I was in Nashville for most of Monday, and, as I stopped at a small convenience store on West End Avenue during my visit, my attention was immediately drawn to about 200 of the worst-looking people you ever saw that were yelling and waving signs across the street.

I quickly learned the United Auto Workers union, which has come under such harsh scrutiny since the “Big Three” automakers began seeking a federal bailout, was protesting Sen. Bob Corker’s hardball view of the colossal mess.

Corker’s Nashville office, I learned, is in a big building on West End, just before you get to the 440 bypass, and the union had the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and several other “friends” in the mix as the protesters gathered in front of the building and held up signs trying to protect everything from retirees’ benefits to adding more high-yield jobs.

Now I’ll admit I‘m not the sharpest pencil when it comes to diplomacy or public relations, but if you think the automakers created a gaffe when they flew their luxury jets to Washington in that disastrous first attempt to get a government handout, you haven’t seen anything to match the gross stupidity I witnessed on Monday.

Some of the foremost thugs were involved in ongoing verbal dialogue with many passing motorists and to say the conversation was a little R-rated was an understatement. It was also interesting to note that everybody who pulled into the convenience store for gas or other goods immediately locked their car doors.

The clerk said she’d called the police, but one of the protestors who was in the store, a decidedly unkempt patron who was buying two “quick-grab” hot dogs to go with his big can of beer, said, “Don’t worry. We’re good people … Hey, you gotta’ little sack for the beer, hon?”

Outside, the jeering continued. Some guy in a pickup truck yelled, “Get a real job!” and a brazen woman, heavy on the peroxide and wearing a UAW-GM Racing Team jacket, yelled to him he wouldn’t be driving if it weren’t for them. Came the reply, “I’ve been wondering what idiots built this piece of (garbage.)”

In other words, the floorshow was great. It was cold and breezy, and, looking at many who stood shivering in the protest, you had to wonder if the union people hadn’t gone downtown to some of those “instant labor” centers and hired some hourly workers to better the cause.

But it wasn’t a friendly crowd, not at all, and you tried to understand if the protesters knew 75 percent of the American people, 75 percent of a nation that just voted in Barack Obama, were opposed to any bailout. You also wondered if they even knew that the President-Elect told “Meet the Press” just the day before, “It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

Michael O’Rourke, who is the president of United Auto Workers Local 1853 out in Spring Hill, where the now-threatened Saturn was once built, made no bones about it. “This protest is about our displeasure with Bob Corker,” he said in today’s editions of the Nashville Tennessean.

“(Sen. Corker) is trying to make a name for himself, but we have 90,000 jobs in our state that depend on the Detroit automakers, and he doesn’t even care,” said the union head. Others in the crowd faulted Corker for helping to bring “a foreign automaker” to Chattanooga (Volkswagen).

Mike Herron, chairman of the UAW’s Local 1853, told the reporter for the Tennessean, “It’s unfair to cut Americans to death while you’re subsidizing the foreign automakers,” he said, noting the new Volkswagen plant is being built in Corker’s hometown. “A senator in Tennessee ought to be speaking up for the auto industry in Tennessee.”

Ironically, the far-louder statement yesterday came from the surly crowd that – in truth – was tragically sad. Anyone who saw the UAW at work in Monday’s broad daylight would hardly be sympathetic to their pleas or, far worse, how they presented them.

You think the sleek jets and limos are bad that the auto executives flaunt, wait until you see what waits on a handout far downstream. These people need a fast dose of manners and coaching in other life skills if they are going to hold their hat in their hand.

royexum@aol.com