EPISODE 18

“Rogaine” I said, knowing that this was what I was supposed to say.

“Exactly!” Bosco exclaimed.  “All that’s left for him are lotions and potions and we all know that the secret behind them is that they don’t work.

“No, our prospect is trapped because even if we put him on a Rogaine regimen, we all know that eventually he’s going to realize that it won’t help him.”

Keith interrupted.  His tone was serious now and he almost snapped as he spoke.

“Ya, ya.  We all know that Bosco.  Rogaine just gives us a way into the client’s pocket.”

“Wait a minute!” I cut in.  “It’s also a holding pattern strategy.  We charge the guy sixty bucks and reevaluate in a month.  If he doesn’t like what he sees, we credit him the money he’s paid to upgrade into the next program.  A lot of studios are already doing that and it seems to work for them.”

“Right,” Bosco agreed.  “But this is bigger, Michael.”

He looked back his to laptop and continued.        

“The most common objection we hear today from a prospect is that the hair is too expensive.”

“What about the fact that the hair just wears out?” Keith cut in.

“I’ll get there, Keith.  First you’ve got to get him to love the hair.  He’s got to need it like a junkie needs his fix.  It’s got make him feel better than cocaine and we need to do that by dealing with the price objection, otherwise we’re just spinning our wheels.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it that way,” Keith objected.  “I mean, shit!  Can’t you find a more dignified product to allude to than coke?”

Bosco ignored him and forged ahead with the nut of his plan.  “What we’re going to do guys, is we’re going to give the hair away for free.”

And that was it.  Keith exploded in the way that only he could.  When he got excited, the words sometimes got so piled up in his mind and in his mouth that he would appear to be just short of speaking in tongues. 

“Oh fine!  That’s a really great idea, Bosco.  We just lay down in the clover and let the client roll all over us and then we all pretend we’re Santa Claus and it’s ‘Ho ho-ho ho-ho’ all the way to the bank at the end of the month because there’s no goddamn money in the till to pay the damned rent.”

“Keith” Bosco said softly, but Keith wasn’t going to stop.

“I’m sure Michael will love this one, Bosco.  I bet he doesn’t need to pay his bills either and so he’ll be jumping up and down with excitement when his commission checks disappear and he can come live with you and your damned horses in the barn because there’s no place else for him to go.  Hell, he could always find a nice warm grate to curl up next to outside at night and bum quarters over at the train station so he can buy coffee.”

“Keith.”

“And it’s good for me too because I’ve got all this hair in the warehouse with nowhere to put it and now we just going to give it away to every Johnny Joe Bob who walks in the damned door just because we’re such kind and wonderful people.  No inventory problem, I’ll give you that.  And the warehouse pickers can just go pick their noses when the hair’s gone because I can’t pay the factory in China to…”

“KEITH!”

“Bosco?”

“Yes, Keith.  Are you finished?”

“I will be if we do this.”

“Are you done?”

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” Bosco said briskly.  “Now it’s obvious our clients need to make money on this deal.  What I’m proposing is that they just don’t make it on the hair.”

“But, Bosco…”

“Stop, Keith!  Just stop and listen to me, all right?  You’re going to make plenty of money, more than you ever have before.”

Bosco paused briefly before continuing.  He often did this to build a little suspense when he made presentations.  When he started speaking again, he kept his voice low and for the first time I could ever recall, he sat perfectly still in his chair.

“I want you to picture that the studio owner has a prospect in a consultation.  He asks him if he wants to see the product and our guy takes a unit out of the box and shows it to him.  The prospect looks at it and doesn’t really know what to make of it.  The only way he’s going to get hooked on hair is if we can get it on his head and that’s just what we offer to do.  We tell him he can have the hair for free.  We’ll put it on him, for free.  We’ll cut it in so it looks nice, for free.  And if he doesn’t like it, we’ll take it off, for free.”

“Now, Bosco – are YOU finished?”

“Nope.  There’s one last point here.  When we put the hair on him, we go all the way.  We use a bonding agent and we glue it on, just as if he’d already bought a service program.”

“Oh, Jesus” I whispered. 

You have to understand just how evil this was.  In order to attach the unit to a person’s head, you first have to shave the scalp clean.  Essentially you take away what little hair the guy had to begin with and then you adhere the hair replacement system onto his head.  If he decides he doesn’t like it, he has to face the fact that while he walked into the studio with thinning hair, he’s going to walk out with at least part of his head completely bald!

“I think Michael’s got the idea,” Bosco laughed

“This is kind of sick, man,” I told him.

“Yeah, but it’s smart” he replied.  “He’s never, ever going to leave that studio with a naked head.  No way!  We get him addicted to the hair in that one moment.”

“So the studio owner makes his money on a service plan?” I asked.

“Sure.  The hair looks great that first day, but those units only have a life of maybe six weeks before they start to lose hair.  So, he signs up for a service plan and our guy pulls in a good $2400 a year keeping the guy looking good.”

“It’s like a cell phone plan” I said.

“Right!  The phone is useless without the plan, so why charge an arm and a leg for it when all that really matters is the ability to connect to the wireless network?  The phone is a thing.  It’s worthless.  So is the hair.  You could hand the unit off to the client at that first consultation and what’s he going to do with it unless he knows how to put it on?  What’ll he do when it starts to look a little ratty?”

“Does the studio owner sell him the subsequent units?” Keith asked.

“No.”

“They’re always free?”

“Correct.”

The next installment will be posted on January 6.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 17

Bosco was clearly in a very agitated mood.  I had just walked into my office and found that I already had two voice messages from him, plus an email requesting that I check my voice mail.  I did and listened as Bosco urged me to call him as soon as I got in…twice.  One thing Bosco was and that was insistent.  I remember him once calling my home five times during the space of an hour to see how I was getting along on a small copywriting project I’d taken to work on overnight.

“Bosco!” I had almost shouted into the phone, “If you don’t leave me the fuck alone, I’m never going to finish this.”

“Just tell me when you think you can show me something,” he’d replied nervously.  “We need to put this to bed before tomorrow morning.”

It didn’t make any difference to Bosco that we weren’t even going to present the copy to anyone until after lunch the next day.  In his mind, this needed to be ready NOW and emailed to him even sooner.  That would give him all night and much of the next morning to fret about it and to make countless changes to the final product.  What I loved was that more often than not, he would hand the whole thing back to me an hour or so before deadline to be reworked again.  I guess part of the reason why I never minded this all that much was that it was sort of flattering that he trusted me to work some kind of perceived magic at the very last minute.  Bosco had confidence in me and I always appreciated that.

I dialed Bosco’s extension and he picked up on the first ring.

“Where’ve you been?” he demanded.

“Fishing” I replied.

“Don’t be so damned smart,” he snapped back.  “Just get up here right now.  We’ve got a conference call with Keith.”

Keith was Keith Baade, the owner of SlipNot and when he summoned, you really had to hustle.  Keith was so damned bright that at times I thought it had driven him partially insane.  This was a widely held opinion, but even though he was prone to strange ramblings when he ran a meeting, he actually listened to whatever anyone had to say, considered what had been said, questioned the logic of each new idea, and then sometimes held an often baffling debate with himself as he turned the concept around and around.  The result is that you never knew what he was going to say about anything you presented him with, but you could be sure that once he’d made up his mind, Keith would demand immediate action and complete allegiance to this newest plan.

This was all fine, except that Keith was quite apt to change his mind on the wisdom of his own strategy within a couple months, if not sooner.  This made things very exciting in the Marketing and Sales departments.

The other oddity about Keith was that he almost never was in the office.  He spent weeks, sometimes months at a time traveling through China, India, and the Philippines looking for new sources of hair to ship to his constantly expanding manufacturing enterprise.  SlipNot owned almost 50% of the US market and his goal was to come as close to establishing a monopoly as the law would allow.  Keith would be speaking to us by telephone from Manila on that morning.  The phone bill was always enormous, so Bosco wanted to get in a few minutes prepping for Keith’s call. 

When I got to Bosco’s office, I found he was already on the phone with Keith.  As I came in, he motioned for me to sit down and he put Keith’s voice on the speaker.

“Keith,” he said quickly, “Michael’s here.”

“Good, good!” Keith laughed.  I loved this about him.  Keith was always in a good mood at the beginning of almost any meeting.  I think he really liked all the people who worked for him and he seemed to enjoy the intellectual exercise of pitting ideas (and people) against each other.  It was a sort of absurdist dialectic the way he’d coax an idea out of one person and then elicit from someone else in the room an objection to the proposal.  He’d let the two sides duke it out for a while, sometimes tossing in a question or demanding an explanation of a point raised, but always keeping his own opinions hidden.  He knew it was a taxing process on the sometimes-fragile egos around the office, so he liked to begin every meeting warmly, just like this one.  This was how I knew that the shit was apt to fly.

“So, Michael” Keith began.  “Bosco has a very interesting idea I’d like to have us talk about today.  Has he told you anything about?”

Nope.  Of course he hadn’t.  This was going to be the dynamic, Bosco was going to throw his plan out and Keith was going have me try to poke holes in it.

“Not yet” I replied and I looked over at Bosco.  He smiled and pointed to the screen on his laptop.  There was a Word document that outlined some kind of marketing plan, written in that bizarre language that only Bosco could decipher.  For all his verbal skills, Bosco had trouble writing.  His spelling was atrocious and he really never quite got the hang of just what a spell checker was for.  I couldn’t figure out what Bosco was showing me anyway and I shrugged my shoulders to indicate this.

“Okay, Keith?  Michael?  Let’s start with the biggest problem we have right now in the business.  Our male client base is shrinking and that’s because there’s really only a very small market to begin with.  In reality, less than 2% of the adult male population that is experiencing hair loss actually wants to do anything about it.  There are millions of other men who lose their hair but they really aren’t any good to us.  They either comb what hair they have over the bald spot, shave their heads, or like Michael, they just don’t care.

“The 2% who might, just might want to buy from our clients are reluctant to do so, even though we know that they’re dying for some way to stop their hair loss and to grow their hair back. 

“They don’t want surgery.  They’re either afraid of the procedure or they can’t stand how expensive it is.  Think about it.  You pay between $2000-$3000 for a procedure that gives you maybe 900 follicles and then you have the rare privilege of coming back at least two, if not three more times so that you can actually build a new hairline.  And of course those follicles eventually die and the whole process begins again.

           “So what’s left for him?”

The next installment will be posted on December 30.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

 

EPISODE 16

The super’s eyes widened.  He ran over to an intercom on the wall next to the shaft opening and pressed the button.  His near hysterical instructions drew an apathetic grunt in response from the elevator man, but he did indeed stop on the floor above and then walked down to ground level to take in the spectacle.

This was an inventive man, one who quickly sized up the situation and then patiently waited for the right moment to play his hand.  He took up a position just within earshot of what was rapidly becoming a heated, but decidedly one-way exchange between the super and the attorney.  The super was doing all of the talking while the attorney impassively stared at the open elevator shaft.

“Listen, my friend!” yelled the super,  “If that friggin’ piece of crap car of yours has done anything to my elevator…I’m gonna sue this asshole,” and he pointed at me as he drew breath to continue, “and then I’m gonna sue the lousy company you and he work for for every fucking dime I can get!”

The attorney said nothing, although he did turn towards the tow truck driver, who shrugged without commitment.

“I’m telling you” the super went on, “I’m not gonna have to work another day for the rest of my life if that happens.  You guys are gonna pay big!”

This was the moment the elevator man had been waiting for.  He walked quietly up to the attorney and stood just a couple feet from his right side, placing the attorney between himself and the now almost raving super.  For his part, the super was now foaming on about how he was going to leave his wife and take up residence in the Bahamas once he won his lawsuit.  I wondered how much of my annual salary was going to be going to him each year and how many years I was going to essentially be in indentured servitude to him.

But the elevator operator saw both that this was his moment and that there was another possible outcome to this situation.  He calmly explained his plan to the attorney.

“Hey man, for a hundred bucks, I could attach a cable to the bottom of the elevator, slide the other end down the back wall and then hook it to the rear axle of that car.  We get that tow truck to hook on to the front of the car and as I bring the elevator up, we can slowly ease the whole thing outa here.  I don’t think the car or the elevator shaft will feel a thing.”

“You asshole!” the super exploded at the elevator man, seeing his fantasy of bimbos, booze, and debauchery in the Bahamas vaporize.  “Whose side are you on anyway?”

The elevator operator ignored him, clearly now only interested in advocating a position that would be to his own benefit.  He kept after the attorney, pleading his case.  Quite suddenly, the attorney turned away from his meditation on the open elevator shaft and nodded his head at the elevator man.

“You know, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” he said evenly. 

He turned his gaze to the super and went on.  “Your man is going to inch that cable down the side of our car and God forbid if it should even graze the finish on the paint.  Then, when the car is safely back on the street, I’m going to personally inspect it for any damage that may have occurred while it was in that shaft.  Then, I’m going to take Michael here to the hospital to be checked out.  Who knows what kind of injuries he may have sustained?  And then, my friend we are going to sue you and the owners of this building for gross negligence.”

“Fuck you!” the super shouted.  “Fuck both of you!  I didn’t drive a car down that elevatorshaft!  You did!”

“Exactly” said the attorney.  “And you have an open elevator shaft at street level.  You’re lucky some kid didn’t fall down it and kill himself.  No, you were lucky as all hell.  You just had Michael here back his car down it.  With any luck, his injuries won’t be life threatening.”

“Who are you kidding?  He’s fine, look at him!  He ain’t hurt.”

I stood there, suddenly aware that everyone was inspecting me for the slightest blemish.  I started to open my mouth to reply, but the attorney cut me off.

“Not a word, Michael.  You don’t say anything until we’ve had a doctor examine you.”

 

He looked back at the super.

“Maybe we won’t actually end up owning this piece of shit building once the jury has heard my case.  But one thing I can promise you, my friend – you are going to be out of a job before I even get back to my office this afternoon.”

The attorney turned away from the now silent and completely despondent super and addressed the elevator operator.

“Are you clear on what’s going to happen next?” he asked.

“Oh yeah” the elevator man replied.  “And things being what they are, fifty bucks is fine.”

The next installment will be posted on December 23.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 15

The first sound I recall hearing was the screeching of metal on concrete as my car slipped through the darkness and downward into what turned out was open elevator shaft.  It quickly became wedged as the front wheels and axle hooked onto the ledge at curb level and the rear bumper smashed into the interior wall of the shaft.  Still, the terrible noise continued.  It was so loud that I was actually beginning to ache from it.  That’s when I noticed that this hellish sound was actually coming from me.  I closed my open mouth and it stopped.  All I could hear then was an ad on the radio, reminding me to “Click it, or ticket”.  I was so out of it that I found myself checking to see if I’d remembered to fasten my seat belt.  A friend of mine who’d been hit by a bus while driving downtown on 3^rd Avenue told me he’d gotten out of his destroyed vehicle to ask the people inside the bus if they were alright, so I suppose I wasn’t too far gone.

Through the windshield, I could see that a few people had crowded around where my car hung at the edge of the elevator shaft opening.

“You okay?” one of them shouted to me.

“Not really.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Almost immediately, about half of the people who had been staring down at me turned their backs and left.  I guess without a little blood and gore to match the sound effects, who really wanted to stick around?

“Do you think you can open your door?” another voice called to me.

In fact, it was probably long past the time when I should have started to figure out a way out of my predicament.  Who was to say that my car wouldn’t slip and tumble down into the dark hole below me?  I had no idea how many basements or subbasements this building had.  It had dawned on me though that even a short fall was going to hurt like hell.  I tried the door, but it barely opened a few inches before it hit the wall.  Clearly, I was going to have to climb out the window.

Moving as gingerly as possible, I worked my way through the window, onto the hood of the car and reached up to a pair of hands that belonged to a large gentleman who had lain on his stomach at the edge of the elevator shaft opening.  He pulled and I scrambled up the side of the wall where I landed, gasping on the sidewalk.  He helped me to my feet.

“Thanks!” I exclaimed, looking down at where the car lay, still wedged with the front axle hooked at the edge of the elevator shaft opening. 

“No problem” he replied as he brushed dirt off the front of his shirt.  “You know,” he added casually, “You’re in a shitload of trouble.”

Actually, I thought I’d just gotten out of a shitload of trouble, but I was willing to trust my rescuer.

“Your car is in my elevator shaft, asshole.”

I soon discovered that my savior was the building superintendent and as such, he was now also a potential enemy.  My car was indeed in his elevator shaft and on the face of it; I had absolutely no idea what to do about getting it back out.  I had the presence of mind though not to say another word.  I figured correctly that anything I might say would be used against me somehow, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone.  I called SlipNot and asked to speak with Bosco.

A half hour later, one of SlipNot’s neatly dressed and appropriately intimidating attorneys arrived, as did a radio dispatch tow truck.  The attorney took me aside and asked me to briefly tell him what had happened, which I did.  He then warned me not to say another word, which I was more than willing to do.  Meanwhile, the tow truck driver looked over the situation in the elevator shaft.  He walked over to where the attorney and I stood.

“It’s bad, man” he began.  “For openers, there’s no way I can attach a line to the front axle and pull this thing out.  All that’ll do is rip the front of the car off and leave the ass end fall down to the bottom.  I could call another truck in, but even then, I don’t know how that’s going to help us.  We still gotta lift the back up in the air so it’ll clear the lip.”

He pointed at the edge where the front axle lay and it became very clear what he meant.  Another tow truck or even three wasn’t going to be the answer.

The attorney walked away from us and approached the superintendent who was beginning to fume.

“What are you gonna do?” he barked at the attorney.

            “When are you going to tell your service elevator operator to keep away from the first floor?” the attorney asked coolly.

The next installment will be posted on December 16.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

 

EPISODE 14

SlipNot had a small fleet of six delivery vans and three cars.  The vans were for large orders that needed to get to their best customers in the Tri-State area.  While the company relied heavily on UPS and FedEx for the bulk of their deliveries, it also offered same-day service to its largest customers in the area.  Of course, it cost a little more, but the heavy hitters never seemed to balk at the price.  This kept those vans awfully busy.  As luck had it, all of the vans and two of the cars were out, taking samples and orders to our clients in New Jersey, Connecticut and the five boroughs of New York.  All that was left was a 2002 Ford Focus wagon, which I signed out.  I loaded everything into the back and headed out into the street.

One of the nicest features of New York City is that it’s laid out on a grid.  The avenues run north to south (or south to north) and the numbered streets all run to the east or to the west.  Things can get a bit muddled down in the Village, but for the most part, New York is easily navigated.  I took First Avenue north to 57^th and took a left over to the West Side.

57th is one of those unusual streets that runs in two directions.  This means it’s four lanes wide and during the middle of the day, traffic flows pretty quickly.  Most of the time though, I avoided it, but on that day, I thought I’d take my time and watch the sights.  The weather was gorgeous outside, a perfect late spring day.  All the beautiful young women of the city had shed their bulky winter coats and were taking to the sidewalks in smartly tailored business suits, skirts, and colorful tops.  I don’t think it’s all that sexist to say that you can tell a city is feeling good when it’s women are looking good.  And if it is sexist, that’s just too bad.  I moved at the sedate speed that the flow of traffic allowed, admiring the view, with the windows open and the car stereo up at an absurdly high volume.

One of the luxuries of driving cross-town in New York is the multitude of traffic lights that catch you in their web.  When the weather is good and you’re really lucky, the light will turn red just as you arrive at the intersection.  You are then treated to a massive procession of pedestrians walking directly in front of you and your eye may feel free to select whichever pretty face or curvaceous figure comes into view for closer appraisal.  Perhaps the best of these places is the intersection of 57^th and 5^th, which was right where I found myself on that morning.  When the light changed back to green, I was tempted to remain parked in this sweet spot and I would have too, if it weren’t for the block-long pile of cars and trucks impatiently waiting behind me.  Hell!  How was it my fault they didn’t get the “A Position” that I’d scored?  Still, for the sake of propriety and to avoid certain bodily injury, I put the car in gear and continued on my way, leaving all of the lovelies that were just then beginning to gather at the two opposites curbs to wait for their turns to cross.

As I got over to 8^th Avenue, I started to pay closer attention to what I was doing.  Universal Hair was somewhere between 9^th and 10^th Avenue and I couldn’t quite remember exactly where it was.  I also had neglected to write down the address, so I didn’t know whether the studio was going to appear on the right or the left side of the street.  As I was crossing 9^th Avenue, I saw that I was about to pile into a bottleneck of traffic that was being caused by a truck that had double-parked in the right hand lane.  I merged to the left and when I looked up, I saw Universal Hair on my left hand side, as I drove past it.

Shit.

The one really bad thing about driving in a city that’s laid out on a grid is that when you pass your intended destination, you have the rare privilege of driving all the way around the block so that you might get another crack at actually arriving there.  In normal mid-day traffic, this could take about 10 minutes, unless there are a lot of trucks double-parked, in which case it could be anybody’s guess.  Once, while driving west on a side street in midtown Manhattan I’d gotten stuck in what New Yorkers laughingly refer to as “gridlock”.  A truck was unloading in the only open lane and everything behind it ground to a halt.  For over an hour, nothing moved.  I’d spotted a deli just a few yards in front of where I was stopped, so I had locked up my car, entered the deli, ordered a smoked ham and turkey sandwich on rye with Swiss and mustard (with kosher dill pickle, of course), grabbed a couple bottles of beer out of the cooler, paid for it, and returned to my vehicle without the traffic having moved so much as an inch.  I then enjoyed my repast, listened to the radio, and read the story about the previous evening’s Mets/Pirates game in the Daily News, but still there had been no progress on the street to report.  I might as well have just parked there for the night.

With this memory fresh in my mind and with the realization that downing a couple beers and a sandwich and arriving an hour later than I already was would make this little delivery job an enormous pain in the ass, I had to find a creative alternative.  I just knew a trip around 57^th Street was going to suck. 

            I scanned the street to my right and saw two open garage bay doors.  While it’s very illegal (and bit suicidal) to attempt a true U Turn in Manhattan, it’s a much safer bet to perform what is sometimes referred to as a K Turn.  I pulled just past the doorway, put my car into reverse as I angled the rear of the car into the bay.

The next installment will be posted on December 9.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

 

EPISODE 13

Les Bernstein was not an unlucky man.  The fact of the matter was that nothing bad ever happened to him.  But for some reason, the people around Les always seemed to be visited by disaster.  Everyone in the company knew this.  One famous Les story had involved Bosco.  Bosco had borrowed Les’ car and not only did it break down on the FDR Drive, but when a passing police cruiser stopped to help, the cops found a half an ounce of marijuana in the glove compartment when he opened it to show them the registration.  Bosco was booked on possession of Les’ weed and spent the night in jail until Leah was able to bail him out the following morning.

It was therefore with a certain amount of dread that I turned around upon hearing Les call out my name in the hallway on my floor one morning.  I looked up as he trotted towards me.  He was smiling broadly.

“Mike!  Jeez, I’m glad to see you.”

“’Morning, Les.  What can I do for you?”

Les paused a second before he launched into his pitch.  This was when I should have made like the Roadrunner from the old Warner Brothers cartoons and disappeared at supersonic speed, leaving Les in a cloud of dust.  Not that that would have helped me any.  As sure as I was standing there, waiting for Les’ next words, an anvil would have landed on my head before I’d gotten two steps away from him.  You can learn a lot about life from Saturday morning cartoons.

“I need a favor, Mike.”

Scariest words on the planet and yet I didn’t make a break for it.  I suppose that I was a very cool character back then.  That, or one of the biggest fools alive.  Bosco had proved it was impudent to accept help from Les, so why would it be much different to offer it to him?  Still, I nodded and Les began to speak very quickly.

“You know Lou Krasner, don’t you?  He owns Universal Hair over on West 57^th Street.  Anyway, he needs a carload of stuff at his place, like yesterday!  This is a big deal for me, Mike.  Huge!  He’s one of our best accounts.  He says jump, I gotta ask him how high.  You know what I mean?”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked warily.

“Look, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.  But do you think you could deliver his order to him today?  It would really get me out of a bind.  I’d do it myself, but I’ve got meetings all afternoon.”

“Les, why don’t you just reschedule one of the meetings?”

“I can’t!  Shit, I’ve got so many meetings today and tomorrow, I don’t have time to talk to my clients.  You gotta do this for me.  Please.”

There’s something sort of comical about a salesman who’s too busy to make sales calls, but that said a lot about Les.  He was in the office every morning before eight and made a point of staying past seven, if only just so he could say that he worked longer hours than anyone else.  What was remarkable though was that he still seemed to get caught in situations like this all the time.  Les had once roped Allan into packing a van with product and samples early one morning so that Les could drive it all to a trade show he was attending in Pittsburgh.  It would have been a great idea had Les asked Allan to do this before the show had already started.  Les arrived in Pittsburgh with his van filled with promotional items just as the first day of the conference ended.  He’d called the office in a panic at around 5:30 that afternoon, looking for someone who could fly out there to unload the van, set up for the second day and then man the booth while he attended to a few meetings with clients.

“What’ve you got?” I asked.

“Great!” Les cried, even though I hadn’t agreed to actually do anything.  As far as he was concerned, just by asking, I’d implied that I was on board.  “There’s a box with 30 units, a box of brochures, and two cases of liquids.  You can get a hand truck up on the sixth floor.  They should have the order picked by now.”

“Les,” I began, but I was too late.  He was already backing away from my, grinning broadly.

“Thanks, Mike!  You’re saving my life.”

He turned around and hurried off, leaving me wondering just how in the hell it had all happened.  I checked my watch.  It was a little before eleven.  Actually, it wasn’t that bad a deal, I realized as I headed to the elevator.  I’d be able to skip out of the office for a little while and the traffic wasn’t likely to be so bad at that point in the day.  If I played it right, I wouldn’t have come back to the office until tomorrow.  I pressed the elevator button and listened as the alarms from a couple floors above woke up George and the elevator began its descent.

George picked me up on the second floor and fell asleep between the third and fourth as we headed for the sixth.  I snagged a hand truck and went to find what the warehouse pickers had left for me.  The box of hairpieces was present, but I would have to go to the seventh floor to get the rest.  I took the box and the hand truck and rang for the elevator.  George and I chatted as we made the short trip up to the floor above.  I gave him a wave as I exited the elevator, but he was already slumped over, his breathing deep and slow.

It took me almost a half hour to track down the other boxes as Les had neglected to actually notify anyone on the seventh floor that he needed anything.  So, I waited as he wrote up a pick order to be emailed from his office to the upper warehouse.  Finally though, I had everything and I headed down to the ground floor to select a vehicle.

The next installment will be posted on December 2.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 12

When Richard Glick had invited us to his office on the Tuesday after the New Orleans conference, he was polite, direct, and concise on his insisting that we both be there promptly at 11 that morning.  Of course, we didn’t make it on time.  But Richard greeted us good-naturedly.

“I see that you guys are still on Bourbon Street time,” he said with a smile as we walked in, about 15 minutes late.  “It doesn’t matter.  I only have a couple of items to go over with the two of you.  Just pull up a chair and let’s get started.”

He was seated at his desk and was looking over several neatly stacked piles of papers.  He picked up one of the piles and began to leaf through it.

“I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing your expense sheets from New Orleans,” he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the papers.

I don’t know.  I just didn’t expect this to be the preamble to a conversation that I was going to enjoy very much.  Richard flipped through the pages of paper and continued in a crisp, matter-of-fact manner.

“$2150 for additional Internet connections.  $73 for room service.”

“It wasn’t technically ‘room service,’” Allan offered.

“No?”

“Absolutely not.  The sandwiches and drinks were delivered to us in the main ballroom.”

“A nice distinction.  I’ll make note of it.  But I also notice a fairly pricey dinner for two and a couple of healthy cocktail bills from some nightclubs on Bourbon Street.”

“Those would be mine,” I said.

“I assumed so.  Michael, you are aware that SlipNot does not reimburse you for entertainment and alcohol.”

“Even if the guy I’m schmoozing is Frank Rotella?”

“You were out with Frank?’

“Absolutely.”

“Did you get any business?”

“He closed Frank on the micro camera and the new TV ad program” Allan interjected.

“Still,” Richard said, with a slight quaver in his voice, “This is not the way we do business.”

“We don’t take clients out?” I asked.

“Of course we do.  It’s just that we like to keep expenses on a short leash.  Michael, an expense account is not a license to wine and dine your favorite clients at your favorite bistros.”

This surprised me somewhat as I had actually held the opinion that this was precisely what expense accounts were for.  If not, then what the hell was the point?  With great self-control, I managed to keep this thought to myself.

“Still,” Richard continued, “Frank is a very important client of SlipNot’s and the fact that you were able to close him on those programs is good.  I’m not happy about how much of the company’s money you spent, but I’ll find some way of making it work.”

“Thanks, Richard” I replied.  I had to admit I was a little pissed off.  I’d invested a few hundred bucks in Frank’s night on the town and bought tens of thousands in good will, which would translate into huge sales down the line, not even to mention what we’d taken in on the ad programs.  But that was part of Richard’s job.  He had to watch all the nickels and dimes.

“You’re welcome,” he shot back.

Richard put down the pile of papers in his hand and picked up another from his desk.  He extracted two pages and handed one to Allan and the other to me.

“This is a new policy paper that I want you both to insert into your employee manuals.”

I knew this was going to be tough for Allan as he’d thrown his in the trash a day or two after it had been first issued to him.  Mine was at my apartment, but I honestly had no idea where.  I vaguely remembered tearing one or two pages out of it to use as scrap paper for a proposal I had been fiddling with at the time.  That was the last I’d seen of it. 

“This policy paper will probably be of some interest to you guys in Marketing.  Essentially, it details the procedures necessary for establishing new policies.”

“This is a policy paper on creating policies?” I asked with a smile.  Allan rolled his eyes and looked down at the floor, suddenly engrossed with the pattern of the carpeting in Richard’s office.

“That’s right!” Richard said proudly.  “Say that you or Allan want to institute a new policy on lunchtimes, or memo protocol, or whatever…all you have to do is fill out this form and give it to your manager.  Your manager will review it and then send it to the management team for consideration.  Once the team okays it, it comes to me and I take a look at it before deciding if it becomes policy or not.”

Somehow, I just had the feeling that this wasn’t going to be one of those little rights and privileges that either Allan or I were going to be availing ourselves of in the near or even the distant future.  Still, I smiled at Richard and patted the sheet of paper as though it was now a treasured new possession.  He smiled back, certain that he’d done his best to reach out to his two wayward charges and with that, the meeting was adjourned.

********** 

 

The next installment will be posted on November 18.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.