So You Wanna Have a College Degree Do Ya?…….Part2

In the Part 1 our hapless hero has had pretty much everything that can go wrong go wrong for him on his way out the door and in to work. Once he arrives there….late….things don’t improve and he has now been summoned to the office of the BIG BOSS….so you know this isn’t going to be a good day straight off the bat. Not unless he is going to offer you a promotion, one that rewards you for arriving late for work.

You arrive at the door with the same dread as a convicted felon about to meet his fate and raise a hand that seems to have developed an instant case of tremors and feebly tap on the formidable wood paneled door.

The voice of the BIG BOSS bellows out a call to enter and follows with an admonishment that if its that under-performing salesman then he may as well not even bother. You enter and are brought up short by both the sheer opulence of his hardwood office suite and the continuing tirade that is now questioning the parentage of the aforementioned salesman. Geneology discourse complete, he spins to face you and his face takes on a new set of features. Grimly you think to yourself that the change in his expression wasn’t for the better, nosireee bob, he has gone from sheer displeasure to something that seems akin to raw hatred with a liberal dollop of disdain thrown in.

So, Rogers, he begins in a soft measured tone, the same kind of tone that the snake charmers of Bombay would use to coax customers closer before sending their pickpocket friends through the crowd, it seems we have a time issue here. I take full responsibility and wish to apologize to you personally.

You lean forward, this is too good to be true, beyond your wildest dream. The Big Boss kissing up to you, well you can see why, his policy of being on time clearly is over the top. Its amazing so many people take that sooo seriously, there’s no need for you to have to adhere to it, why the man himself has as much as just said that this doesn’t apply to you.

See, Rogers, he begins again in his silky voice, I had no idea of the complexity of your life and the incredible demands that must be placed on your time outside of work. I don’t know what I was thinking when I hired you, I mean to expect you to just drop everything that you have going on to come in here every morning and work for this company….he is even starting to sound disappointed in himself…then his voice begins to take on an edge.

No, Rogers, I was wrong and way out of line to ever have expected that you would have the slightest idea of what being on time means.

Do you, Rogers?

Oh, of course, I’m sorry. Of course you do. To you it means coming in here 5 to 10 minutes late pretty consistently because we here at ‘Fish 4 Life’ just don’t get it, we don’t understand that you have priorities and we aren’t one of them.
I can clearly see that we are nothing more than a rock in the road of your picture perfect life, an obstacle that you have to overcome

By now the BIG BOSS is shouting, his face a dangerous purple, indicating that the dial is way up in the cardiac lock-up meter, and you’re thinking oh great and you faked your way through the CPR class too. And if he blows a heart valve who is going to have to try to save his sorry butt?? You? Are you kidding? You weren’t even able to help your nine year old son’s gerbil through after it had eaten an entire package of soda crackers in one afternoon and now you’re going to save a human’s life. Oh that’s sitcom level comedy and you realize with a jolt that this isn’t how a sitcom is supposed to go.

You stand to go and he moves to block your path but you are so much quicker than him. As he lumbers to the left you slide further left than reverse and come around him on the right side and beat a hasty retreat down the hall to your office with a distant thud following you down the hall. Once in the your office you blink your beady eyes and then shift them rapidly from side to side looking in vain for some way out. Hastily you throw your personal effects into a cardboard box and clutching it with a demented like fervor you sprint down the steps. Your popped ankle is giving you hell but you are on a mission.

The mission to save your miserable hide, you think as you stumble over the curb staring wide-mouthed across the lot at the ambulance arriving in a Code 3, full siren and lights blazing. Dear God, you’re thinking as you fumble for the keys to your deathtrap, have him hang on long enough that I can get out of this parking lot.

The car motor coughs once and a blue smoke ring issues from the tailpipe. On the next try it catches and with a wheezing effort manages to make it to the gate. Later testimony in court showed how you attempted to slow for the guard to raise the gate, at least in your words although the security camera clearly showed something quite different. It revealed a facial expression that was best described as a combination of fierce determination and maniacal glee, according to one juror who summed it up in the sequestered room in the late stages of your trial.

That, and the fact that the guard was thrown ‘ass over tea-kettle’ some ten yards away both weighed heavily against you in the final decision. The judge leaned conspiratorially towards you and said that if she wasn’t bound by sentencing constraints she would have let you off with a warning. The fact that the guard wasn’t seriously injured, but could have been, results in you having a few extra months of wearing the homing device otherwise known as electronic monitoring. Not that it proved too much of an inconvenience, it wasn’t as though you were going to work everyday, or maybe not any day soon. In fact, once the trial was over it seemed so odd how it all worked out, so destined. The first day of monitoring coincided quite nicely with the day that you withdrew the last few dollars from the account and then on the way back to the house, on an impulse thought what the heck, and stepped into the local watering hole for a fast cool one. Settling into the chair you glance up at the oversized screen thinking that maybe you can watch part of the game and still make it back before the supreme commander discovers your prolonged absence. Well discovers it perhaps, but if you’re quick then you will still have a believable alibi, having run into your cousin down at the bank and spent some time bringing him up to speed on the goings on in your life. Of course you also know that if you have to use the excuse you will have to phone your cuz PDQ to alert him to the supposed conversation.
Right about that time your reverie and sightline is disrupted by a man of rather a small stature who’s voice is well out of proportion to the rest of his body. His tone is just short of sarcastic but his inquiry about who owns the big feet that are blocking his bleeding way to the table is delivered at a full roar. You’re halfway to your feet clenching your fist and thinking about which day of the week you are going to knock him into when he bellows again.
Rogers? Is that really you? Here in this little rat infested dive? What the hey are you doing here and why in hey don’t you buy me a beer? In fact, why don’t you buy everyone in here one? You’re the guy that told me he is making a killing in the fishing industry. You are still trying to splutter a reply to that outrageous claim as he turns to address the room in general. Yes folks, this guy is the only reason that I didn’t fail right out of high school. If I hadn’t have been able to cheat of virtually every math test that we ever had I don’t know where I’d be. Right about now you are mentally chastising yourself for letting him cheat, thinking that if you hadn’t then you sure wouldn’t be suffering through his diatribe now.

‘Loudmouth’ Larry had been a thorn in the side all the way through high school although to be perfectly honest you hadn’t exactly been a player in the popular crowd. So there were more than a few lunch hours that would have been pretty quiet if not for the presence of Larry. Actually there were no quiet hours when Larry was on the scene. His booming voice, so startling out of such a small frame certainly set him apart the same way that a new car is parked well off by itself to keep the fender scuffers at bay. You had almost lost yourself in a bit of a daydream when an eighty decibel question rang in your ear. Rang is the right term to use when describing how your head felt after an animated conversation with Larry.

Oh pardon, um not much, you stammer quickly hoping that he wont ask you again or want to repeat anything that you say to pretty much anyone that will listen. Well Rogers,
let me tell you how I am. Anyone else would think it odd that he would say anything without being asked, but they didn’t know Larry. I‘ve got the world by the balls Rogers and its all on account of one little thing. His voice actually dropped now, down to a stage whisper for Larry. See Rogers, its that one little thing that sets us apart, the thing that puts you on the road to mediocrity and me on the road to fame and fortune.

Its because I went to college and you didn’t. Of course he bellows this at a full volume rip so that the entire place can hear it. Remember how I told you that it was so important and you told me that you didn’t have the money. And let me go one step further now too and make a gigantic mental leap and predict that you don’t have the money now either.
You’re starting to think that maybe Larry does have X-ray vision glasses like you could get out of the backs of old comic books and that he can actually see into your pockets and that he knows that you are broke. So as it turns out, Rogers, today is your lucky day, let me show you how you too can look like me. Although that isn’t exactly a closing sales pitch in your mind there is no denying that his leather jacket isn’t cheap and nor is the rest of his clothing or the jewelry that he is flashing about. He follows your eyes and smiles. You can have all this too he intones, but first we have to get you an education.

Whoa, whoa, hold it right there you protest. You are not, repeat not, going back to school. Not ever again. Period. Yes, yes, he nods, there is another way………to be cont’d