Taking Out the Trash
How the Beleaguered Faculty at the San Antonio Learning Annex Banded Together to Dispose of a Toxic Facilities Manager
What do you do when a poisonous person seizes control of a beloved institution? How do you gather the courage and strength to fight for what you know is right, when everyone around you feels depleted and weak? I am Michael DeWitt, head E-Bay instructor at the San Antonio Learning Annex, and this really happened to me.
Thom Gunger was the best facilities manager to ever step foot on the San Antonio Learning Annex campus. With his grey, windswept ponytail and humble, closed-mouth smile, Thom was a walking example of the popular phrase “San Antonio Sweet.” He kept our facility safe and beautiful and he did it all out of the love he had for this city and its citizens.
I was downloading a high-resolution JPEG of the Taj Mahal from Time Magazine’s website on November 11th, 2011, when I got a phone call from San Antonio Learning Annex Director Linda Carmel Hughes. Before the image could render the very bottom of the reflecting pool, she delivered the tragic news.
Thom Gunger had died that morning in a non-aquatic boating accident in Corpus Christi.
Two days later, I received another call from Ms. Hughes. One that, I would quickly learn, contained worse news. The board had selected Thom’s replacement as facilities manager, an outside hire from Silverbrook, Nevada named “Phillip”.
The first time I met Phillip, he was standing on the aerial lift, about 25 feet in the air, and he said to me “I can almost see out of this hell hole.”
I didn’t laugh.
Because what he said was not funny.
It was uncalled for.
And it was just the beginning of a three-month period of unrelenting harassment, abuses of power, and uncalled for negative remarks about San Antonio. If you’ve ever had a toxic person in your family or workplace, this was just like that…but 18 times worse.
Within a week, Phillip had fired the entire custodial staff and replaced them with his own unqualified family members. At first, he told us that they were his old co-workers from his previous job as a sanitation supervisor at a car wash in Silverbrook. These “old co-workers” came in to work late, left more trash behind than they cleaned up, and smoked cigarettes in class rooms with the windows closed.
Glen Harsmars, the San Antonio Learning Annex’s head chess instructor, called Phillip’s old boss at Silverbrook and it turns out Phillip was not the sanitation supervisor. He was an independent contractor who provided substitute security for the car wash when the full-time security workers were sick or on vacation. And, get this: Phillip was fired after only 2 nights after the security camera footage showed Phillip and his family members toppling the vending machine, yanking snacks from it, and then smoking in the lobby with the windows closed.
When Glen told the board what he learned, the board asked Phillip if it was true.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Phillip said.
Classic toxic response.
Then he said “If you fire me then my entire family–I mean, my entire staff–goes too. And you’ll have no facilities manager and no custodial staff with a full slate of classes tomorrow morning. I know this is San Antonio but there’s no way you’re that stupid.”
Somehow, it worked. The board let him and his family keep their jobs, despite the evidence and the truth.
The bad guy won.
Another thing about Phillip is that he wore Oakley sports sunglasses with the tinted lenses removed and clear, non-prescription lenses in their place, even though he worked mostly out doors in the sun and he actually needed prescription lenses to see. Everyone hated Phillip, his nasty comments about San Antonio, and his Oakley sports-glasses that seemed purposefully inconvenient to wear for no real discernible reason.
Over the next several months, Phillip and his family ran roughshod over every boundary and norm at the San Antonio Learning Annex. Our vending machine was routinely toppled over with all the snacks yanked out from it. Class room doors would randomly go missing and we would overhear Phillip’s family members bragging about how they got a new door for their home without spending any money. The beginnings of spray-painted murals would appear in the parking lot and they would never be completed.
Things hit an all-time low when Phillip convinced San Antonio Learning Annex’s board chair Kelly Lewis Moran to enter a dangerous bet that would change everything forever.
If Phillip could eat 50 eggs in one hour, Kelly Lewis Moran would agree to resign and make Phillip the new board chair. If Phillip could not eat 50 eggs in one hour, Phillip would agree to accompany Kelly Lewis Moran to Sandals in Antigua and do whatever she asked him to do for the entire 4 day trip. “And I mean whatever,” she reiterated, in front of all of us, with a curled smile.
Unbelievable.
Phillip had gotten the board chair to risk her position in exchange for the possibility of using Phillip as a sex toy in an entrancing tropical paradise where everything is on the table and nothing is off limits.
The terms of the bet alone should have been enough to get Phillip fired. But, instead of firing him, the rest of the board just sat there and said nothing.
As we all filtered out on to the small quad behind the Annex to watch the egg challenge take place, the faculty couldn’t hide their disbelief.
“This isn’t happening.”
“This is a clear rip off of the most popular scene in Cool Hand Luke.”
“I don’t know. ‘What we have here is a failure to communicate’ feels more iconic.”
“The buxom blonde washing the car as Luke and Dragline watch on from their station on the chain gang, overcome with equal parts pleasure and agony.”
“That’s a great one. Or just that shot of the tire running over Boss Godfrey’s sunglasses. Luke’s final, fleeting triumph over authority.”
“Ok, ok. You’re right. I was wrong. God.”
“No. No. We were being mean, Glen. We’re sorry. The egg eating sequence is definitely in the top 3 most popular–”
One of Phillip’s cousins fired a gun into the air. That was the cue for Phillip’s niece to push down on her stop watch. The hour had officially begun.
We watched with bated breath as the first 5 eggs went down Phillip’s throat like they were coated with vaseline. The next 40 went down like they were being eaten by a rotating cast of Phillip’s family members who were dressed approximately like Phillip. The last 5 went down like the real Phillip had come back after taking a #2 and was now ready to start eating eggs again.
I say “like” because that’s exactly what happened.
Through cheating, Phillip and his family had eaten all 50 eggs in 17 minutes.
They even all stood together and celebrated, all of them dressed as Phillip, clearly proud of approximately impersonating Phillip to win the bet illegally.
“San Antonio SUCKS!” they chanted.
Still, the board did nothing.
Not only was Phillip not fired. He was promoted to board chair AND he went on the Antigua sex vacation with Kelly Lewis Moran where it was confirmed by both parties that everything was explored and nothing was so uncomfortable that they didn’t try it twice.
After that stunt, we had had enough.
We were tired. We felt depleted. But we knew we had to do something.
And that’s when it struck me.
What would Thom Gunger do?
One Friday in August of 2007, a strong wind knocked over several trees like dominos, leaving toppled trees and debris covering the entrance to the San Antonio Learning Annex.
For the entire weekend, no one could enter the building and all classes had to be canceled. The situation was intrusive, wide-spread, and seemingly impossible. Some faculty members strongly considered applying for jobs at Learning Annex centers in other states.
When Thom came to work on Monday morning, however, he saw the fallen trees, gave a tight-lipped smile, and he said “I know just the thing.”
In an hour, a trash rental company had dropped off a large dumpster and, by Thursday, all the trees and debris were chopped into smaller pieces and loaded into the giant disposal bin and hauled off.
On the three month anniversary of the Linda Carmel Hughes’ first phone call, the one where she told me that Thom had passed, I rented a large dumpster.
I can’t tell you much about the rest of this story…other than to say, our “problem” was “solved”. Phillip and his family were no longer employed by the San Antonio Learning Annex and we never saw any of them again.
We have a popular phrase in these parts called “San Antonio Sweet.”
We also have another less popular but equally useful phrase called “San Antonio Secrets.”
Update:
Since publishing this article, I have received private messages from several concerned readers who believe that the end of this article highly implies that we murdered Phillip and his family, chopped them up like the trees from earlier in the article, and had their remains hauled away by the unsuspecting staff of the dumpster rental company. To avoid further confusion, here’s the rest of the story:
We held a yard sale to raise money to pay off Phillip and his family members so they would agree to leave town and never come back. Faculty members and their spouses and children donated as many valuables, heirlooms, and toys as needed to reach Phillip and his family’s demand of $14,000 to skip town for good.
The dumpster was to hold everything and make it easier to transport to Glen Harsmars’ yard. We didn’t even actually end up using it because we realized that most of the stuff fit in three cars, if they each made 2 trips.
In the end, it took several weekends and some families gave and lost everything. But we raised the 18 grand.
And we got our fleeting moment of triumph.
When we handed off the sack of money to Phillip and his family, Phillip reached out of the driver’s side window of his van, grabbed the sack, and, as he drove away, he yelled “You ignoramuses! Y‘all just paid me to leave a garbage city that I would have paid you for the pleasure of–”
I didn’t take in the rest of what he said because, at that moment, the tires on Phillip’s van rolled over his pair of non-prescription, clear-lensed Oakley sports-glasses.
They had fallen off his collar on to the floor when he reached out for the sack of money. And, for some reason, not one member of the San Antonio Learning Annex faculty who saw this happen decided to let Phillip know.
Now, that is San Antonio Sweet.
Have you ever had to deal with toxicity in the workplace? Share your own personal stories with a poisonous co-worker and sound off in the comments below.
