Shayne Gnung

Shayne Gnung

L: Well, when do you want me to start, from how the whole thing started?

M: Yes.

L: Every morning I went to work at 6 o’clock, 6 o’clock, 6 o’clock, year in and year out, and I would find my station and I start to sort mail. You have to put the mail in order, so that when you’re on the street, all of the little places you’d visit would be in sequence--that’s the only way you can deliver the mail. Now next to me was an older man, Jewish, he and I were both Jewish. And he was frail; he was on his last legs, in fact he only had one eye! So he, everyday, it was an extra struggle for him to survive, and he just didn’t want to quit yet, for his own needs, for his own reasons.

Now we had a boss who came around every morning, and started to heckle him and push him and scold him, pressuring him to retire and let a younger man take his place. Over and over again. And it bore on me to have to listen to that man scold this helpless individual next to me. His name was Abe. And the boss, also Jewish, continued and continued, but one day I had had enough. And I turned around, with a face as mad as anything, and I said to the boss, “Shayne gnung!” with a fierce tone in my voice.

Now: he ran away! He immediately ran away, he didn’t confront me, he didn’t fight back, he ran into his office. And the men who had been watching the whole incident were overwhelmed: what were these strange, magical sounds called shayne gnung, shayne gnung…what was the magic in that voice, in that symbol, that made him run away? He had been a tyrant who had plagued us, and we had suffered under his reign. But this time, all the men gathered around me, and wanted to know, what had I said that drove him away?

I was so excited, and I started to explain:

Every child usually has a parent who wiggles a finger at some point in the child’s life and says, shayne gnung, which means this is the last time—after this, you’re going to get it, some terrible spanking or punishment you’ll never forget.

They went back to their places, but they didn’t sort mail. They started to bang their fists on their tables, crying, “Shayne gnung, shayne gnung!” and the noise and the upheaval was so great, I watched people in the lobby turn around, wondering what the big chorus in the background was. It was overwhelming.

It was like James Cagney in that big movie about the penitentiary!

Well--I knew that my fate was at stake.

M: Yes.

Lou: You cannot confront the United States government and get away with it! Here I was, defying authority! So of course, I had to expect the worst. And every day on the street, I can tell somewhere, somehow or other, both the boss and the assistant were watching me. Trying to see if I would slip, so they could write me up with charges and maybe fire me or something terrible.

M: As you were delivering mail?

L: As I was delivering mail…I could always tell that one or two of them was around, watching me. And that went on for months and months. Then I spoke to the union delegate. He was a very fine person and he said, we have a very good postmaster now. You have the right to go down and be judged by the postmaster, and the boss, the superintendent, must go too, and if he listens to us, and he finds the boss derelict in his duties, he may be punished, too.

And I said, let’s go!

And, sure enough, the boss got a letter, saying he should come down if he can’t solve the problem up at the station. I was delighted!

Well the boss brought me into his office, and he said, if I call off this relationship we have with each other, will you stop whatever you’re doing? I said, Sure, I’m just a quiet, shy letter carrier who wants to do his job, I don’t want to make trouble…

M: Mmm hmm…

L: Well, but I said, if you change your mind and you come down heavy on me, I’m gonna talk and talk and talk. He got so scared, because I kept banging my fist on the table. He was so afraid I would come on heavy, because he was in trouble. Nobody should treat an employee like that. He had no business doing that. He was wrong!

M: But you--had you lost your job…you had 4 children you were supporting.

L: You can’t lose a job like that. I had been in the army 5 years, I’d been a lieutenant. You’ve got to go places to fire somebody like that. At any rate, shortly after that (this is the punchline of the whole story), both the boss and the assistant were transferred out. It may not have had anything to do with the incident, they normally get transferred every so often. But the employees took advantage of that: every time a new boss came in, somebody would walk over to the boss and say,

“You see that letter carrier over there? He got rid of four bosses already…”

That worked for many years! Isn’t that a beautiful story?

M: It is…Shayne gnung!

L: And it reaches a certain peak of violence, and then it comes down to the employees saying, “He got rid of four bosses already…” You have to laugh! It was my one strike at authority... well, later we were on strike, I gave a talk on that one too…but this incident was so pleasurable, I’m looking for another one like it!