Day 125 - Return to Philanderville

          I’ve decided that I’ve run out of time to get a job before I have to move. Things are accelerating on all fronts now, except the job hunt. There is no acceleration there, nor even any movement. The job hunt is dead in the water, becalmed, no wind, no current, nothing. The up-tick I hoped for in the listings after the holidays has not materialized. We’ve decided to move in with my father-in-law rather than our son. This will be more difficult in some respects, but less complicated too. At Nelson’s place we will have a purpose. At our son’s, not so much. Purpose is good.

We’re having a garage sale to get rid of our excess stuff. There’s a lot of excess stuff. The garage is already full of stuff we don’t have room for in the house. We haven’t been able to put a car in the garage in years. I hate garage sales. I hate moving. I hate organizing and packing crap that, when I look at it, I wonder what the hell we were thinking when we bought it. I want to set fire to the whole lot of it, and run away. I’m not looking forward to any of this. It sucks to be me. It probably sucks even more to be my wife because in addition to all the crap I have to deal with, she has to deal with me.

          Another problem for me is the growing possibility that I’m not going to get a job at all—that the economy is so well and truly flushed that it will never recover to be like it was. That is not to say that there won’t be growth in wealth and income, or even that there won’t eventually be a return to something like full employment, but that the growth of wealth, income, and jobs will look completely different from what it did just a short time ago.

There is no question in my mind that certain things have changed permanently. For instance the transfer of manufacturing capacity and jobs from the U.S. to China is a trend that will not reverse. Even if the U.S. were to take drastic protectionist measures now, it would only slow the erosion of manufacturing base in this country and create an artificial respite from the inevitable. A better—that is more logical—tack would seem to me to be a quantum shift in our knowledge and skill base toward more technical and service oriented productivity.

Some of this may happen naturally and organically, driven by market forces, but a lot of people are likely to be displaced one way or another along the way. Some are going to lose their jobs. The less fortunate are going to lose their livelihoods. The pitiable are going to lose their homes, their utility, and their dreams.

A quantum shift in a population’s knowledge base is a long term enterprise. It will take years to accomplish. Even on an individual level—the level where it will begin and end—it takes a long time to change careers and get back up to speed in something new. For a guy over 60 who still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, there may not be enough time left. The problem on a personal level, my problem in other words, is to determine where all this is going to lead and to anticipate both the pitfalls and the opportunities that are going to be presented. Hoo boy! Tell me that’s not a tall order.

*****

          Like most places, there was sub-text at Albatross—stuff going on beneath the surface and behind the scenes that influenced and flavored the larger currents. Some of these had to do with the by now familiar bane of my working life, philandering. I’ve grown to hate philandering. Men and women who are seemingly at the mercy of their baser instincts, unable to resist the charms of the opposite sex, powerless to cool the flames of their own ardor, are willing in the end to crater their workplace and ruin the lives and livelihood of their co-workers, friends, and neighbors to sate their passions. That something as pervasive and banal as lust can undermine the flow of commerce and industry seems ludicrous to me, yet I’m sure it is so.

The principals this time were the corporate CFO and his secretary. Let’s call them Quentin Parks and Marjorie Tinn. Quentin was a distinguished looking gentleman, silver haired, ruddy complexioned, a sharp-dressed man. I never saw him when he wasn’t splendidly turned out.

Marjorie was much younger of course—a thirty something divorcée, exceedingly pretty, who spent most of her income on smart dresses, killer shoes, and a regimen of physical enhancements calculated to augment her appeal.

Together Quentin and Marjorie were a resplendent couple, the very picture of a titan of industry squiring arm candy like the spoils of war. Of course I had to imagine that. I never actually saw them together in public other than in the office where it was completely appropriate for them to be together performing their various work day duties.

          There were few people in the office who did not know or suspect what was going on. Marjorie would drive Quentin’s silver Mercedes around town on errands like picking up his laundry and getting lunch for the two of them to share in his office with the door closed. She spent way more time than one would have thought necessary in his office, bending over his desk, standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder, leaning against him, even occasionally rubbing his neck. When she wasn’t busy attending to his needs, professional and otherwise, she sat at her receptionist station in the middle of the finance department and played solitaire on her computer.

She was not a popular girl with the other women in the office. She was popular with most of the men because she was pretty, as I have already mentioned, and flirtatious and happy to describe the intimate particulars of her lingerie with anyone who would listen. But the women hated her.

I know this because they came to me about it, complaining and demanding that I do something. It wasn’t just that she didn’t do any work other than for Quentin. Ostensibly her job was to provide reception and support for the entire department. After she took up with Quentin, she pretty much refused to lift a finger for anyone else. And she didn’t just refuse. She copped an attitude. She let it be known in no uncertain terms that her station was improved and that any secretarial drudgery was now and forever beneath her.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you know that women do not like that shit. They do not like a woman who doesn't pull her own weight. They do not like a woman who screws around because it seems to put their own husbands at risk. They do not like a woman who screws around with the boss, and leverages her intimacies into what looks like a better position. They may like all these things in soap operas and day-time TV, but they do not like them where they work. It's like the difference between a frog on the Discovery Channel, and a frog in your house. Too close to home is just wrong. I knew all this. It was painfully obvious to me, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I knew that too.

Day 88 - Beer and Barbecue: Nightmares of the Deep South

         Today I couldn’t get hold of either of the recruiters who submitted or claim to have submitted me to the juice packing company. This has turned into a mess of sorts, and I have to say it’s a crying, bleeping shame because one, based on what they each told me about the job, I think I’m a good fit, and two, whatever negative impression they have managed to leave with the employer is just not my fault.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone gets a job in this current environment. The recruiters I used to work with just don’t seem to have anything. At least that’s what they claim when I call them. I don’t have any reason to doubt them. I know them, and I’ve had success with them, and they with me. When they don’t call me back I assume it’s because the market is skinny.

These other recruiters though, the ones who say they have listings, the ones who talk and act as if they are hustling on my behalf, are just so incompetent it’s become laughable. I honestly think that they are doing me more harm than good. If I weren’t growing desperate I would just quit responding to them at all. Almost every time I interview one of these birds or even let them submit me, it turns out to be a monumental waste of my time.

*****

          In my first several weeks at Albatross I got invited to a party of sorts. It was to be all or at least most of the men in the finance department. The women were not invited. It sounded pretty innocuous except for the no women thing, but given my past experience with philandering associates I was somewhat relieved to know I wasn’t going to witness any sexual improprieties at this particular event.

The controller I was replacing told me about it. He took me out to the site of the party during our lunch break on the day of the party so that I would be able to find it in the evening. It was in the woods. I mean deep in the woods.

We drove out of town a couple of miles, turned off the main highway for another mile, and then turned off that road onto a dirt track that skirted a pasture. Behind the pasture was the front edge of a substantial pine forest, and we bounced along next to it for another half mile or so. The track consisted of two ruts separated by a ridge of tall grass. It ran in a straight line except for several places where it made a sharp jut to the right in order to go around rusted hulks of ancient farm machinery. I know I saw a harrow and a hay rake. It was hard to tell in the tall grass but they looked to me as if they had been horse-drawn.

At some point the track made a sharp left turn between two pines and continued into the woods. Light filtered between the leaves and the pine needles, streaming down in shafts of green tinged light that reminded me of the inside of a cathedral. It was eerie quiet and stifling hot in the middle of the day.

A little way into the woods we came upon a clearing with a tall metal shelter and a fire pit. There were a few picnic tables. The shelter consisted of a corrugated tin roof suspended high up on four round steel posts. I grew up in a farming community. My dad was a country veterinarian. I have been on hundreds of farms. I had never seen anything like this deep woods compound.

I knew farmers to be a practical lot. They do not build stuff for which there is no immediate and logical purpose. They do not build anything very far removed from the center of the farm. I had no idea what this thing was for.

I was a lonesome Yankee boy in the middle of rural Alabama. My nearest friend was over 300 miles away. My nearest relative was over 700 miles away. I was being lured into the woods by a bunch of Alabama crackers with the promise of beer and barbecue.

I have seen the movie Deliverance…twice. I was pretty sure that at some point that evening I was going to be bent over a tree stump and ordered to squeal like a pig. I actually missed Alicia and Fische a little bit just then.

Day 77 - Sermons

It’s been another day with nothing to do but reminisce on past jobs. Future jobs are for the moment impossible to contemplate except for the notion, proved by a preponderance of anecdotal evidence, that they are likely to be more of the same and to require the forbearance of fools.

It’s not easy for someone who generally thinks that he is smarter than most to exist in an environment where the people who control his day-to-day involvement in the implementation of his own future think they are smarter than him. Yet this is the condition under which many of us toil. Some of us would be correct in thinking we are smarter than most, while most of us would, by definition, be wrong. Right or wrong however, your capacity to achieve either greatness or mayhem depends on the conviction with which you cling to the notion that you know better than everyone else. 

*****

Fische and Alicia continued to make my life difficult at Quilnutz. I had good intelligence on their activities, but I could not manage them. They were capable, when they got a really novel idea, of acting on it in swift, decisive, and surprising ways. I could usually get my guard up, but I could never get ahead of them. The one thing that worked best in my favor is that they also thought they were smarter than everyone else. If some of their machinations had not been so comical I might have been persuaded to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Once Fische came to town with a retinue of clingers-on from Florida that included the head designer. He brought her to get our design department to start turning out interiors that looked more like the Florida boats. (Some of our Arkansas workers naturally thought this was so that it would then be more credible for the Florida facility to re-badge our boats as theirs.) Anyway Fische decided to take the design department out for lunch with the Florida designer to help foster teamwork and cooperation. He wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to spend some time with Alicia though so he included her in the lunch invitation. He wanted to cover up his ongoing association with her even though by this time it was pretty much common knowledge in the plant. To cement the subterfuge he got one of our designers to extend the invitation to Alicia for him.

“Go up to accounting and ask that cost accountant—what’s her name?—if she’d like to join us for lunch,” he said.

He said it with a straight face. The designer did not have a straight face when she came into my office to tell me what he’d said.

“Who does he think he’s fooling?” she asked.

“Everyone,” was the only reply I could think of.

I had occasion shortly after that to lecture Alicia on the harm she was doing the company by carrying on with Fische. Alicia was forever going on about how there was too much divisiveness in the Arkansas workforce, and that they needed to swallow their misplaced pride and do things the Quilnutz (meaning the Florida) way. This made it obvious to the local masses that she had taken sides in the issue—and the wrong side at that. I didn’t think I could persuade her to adjust her loyalties westward, but I knew she had left me an opening to appeal to her avowed interest in the ‘big picture’—the good of the company as a whole.

We were discussing the difficulties we were having in hiring qualified help for the plant floor. I told her that I thought that it was at least partially her fault. She wanted to know how I could possibly think that.

“We live in the middle of the Bible Belt,” I told her, and that much was true and obvious even to Alicia. There was a Baptist church on every corner of town and every other intersection in the county.

“So?”

“Your affair with Fische has given the company a reputation,” I said. “I hear about it in town. Employees have left here because of it. The folks who attend all these churches around here talk about it. They think we are a hotbed of loose morals and infidelity. Otherwise qualified employees do not even apply here even though we offer good benefits and competitive wages because they don’t want to be tainted in the community.”

“What affair are you talking about?” she asked.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

She sat back in her chair, and I never heard another denial from her. I don’t know if that was the beginning of the end for Fische or not. I’d like to think that I got him cut off with a few well timed and supremely lucid sentences, but that’s just because I wanted to be the author of his unhappiness. Far more likely is that Alicia had already discovered herself mired in the sticky morass of Fische’s neediness, and was actively looking for ways to extricate herself.

Day 64 - More Philandering, More Fallout

          The landlady came back today offering to reduce our rent until I get another job. This was a very nice gesture, and it’s just like her to do something like that. Unfortunately she can’t lower it enough to make any difference to me once my severance runs out. This is kind of a bummer because I would really like to keep living here. It has been great.

          My wife actually found this place shortly after I started work at my last job. She found the listing online and called the landlady to get the particulars on the house and directions to it from my office. I went to see it over my lunch hour. It was exactly what we were looking for—a nice big split plan with an open kitchen and family room, high ceilings, and a pool. It was situated on a cul-de-sac so traffic was minimal. It was also in a golf course community, but not adjacent to any of the holes. To me that meant things would stay green and manicured, but also that I wasn’t going to be getting a lot of errant golf balls crashing through my windows. The landlady lives right across the street.

          The longer we live here the more we like it. The neighbors are great. They are an interesting mix of ages, professions, and acculturation, and they all get along with one another. Almost every holiday we have a block party in the cul-de-sac. Everyone brings a dish. We drag a fire pit into the street, ring it with lawn chairs, wire up some music, and talk and drink wine into the night. There is nothing not to like.

*****

          There was plenty not to like at the new Quilnutz—the one defined now by Alicia and her boyfriend, Fische. Fische was in love. Alicia was not. Fische was calling Alicia dozens of times a day. He called during the day, and he called into the night, leaving voice mails…lots of them. He wasn’t leaving mentoring messages either. They didn’t deal with the intricacies of costs or allocation of overhead or the problems associated with pricing custom contracted products. No, these messages were intensely personal. Fische was in love. Fische had been transformed from the consummate swordsman bragging around the water cooler to the lovesick puppy. Gone was the self-assured, foul-mouthed ex-marine on the make. That guy had been replaced by a whiney, insecure, self-flagellating, and epic putz.

          I can only speculate what might have happened to effect this transformation. It was obvious from some of the things that Fische said that he and Alicia had slept together at least once, although not so obvious whether or not they had actually consummated their relationship. It became obvious over time that the relationship was not progressing according to Fische’s expectations. He wanted more from Alicia than he was getting, and he wasn’t talking about sex either. He was talking about affection.

          The sheer volume of the messages was troubling. Three, four, five times a night, sometimes even more. He called after work. He called before dinner. He called after dinner. He called between planes. He called before bed. He called in the middle of the night when he got up to piss. How many times can you call someone and leave a message without seeming desperate, no matter what you’re saying. What Fische was saying only raised the level of desperation into the realm of the pathetic.     

          My personal favorite message was a long, whimpering soliloquy on unrequited love. Fische could be quite philosophical when he put his mind to it. I guess he meant to be instructive. It was as if he thought if he explained it just so, if he made it perfectly logical and easy to follow, that Alicia would finally see the light and love him back the same way he loved her. It’s hard to say. Anyway he went on at length on how love could not exist for long unless it was returned. Eventually a one-sided love would wither and die, but if that love were returned it would flourish and grow stronger and reflect back the returned love and the two loves together would become some magical, noble force that would sustain them forever. “Love must return,” he kept saying over and over and over. “Love must return.” It would have made a great country and western song if it rhymed, but it didn’t so it wouldn’t. It’s been ten years now since I heard it and it still makes me chuckle. It was so perfectly, magnificently maudlin. Whatever else I may think of Fische, I’ll always be thankful for that wonderful little bit of entertainment.

          Of course it wasn’t all love and flowers with Fische and Alicia. Occasionally Fische would get down to business. I can only speculate in this regard as well, but I think the business that Fische got down to was the real reason that Alicia was even party to this relationship. The reason I think this is that, in large measure, the business had to do with me. It seems that Alicia had designs on my job. I don’t know if she came up with that notion on her own or if Fische came up with it and presented it to her fully formed as a kind of inducement to her continuing and intensifying their affair. Whichever way it played out, the two of them were trying to orchestrate an accounting coup of sorts to bring me low and get me fired. With me out of the way they thought Alicia could just step up and take over.

          The only problem they had, although I’m not sure either one of them realized this at the time, was that there were only two people in the company who thought Alicia was even capable of doing the job she already had. Those two people were Alicia and me. I don’t count Fische as knowing because I don’t think he had any idea. It didn’t really matter to him. For him it wasn’t about Alicia getting my job. It was about Alicia thinking she could get my job if she kept feeding his need to be loved.

Fische had no clue what accounting entailed. He probably thought it was akin to his job, executive administration. You put in your hours. You sling some hash. When things go wrong you jump up and down and yell real loud about how nobody in this goddam company has any sense of urgency.

          If Fische and Alicia managed somehow to get rid of me they would then have to convince the grunts at corporate finance that Alicia had the chops to do my job. That wasn’t very likely because I was continually having to sell those same grunts on the idea that eventually she would make a cost accountant. I thought she was already doing a fine job in spite of the fact that most of her time was taken up either salving Fische’s precious ego or plotting against me. The corporate finance grunts thought she was too pretty to be any good. They were all Midwest farm boys at heart. They’d never seen a pretty woman who could add two and two and consistently come up with an answer of four without using ears of corn to hold her place while she thought it through.

          When I’d first hired Alicia, I sent her résumé up to corporate as a courtesy. I figured it was my department, my call. I’d already made the offer. The CFO called right away and started second guessing me. He wasn’t sure she had the experience we needed. He wasn’t comfortable with the fact that she’d been selling real estate for two years. He was going to send one of his analysts down for the next month end closing to make sure she knew what she was doing. I was a little miffed, but I wasn’t really concerned. I knew she’d do all right.

          I already knew the guy they were going to send. He was a kid—a nice fellow and smart as a whip, but a kid. He was either going to be tongue tied and clumsy around Alicia or she was going to have no effect on him whatsoever. I was actually betting on no effect whatsoever. There seemed to be a lot of sexual disinterest going around amongst the boys from corporate. Too much corn and pork in their diet perhaps. Fische made up for the lot of them, but then Fische wasn’t actually from the Midwest. He was from California—apparently a whole different thing.

          I got the strangest reaction when I told Alicia that the guy was coming though. She asked me if I wanted her to wear a short skirt while he was there to keep him distracted. I couldn’t believe she’d asked that. I couldn’t believe she thought that was an appropriate thing to do. I couldn’t believe she was willing to do it. I couldn’t believe she thought I’d say yes. “Good Lord, no,” is what I said. It might have been a pleasant diversion to see her in a short skirt, but I knew I was not prepared for the chaos that would ensue. Some things are just not worth the trade off.

Day 62 - Beautiful Sheet Metal and Curves in the Road

          I went to visit another recruiter today. This one was way over on the west end of town. She indicated on the phone that she had a controller position open so I agreed to see her today. When I got there something seemed amiss right off the bat. First of all I had to fill out an application and some other paperwork before I sat down with the recruiter. They already had all the information they asked for on my résumé so I was a little confused about why they needed to capture it again in a different format. Still I’d already driven all the way across town so I filled out forms without complaint. The other thing that seemed off was that there was quite a parade of candidates going through the reception area, all filling out packets like me, all with appointments at the same time, and all very obviously applying for clerical rather than executive positions.

          When I finally got in to see the recruiter who had called me I found that she didn’t even have a cubicle. Her desk was in the midst of an army of recruiters in a large open space. I sat in a chair next to her desk. Every other place I have been I was at least taken to a conference room for the interview. This was a high volume operation with, as it turned out, low paying positions to offer. The recruiter was happy to tell me that I had excellent credentials and experience and she was sure that she could place me in one of a number of positions they were trying to fill. She then gave me the salary range of the position she was actively working. It was less that a third of what I made last year. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Another colossal waste of my time! What the hell was going on?

          One good thing about this particular appointment—the only good thing—was that the recruiter’s office was right next door to an Aston Martin dealership. I love Aston Martins. I think they are among the most beautiful cars built today. The DB9 model that I would most like to own comes in at around $170,000. Stopping to gaze at the graceful sheet metal and opulent colors was a bittersweet moment. I’m unemployed. If I don’t get something cooking in my job search within a couple of months I’m going to be homeless. Maybe then I’ll be able to run out into the street at stoplights and occasionally polish the windshield of an Aston Martin with a filthy rag while the owner yells obscenities at me from behind the leather clad steering wheel—something to look forward to, huh?

*****

          I got a strange e-mail from an anonymous source while Alicia was off in Florida with Fische. The gist of the e-mail was that Fische had been bragging around the water cooler that, in his opinion, Alicia could be had if a fellow played his cards right. The sender of the e-mail was concerned that Alicia was about to become the victim of blatant sexual harassment and that Fische was exposing the company to a lawsuit.

          There were a number of other employees from our Arkansas facility who also had gone to the open house, mostly sales people and technicians from our service department. These folks came back with stories that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Chief among these was that Alicia had been seen leaving the open house in Fische’s car with her feet sticking out the passenger side window. There was a lot of speculation about how far that particular posture had caused her skirt to ride up and how much of her nether delights were thus exposed to Fische’s view. Another story was that Fische had been seen leaving her hotel room early in the morning wearing the clothes he had been wearing the previous day. Either Fische had been correct in his assessment of Alicia’s availability or Alicia had been an enthusiastic participant in the tryst—seen by her as an essential component of her new career path. This was all new territory for me, certainly not the kind of thing they teach you in business school. Oh how I wish that they had.

Day 61 - Tears and Implants

          I had another downtown interview with yet another recruiter today. I think I am going to stop making appointments with recruiters unless they have a real job order that they are trying to fill. This one was a plump little Asian woman. At least she was dressed smartly. She may have been as smart as she looked, but alas she was another youngster conditioned to become a non-reader by a relentlessly digital world.

Personally, I have trouble operating my cell phone. I think texting is a ridiculous waste of time. I do not Tweet. I don’t post daily updates on my activities on FaceBook or MySpace. These young recruiters, however, adept as they may be at brief, digital communications, can’t be bothered to read the very résumé that made them want to talk to me in the first place. Yet they seem to be thriving while I am unemployed. I guess that ought to tell me something about how useful my focused, linear, and structured mindset is in today’s workplace. The world is a very different place than it used to be when it made sense to me.

*****

          When Fische first met Alicia I didn’t even own a cell phone. Even so, looking back, this is about the time that the world started coming off the tracks for me. I’d like to blame the digitization of social interaction for this, but that’s just because I am digitally disadvantaged. Digital media may be linked in there somewhere, but the reality is much more complicated and sinister.

          To say that Fische was fascinated by Alicia is to make short shrift of what in Fische’s mind at least was about to become one of the great love stories of all time. Fische was smitten, mesmerized, dumbstruck—good for him perhaps at the time because he was thus prevented from declaring himself early and derailing the whole enterprise. Instead of falling to his knees and making a fool of himself, Fische plotted a conquest.

A good marine in all things, even Amor, Fische developed an overall strategy. He did reconnaissance. He requisitioned the necessary supplies and resources. He enlisted troops and reinforcements. He planned a series of small engagements. Then he threw himself into the fray with courage and abandonment.

That Fische eventually succeeded appeared at first to be a testament to his marine training. Nothing else made any sense. Where Alicia was young, pretty, engaging, smart, and sexy, Fische was anything but. He was an aging, paunch ridden, intolerant, bellicose mass of overcompensated insecurities. His grey hair was receding faster than an estuary tide, and his nose, viewed from straight ahead, was the approximate shape of the state of California.

Fische started his campaign by ratcheting up the attentiveness. He became Mr. Sensitivity. He made it a point to stop by Alicia’s desk several times a day whenever he was in town. He inquired after her health, her family, her work, and her aspirations. He traded bits of philosophy and what passed for business acumen. He carefully mixed the personal into the work-related. He maintained an air of propriety in these exchanges while continually testing where the border between that propriety and impropriety might lay, and whether the border might shift as he continued to pitch his subtle woo. He encouraged her to think of him as her mentor, ever willing to guide her through the intricacies of corporate life at Quilnutz.

Alicia ate it up. She wanted a champion. She wanted a lot of guidance and feedback. She had told me as much in our interview. Trouble was I didn’t have near as much time to devote to it as Fische. His title was Director of Executive Administration. You figure out what that’s supposed to mean. To me it meant that Fische’s job was bullshit while I had actual work to do. Alicia had actual work to do too, but Fische was eating up an increasingly unreasonable amount of her time. He was in her office constantly, leaning over her desk, chuckling over some insight or some shared intimacy while he helped himself to a view down her blouse. He came to town more and more often. They started taking their lunches together. What I saw as time spent feeding Fische’s libidinous ego, Alicia saw as career development. She was not being naïve. She was not even innocent, not by a long shot.

Things really came to a head when Alicia had breast augmentation surgery. She actually came to me about this. I guess she felt she had to since, technically at least, she still reported to me. She needed a couple of days off for a medical procedure. I said okay. She told me it was a female problem. I didn’t want to know the details. I said okay again. Then she told me it wasn’t a female problem in the way I’d probably thought, but was in fact breast implants. I was quiet for a long time trying not to let my face twitch, and then I said okay a third time. Then she told me a whole bunch of the details I had been hoping to avoid. Her husband wanted her to get the surgery. She couldn’t understand why, but she was willing to be the trooper, the dutiful wife, and do what she could to keep him happy. By the time she had laid it all out for me I actually felt a little sorry for her.

I have to say that the results were spectacular. I had seen women with boob jobs before, and not been overly impressed. I didn’t really understand what all the commotion was about. I think that my problem was that I had never known a woman in the before-and-after context of breast enhancement. Up until Alicia’s procedure, I had only known after. With Alicia the change was instantaneous and remarkable. She went overnight from merely curvy to full-on voluptuous. I have been a big fan of implants ever since.

The first time Fische saw Alicia after the surgery he left a trail of drool down the hallway. If I thought he spent too much time in her office before the implants, I figured he’d need to pitch a tent in there after. I was wrong. Instead he decided to take her out of town.

He told her he thought it would be a good idea for her to travel to the Florida facility for an open house that they were having. It would give her an opportunity to meet the Florida staff, meet some customers, and get a better idea of how things were done there with an eye to what might be worth incorporating into our processes in Arkansas. Alicia was anxious to go. She thought it would be a big boost to her career. It didn’t seem to register on either her or Fische that she would be leaving right in the middle of month-end closing when I needed her to be accumulating and reconciling the costs in our work-in-process and finished goods inventories—the job I had hired her to do.

I told her she couldn’t go. She went to Fische, and he called me and told me I needed to let her go. I told him I wasn’t against her going, I was only against the timing. He said they couldn’t move the open house to accommodate my closing schedule. I told him it wasn’t my closing schedule, it was the company’s closing schedule and it was the same every month. He told me to get over it. I went to my new boss, the vice president and manager of the division that had been Henry’s company. He was an import from another division of Quilnutz, but one who was at least willing to listen to reason. He called Alicia in to his office to discuss the situation. She came in tears and pitched a serious and unnerving fit about my apparent determination to keep her from developing into a fully realized cost accountant. I could hardly believe my ears. All I wanted her to do was stay in town and do her job.

My boss called Fische to impress upon him the importance of Alicia’s presence for the closing. Fische stood his ground. My boss gave up.

“You need to pick your battles,” he told me. “Fische is a director. You are a division controller. You can’t win.”

I was really beginning to hate working for Quilnutz. I had hoped that they would be more orderly, more logical, more businesslike in their decision-making than Henry had been. I had hoped that the combination of their good business practices and our products would create a synergy that allowed us to meet our potential. I had hoped that my one twelfth share of Henry’s company would grow under Quilnutz’s management into a real stake in my future. Instead I got counterintuitive decisions based on the prurient aspirations of venal and stupid men.

Day 60 - Trouble Brewing

          There was nothing of substance on the job boards today. I’ve noticed a pattern. Tuesdays and Wednesdays seem to have the most new job postings. Then activity tapers off. Mondays seem to be the slowest. Of course this is only after a few weeks of observation so it may not be valid at all. I’m just saying.

          I like to study patterns and trends. If I had the patience for charting and graphing all my observations, I might know a hell of a lot more than I do. Still I watch and observe and file stuff away in my mind, and sometimes it helps me predict the future. Other times I am taken completely by surprise. Completely by surprise is a good characterization of my life with Ivan’s company. For the sake of brevity, let’s call them Quilnutz.

          While Fische, Ivan’s travelling second, was very like Ivan in his use of abusive and scatological language he was very different in one other important regard. Ivan was as nearly asexual as a man can get and still be married with children. Ivan was unmoved by and oblivious to anything remotely associated with feminine wiles. He was not a philanderer, a chaser, a flirt, a gawker, a backslapping exchanger of sexual innuendo, a speculator, or a teller of dirty jokes. He seemed immune to women with the exception possibly of his wife, and his receptiveness to her input must have been based on something other than romance as she was more manly by half than most of the men at Quilnutz. Further, Ivan seemed to have passed this immunity on to his son who also had little if any use for or attraction to women, although in the son’s case it would be hard to judge his predilections based on evidence that was likely influenced to some extent by the continual presence of manure on his boots.

Fische on the other hand may have been happy to share Ivan’s family dispositions in many things from salty talk to motorcycles and greasy foods to the smell of diesel, but asexual he was not. This led to some of the darkest days of my career.

          Shortly after Quilnutz took over our company Fische decided that the skill-set of my cost accountant would better serve the company in another capacity. He decided to make him the assistant production manager. Fische announced his intention to the cost accountant, let’s call him Rob, on the company jet during a trip to Florida. Rob stalled. Rob felt that he owed a certain amount of loyalty to me for plucking him out of the upholstery shop and giving him a chance to use his accounting degree for a change. Rob told Fische that he couldn’t give him an answer until after he had talked to me. Fische told him that it didn’t matter what I had to say in the matter, that Rob would be the new assistant production manager or he would be fired. Fische gave him two weeks to transition.

This kind of thing was typical of Fische’s heavy handed management style, something he had learned in the Marine Corps and carried with him throughout his civilian career. Everything with Fische was a battle, and success or failure was always measured by a body count.

          Rob came to me and laid out the new plan. I realized quickly that there would be no point in protesting. Anything I said at that point would get me another one of the by now famous Quilnutz lectures where the lecturer stands the lecturee up against a wall and yells obscenities at him until the paint blisters around him in a perfect silhouette. That way when they come to cart the carcass away there’s no need for the forensics people to make a chalk outline. I had two weeks to find and train a new cost accountant.

          My wife knew someone who might fit the bill. One of the other agents in the real estate office where my wife worked was a young woman with an accounting degree and some experience in oil and gas accounting. I knew oil and gas accounting to be a demanding field, so I reasoned that she would be smart and trainable and, more importantly, given the lack of otherwise qualified candidates in our area, a quick hire if she was interested. I gave her a call. She was interested. She came in for an interview the next day.

          My new candidate, the real estate agent, acquaintance and co-worker of my wife, let’s call her Alicia, was not just smart, educated, and trainable. She was also very attractive. She had a pretty face framed with a lush cascade of auburn hair. I did the interview, gave her a plant tour, and agreed to call her by the end of the week with a decision. After she left half a dozen fellows from the plant floor stopped by my office to thank me for giving her a tour of the plant floor so they could see her and to encourage me to make her an offer. They agreed to subsidize her salary if money became an issue. The women in the office, who I later learned all knew Alicia and loathed her, said not a word. Had they said something they might have helped prevent the train wreck that was about to happen, but they chose to keep quiet until it was too late.

          In my experience sometimes women will tell you too much too soon and sometimes they will tell you too little too late. In either case they expect men to glean from the exchange what constitutes to the women proper and sensible behavior. In either case a man will almost always guess wrong and in so doing set himself up for a boatload of censure from the women who could have conveyed useful information, but chose instead to put the poor bastard to the test.

          I made Alicia an offer, and she accepted. I was a hero among the men of the plant. I was a goat among the women. The trouble began shortly after, when Fische met her.

Day 40 - Sport Philandering

          The Cipro doesn’t seem to be having any effect on my infection. I developed a fever over the weekend that hasn’t been diminished at all by the antibiotic. I’ve been in and out of bed all day, napping, pissing, pushing fluids, taking pills. I don’t know why I have to keep dreaming fitfully of work. It seems unfair, now that I’m out of work, to have to keep suffering the indignities and hassles of being at work in my dreams. Why can’t I dream of idyllic tropical islands, graceful sloops, leaping fish, soaring birds, exotic women? I’ve heard that you can actually program yourself to dream of specific things. I made a mental note to myself to study how to do that once I am drug free enough to focus on a topic for more than 15 seconds at a time. Now that I’ve recorded it here it is no longer a mental note is it? A mental note is like Samuel Goldwyn’s infamous verbal contract—‘not worth the paper it’s written on.’ Meanwhile Henry and his antics occupy more of my time now than they did when I was working for him.

          In addition to being a cheat in business, Henry was a cheat at golf and a cheat in his marriage. He was famous for parking his golf cart between himself and the rest of his party and improving his lie by whatever means came easily to hand, usually his foot. It became known as ‘Henry’s foot wedge’ among his familiars. Another irony—Henry was full of them—is that he was actually a pretty good golfer. He didn’t need to cheat, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. After years in his employ I came to realize that Henry was happiest when he thought he was putting one over on someone. He could often expect to get the exact same outcome in a situation by cheating or not cheating, but when he cheated he felt better about himself and his innate shrewdness.

          He didn’t need to cheat on his wife either, not that I’m suggesting anyone does. It’s just that it’s possible to imagine a marriage so cold and loveless that a man (or woman) would seek solace in the arms of someone other than their wedded spouse. Contrary to this vague imagining, Henry’s wife was a lovely, charming, warm, and loyal woman who worshipped him in spite of his many faults. He could not have done better in any universe familiar to me.

Still he was an incorrigible philandering dog—incapable of any kind of faithfulness. It’s not as if he was faced with difficult temptations. It’s not as if comely and affectionate women were throwing themselves at him willy-nilly, overwhelming him with irresistible enchantment. No, Henry was a runner, a chaser, a hound of heroic proportions. Henry would pursue any woman that crossed his path. It mattered not whether they were attractive, beguiling, refined, friendly, or even available. All that mattered was what Henry thought he could get away with.

It often surprised me how unattractive the targets of Henry’s intentions could be and still hold some fascination for him. He once asked a pair of 200 pound lesbians in dirty jeans and flannel shirts to flash him their breasts. He flirted or propositioned women of every station and situation from scullery help to executive, from jailbird to officer of the court. He hit on waitresses, flight attendants, gate agents, secretaries, hostesses, sales clerks, machinists, loan officers, realtors, maids, nurses, welders, accountants, and machinists. He did not seem to care if he failed in the attempt, which often was the case. Rather he would be emboldened and enlivened by a rebuff. When he did succeed it often cost him more than he bargained for.

Once, when his wife was out of town, he took a group of employees out to dinner and then to his house for an evening of serious drinking. This was the same house that my wife later sold for him. It was an $850,000 waterfront showcase that had been built by an architect designer. It was a stunning piece of work and sure to impress the gaggle of factory workers that he had in tow on this particular evening. I wasn’t there so I don’t know what all ensued or even who ended up with whom or how. What I do know is that soon after this little soiree Henry apparently felt compelled to give one of the young women who’d been in the group a brand new, candy-apple red Ford F-150 pick-up truck, complete with leather seats and a bed liner. The ‘gift’ and the circumstances under which it was given were the subject of a great deal of speculation on the plant floor for months to come.

On another instance Henry found himself drawn to the company receptionist who sat behind a high counter at the front door to the plant. He walked up to the counter, pulled out a wad of currency, and began peeling off twenties one at a time, lining them up along the countertop.

“Let me know when I’ve counted off enough,” he said.

“Enough for what?” asked the receptionist.

“For me and you to run off and have ourselves a nooner,” Henry replied.

This particular affront on propriety, manners, sensibility, sensitivity, and good sense lay dormant for two years, seething and festering in the receptionist’s injured heart until she got herself a boyfriend with whom she wanted to buy a house. Then it manifested in the form of a letter, addressed to the company and delivered to me, from the receptionist’s new attorney. The lawyer felt that $40,000 was a sum sufficient to redress the insult. Henry’s attorney, apprised of the circumstances, thought that was cheap.