George Visger: My Job at Kmart
Picture a 259-pound young man of 21 who had lifted weights for 10 years in order to get a job with Kmart finally being hired by Kmart. Both his older brothers and father had worked at jobs below Kmart but never made it there. He had dreams of being better than all of them. During his interview, the supervisor told the young man with a wink, that there was a place for him at Kmart if he could put on 20 – 25 pounds of solid muscle without losing any speed. The caveat was it needed to be done before he started work in 3 months. Considering there were 50 others vying for his job and he had planned on buying his parents a new home and helping his older brother start a business, the young man returned to school, obtained a prescription for steroids, as he knew the supervisors request was not physically possible without chemical help. He returned to work 3 months later weighing 275 pounds while maintaining his speed as requested. Despite the fact he had fulfilled his obligation, his supervisor fired him after 6 weeks.
.
But the young man never gave up on his dreams and landed a job at another Kmart store. Early in his second year working for Kmart, the young man severely inured a knee while doing his duties as a Kmart employee. One of his new supervisors told him he was not injured, convinced him to have his knee drained of 65 – 70 ccs of blood every 2-3 weeks and put him back to work. The knee failed every few weeks prior to being drained, but he reported to work every day as required and did his duties as well as he could with his injured knee. The knee failed again and required surgery, during which they removed all the cartilage but never repaired a torn Anterior Cruciate ligament which was duly noted in the medical records.
.
He returned to Kmart after the knee surgery and began working in a new area of the store until he could function at his old position again. While working at his new position, he began developing severe headaches, projectile vomiting, loss of hearing and eyesight. His supervisors told him it was due to a cold, prescribed cold medicine and told him to continue working at his new position until he was healthy enough to return to his original job. He did as he was told but his conditions worsened over the course of 2½ weeks, culminating in focal point paralysis of his right arm. He again returned to his supervisors and relayed to them his paralysis of the night before. His supervisor looked in his eye with a light and told the employee his brain was hemorrhaging. So the supervisor told this employee to go home, lie down and then drive 30 minutes to a hospital later that afternoon… by himself. The young employee did as he was told and subsequently underwent emergency VP Shunt brain surgery that night.
.
None of the Kmart management or fellow employees visited the young man once while he lay in intensive care for 14 days but the CEO did send his secretary in to visit one day. Unfortunately, the young man had never met this woman before and had no idea who she was. So the conversation was a little strained at times during the brief visit. But two of his fellow Kmart employees with whom he lived did visit and relayed to the injured Kmart employee that the CEO and COO of Kmart had addressed the rest of the employees and openly stated the injured Kmart employee was at this parents’ house recuperating from a spinal exam! And then both of his fellow Kmart roommates were coincidentally fired the week he was released from the hospital…
.
Four months after his second season with Kmart, he underwent two more emergency VP Shunt brain surgeries which occurred 10 hours apart and he was given last rites. Kmart denied he was ever injured while working for them and refused to pay his several hundred thousand dollars of medical bills. The young man – who by now was an ex- employee of Kmart due to the fact he had been in intensive care for several weeks and had no memory for the next 14 months – had to fight creditors for nearly five years until he was forced to sue Kmart for Workers Compensation in order to finally get his work-caused surgeries paid for.
George Visger(With sincerest apologies to Kmart for the analogy – they’re a BETTER employer than the NFL!)
Brain Damaged Wildlife Biologist/Motivational Speaker
Visger & Associates
San Francisco 49′ers 1980 & 1981 (Super Bowl)
Survivor of 9 NFL-Caused Emergency VP Shunt Brain Surgeries
Benefactor of ZERO NFL Benefits
.
.
.
.
.