I arrived home from the traumatic business expo and considered throwing away the pants that encouraged the "ass" comments from drunk Michael. Instead I gave them to my dog Luke and told him to go at it, why throw away a perfectly good pair of pants when they could be offered up as a free chew toy instead? Perhaps this was just rewarding bad behavior but I really didn't care, and neither did Luke.
As soon as I collapsed on my futon mattress and closed my eyes my alarm clock was blaring me awake again. Why did it seem that time was dragging on during the day and skipping beats at night?
Armed with coffee cup in hand, I arrived at work with a perfect excuse for Michael. I would tell him that I had to leave the business expo early and unexpectedly as I had received an emergency call from my sister. I've found that lies tend to do better when they are allowed to unfold naturally, if Michael asked more questions about the emergency call, I would answer, but there was no use coming up with a choreographed excuse if he didn't care. Bushy tailed and bright eyed Michael was waiting for me as I walked through the door.
My heart started beating itself up into my throat, I used to hate lying to him.
"Gooooood Morning Amanda!" Michael cried.
"Hello Michael," I smiled.
"I'm going to have you go out in the field with Stanley this morning, it will be good for you to see some of the Telewave POS systems in action."
"Ok great, where's Stanley?" I asked, had I really evaded the question about the previous night so easily?
"He's in the Poop Bathroom," Michael answered.
This is the type of answer that makes me wish I could move my eyebrows independently of each other for I certainly would have raised my right eyebrow as if to say, "Poop bathroom? Did you just say 'POOP'? How do I even react to this? Why is there a 'POOP' bathroom? Will you always mention that someone is using the 'POOP' bathroom? Is there a signup sheet? Is there a time limit? Why wasn't this 'POOP' bathroom mentioned during Angela's introductions?" My rambling questions stopped when I realized that Angela would never say the word "toilet," let alone the word "poop."
I asked for directions to the Poop Bathroom and found myself walking towards the darkest, farthest corner of the warehouse. Perhaps I hadn't noticed the Poop Bathroom before since it was hidden behind stacks of unwanted parts and broken telephones. As soon as I arrived, Stanley was immerging drying his hands on his shirt. Stanley didn't seem to mind that I had caught him coming out of the Poop Bathroom, though he was still annoyed by my presence.
Stanley was annoyed with everyone's presence though, and in his defense, I would be annoyed by everyone too if I knew as much as Stanley did. Pardon the pun but, . . . Stanley knew his shit. Now he'd have to waste what could have been a productive day showing the new salesGIRL around. He pointed me towards his old work van and instructed me to "load it up."
"Load it up?" I thought to myself, "I wasn't hired to 'Load it up' I was hired to look nice and use big technical words and sell stuff, not to 'Load it up.'"
As fate would have it, I was all out of pants now and decided to go with a short skirt and heels instead. Of course Stanley would have me load it up today, but there's no arguing with Stanley, so I practiced keeping my balance as I "Loaded it up." Finally I had finished my task and it was time to leave to the jobsite. We had an hour of driving before we arrived on site, so I did my best to start a conversation.
A good salesperson would be able to assess the situation, find a knick-knack sitting on the dash of the van, relate that to the other passenger and artfully weave a conversation out of thin air. I, was not a good salesperson at the time, some might argue that I'm still not, so instead fell back on the mindless questions that someone asks when they're nervous and trying to fill the silence.
"So," I paused for a brief second, wondering if I should even try to start this, "how long have you worked here?"
"Twenty-six years," Stanley answered and pursed his lips.
"Do you like it?" I asked.
"Nope."
Stanley wasn't giving me anything to work on here. I'm sure that after working anywhere for twenty-six years I might have the same attitude as Stanley. After twenty-six years it's probably not about loving your job anymore, it's probably more like going through the motions and waiting for retirement. Stanley had been working here longer than I had been alive, and since he'd probably heard every dumb question in the book, I decided to nervously smooth the wrinkles out of my skirt and keep my head down for the rest of the ride.
One long hour later we arrived to the site and walked in to the office with the problematic Telewave POS. It pleased Stanley to loudly point out that every problem was "USER ERROR" and could have been prevented if only the customer wasn't such a dolt. I noticed the secretary of the office nervously smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt and knew immediately that Stanley had this affect on many people. After we were finished humiliating the poor secretary it was off to the exterior of the building to check out some faulty wiring. Stanley quickly deduced that a new wire would need to be run and assigned Kevin, the greenhorn technician, to complete the task. "He could use the exercise," Stanley said to me, talking about Kevin in the third person.
Stanley was of course referring to Kevin's portly size. Kevin shuffled off to his work van and grabbed his tools. "I'm not sure how he squeezes through those crawl spaces," Stanley whispered and when Kevin was within earshot again he said, "And don't fall through the ceiling this time! If you get this finished in an hour then we can go have lunch....not that you need it."
I crossed my arms hoping that Stanley wouldn't focus his attention on me next. He seemed to be satisfied poking fun at Kevin. A few awkward hours later we were finally done watching Kevin hustle and it was time to go back to the office. Rarely do I get to work nowadays and have an overwhelming happiness at seeing my desk, but this time I could have kissed it. I sat down and started shuffling papers, trying to get a little more organized.
As I shuffled, I didn't notice Michael sneak up behind me and I had a feeling that perhaps he would want to hear my thought out lie after all.
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