Commonwealth Edison has 6,600 employees, none as well known as Shermann Dilla Thomas, power grid manager by night, Chicago TikTok historian and roving South Side tour guide by day.
Leading new Bears and Bulls players through Bronzeville on his custom luxury bus, appearing on television, pinballing around the internet, always giving props to his bosses at the electric company.
That was the case, least, until ComEd fired Thomas in September.
“I cried for a week,” he said. “I loved being there.”
Even more surprising is how it happened.
Thomas joined ComEd in 2011, as a meter reader, rising to meter technician, substation operator, then area operator. A safe union berth with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and an important job, a troubleshooter, literally keeping the lights on.
“We manage the power grid for the city,” he said, as if he still worked there. “If somebody downtown loses power, we’d get power restored. I was mostly underground, inside manholes.”
But it’s hard to work at night and build your business during the day, while raising a family. Thomas worked from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., arriving home in time to help get his younger kids — he has seven children, aged 4 to 26 — to school.
“You’re a zombie,” he said. “My wife would ask me every day what day it is, and I would say, ‘I have no idea.'”
Meanwhile ComEd began to notice there was something special about this particular employee — the Sun-Times might have had a hand in that, splashing him across the front page in April 2023.
The Sun-Times featured Shermann Dilla Thomas and his tours on its front page in April, 2023. ComEd was eager to take advantage of him, until the utility lost interest in the popular historian.
“Once the TikToks happened, I started to get press and ComEd reached out,” he said.”They wanted me to wear a ComEd hat in my videos. A ComEd shirt. To make sure ComEd branding was there. They set some ground rules.”
They also suggested ComEd-focused historical subjects.
“Make a video about the ’92 flood downtown and ComEd’s response,” he said. “They asked me to talk about famous architect Hermann von Holst, who designed substations.”
Then Thomas met Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which really caught the attention of the utility. If you’re following the Michael Madigan trial, you know ComEd has been accused of putting its thumb on the scales of government.
“The VP of communications said it would be cool if Gil heard about you — maybe a good idea to take him to meet Gov. Pritzker,” said Thomas. “So I did.”
That would be ComEd President and CEO Gil Quiniones. Suddenly, the CEO and the night shift worker were pals.
“He would text me, ‘Hey Dilla, retweet this,'” said Thomas. “‘Hey Dilla, we’re going to do this ribbon cutting, can you show up? Dilla, we’re graduating this class at training; can you show up?'”
Thomas has 115,000 followers on TikTok. Quiniones has three.
“They were getting nonstop goodwill.”
Then ComEd had an idea.
Quiniones invited Thomas to a Bears game in the ComEd suite.
“He said, ‘Hey, we want you to take this management job,’ demoting me from full to part time, which I didn’t love,” said Thomas. “But that meant I could put in more time working on my tour company and my brand. I said I’ll need assurances I won’t get laid off. I’ve got seven kids. Gil said don’t worry about that, we’ll take care of you. We’ll work something out. So I believed him.”
Shermann Dilla Thomas (center) with his seven children in 2021, at the renewal of wedding vows with his wife, Lynn.
Provided
What they worked out, was that Thomas would leave his union-protected, $120,000 a year job, and work half-time for half pay as a social media influencer. When he pointed out that this would leave him vulnerable to firing, the response, he said, was, “Why would we lay off our TikTok star?”
Which, honestly, was my reaction to ComEd firing him. It did not seem the action of a company concerned about image. Thomas worked part time for 18 months and then was let go in a general sacking of 70 employees.
“ComEd initiated a limited workforce reduction program earlier this year affecting approximately 70 individuals,” wrote Shannon Breymaier, vice president, communications and marketing, in response to a query from the Sun-Times. “This decision was not made lightly and was taken only after careful consideration of all the alternatives. All impacted employees were offered a 60-day internal search period to find a different position within the company and a comprehensive severance package.”
Thomas wants to emphasize that he does not think he is better than anybody else.
“I don’t think I’m special or un-layoff-able,” he said. “I feel a promise was broken to me, and that’s not how we do things in Chicago. I try to be really positive. I didn’t deserve this, If they knew this was a possibility, why pull me from a secure space? I’m really hurt. I wish them the best. I’m super sympathetic to the other folks But I would sincerely like to know, of those other 70, which of them did the CEO say we were going to take care of you, and pull you from a secure job to basically bolster the brand?”
Quiniones declined a request to speak on the topic.
Thomas didn’t reapply because none of the jobs were part-time and all involved retraining. ComEd offered him a severance package — half a year’s salary, or $30,000 and half the cost of his health insurance, attractive to the father of one kid with severe asthma and another with autism. But it came with a non-disclosure clause, silencing the man who makes his living telling stories.
“I didn’t take it,” he said. “I didn’t take their dirty money.”
Thomas says he’s “hurt, genuinely hurt” emotionally, though financially doing OK — his tour business has taken off enough to pay the rent and feed his kids. He’s a rising star, and I’m sure he’ll be fine, this hiccup notwithstanding. Maybe I’m an optimist, but the ending to this chapter of his story just looks bad, and I can’t believe the geniuses at ComEd can’t put their heads together and come up with something better for a man so closely associated with both ComEd and the history of the city we all love.