Deviant Office Perverts, The Apple of My Eye

During my early years of office purgatory – when mastering the formula for our auto-drip coffee maker was considered an admirable job function, and the Brother P-Touch labeler was one wrist-strap away from being soldered to my forearm – evenings were spent rehashing the merits of a trounced college degree. That said, my pissant status still ranked higher than that of the chest thumping pimps doubling as mail sorters on the building’s eighth floor. In fact, this comparison kept the alarm clock ringing each morning and the belt nooses (which hung from my clothes rod as a hedge against mental meltdown) off my neck. Although the moustached drunks in management were far from a ringing endorsement of integrity, the atmosphere was kept therapeutic by equally incredulous colleagues. An eclectic troop of cube dwellers, we were simply thankful to stand on the receiving side of the cafeteria grill counter. In other words, if the bathrooms of this painfully outmoded building were infested with roaches, at least we weren’t made to strap on an insecticide pack.

The revolving door of temp workers kept the mood light, even in our darkest hours when the final toner cartridge ran dry. Spanning the gamut from punks, artists, whores (not in the official sense), junkies, perverts, and cocktail waitresses (with the inability to operate a fax machine, much less speak English), this collage of misfits flashed a bag of tricks more suited to a circus sideshow than a buttoned-up private bank led by sherry sipping Protestants. And while I shared a few laughs with the overweight dapper dan – dressed nattily in the same black blazer and t-shirt as if wardrobe variety were a death knell – and exchanged pleasantries with the unkempt skateboarder at the elevator banks, none of these characters made quite the impression as did the balding pervert and his alcoholic sidekick.

This peeping tom was a cross between James Lipton of 'Inside The Actor’s Studio' fame, and Andy Samberg’s 'Dick In A Box' caricature of early ‘90’s new jack swing. More specifically, his style was one part uncombed halo of thatched hair, two parts ever-evolving variety of frumpy suits, purchased from a nameless friend known only as “the haberdasher.” Should I have been in the market for a pre-owned Hyundai Excel, or effected an in-person audit of a Van Nuys porn distributor, this gentleman’s hand – bedecked in faux gold bullion – would no doubt have extended itself in unctuous amity. However, in the caverns of Wall Street, with storied tales of greed, guts, and glory framed by power outfits and $200 haircuts, the presence of an ornamented carnival barker with an eye for ass was more comic relief than hard-nosed deal making. If this man had candy and you had a child, hopefully you also had a shotgun, or the phone number of your local crime stoppers tip line, or at very least one of a decent barber.

Instead of feigning horror, I happily embraced our cast of fools. And while it sometimes takes one to know one, I wasn’t the guy printing out young female profiles from the company picture directory in order to deface their idealism in some grody apartment, nor was I buying polyester neckties on the street corner, wrapped in cheap plastic. And I most certainly wasn’t lunching with a red-faced drunk who preferred virtual reality sunglasses on most afternoons, presumably to hide the pinched capillaries in his cheeks after a solid six of Killian’s (see “The Elephant Cometh” for even more office oddities).

Take me by the hand, o wise sage of haberdashery, o mightiest of Chess Kings, to the place where crazed bums wearing sandwich boards advertise discount strip club admittance and two-for-one suit sales. Show me the wonders of backside pinching and the talent for quick tongue flicks as mating calls. You rule the flea markets of Nassau Street with the heft of a thousand swinging phalluses, sucking the oxygen out of each room you inhabit with a ball sac of potato-sized immensity. In your presence, my testes are mere peas, my persona a regrettable shell of reservation, brains, and common sense. I am but a meek student of the overused pick-up line; unable to smoke enough unfiltered cigarettes to yellow my teeth, ingest adequate spinach to sprout fur on my chest, or haggle with enough gusto for discounted prices on cubic zirconia. Show me the places were beards grow wild and men roam wilder. I want to feel what you feel when you sexually harass an entire secretarial staff, taste what you taste when you hunker down for a broiled steak dinner at the cafeteria-quality Tad’s. More than a budding hero, you are a masculine colossus of 1950’s over-cologned supremacy, a time traveler from bygone eras of subservient women and workplace spankings. Lead me to the well, bald man, and compromise my financial career and economic stability for a quick drink of unbridled randiness. After all, this is our Eden, and no one lasts long in the garden of forbidden fruit (even if that fruit happens to be the cherry of a bubbly yet naïve ditz tasked with faxing trade confirmations).

Awakening in reality, I suppose the switch to business casual came as a blessing in disguise. Most likely, I wouldn't have commanded much respect with a Borat suit and Flowbee haircut. And as a white guy, well, let’s just say when the axe falls, you don’t have that extra card to play. Even so, I'll bet the first bite of that apple was delicious.

Apocalypse Now (With Love And Squalor)

Ain’t the recession grand?

A perpetual sucker for nostalgia, The Bastard recalls an equally frenetic time during 1981-82; one soiled by double-digit inflation, soaring unemployment, and record shattering bank failures. Although I was newly out of diapers and mastering sentence construction, our nation’s elder statesmen (most likely back in diapers at the time of this writing) had just maneuvered through an oil shock several years prior before wading through the dung of the most serious contraction since the Great Depression itself. But just as the summer of 1981 spawned adversity for key American industries, it also ushered in the golden era for Menudo and the mainstream explosion of synth-pop and resulting Flock of Seagulls haircuts. Said differently, there’s a pearl in every oyster. And that, my friends, is why I sit here like a grinning simpleton day after day, holed up indoors like some reclusive hobbit with minimal income, yet still whistling myself to sleep each night. Recessions have their bright spots.

Now, I could bore you to tears with arguments concerning global balance of payments, speculative bubbles, and savings rate disparity, but let’s just agree that the current market correction is a nice way to flush some fat down the bowl. And let’s also agree that financial hardship makes it easier to order a round of Milwaukee’s Best for destitute friends without eliciting the sideways glances usually reserved for wearers of foam trucker hats. Not only is retirement plan implosion a conversational ice breaker, but it’s a sympathy play and a hilarious excuse to bump chests. Moreover, job loss stories make for interesting coffee house fodder. In fact, there’s a quirky political drama behind mine which is certainly worth a latté or two. But above all else, this nasty contraction is forcing people to do their homework. Suddenly, headlines regarding AIG or Citigroup can be discussed, in relative degrees of sophistication, with barbers, policemen, gigolos, and just about anyone with a dime in the local bank and a desire to hang up the hat by 65. We’re poorer, but we’re also smarter.

Yes, I’m newly minted collateral damage in this equation. It was barely four months ago that I last hunkered down in the trenches of financial warfare amidst squabbling pundits; where every slip in the Dow hastened lively debate concerning the endgame for my weakened (yet still existent) firm. We were a sinking battleship, holes plugged with cork and bubble-gum, deck awash with raging sea water as crew mates pondered the drowning value of vested equity. Then I got fired. And the investment community took a collective breath. And the firm’s stock value slowly rose from its November bottom.

It wasn’t the most dignified of moments, speaking to my bible studying, power grabbing, allegedly alcoholic, pseudo-manager in what will go on record as our longest conversation ever. Certainly, my clumsy victory lap around the perimeter of the trading floor was an awkward means to close an interesting career step, but frankly, I couldn’t find the damn conference room in which he was roosting. Metaphorically speaking, I was shooting baskets at the wrong net, scoring touchdowns in the opposite end zone, completely disoriented with the building floor plan and forced to ask my executioner for directions to his own guillotine. Explicit directions, mind you, which made that second phone call all the more unsettling. Seriously, who does that? “I’m sorry, where did you say you wanted to shove that five iron up my ass, because I’ve already pulled down my pants but the numbering sequence for these rooms is rather confusing. Also, I think the sight of my bum is upsetting some females.” At that point, an HR lackey should have just lobbed a grenade at my workstation and blown me up in an extraordinary blaze of mediocrity. If anything, the blast could’ve made for an exciting “Power Lunch” segment on CNBC, targeting its economically fatigued viewership.

The rest of that day is inconsequential, although I remember taking shelter from the bitter cold in a subway station, making frantic calls on my dated Motorola RAZR V3, shaking my colleague’s hand in a Starbucks, and bemoaning the surrender of a Blackberry and its engaging diversions (BrickBreaker, anyone?). Removing that device from my pocket was like unhooking a brain, forcing its hollowed victim to amble zombie-like against the rushing flow of commuters who relentlessly bumped at my sides; a surging army of black overcoats en route to purpose and income.

As for my future, maybe I’ll join one of Barry O’s work project crews, assuming that his New Deal II ever shifts out of ideological gear. Hell, if I can calculate bond interest, I can learn to operate a jackhammer or swing a wrecking ball, all while smacking the cheeks of passing cougars. After all, someone needs to rebuild our country’s infrastructure and satisfy its aging female populace. I’m in decent physical shape and probably look alright in a reflector vest. If I could just wrench this five iron out of my ass, I’d be your model citizen for a new tomorrow.

The Elephant Cometh

We became friendly just as his trolley was jumping the tracks. True, my old colleague was a bit quirky, but the laughs shared over our cubical wall balanced the self-loathing panic which bubbled in my gut. What was I doing wasting away in this den of low ceilings and slipshod ethics for the income of a social worker? Shackled firmly in the throes of middle office mediocrity, we collected dust on the low rung of a rusted corporate ladder. It helped neither career nor confidence to have that ladder steadied by functional alcoholics in management positions. Changing urinal cakes was probably a worse existence, but the bottom feeding world of portfolio support was ranked a close second, or perhaps a close third behind our grease-bathing cafeteria fry man (who served up a delicious grilled cheese, mind you). Congenial as I appeared, still living at home with a minimum of expenses, sanity was fleeting in those curious days, and mine persevered where others’ fell dead. Lights out. Pencils down. Work coma. Swiftly did the monotony of account reconciliation make mush of my friend’s mind, pounding brain matter into pulp until it resembled the guts of an overripe cantaloupe; common sense scraped loose and fed to the warring dogs of office politics. Overnight he became a Class A buffoon. An unpredictable pervert. A slow-motion disaster tumbling face first down an upward moving escalator, for months at a clip. And then he snapped.

In those unpleasant days – before the arm of almighty God plucked me out of that cesspool and presented a civilized alternative with all the trappings of a living wage – my friend had fully submitted to insanity, resigned to crunch numbers on the bank’s Windows incompatible accounting software and preoccupy his downtime spinning bizarre yarns on the size of the garbage in his pants. Rechristening himself The Elephant, he was prone to outbursts of extreme genital braggadocio, often using his right arm to emulate a swinging trunk and speaking of Trojan Magnums as a necessary element to his survival, much like water or air. Although he was a man of pedestrian looks and somewhat portly build, no earthly force could prevent his testosterone from bursting through the stratosphere during happy hours; no mere mortal could shield their eyes as he strut into bars like a peacock, puffing his chest through a comically tight blazer (almost certainly last worn at his eighth grade graduation) while lighting matches off clenched teeth. He was a winking, derriere grabbing jackass – something straight out of ‘Mad Men’ or a 1970’s how-to brochure on sexual harassment in the workplace – with limitless confidence and the threat of a rocket launcher in his pants that could presumably be discharged during any conversational lull. Suddenly, the simple act of sharing a beer was like having a grenade launcher pointed at your ear. I was in a perpetual state of unease. Women were aghast. After all, he was a lowly administrator turned (alleged) phallic colossus. A godhead of virility. You would’ve been horrified.

Why this sudden swing from office dolt to sexual superman? Why the invented legend status which, ultimately, spawned an amusing fool amongst the company of men yet a deviant in the mind of females? Quite simply, he had nothing to lose. His personal and professional life were magnificent trainwrecks, and the mythic hammer behind the belt buckle was an emotional crutch; a psychological weapon to be exploited on the worst dates in the worst seats at the worst restaurants when all other attempts at witty banter fell short. For all I know, it could’ve been a twelve inch beanstalk secured to his femur with duct tape. I really don’t care and I never asked for the negatives. And when he finally quit, cowardly retreating on a Greyhound bus with the usual lot of immigrant drifters, hillbillies, and murderous church custodians, it was another chapter closed on another oddball flame-out. Keep in touch, we did not. His manliness was too hardy a force for my diminutive stature. Still, it was always fun having drinks at the circus when the elephant was out of his pen.

Sedentary Office Fool (or, Beware The UPS Loading Dock)

Buried on page 6 of a redundant and harrowing job description (for a financial position, mind you):

“Factor 8 – Physical Demands
The work is mainly sedentary in nature. Typically, the employee may sit and do the work, but there will be some walking, standing, bending, reaching, or carrying light items.”

OK, let’s take a step or two backward, shall we? No one assumed this was touting the opportunity of a lifetime to kick boxes around on a UPS loading dock – ill-fitting brown shorts in tow and lit cigarette dangling – while smacking the random ass of hardy female colleagues. Said differently, the posting refers to a risk management position, not a UFC contender slot. Really, if anyone other than Stephen Hawking applies for this job and gets hives at the mere notion of reaching for pens and trucking a few sticky notes from cube to cube, they probably need a psychiatric evaluation and a proper flogging. Or a new metal helmet. Or a punch across the face (sorry, is that harsh?). On a plus note, and in all probability, “Factor 8” implies that I have the luxury of performing said office duties on a chair (or stool), as opposed to, say, standing on my head or on my manager’s head, or at the top of a fucking flagpole.

And anyway, if I’m up against Hawking, I’m probably trolling the wrong job board … in the wrong universe. Or my metal helmet is screwed on too tight.