I had “The Mouse” by the Balls
February 2, 2011
An excerpt from my current book project:
Hello, God. Can you Spare a few Bucks?
How I landed a professional position with The Mouse still evades me. It must have been the big words I used on my resume. Regardless, I had “made it” too. I was in cahoots with the Big Cheese, and shared a building with brainy MIT grads and so called Top-Professionals-in-Their-Field. And Walt’s predecessors liked to spend money. They threw bucks around like nobody’s business. And much to my liking, my well-worded resume apparently gave them the notion that I was extremely adept at structuring intelligent paragraphs and selling something (mainly me).
“Hmmm. How could we use this Mechanically-Inclined-Dude-With-Expert-Bullshit-Writing-Abilities?” one suit said to the other.
“Let’s ask him to write 100 page proposals to attain funding for park-wide improvements thus resulting in a more pleasurable experience for our guests so we can raise ticket and accommodation prices”, replied suit number two.
So, basically, Disney funded me to, well, BS my way to justifying my employ; I was awarded free reign of the parks at any hour, a huge budget, and job security. I had The Mouse by his little mouse balls. But don’t get me wrong, I worked. Many times I spent the pre-dawn hours hunched in muddy ground behind a Jungle Cruise native shining a flashlight up his butt to determine why we’re using $300 aircraft bearings to make this little brown guy bend his knees three inches. Other days I spent chasing down pneumatically launched firework duds through an orange grove when it’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 200% humidity outside. There were fun times too. I was sanctioned to “improve” the ride experience of the “Small World” attraction. I spent thousands of dollars on vibration equipment to gauge the on/off ramp of the ride boats; the goal being to eliminate the bumpity-bump the guests were experiencing. As it turned out, all I needed was a video recording of the female guests (the ones with ample boobs) to demonstrate the “before my improvement” and the “after my improvement”. The suits were convinced, and entertained.
But I soon tired of staring across mahogany tables at Michael Eisner look-a-likes….
