How I got named Little Bastard

The story of the little bastard names goes back to 1993 when I was working at a aluminum diecast factory for almost minimum wage. I was a trim press operator, and had an opportunity come my way to transfer to the QA dept. Well I leaped at the chance to get a better job and more pay.

My boss was a lady named Martha (a story herself) who could cuss like a sailor but was soft as a grandma. Martha liked me and when I went to her to turn in a 2 week notice. An opportunity to work for a different company with better benefits and higher pay. She closed the door to her and said, I know you’re a smart guy that loves his job here. How much money are we talking about. I said $2.50 an hour more, and she said since I was up for review she thought she could get me a $2.00 an hour raise. I accepted and she went to the owner. I was the first ever employee not being promoted to a supervisor position to get a raise like that Now the plot thickens, I worked along on 2nd shift and was doing ok when a job in the precision machining dept. QA was posted. I saw an opportunity and signed up for it. The next day I started my shift and the owner of the company approached me and asked me why I wanted the job. You know of course I told him to learn more and experience how the company operated. The owner who I had barely knew me said he was going to approve the transfer even though, and I quote, "Martha is going to have a SHIT FIT" He was right , she called me in the office and said" YOU LITTLE BASTARD I GOT YOU THE F***ING MONEY AND NOW YOUR GOING TO WORK FOR THAT B**CH IN THE BACK.(meaning the qa supervisor in prec.) My reply was yes boss lady I am but you never know what's in the future, but I am always going to try to improve my life. I worked for Judy (the B) for a year and finally had enough. I got a job at a different company and was doing fine at it. I came home from work that night and my wife,(who also worked at the diecast plant) told me that Martha asked her to have me go see her the next day.

Of course I went to see her I had a lot of respect for Martha as you can imagine what a special lady she was to go from an hourly worker to supervisor in a large factory that employed more than 450 people. She asked if I was interested in being a 2nd shift leadman for the qa department.She was in a bind and because the diecast foreman was such a bastard nobody wanted the job and she would get me $9.00 to start and 10.00 after 90 days. This was 1994. I accepted her job offer and reminded her what I said when the little bastard conversation happened.

I worked for this lady for 8 more years. After 3 more years of 2nd shift I was moved to 1st shift so I could do 2 jobs for the company Be 1st shift QA leadman and do dimensional layouts for engineering, I averaged 80+ hours a week for the year. Martha went to the owner and had me promoted to QA Supervisor Diecast. I was put on a nice salary Of 42,000 a year, a far cry from the $4.65 hourly wage I started at. Well life was ok and then big changes happened again (a story to itself) and I was miserable at work. We had a ass that was put in charge of all QA. Precision, Martha, and I. Finally one day I went and told Martha that I had to go , she understood my reasons better than anybody. I took my 401k money went to truck driving school and that’s that.

The reason I use Little bastard as a nick is :
In 1999 I got my first internet capable pc and was finally going to take the plunge into the net. Microsoft would not let me make an account for littlebastard so I used littlebastrad and it worked. The next 6 years on the net I made friends from all over world using that name. I learned so much from the wonderful friends that I made. I went trucking I lost contact with almost all of them. I hoped by using this nick name on Twitter I will find a least some of them.

I am positive you know the cliché Don't judge a book by its cover. I figure if somebody is so uptight that cant get to know me because of my name I probably don’t care to know them either.

I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did writing and remembering it.

Terry Huntley

P>S> Martha retired 3 weeks later after i quit at 64 years old and is like a 2nd mom to me after my mom passed in 2000. I don’t see her often enough but I will when I get back to Tx