Have survived another visitation by Corporate for inventory count, calling it out loud as I watched the rental car pull off our lot.
…Every quarter the counts have to be made, which (in a perfect world) should be the only time we see these people. But (of course) it isn’t. Not when you’ve gone through all the management changes and shit that we have. For a bit there, the bastards were occupying our lobby and reproducing like fruit flies…tag-teaming one for the other…or sometimes swapping two-for-one, across months and months of time.
…Since then, we’ve gone from 32nd in the Nation to 3rd, and finished counts in 2.5 days instead of 5…so: here’s hoping we’re off the shit-list now, and those asshole good-ol-boys can go dick around in someone else’s lobby for a while.
“Why so hostile?,” one might ask, (if one were anyone other than a late-middle-aged white man.)
…The reason is, of course, due to the fact of how little has actually changed in Corporate America since the Don Draper years. And having to try to do actual work while it actively fights against you in the form of dozens of long-lunches, loud conversations by your desk, no tangible answers for anything important, half-assed problem solving, and lots and lots and lots of cigarette smoke.
The Chief-Boss of our region is actually one of the longest-term employees of the company, therefor, likely the most useless. He paces the lobby on this cellphone at all hours, wheezing and attempting to cough up the same deep phlem ball he’s been culturing in his lungs since prob’ly 1956. Through this, he yells into the phone, as if attempting to cover the west to east coast miles in lung power he obviously doesn’t have, in between puffing on an unending supply of Winston’s.
…This bastard, every time he comes, soaks our branch in hotel suit, mini bar, write-off Happy Hours, and BMW rental fees, across weeks at a time, while constantly on the phone with other places, doing whateverthefuck, but certainly not in the least helping with things here.
…In fact: he smells up the place, drinks all the coffee, and yells so loud on that fucking phone, it’s like a major battle just to get my own crap done. And so: I despise him.
You would too.
…Even if you didn’t know that he looks like the love-child of Burgermeister Meisterburger and a Troll from Trolls 2.
…But now: you do…
…And now he’s gone…
…For (God-hope) at least a month or two…
…If we gotta have this 1960’s office crap, why can’t we at least get the benefit of the old, “bottle in my file cabinet/flask lunches” to compensate?
~D