Network Video Employees: Enter Here…

Excerpt from my current book:

Hello, God.  Can You Spare a Few Bucks?

Thank You for Coming,

Please Exit Through the Door at the Rear

             When I enrolled in a few business classes my freshman year of college, Professor Been-There-Done-That made no mention of the economic indicators we later encountered in 2007, for instance:

• Boss Man is spending more time in the office
• Boss Man’s office door is most often shut
• Boss Man sold his boat
• Boss Man cancelled his Country Club membership
• Boss Man is getting phone calls from people who want to know why he hasn’t made a lease payment on his vehicle
• Boss Man has completely lost his sense of humor
• Boss Man doesn’t pay for conventions any longer

 

      Our office economic barometer changed suddenly. And, as our luck would be, it changed during Connie’s and my decision to refinance the house, and add a 400 sq. ft. room and a screened-in pool. It would have been nice to hear from Boss Man’s mouth that things were taking a bad turn, especially since he knew of our home improvement plans. But, Boss Man had rapidly changed to Paranoid Boss Man-afraid that Connie and I would steal all of the heavily guarded Video Store/Tanning Salon trade secrets. No need to point a finger, plainly, we weren’t paying attention. We’d found the (narrow) yellow brick road, but failed to draw back the curtain to see which levers the wizard was pulling.

It was the week of both our birthdays, and being Aries, we normally would plan a birthday “week”. Aries is the infant of the Zodiac, and having our birth events merely two days apart most always resulted in at least a 48 hour celebration. But, the lack of competent (competent: the ability to comprehend days of the week on a current calendar and possess the intelligence to tell time by use of a wall clock, watch, cell phone, etc.) employees left us stuck on Friday afternoon at one of our remote salons, swabbing up pools of oily, Channel #5 sweat left by wrinkled, 60 year old, large-house-cat-but-wannabe-cougars from L.A. (Lower Alabama). Not that we were above that type of work, but it was our birthday weekend and we didn’t want to kick it off smelling like sanitized burnt skin on the ride home. Paranoid Boss man phoned us on our way back into town, Connie answered, and the conversation went something like this:

Paranoid Boss Man: I need you both to come by the office before you head home.

Connie: It’s late Friday afternoon, and I told you we’d be taking time…

Paranoid Boss Man: It’s important, see you in a few.

Click.

The conversation should have gone like this:

Paranoid Boss Man: Just wanted to call and tell both of you Happy Birthday, and thanks for filling in out there today. I know you had better things to do than slop sweat all afternoon. By the way, make sure you stop by the office Monday morning, there’s some important stuff we need to go over first thing.

Connie: No problem. Have a great weekend.

But, that’s not what happened, and the explosion that ensued shook Northwest Florida to a near 8.5 on the Richter scale.

It was a blur, like a slow-motion car wreck, and I was strapped motionless in the baby carrier.  Boss Man was seated behind Connie’s desk, and twelve years worth of personal belongings had been lumped into two small boxes. “I can’t afford you guys anymore”, was all he could mutter. No explanation, no apology. “I’ll need your keys, cell phone, and credit cards”. I was in brain-lock mode, I’d never been fired before, and the unexpectedness took logic and clear thought out of my head. I looked at Connie, but she didn’t return my stare. And I swear, right before my eyes, she transformed into Al Pacino-the Scarface Al Pacino-she was full blown Tony Montana. I was initially frightened to witness my little love flower metamorphose into a walking and talking  angry dictionary of nasty words, suggestive death warrants and threats involving family, business, and any chance Boss Man will ever have again at being a person worthy of life here on earth. She grabbed a Taco Town plastic knife out of her box and aired a few Zorro-like swipes in his direction. She was pissed. And me, well, I was a little turned on. Her display of rage was, in an odd, caught-in-the-moment sort of a way, kind of cool to watch. But this was going to get bad fast, so I grabbed our boxes and my (hot) wife and made our way out the back door. The only words I could muster for Boss Man were, “Karma’s a bitch, dude”.

For those of you who’ve never experienced ‘shock’, it’s a state of being severely disturbed emotionally. Blood volume and pressure are reduced and redirected, causing, in Connie’s case, irrational thought and mindless behavior. Our ride out of the parking lot and down the road was like being locked in a semi-padded moving cage with a mentally unstable epileptic having a very bad day. Words like ‘kill’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘revenge’ echoed through Connie’s rolled up car window. The old lady in the vehicle next to us ran the red light. But, being the more logical of the two, I managed to calm her down enough to set our sights on reality. We had calls to make, but…oh…yeah…we have no cell phone.

My Dad had passed away the year before, which meant frequented visits from Mom at our workplace. So the sensible task to tend to first was let her know what happened. The last thing I needed was for Mom to show up at the office, find out we were fired, and go into cardiac arrest surrounded by video clerks with no recollection of the CPR training we gave them. Mom deserved a better place of death than the foyer in a video store. She was a worry-wart, and number two on my list who would need mental sedation. I put myself at number three in need-I’m poster boy for the three C’s: calm, cool, collected. I handle things like this better, and have been teaching Connie how to do the same over the years. Problems, such as the one we just encountered, can in my opinion be compared to scenes from the Wizard of Oz. For whatever reason, I relate a whole lot of life to Dorothy and ToTo. In this case, it was the song they sang: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! For me, this translated into Mortgage, car payment and food, oh my! Mortgage, car payment and food, oh my! Putting life’s jagged cuts into catchy show tunes just makes the bad sound less significant. Try it sometime.

After spilling the afternoon’s events to Mom, I picked her up off the kitchen floor and fed her and Connie a Xanax. I had things to do and neither of them could get past the anger enough to be of any assistance. I made the necessary call to the unemployment office-no time like the present to file a claim, right? Living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of your financial worth, is a definite disadvantage when unemployment smacks you in the face. A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned, and that was about all we had, a copper collection in a water cooler jug behind the front door. Hindsight is twenty-forty (I don’t believe in perfection).

So we did what any good Aries would do: we temporarily ignored our woe, counted our blessings, and commenced procurement of beer, wine, and party supplies for the Big Birthday Bash. And the cell phone was not going to ring this weekend.

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