The Transporter Couch

It’s been a long, dry week, as far as this venue is concerned. Been busy with cats, for starters. My sister’s cats are staying with me for a couple of weeks while she completes a move. It’s been challenging. For one thing, they have to stay INSIDE which means they have to employ a litter box and that’s not appealing. I have to clean it but also it’s just a LIE that a litter box doesn’t have to stink. My own cat, Aretha, goes out. She has a litter box but she never uses it. I should check in there for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.

Busy, too, with the tortilla factory. They were short-handed all week and I did a little bit of everything. Hilda had a meeting Friday for which I happened to be present, though I wasn’t part of it, and she was reading beads left and right. Good for her. People take her for granted and get away with all kinds of shit.

I went out Friday night and met Deborah. Beautiful beautiful woman and she knows it. Youngish, in her …. 40s I’d say, and very well put together. I didn’t MEET her as in an introduction. I ran into her, I should say. For our own peculiar reasons neither one of us drinks and so we sit around and flirt endlessly and uselessly. She’s way too beautiful for me to say we make a match, especially not for a camera, but everyone thinks we look good together and assumes we’re a couple and we play it. Anyway, that was fun.

And I went to my niece’s dance recital yesterday and was absolutely utterly completely wonderfully delighted. There were 19 routines (BEFORE imtermission) and I was never bored and frequently amused and constantly delighted. This dance academy is top notch. Some of the older girls did serious ballet routines. I wanted to stay for part 2 but it wasn’t feasible, on several fronts. I just loved it. And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Well, there wasn’t any food to speak of but there was a feast of entertainment. Beautiful costumes, carefully choreographed dance routines, running the gamut from ballet to modern to Broadway. And the staging was outstanding!! When I learned I had to go to my niece’s dance recital I thought, “OK” but I expected it to be a pedestrian experience. I was absolutely mesmerized.

See, the lesson here is, these girls don’t go to dance school just because their parents don’t want to deal with them on cloudy days. Rather, they have a passion for the art…. They WANT to TRAIN and they HOPE to LEARN and perhaps they even hope to go on someday to be professionals. And they outdid themselves.

It takes a LOT for me to say something is “top notch” but I readily assert it now, the Fusion Dance Company in Austin, Texas is top notch.

Congratulations to all the dancers! You did well.

I got fired yesterday. Or maybe I quit. It’s a little ambiguous but since it’s ME talking and it’s MY forum I’m gonna take a ME stance and say I quit.

I won’t bother going into the details, but on the surface, they suspected me (but did not accuse me) of stealing from them. They vaguely offered me a “punishment stage” and I said no, thank you. And walked away.

Peter was looking like he was about to cry throughout the meeting. Judy just looked angry and disappointed.

Well I’m angry and disappointed too. I hope they both wept at the loss this supplies them. And while something DID happen, I said it was an accident and they didn’t trust me. And that’s what I said to them, “If you don’t trust me in this moment, you never will. And you don’t. And you won’t.” And that was my parting shot.

LOOK AT ME, I thought, in my anger. I’m wearing $900 worth of clothes. Why would you think I would steal $70 worth of liquor from you? What is it about my demeanor that would let you question my integrity; I do $10,000 deposits for you; I come in on time and at your behest; I ….. I ….. I just can’t believe they would believe I would steal.

But, the tie is broken. They don’t trust me. I’m very sad.

On Friday and Saturday nights I work in a liquor store. Please see below a note I wrote to my employers.

Food for Thought

Hi Judy & Peter,

Recently I offered, at my discretion and without authority and frankly without any concern, a discount to some customers on military leave. It happened in a spark, a moment. Afterwards, Nari asked if that’s a policy and I assured her it isn’t a policy. But I further assured her that there are moments when you supply discounts. You have to pick and choose and be careful, and there are rules of course about extending discounts to family and friends (that’s off limits and well it should be). But it gave me pause for thought.

I am so disgusted with this war (that they say is over), the trouble it causes in our lives, and I’m not going to place blame or discuss politics but I assure you I’m disgusted. So, when someone comes in and buys something and the conversation reveals that she or he has spent 18 months (or more or less) in a place fraught with fright, death and hell, all in the service of the country, regardless of the things I think of the war or its leaders, my heart opens. One reason for that is that I’ve never been summoned to that cause. I don’t feel shame or guilt for never being in the military, and I don’t speak the following sentiments out of shame or guilt. And though I’ve never experienced it first hand I know still that it’s fright, death and hell, and people who do it deserve my respect and admiration. Derision might ensue but first and foremost, respect and admiration.

So, my heart thus opened, it’s my tendency to give. I’ve had every advantage in life and it’s my responsibility and duty to give back, whenever and however. And I do my best to be honest, kind, decent, generous and gentle. This doesn’t afford me license to give away your store, but I would like to know that I have the authority to apply a discount (say 10%) when I am moved to do so by an encounter with someone recently returned from the war. It’s easy enough to put a yellow sticker on your car but the true heart is in the moment when you actually say thank you. And, I don’t just say “thank you” with your profit, I always say it in words and with a handshake, as you’ve perhaps observed.

The fear here, of course, is that “momentary compassion” could overextend itself and be or become self-serving. So let’s not label it thus. I suppose ultimately that I’m just asking for the authority to give a discount at my own discretion. I’m not asking for a company policy, I’m just asking for …. a favor I guess, that my discretion be relied upon.

What do you think?

Brian

“Lunch truck is here” used to be the only thing heard on the Page All at where I worked in the mid-80s. I worked alone on a weird sort of evening/night/overnight shift for several months. Once, in a fit of sleep-deprived hysteria at around midnight, I got on the PA and said “Lunch truck is here” with kind of a sinister laugh. I heard two distinct set of footsteps run down the dark hallway and out of the building with the sounds of “ohshitohshitohshit”.

I later heard two programmers were on deadline when they became convinced that a maniac was in the building.

In a company I worked for, it was a common and open practice that if you didn’t want to deal with something, you found out who was on vacation, put a routing slip on a memo, and ask for the vacationer’s opinion. People actually advised me to do this.

I came back from three weeks vacation once, and there wasn’t a horizontal surface in my cube that didn’t have a folder or book with a routing slip on it. I got a couple of boxes, filled them up, and routed them to my supervisor (who was on a long weekend), asking him to prioritize the tasks.