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THE BOMB THREAT
As we basked in the warm June sunshine on the steps of Chicago's Art Institute, I asked my young friend Dean if he had managed to cajole our boss, Athena Wells, into permitting him to take-off the upcoming Friday.
"She told me if I take that day off, that she'll fire me. I positively absolutely will not be given that day off. Believe me, I have tried every angle. The woman is a complete bitch."
We were waiting for Dean's fiancée, Veronica Powers, to join us for lunch in the restaurant on the other side of Michigan Avenue. Dean wanted me to meet Veronica, a student at the Art Institute, and he had also pledged to help me pick out some computer parts. Dean Crystal was a computer wizard.
We worked together at Pumping Sunshine, Inc., a telemarketing firm located in a tall glass office building out on the edge of the city, near the airport. I had been fired from my manufacturing job again, but felt confident the union would get my job back for me. To keep from starving, I took what I considered to be a fill-in job at Pumping Sunshine. The job felt like one more checker in my already checkered career which consisted of graduate student, cab driver, factory worker, fried chicken chucker, factory worker, and now telemarketer.
Everyone we worked with, however, seemed to be in the same state of flux. Pumping Sunshine served as; a fill-in for people waiting to get the results of the postal service exam, a place to park between college semesters, or as something to do while you looked for a real job. Or, as in Dean's case, it provided work for a full-time computer science student who was trying to finish his degree.
Between firings for "being unproductive and not meeting quota" and voluntary departures, the whole workforce seemed to turn over once every three months. I had managed to limp along for four months without getting fired by Athena Wells, our legendary boss.
"Just call-in sick next Friday," I suggested as we watched the Saturday afternoon traffic crawl down Michigan Avenue. I loved the way the Loop skyscrapers created acoustical canyons. You could hear the eerie echoes of automobile horns or the rumble of the L from the other side of the Loop. The skyscrapers did funny things with the sunlight, too. And like the shady side of a mountain, they created pools of cool air on a warm day. The totally artificial environment created an ambiance in the Loop not found anywhere else in the great city.
"She'd fire me. I already made the mistake of asking for the day off. She's marked the day in her computer." Dean sounded completely fatalistic, like a man who had come to accept his unavoidable fate. "Veronica's gonna be pissed about it. We were going to go to some art exhibit in Milwaukee that Friday. She already bought the tickets."
As he said that, a lovely young woman dressed in red shorts came prancing down the monumental steps in our direction. We both got up, and Dean embraced her. He introduced me, "This is Peter MacNaughton, my buddy from work." As I shook hands with Veronica I couldn't help noticing her fiery t-shirt which proclaimed, "Shoot a stockbroker, save the environment." One of her fellow art students had depicted a gang of women armed with shotguns including very elderly women, chasing a gaggle of suits and ties. The t-shirt was hilarious, but I knew I wasn't going to like Veronica because she was too much like me.
"Let's eat," she proclaimed and pointed to the restaurant across the street.
My first impression, of course, proved to be true. I couldn't stand Veronica. Dean had constructed a perfect triangle for himself. Dean and I hit it off despite the fact that I was middle aged because we were psychologically opposite types. He loved Veronica and vice versa because they were opposites. But Veronica and I... it was too much like looking in the mirror. I just couldn't enjoy socializing with the woman. I saw an introvert trying to act like an extrovert. I felt sorry for her, too, because she was just too damn sensitive to be suited to the daily brutal grind in the Psychotic Atomik Empire. And I felt jealous of her, because I had never been able to take advantage of my artistic or creative side as she clearly intended to do with a degree from the Art Institute. When I looked at Veronica, it made me realize how anti-social and aloof I must appear to most people. On the other hand, she made me want to do better.
When I glanced into her brown eyes from time to time from the other side of our lunch table, I saw intelligence and compassion for humanity. Conversely and ironically, I also saw unlimited ruthlessness and retribution against personal enemies.
"I have to get back to the studio. It was nice meeting you Peter. You're going to swing by and pick me up on Friday morning, right?" She asked Dean.
"Uh... I meant to tell you. I can't get the day off. That bitch Athena won't give it to me."
"Don't call women 'bitches.' It's sexist, and I don't like it."
"I consider myself to be a feminist. And I gotta tell ya. Athena is a power skirt," I volunteered.
Veronica bestowed a belabored and artificial smile in my direction that seemed to say, "You don't know what you're talking about, so you had better shut up·"
"He's right, honey. She's completely unreasonable. I've worked there two months and never taken a day off. She's pissed at me because I don't make her quotas."
"Well, tell her you'll make quota this week if she gives you Friday off. I can't cancel the trip now. I already bought the tickets. I can't get a refund."
"I can't make quota because she's got me selling fishing magazines into a list of phone numbers in Manhattan. She gives me all the bad lists. I don't have a chance."
Ignoring her previous facial expression, I chimed-in, "You don't know Athena. When we start a shift, we can't get out of our cubicle without permission. She's denied bathroom permission to people until they made their quota for that hour."
"Well, then.., tell her you're going to quit if she doesn't give you the day off."
We both laughed in Veronika's face. The idea of approaching the fashionably dressed and chain smoking Athena with such a threat seemed ludicrous.
"She'd just tell me not to let the door hit me in the ass on the way out," said Dean. "When you make quota, the job can pay twice the minimum wage, honey. There's a line of job applicants in the 15th floor lobby every day."
"She won't want to lose an educated person. You said Peter had a Master's Degree."
We both laughed again. "The only requirement is fluency in English," said Dean.
"And a very thick skin," I added.
"They can't take a lot of turnover in people," Veronica persisted.
"Honey, on average, two people quit every day. We see fresh faces on every shift."
"You have to get Friday off. You're smart. Figure out something." And with that Veronica excused herself and flounced back across Michigan Avenue leaving Dean and I at the table.
Dean leaned back and savored his coffee. He looked at me and said simply, "I'm screwed. If I take the day off, I'm fired. And I need that job. It's a shitty job, but it's still a job. You know how hard it is to find a job?"
I laughed. "I'm working the same one you are, partner. If it were easy, we'd both be somewhere else."
"And if I don't take the day off, Veronica is gonna be pissed. You can see that."
"Better to keep the job until you can graduate. Veronica will get over it," I counseled with my middle aged wisdom.
Dean, typically not the type to get emotional, abruptly slammed down his coffee cup splattering both of us, "But goddamnit, I just can't stand getting beat by that woman." He referred to the ongoing duel of wits in which he had been engaged with Athena Wells since the day he had been hired by the owner of the company, old Dick Richhead.
We all suspected that young Athena slept with the boss because she was fashionably slender and ostentatiously eager to be successful. She drove a used BMW while the boss drove a Porsche. Athena had been occupied with other activities the day the boss hired Dean. She would have never hired Dean because she instantly sensed his natural disrespect for authority and traditional ways of doing things. Because above all, Dean was an inventor and an engineer of doing-things-better. So, right from the start, Athena wanted to get rid of Dean. I saw it all.
The first time Athena handed him one of her idiotic scripts, which we had to slavishly follow in our sales presentations, Dean pointed out all her mistakes. She made him use it verbatim anyway.
When Athena handed Dean a list of phone numbers in Phoenix to sell a Southwestern magazine, Dean said the idea was stupid and demanded a list of numbers in a Midwestern city.
"Nobody in the Southwest wants to read about it. They're already there, they don't have to read about it."
Athena made him call through the list anyway. When he continued to complain, she assigned coffee making duties to him. He salted the coffee, quickly bringing an end to that humiliation.
She assigned him a telephone survey which only paid minimum wage because no sales were involved. He had to phone Iowa farmers and ask them what they liked about a certain brand of tractor. He fabricated a bunch of fake answers rather than make all the phone calls. Athena didn't suspect anything until the customer vehemently complained about all the "it doesn't start very well in the winter because it's a diesel" responses. Apparently their tractor sported a gasoline engine.
Athena then took to publicly criticizing Dean. In front of the others she told him he socialized in the office too much, and she scolded him for making too many personal phone calls (to Veronica.) Dean, of course, always had something witty and sarcastic to say in response. Mocking her, he would obsequiously snap his arm back across his chest and thumping himself would say, "To hear is to obey." When she turned her back, he enthusiastically gave her the Nazi salute.
From Monday to Thursday Dean tried every ploy in the book to get the day off on Friday. Monday morning he informed Athena that he had a doctor's appointment on Friday morning. She said fine, she'd have a special project ready for him Friday afternoon. Failure to report on time for said special project duty would result in termination.
On Tuesday he tried to tell her that he had a dental appointment on Friday afternoon. His molar was suddenly bothering him. She countered with an immediate complimentary appointment with a dentist friend of her's on the 14th floor.
On Wednesday he announced that his grandmother had died, and he planned to attend the funeral on Friday. Athena laughed in his face. She told him if he couldn't produce a newspaper obituary, not to bother to report to work on Monday.
Thursday morning he asked to see Athena in her office. When he returned to the "killing floor" as Athena referred to our forest of cubicles, I asked him about his latest ploy. "What did you tell her? "I whispered.
"I just begged to have the day off. I told her flat-out about the tickets."
Curious if the truth had any effect on Athena's limited well of compassion for fellow humans, I said, "What'd she say?"
"She said, 'no.' If I take the day off, I'm fired."
Friday morning started out as regular as the alarm clock in the infinity of days of my working life. Athena held her traditional morning motivational meeting that typically demoralized and demotivated everyone. She handed out her moronic scripts and lists for the day, then returned to her glass walled office while we settled into our cubicles for the morning offensive against the hapless individuals unfortunate enough to pick up their telephones.
However, I had only dialed one number before Athena came rushing up and down the aisles. As she moved closer to me, I watched my co-workers rapidly peel off their headsets and head for the lobby and the stairwell. I assumed it was a fire drill because nobody headed for the elevators. When she reached me, she repeated her mantra, "Bomb threat. Down the stairs. NOW. Bring your purse and car keys. Leave everything else.
The parking lot was full of cops. I never realized the FBI had a field office in our building. I thought they were located downtown. The employees from all the various offices in the building milled about in the parking lot for about 45 minutes. It was a sunny day and the sudden break in routine appeared to be welcomed by all. I found Dean sitting under a little ornamental sapling on one of the carefully landscaped tree banks. He beamed a carefully controlled smile at me.
Eventually the cops came around and told us all to go home. It would take most of the day to completely search the building. Apparently the bomb threat had been called-in against the FBI. Dean drove off the moment they made the announcement.
I hoped Veronica didn't get caught.
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