Chapter 15 – Are You Serious?
“Bill, are you serious? I mean come on, I like Cory but it’s been what, three maybe four months?”
I knew there was going to be no way of placating Adrian on this one but it didn’t hurt to try. “Look, I know we haven’t dated long but come on, you can’t deny that we are kind of meant for each other. And I know that’s cheesy…”
“I know but still, getting married? What did her family say? And your family for that matter?”
“Well her dad and mom love me. Same goes for my family liking her. They don’t mind, they trust us.” I emphasized the trust us part.
She glared at me. “I trust you. Well I’m happy for you. Please tell me you didn’t ask her to marry you last night at BW2’s?”
I looked away. She didn’t want me to tell her so…
“OMG Bill! You did not propose at a sports bar!”
“It’s a little more than a sports bar…”
“Really? You think so? Do they have beer, giant TV’s with sports playing, and um, oh yeah, hot wings as the main course?”
“It’s where we met and where I asked her out. She liked it.”
“I’m sure she did. She’s a freak about that place too. Seriously Bill, you crack me up. Well congrats. Are you moving in together?”
“No, we’re both kind of old fashion that way and her lease is up in three months so it works out anyway.”
A look of pure incredulity crossed over Adrian’s face. “You’re getting married in three months?”
“Yeah, why not? It’s not like we’re going to change our minds or anything.”
She shook her head. I shrugged. Cory’s mom saw herself as an up and coming wedding planner, so Cory and I wouldn’t have to do anything. When I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if we would even be allowed to do anything.
It didn’t matter anyhow. Nothing could bring me down today, nothing at all. Although, I was pretty sure Moleth would try. Ever since she arrived a month ago she was making up for lost time that was usually spent pissing people off. But she couldn’t affect me today.
I put in my ear buds and decided to go for classical today. I don’t know what it was about classical music. I liked it most of the time, but I wouldn’t say it was on the top of my most-played list. No, Classical music to me was like Taco Bell for most people. You could go months without wanting it and then you start to crave it like…like crack filled tacos. Yes, that was the right description. Few people think that Taco Bell is even remotely high quality food but we all find ourselves thinking about it a lot of the time. Ok, maybe that wasn’t a good analogy. After all, I did like Taco Bell but I liked Classical music, too. At any rate, I felt a binge coming on and it was for these occasions that I kept a good supply of classical in my iPod just in case.
The music was soothing as Moonlight Sonata started up. I began looking through my cluttered email box. I needed to purge it, which I seriously considered. But what if there was something important in there? Just because I didn’t read my email didn’t mean that I thought every email I received was unimportant. It’s just that most of them were unimportant. I built a rule wizard in Outlook for that exact purpose; it was great. Most of the junk from corporate went into a folder called “I don’t care”. All of Philip’s emails automatically forwarded themselves, too. As I read along the large list, there was a meeting request from Larry that came into the folder. It was for eleven in the Meeker room. The odd part was that it was for the whole department. We never met together in a formal meeting. It was always just a gathering outside Larry’s office.
Time melted by, and for once I didn’t think about the sure-to-be boring meeting. I just listened music and, to be honest, thought about Cory a lot. Man, had I been nervous last night. Sure, I knew she was going to say yes—We had picked out the ring together. But still.
At 10:55 a.m. Adrian and I made our way to the Meeker room. I even brought two different colored pens to this meeting. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. I was in Lalaland today.
“What do you think this is about?” Adrian asked on our way up. I could hear similar questions coming from others in our group.
“I have no idea. Maybe we’re getting another logo.”
“Don’t say that, Bill; you’ll jinx us.”
“Sorry.”
“You probably don’t care today anyway, do you?” she nudged me.
I just smiled. I really didn’t care. The Meeker room was one of the larger conference rooms and when I slipped through the door, all of management was waiting for us with the new HR lady. What was she doing here? They didn’t look happy. Well, Philip looked a little happy but that didn’t mean much. We all sat and stared at Larry, waiting for the big man to talk. My ‘I don’t care attitude was starting to wane a bit. He really did look concerned. I did a quick head count. Everyone was here; no one died or was hit by filth of some kind. He cleared his throat.
“Thank you for coming up here today.” He stopped for a moment.
“As many of you know, the company has been looking to leverage offshore resources.” There was a new kind of silence in the room. Larry read it correctly.
“Don’t worry, Riders is still strong; it’s not going anywhere.”
There was a collective sigh at this and Larry seemed to loosen up. At least we weren’t screwed; that was good.
“In keeping with this, Riders is going to be using some of that offshore leverage to help audit.” He smiled widely. “And I’m happy to announce that we’ve found way to offshore nearly all of audit’s functionality.”
And how was that good news?
“So, what does that mean for us, Larry?” Yoda piped up.
“Well, like I said, don’t worry. Riders is still strong and that’s what matters. Now, as for the Denver Center, we will be shutting it down.”
There was pandemonium. There was no telling what all was said but most of it didn’t follow the golden rule if I wasn’t mistaken.
Larry attempted to calm everyone. “Don’t worry, we’re not going out of business.”
“Why would we care about that if we don’t work here?” some lady yelled; there was no telling who.
My feeling of calm was dissipating fast. The room’s volume seemed to be turned to mute. I knew there were questions being asked and severance being explained, but I didn’t hear any it. I didn’t notice time or anything. All I could think was that I didn’t have Cory’s ring paid for. There was other unimportant stuff to, like what was going to happen to all the videos and crap I had on my work computer? The last time I was laid off, I had some notice, some time to go klepto with the sticky notes and pens. But holy crap, today was our last day! What stuff would I keep? What could I keep? Would they even let us log back into the system? I hoped so. I just changed all my bills to email my work address! Never did loosing your job seem to affect me. Maybe it should, but I mean hell, I lived with my mom, Cory already lived by herself, and it wasn’t like we were going to need a two bedroom place. Plus, from what I could hear about the severance package, it sounded pretty good.
Suddenly, I was back at my desk cleaning it. When did I leave the conference room? They did allow us back into the system or more accurately, they forgot to tell the IT guy to lock us out and he was on lunch now. I sent a “sorry I don’t work here anymore because Apu oo is better than me apparently” email to all of my contacts. My work phone rang. I knew the number. It was for a local insurance agent. I answered.
“Hey man, I just got canned. I can’t help you with one of your retarded clients.”
“Yeah, I know. Great news; congrats man!”
“Are you high? I just told you I lost my job.”
“And I just happen to need someone to help my agency with audit support and basic sales.”
Wow, that was impressive. My butt hadn’t even been hit by the door yet and I was getting an offer.
“I don’t …sales.?”
“Yeah it’s easy. Insurance sells itself and y
ou’ll be doing a lot of audit support anyway. I’ve been wanting to offer you a job for awhile but if I tried, well, you know Riders can be a dick.”
“Yeah I hear ya there.”
“Come on, say yes before they disconnect your phone. You’re just moving class codes. Ya know, from 8810 to 8742 so to speak.” 8742 was the outside salesperson class code. I caught onto the reference. “Ok fine, I’ll try it out but no promises, ok?”
“Great!”
I gave him my number and I felt better. “That was good hustle about the phone not working.”
“That wasn’t hustle dude. They’re Nazi’s. There’ll be people to escort you out of the building and make sure you don’t jack Post-it notes or anything.”
“But cut off the phones? Come on you can’t be serious”
“Just you wa—”
The phone went dead. He had to be jacking with me, but then I started to hear muffled “hello, hello, did you hang up?” coming from other cubes. He wasn’t joking, not even about the escorts. Holy crap this was lame. Yoda walked to my desk.
“Hey bro you tell your wife?”
“No, I got a call from Tony at that agency in Highlands Ranch. I told him couldn’t help him anymore.”
How many people did Tony call for help? He called me like once a day!
“Did he offer you a job starting in two weeks?” I asked.
Yoda looked taken back. “The force is strong with—”
“Don’t even finish that.”
“Sorry, but yeah he did. I take it you got one too?”
“Yep.”
“Cool.”
“Wings?”
Yoda stared at me and then his shoulders shrugged. “Sure.”
“Do you think anyone else will want to go?”
Yoda looked around at the people packing their stuff in boxes. “I don’t think so. Maybe if you yell it standing on your desk Dead Poets Society style they’ll be inspired.”
“Will you pay for my lunch?”
“Sure, why not.”
“Cool!”
“You’re not going to…” he trailed off.
“What are they going to do, fire me?”
I stood on my former desk and yelled, “My fellow piss-ons, hear my words!”
People stopped and looked at me and smiled. Others, like Star Wars scowled and growled at me.
Star Wars spoke, “Bill that’s—”
“Oh shut up man. We’re not Jedi and no one cares except maybe the guys who are here to walk us out and they’re…where are they?”
I looked around. “They’re just underwriters. They went to lunch.” Manager-lady said.
“Oh cool. Anyway, today we’ve all been fist fu—”
“Bill!” Manager-lady barked.
“What? Anyway you know what I mean. We got kicked out on our aces!”
Manager-lady looked like she was going to protest again.
“Oh, I said aces. Got ya, didn’t I? You thought I was going to say a—”
“Bill!” This time it was from Yoda.
“Fine! Anyway, we all got screwed and most of us hated this place anyway. So I’m going to BW2’s to celebrate my freedom and to tell my fiancé that she may need to, um, pay for some of our dates for a while. Not like it matters anyway; it’s going to be our money soon right? Right! So let’s get out of here!”
I jumped off my desk and grabbed my box of stuff and walked with Yoda to the door. Chester glared at us as we passed by.
“Do you see what you did?” he said with cold malice.
“Oh shut it man! Are you coming?”
Chester’s face relaxed. “Ah screw it. I hated this place. Yeah, I’m coming.”
I remembered something and dashed back to my desk and then Yoda’s. When I got back to the group, Adrian and Manager-lady were standing there. In my hands were mine and Yoda’s green hats. I placed mine on my head and gave Yoda his.
“Ok let’s go see if we can completely trash the company’s image,” I said with a smile.
Yoda put on his hat and we all left Riders Insurance for the last time.
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