Collecting Chips
The Cost of Betting Against the Quiet
I remember the first time I cashed in a proverbial chip.
I was working at a Frito-Lay plant in the early 2000s. I was young, and I think I had the appearance of someone who could be pushed around. In fairness, I probably was someone who could be pushed around. I hadn’t learned much about the world yet, and I was discovering in real time that there are people who will absolutely take advantage of you.
Although outright bullying doesn’t usually follow us into adulthood, a subtler form does—trickery, manipulation, and exploitation of youthful naïveté. As a fairly new husband and a budding college student, I probably looked like an easy target to tough guys who built their self-worth by lording over people they perceived as weaker than themselves.
The situation built over weeks. A member of the maintenance crew began stalking me from afar. Whenever he caught me without my safety glasses on, he’d jump out and insist I put them back on. After the first couple of run-ins, I noticed a pattern.
He was watching me.
It wasn’t coincidence that he kept “catching” me every time I lifted my glasses to wipe sweat from my face.
No—this guy had an issue with me.
Maybe (probably) I rolled my eyes the first time he corrected me. Maybe he wanted to prove something to himself or his superiors. Maybe he was just a bully, and I looked like a prime target.
Whatever it was, I noticed.
Collecting Chips
I’m about to share either a character flaw or a superpower—depending on how it’s managed.
I have an unconscious ability to remember moments I find meaningful or revealing. It’s like a mental notepad that records behavior. I spend no effort compiling this information, and no effort recalling it later.
It just exists.
I see something. Hear something. Experience something.
And it gets filed away—like a gambling chip, waiting to be cashed in at the end of a long night.
This story is a perfect example of collecting—and eventually cashing in—these chips.
This maintenance guy was using “safety” as a tool to bully me. I knew he didn’t actually care about my well-being. If I took a piece of shrapnel to the eye, he wouldn’t have lost a minute of sleep over it. No—he was leveraging safety rules to assert his dominance.
He wanted respect, and he would demand it by any means necessary.
For nights on end, I noticed him lurking. Sometimes he’d pretend to inspect something on the second-level catwalk, eyes locked on me. Other times, he’d walk past at a distance, supposedly headed to a maintenance call—still watching.
At this point, you could reasonably question my sanity. Maybe he was just doing his rounds.
So I tested it.
One night, seeing him approach out of the corner of my eye, I removed my safety glasses and waited.
Poof.
Like a magician appearing out of thin air, there he was—this time with threats.
“I’ve told you repeatedly not to remove your safety glasses. Next time, it’s a written warning.”
Over Playing His Hand
Interesting, I thought.
Here was a guy with a military background, clearly targeting me, using legitimate company policy to justify his tough-guy routine. Maybe he was reliving his drill sergeant days.
Morally and ethically, he was wrong.
Technically, I was also wrong.
Let me be clear: I should have been wearing my safety glasses. And most of the time, I did. But I had to wear the safety glasses over my prescription glasses, which caused intense pressure on the bridge of my nose after hours of work. The rare moments I took them off were about relief—not defiance.
That said, I was still in violation.
But that wasn’t the point.
What I knew—deep down—was that this had nothing to do with safety.
And to prove it, I set him up.
For weeks, as he stalked me looking for violations, he and his crew ignored repeated requests to replace missing guarding on the machine I was running. Night after night, the machine jammed because the safety guards were missing.
I submitted repair requests.
I was ignored.
A few more nights passed, and I almost forgot about him.
Then it happened.
I took my safety glasses off briefly and put them in my back pocket to see more clearly. A short time later, I noticed him watching me. When he realized I saw him, he stormed away.
I quickly put my glasses back on, thinking I might have dodged being seen.
I hadn’t.
Moments later, he marched toward me with another employee. He asked that employee to cover my station and said, “Come with me.”
In the office, he slid a piece of paper across the desk.
A written warning.
One more incident and I’d be fired.
For a brief moment I thought about mouthing off—but there was no need.
I had collected my chips.
Now, it was time to cash them in.
I read the warning carefully. It was legitimate. I acknowledged that I been verbally warned about not wearing safety glasses. I had been caught again. Fair enough.
I signed it proudly, ready to enter my new era of workplace safety and responsibility.
Cashing in Chips
Anger boiled as I walked calmly back to my station. I relieved the operator covering me and immediately hit the emergency stop on my machine—the same machine that had been running without guarding for weeks.
The machine operator on the back side rushed over, confused.
“I can’t run it without guarding,” I said. “It isn’t safe. We better call maintenance.”
She knew exactly what I was doing. And despite her frustration, I think part of her respected it.
Moments later, Mr. Military Maintenance came storming over, standing nose-to-nose with me.
“You’re getting really close to the edge!” he shouted, doing everything he could to intimidate me.
Calm on the outside. Seething inside.
“No,” I said quietly. “You are.”
I explained that I wasn’t permitted to operate unsafe machinery. If safety mattered so much to him, he needed to fix the guarding—or I wasn’t running machine.
He ordered me to start it anyway.
“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’ll run it—and I’ll inform the head of safety in the morning that you personally ordered me to operate it without guarding all night.”
It was over.
He knew it.
The head of safety at that plant was legendary—and absolutely untouchable.
Nobody wanted her attention. And he knew he was on the wrong side of this situation.
Containing the Monster
What I call collecting chips is similar to holding a grudge—but it’s different.
It’s not something I dwell on or lose sleep over. It’s simply stored quietly on the hard drive of my mind. If nothing triggers it, it never surfaces.
But when I sense injustice or malpractice, it roars forward—fueled by righteous indignation.
It’s a force I’ve had to learn to manage.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more patient about cashing in chips. Ironically, that patience often allows even more chips to accumulate.
Burying moments that challenge us or harm us can damage our mental health. But when we transform those memories into motivation—to protect ourselves, to grow, to push back—we reclaim our independence and autonomy.
When we cash in our chips with intention, we become something more.
We become… Uncredible.
Music for voice over by Jeremusic70 on Pixabay.