Self-professed nasty guy battles WCB over his retraining

Last week, we received an e-mail from a Delta man named Terrence Norfolk about his fight with the Workers' Compensation Board. We regularly get e-mails from people about their fights with the WCB, but Norfolk's e-mail stopped us in our tracks. It began:

"I have a story to tell regarding what I believe are several injustices with my WorkSafeBC claim. . . . I do not wish to waste your time but I need to tell my story and expose the dirty tricks WCB uses so others can avoid certain pitfalls.

"Briefly [it is] regarding [my] retraining into Automotive Service Advisor. It is definitely not where I chose [to work] and definitely not suitable as I tend to be nasty towards people. The [WorkSafeBC] Board knows this."

It was his admission of his own nastiness that intrigued us and, we have to say, made us smile. There was something laudable about his brutal self-candour. Not to mention refreshing in an age top-heavy with self-reverence. Know thyself, Shakespeare advised, and Norfolk, in knowing himself all too well, owned up. He could be, he said when I talked to him in his apartment, a real ass----.

His word, by the way, not mine.

"I have a really, really limited patience for idiots, for one thing, right? You know, I can be a nice fella, but it seems to me sometimes I have to explain more than is really necessary. I lose my patience, you know? It's fairly common for a lot of people, but for me, to be self-descriptive, (I can be) a bit of an ass----. It's pretty accurate. I think a lot of people would agree with it. I'm serious! I've been called it enough I've wanted to use it as my middle name."

His e-mail address includes the moniker "trainrek." He has a file folder on his computer entitled "You're An Ass----" for those messages he gets that suggest the same.

He has no time for tact, he said, or the thousands of small diplomatic niceties that gets one through the day. He can, he said, be "just mean."

It wasn't always so, he said: his work injuries changed him.

In 1993, he was working as a drywaller when he fell during a job and screwed up his right shoulder. In 1994, he had surgery on it, and in 1995, he entered a rehabilitation and retraining program with the WCB.

He found work as a machinist from 1997 to 2003. It was on that job he injured his left shoulder.

He had surgery on that shoulder in 2005, and more surgery on his right shoulder in 2006. It left him in pain much of the time and unable to do the heavy work he once did.

Enter the WCB again in 2007, and more retraining for Norfolk. He was tested for aptitude and ability, and scored quite high. (As nasty as Norfolk makes himself out to be, he's a bright guy and, when we talked, personable enough.) He even scored quite well in these tests on his ability to deal with people -- "which," said WorkSafeBC director Chris Hartmann, who reviewed Norfolk's file for me, "is kind of surprising."

At the end of his training, Hartmann said, Norfolk began a practicum in May of this year working with a company as an automotive service adviser, which meant working with staff and customers. It was then, Hartmann said, when things tended "to start to crumble a little bit."

After three weeks, the company terminated his practicum. In his file, Norfolk said he had back and foot problems and couldn't stand for long periods of time, and that he had "disagreements with other staff." The employer said he was terminated for "lack of commitment to showing up for shifts, attitudes towards other staff and other reasons."

The commonality in those two versions is, Norfolk would point out, his difficulty working with people. That, subsequently, became apparent to a second potential employer with whom Norfolk had gone to be interviewed for a job in the parts department. He didn't hire him. The employer, Hartmann said, told WorkSafeBC that Norfolk "blew his interview" when it became obvious he had difficulty dealing with people.

It was then that WorkSafeBC suspended his vocational rehabilitation program and cut off his assistance benefits. And that led to Norfolk's e-mail to us.

WorkSafeBC, Hartmann said, has not necessarily given up on Norfolk.

"I believe he's employable," he said. "Everyone should have a job."

As for Norfolk, he would like his benefits reinstated and given time to find a job that suits his, um, particular mindset. That would include, presumably -- and I hope I'm being fair to Norfolk -- a dark nature, an utter impatience for tact and a readiness to say whatever he thinks despite the feelings he might hurt.

I can hear my editors thinking now:

"I wonder if he'd like to write a column?"

pmcmartin@vancouversun.com or 604-605-2905