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Death By Her Own Design
10-24-06
As a rule, I try to avoid
office gossip. In truth, however, I try only to avoid spreading office
gossip but whole-heartedly condone listening to it. With this being
said, the following events from Monday, October 23 have been
reconstructed from bits and pieces of overheard conversations around
the office.
11:00 am: Cara, the other
salesperson in the office, had two appointments scheduled for the day.
She called in after her first meeting had ended and spoke to our
receptionist. Things went ‘awesomely’ she reported, but was too busy
to speak with the boss and promptly hung up.
11:05 am: The company that
Cara just left called the office asking where she was. “She never
showed up for the meeting,” they told our boss.
1:00 pm: Cara’s second
sales call of the day is scheduled to begin.
1:10 pm: Our boss, now
skeptical of Cara’s whereabouts, calls the company to see if she is
actually there. The answer, he is told, is ‘no’. “She cancelled the
appointment this morning.”
1:45 pm: Cara calls back
into the office. “My second sales call today was awesome!” she tells
our boss, who made it a point of answering the phone when she called.
“I’m going to grab some lunch and will try to make it in later this
afternoon,” she continued.
It was at about this point when our boss told Cara to ‘cut the shit’.
“I know that you didn’t go to either appointment today. You better get
into the office immediately.” Cara’s response was that her car broke
down and that she had been too embarrassed to say anything earlier.
2:15 pm: Despite the broken
down car, Cara makes it into the office surprisingly fast. She is
quickly dragged into a meeting with our boss and the office manager.
2:25 pm: Her story has
changed from 40 minutes earlier. The new and improved story involves a
friend with personal problems who was at Cara’s house the night
before. Cara stayed up all night consoling this friend and didn’t get
any sleep.
“You’ve told me two completely different stories,” our boss is rumored
to have said. “Which am I supposed to believe?”
2: 33 pm: It is unclear
which story Cara asked him to believe. Some around the office say the
former. Others, the latter. Still others think that a third story,
involving alien abduction and mysterious crop circles surfaced.
Whichever of these Cara stuck with, she broke into tears and said that
‘this will never happen again.’
2:34 pm: Cara was right, it
will never happen again. She was fired. It has been reported by people
who sit near the boss’s office, that Cara stormed out declaring how
‘unfair’ this was and how he would ‘be sorry’ for letting her go.
Unfortunately, my boss does not value ‘pretend’ work.
2:35 pm: I become the top
sales person in the company…by default, of course, yet who am I to
deny the title?
American Idle
10-21-06
We had a luncheon staff
meeting earlier this week, a mixture of food and business which
inevitably led to heart burn. And, as if to add to the gastronomical
distress caused by the greasy buffalo wings
and even greasier pizza that had been ordered, I was stuck
sitting next to Cara.
When the last slice of pizza was consumed and the final wing was
eaten, we all settled in for the business portion of lunch…decreasing
sales, decreasing morale, lack of team spirit and, in essence, what
the hell was wrong with all of us?
As the meeting wound down, Cara looked at me and said, “You are such a
fidgeter!”
Which is true. My hands are constantly in motion. During college, my
notebooks were filled with pictures of my professors and classmates
that were drawn while sitting in class. Pen caps get flicked and paper clips get linked
together. And, right before Cara made her comment, I had been creating
a work of art with my fork on the remaining buffalo wing sauce that
was left on my plate. A masterpiece that, while getting me labeled as
‘fidgeter', would have been proclaimed ‘genius’ if done by someone like
Andy Warhol.
“And you know how the saying goes,” Cara continued, “Idle hands, busy
mind. Busy hands, idle mind.”
“Cara, what are you talking about? The saying goes, idle hands are the
devil’s workshop,” I responded.
“Whatever,” she said, “you know what I’m trying to say.”
Which was also true. I knew exactly what she was trying to say…despite
my ‘idle’ mind. But as I opened my mouth to respond, I saw that Cara
had already turned her back on me and was busy talking to an
overweight lady that works in the office.
“I love cooking and have some great low calorie recipes that you
should try,” Cara was saying. As far as I knew, this lady had never
expressed a concern about her weight. Complimenting herself while
simultaneously insulting the person she’s talking to is very typical
in Cara conversations.
And watching her reminded me of another non-existent old saying. Open
mouth, empty head.
An Overheard Conversation
- In Three Acts
10-10-06
I was at the supermarket
yesterday, waiting in line at one of those self-scanning stations. The
guy ahead of me was scanning his groceries when his cell phone started
ringing. He answered the phone and, unlike the hushed tones that some
people use to speak on their cells, this man was an extremely loud
cell phoner, speaking in a booming voice as if he was alone in his
house rather than standing in the grocery store at 8:30 pm on a Monday
night.
As he continued to scan, it became clear that the entire store would
be audience to the call.
Act I: The Meeting
“Phil, how are you? I’m fine. Yeah, the flight back was great, but I
just gotta tell you about what happened. You won’t believe it. I was
sitting in the airport bar since I had about two hours to kill, and
this lady comes up and sits next to me. We start talking, I buy her a
drink, and before you know it, we’re both sitting there doing shots of
tequila. So I slip off my wedding ring..."
Act II: The Deception
"...one thing leads to another, and soon this woman is all over me.
We're both pretty trashed by this time and I really have to pee, so I
ask her to watch my briefcase and carry-on bags while I go to the
bathroom. So she looks me straight in the eye and tells me to hurry
because she's got a room at the airport hotel and maybe we could slip
upstairs before my flight...no, I'm not shitting you! I'm dead serious
man! So I take the fastest pee of my life and head back out to the
bar, but when I get there she’s gone, and so are all of my bags..."
Act III: The Mess
"...so I throw some money down on the bar and go running out after
her. And not 50 feet from the bar, I find her standing in the middle
of the terminal puking all over my luggage! The stupid bitch barfed on
my bags! I grabbed them and headed back to the men's room to rinse off
as much of the puke as I could. It’s a good thing I bought her all
those drinks, otherwise she would have made off with all my stuff."
As he finished up his story and began talking about the football
scores from the day before, I looked down and studied my choice of
grocery purchases; a box of granola bars, coffee, and a package of
Winterfresh mints. I stood there thinking, ‘Boy, what a boring life I
lead.’
I put the mints back on the shelf and replaced them with a pack of the
‘Hot & Fiery’ variety instead. Satisfied that my life had just become more
exciting, I thought, ‘there, that’s better.’
Phantom Vibrations
10-01-06
My typical packing
procedure involves stuffing as many things into a bag as possible.
And, as the training week came to a close in Minneapolis, I packed for
the return flight in this very way.
Clothes, shoes, books, a bottle of aspirin, and other assorted
knick-knacks that were accumulated during the week were all
haphazardly stuffed into my suitcase. I struggled with the zipper for
a full five minutes before I finally got the bag closed and, once
finished, I stood back to admire my work…a suitcase with more lumps
than any homemade gravy you’d ever seen.
The zipper was struggling against the sheer perversion of physics
which I had just performed…surely no mere zipper could endure the
amount of force pressing against it from all the crap that it was
expected to contain, yet hold it did.
Upon getting back home, I unzipped the suitcase and relieved its
burden. My unpacking routine, being very similar to my packing
routine, consisted of throwing these same (and now wrinkled) clothes
into various drawers. The knickknacks were left in the suitcase and
tossed into a closet, to be dealt with at a later date.
My packing and unpacking prowess was flawless, and remained flawless
until I realized that my cell phone was nowhere to be found. I was
certain that it got thrown into my bag at the hotel, though where it
could have ended up once I got back home was completely beyond me.
In true sleuthing fashion, I grabbed my land-line phone, dialed my
cell phone number, and proceeded to walk around the apartment,
listening intently for a clue as to where my missing cell phone might
be. This was made more difficult by the fact that I keep my cell phone
on ‘vibrate’, having made an unfortunate choice in ring-tones several
months back. Being that I spent two dollars on this ring-tone, however, I refuse to
replace it with a more normal sounding ring…I'm determined to get my monies worth
out of the ring-tone that I purchased.
So I walked around for 20 minutes, dialing and redialing my cell
phone, carefully listening for the faint sound of buzzing from
somewhere within my apartment, all to no avail. Wherever my cell was
hiding out, it clearly didn’t want to be found.
And the next day I went phoneless. I felt like a war veteran that had lost
a limb in battle. And just like these veterans who experience phantom
pain in limbs that no longer exist, I kept experiencing phantom
vibrations throughout the day, only to reach down and find that no
phone was there.
This continued for several days…mysterious phantom buzzing from a
phone that wasn’t there. I was positive that I was receiving, and
missing, many important calls in my phone’s absence. That call to
alert me to the fact that I had won a million dollars was missed. The
call from Sarah Michelle Gellar telling me that she loved me also went
unanswered.
Early one
morning, later in the week, as I groggily rooted around in my sock drawer for a clean
pair to wear, I stumbled upon something that was neither soft nor
sock-like. Confused as to what this hard object could be, I pulled it
out and saw that it was my cell phone.
Apparently, in my unpacking frenzy of throwing large, wadded lumps of
clothing into drawers, the phone was inadvertently tossed in
with the socks. Either that or my low-tech socks decided to wage war
on the high-tech gadgets by taking the cell phone
hostage. Either way, the prodigal cell had returned home.
I plugged it in…for after several days on the lam it had no battery
power left…and turned it on, ready to catch up on all those important
messages which had been missed. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I was
excitedly anticipating what these messages held. Sarah Michelle?
Unclaimed fortunes? Six figure a year job offers?
I punched in my pass code and listened as the tinny, Verizon voice,
told me that I had four new messages...three of which turned out to be
some lady named Fran trying to get me to apply for an American Express
card and one from Gary telling me that I could save 20% on a carpet
cleaning.
In the future, my cell phone is going to have to fend for itself
against the socks.
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