My Closest Friends Pt. 2

PT 2.

Jordy leaves the room and I get out of bed and use the bathroom, looks like Jordy was in here last, he never flushes. I don't know how many times I've discussed this with him. Once I've finished that business, I head into the kitchen and make coffee. Bruce is sitting at my computer. I wasn't aware that he was here. “Bruce is here, needed on your computer, Photoshop!” Jordy tells me as I light my first cigarette of the day. “When are you going to quit that?” He asks me. I don't answer. “So what is it this time?” I ask Bruce, who is so focused on what he's doing he doesn't even seem to notice that I'm there. I look over his shoulder and he's working on replacing the background of a picture of a nude woman whom I don't recognize. “Girl's paying me $100 to take her out of the picture and put her on the plains of Africa with a Lion in the background!” he tells me. I admit to him that the girl is pretty enough and well built too, but the way he's doing the background replacement is not going to work right, that she'll stand out and it'll be obvious. He tells me that he doesn't care about that, and neither will she. She's just a dumb blonde who he's hustling for some cash. I ask him how he knows her and he tells me an elaborate story about shooting pool, dollars for clothing at a party he met her at. He had to pay her a dollar for every ball she sunk, she had to remove an article of clothing for every ball he sunk. Needless to say he took the picture after the game was over. She'd been a terrible pool player. “You don't think it's bad form to take advantage of the stupid?” I ask him. “No, it's why god created them.” his response.

“Elaborate.” I say.

“See, God made regular people and stupid people, so that regular people would know that they were regular, also so that the semi intelligent to the really intelligent would have someone around to make them feel better about themselves.” he says.

“To feed our narcissism?” I ask.

“No, not really, well yes kind of. You see if there weren't any stupid people, then who would do menial jobs? Who would wait tables? Wash cars? Sweep floors and clean toilets? No one, so maybe god made them to feed us, and keep the planet from becoming a shithole?” he says.

“The planet's already a shithole.” I tell him.

“People are getting better educations these days there're less high school drop outs too.”

“I'm not sure one has anything to do with the other.”

“How many strippers have you met that are high school graduates?”

“I've never asked any. Not something that really comes up at a strip club.” I tell him.

“See! You don't know any, so we can extrapolate that to mean there aren't any!”

“I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that assessment.” I retort.

“Ok, but for the sake of argument, let's hypothesize that I'm right about this.” he says turning away from the computer monitor to face me. “If there were more high school drop outs there would logically be more strippers, and janitors and waitresses. Since there are more people with well paying jobs, we have to assume, for the sake of argument, that there are less, than say twenty years ago, because people are getting better educations. So if people are better educated but there are still idiots out there, most of them dumber than ever. It must be Gods way of evening things out for the rest of us. I don't want to piss off God by not taking advantage of a gift he's given me.” Bruce informs me.

We continue to banter over this for a few minutes until I realize my coffee's done. Not through some beep signifying it, but Jordy has been standing and watching it drip since it started. He has an odd habit of doing that, somehow he finds pleasure in watching coffee drip. I've never understood it and don't want to. But he always exclaims “It's done!” whenever it's done. I go into the kitchen to get a cup of joe when he begins with his inane questions anew. “When are you going to give up the smoking? And can we go out and get some clay? I'd really like to learn to sculpt.” he asks me. I say nothing I only look at him. “Where's Helen?” I ask him. “Sleeping, she said you kept her up after all the hot steaminess last night and was talking to her about love or some such shit. Why would you talk to her about love?” he wanted to know. “She asked me if I love her.” I say.

“Do you? Do you love her?” his eyes glinting and a huge smile on his face.

“Just about every night.” I say smiling at him.

“Oh, I think you love her more than just that. She's been around longer than any of the others have ever been. There's something to that I think.”

“If that's what you want to think, go ahead and believe it.” I tell him.

“If you didn't love her more than you let on, then you'd have sent her away by now, gotten tired of her. You've said it before, they're all the same, all of them, how's she different?”

“She's not.”

I think she is, special to you somehow.” he sang this to me as I walked out of the room. Bruce asked why I put up with him, I told him that Jordy had been there for me when I was at an all time low, and despite being a pain in the ass, he's a really good listener. Every once in a while, everybody needs someone they can talk to. Bruce told me that I could always talk to him, but the truth being that Bruce did most of the talking when he was around. Bruce's philosophy of life was that no matter who pissed you off, as long as they couldn't get you pregnant or take away your birthday, then it didn't really matter and you should let it slide. Thinking about it, I'd never even seen him upset about anything. Either he didn't care about anything, or he just practiced what he preached.

“They tore down the Burger Barn, did you know that? It's been there since 1954! And they just tore it to the ground. Nothing lasts forever, seems to me that everything's disposable!” he said, echoing Helen's sentiment from the night before. I gave it some thought but said nothing about it. After I'd gotten ready for work I told Bruce to shut down the computer when he was done, knowing full well he wouldn't. He never did.

Work was a retail chain, you know the one always offering the lowest prices with stupid slogans that changed every year or two like, “Best prices anywhere! Guaranteed!” I worked as an electronics sales specialist. Loose translation: Someone not paid well enough for all of the collective consumer electronics knowledge I have. It sucked, especially knowing that there were people out there who knew less about the products that they sold making twice what I was making. But that was one of the ways this retail chain kept prices so low. Don't pay anyone what their skills, work or service is actually worth so they can pass the savings on to the customer and pad the company's bottom line. Sure they offered quarterly bonuses, but they also made it more difficult to get one. If, say for instance there were accidents, by customers, or employees and they had to go to an Emergency room, that money came out of the profit which would reduce the bonus. Just so long as the company itself didn't have to pay for it. It sure wasn't coming out of the CEO's, the VP's or anyone in the company with letters as their job titles bonus. An accident by its very nature is some unforeseen occurrence, some are avoidable sure, but it didn't matter to the higher echelon of management. Get those consumer dollars and to hell with the people who keep the company running. Big business, that's how they do things. I was talking to a co-worker about things being disposable, he agreed, that just about everything is disposable. It bothered me a little. During the conversation one of our managers, Marty came by to remind us that we weren't being paid to socialize. This same prick called me into the office an hour later to tell me that he felt I'd spent too much time with a customer earlier.

He told me that and so I asked just how much time should a customer get? One minute? Seven minutes? I wanted to know just how much time, so that I could check my watch and at the pre-designated time limit I could tell the customer “Sorry sir, but I've been informed that I can only spend 'X' amount of minutes with each customer, if you like I'll call a manager for you and they can give you another 'X' number of minutes of their time. It was ridiculous! “That's not what I'm saying!” he exclaimed.

“Sounds that way to me.” I replied.

“No, I just think that there were other things you could have been doing, and that the amount of time spent with that customer was excessive.”

“He's bought everything from us, from me! Flat Screen, Blu-Ray player, Laptop, Surround Sound system and now he wants to buy a gaming console, he always comes back to me, because he's happy with the service I've provided him. Are we not to try to develop customer loyalty?” I argued.

Then there was silence. His lips were moving, so were his hands and arms as he spoke. I heard nothing. I could read his lips “Do you understand?” he was asking. I reached behind me and pulled the gun from my under my belt and pants. I could feel myself smiling. He looked terrified as I leveled it at his face. More lip reading “What are you doing?!” he seemed to be screaming, but still I heard nothing. The gun went off, I saw the flash from the muzzle, and the back of his head splattered against the wall behind him. The look of shock and fear faded from his face as his body capitulated to the floor in a heap.

Then I snapped out of it. He was still talking. Just a fantasy. Too bad for me, but good for him I guess. “Just try to limit it in the future, take care of the customer and move on.” he said. I didn't reply I walked out of the office and went back to work. The rest of the day was uneventful, but every time I saw Marty, I felt a little satisfaction at the thought of blowing his goddamned head off. He thought I was just smiling to be polite.

See the problem I had with the management team was the same with all of them. Customer service meant get them what they want, take their money and get them out the door. All but one of them had gone to college, associates degree, and straight into management. They didn't have any experience with customer service. They'd never been on the bottom rung of the ladder and the one who did, hadn't been on that rung in so long, she was out of touch with the people she was supposed to be supervising. I left at the end of my shift, tired and aggravated. I'm always aggravated when I leave that place.

Once I'd gotten home I found the computer still on. Thank you Bruce! Jordy was sitting on the couch pouting in his usual way. “What's wrong with you?” I asked. “You aren't carrying any clay.” he retorted. “Payday, I'll get some.” I informed him. He looked at me, tilting his head sideways, the way a dog would. “That's a whole week away.” he complained.

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