to do and this resulted in his just standing there unable to move. 

I did not believe him because outside of work he was normal. I suspected he was like that at work because he merely wanted to kill time. I understand that a person may hesitate but not for 15 minutes and his indecision did not account for the many times that he disappeared when he should have been working. Then all of a sudden he would reappear with a guilty look on his face. Where he had been, nobody knew. 

We then both got transferred to another store and this new store had empty offices around the upper perimeter. These offices had one way glass and you could see down on the salesfloor. I was now his supervisor at work and I would watch him through the one way glass to see where he was going. He would always go and hide in the backroom and I could never find him. Then one day I had to move a pallet and he was down on his knees masturbating as he watched porn on his phone. I hollered his name over and over but he couldn't stop until he was finished. He then rolled over and fell asleep.