You've got corporate written all over you.

I sprayed some cologne which my boss had given me last Christmas for the present swap we had done.

“I don’t know anything about you or anything you like, so I just got you this.” She had rasped on the December morning before the horrid holiday, her face way too tight, like a veined balloon atop a sagging, pale body about to break down. She tolerated me because I was a hard worker, but I knew she felt contempt towards me that usually would take years to cultivate, but I had managed to accumulate in only a few months.

I reached into the back seat of my car and grabbed a random tie which was already noosely knotted and threw it over my head and tightened it around my neck. I clipped my manager keys to my belt and smoothed over my hair in my review mirror then hopped out of my car and strode into work.

She smoked a couple packs of cigarettes a day, and probably had for a long time, so when I reached the back office it was no surprise that Ms. Krause, my boss, was smoking. At times, right in the middle of barking out commands, she’d break down and cough for minutes, while the rest of us, her ever loyal troops, stood around awkwardly waiting for the emphysematic blitzkrieg to pass.

“Mr. Moooon.” She said, dragging my last name out like an old door opened slowly in the early morning hours as not to wake other occupants of the house.

The informalities being over, she cleared her throat to become businesslike, but she coughed, the burst capillaries underneath her pale cheeks highlighted bright pink momentarily, her eyes bulging because she was suffocating. Finally able to communicate again, she began to bark out orders.

“Who built the Tuf’s display? It looks like crap. Knoxville said it was you.”

“I’m not aware of any Tuf display.” I replied, which was true. Usually as soon as I stepped foot outside of work, I immediately forgot anything which occurred within its walls, regardless of the drugs or alcohol I may later consume.

“Well, I need you to rebuild it. It looks like shit. And when you’re done with that…” She croaked, and began to hawk phlegm up in her intimidating throat and then swallow it, rising her fat arms to cover her mouth causing the flabby undersides of her upper biceps to sway and jiggle. I turned away my eyes, the morning rum suddenly not sitting as pretty as I imagined it would when I woke up to the morning sun.

She wheezed, then caught her breath, her meaty knuckles turning white as it grasped her soft drink bottle. “What was I saying…?”

“Telling me that the Tuf someone built looks like shit.”

“Right. Do that again. Then I want you to climb up to your bay and organize all the boxes of your paper. They look like shit, I want to be able to see every product from the floor.”

“Why?” I asked. “I’m the one who goes up there and gets the boxes. As long as I can read it, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“It is an issue. I want to be able to see it. I don’t care if you can see it or not, I need to be able to read them, okay?” She croaked.

“Right.” I said. The bay was a twenty foot high wooden shelf where we stored the giant boxes of toilet paper and paper towels. It was going to be hot up there, and I’d have to climb a rickety ladder of poor career choice to the top and rearrange the heavy bastards. I’d be sweating through the armpits of my nice work shirt in no time, so I loosened my tie right away.

“Then come see me when you’re done, I’ll have more for you. And I want it done fast, don’t pull any shit, you’re going to be very busy today.” She rumbled past me, knocking into my shoulder and knocking me back with out seeming to notice it. The door slammed as she walked out onto the sales floor.

I spat on the floor and quickly counted the safe, becoming an authority by default. I was on the brink, on the edge--a young man in his early twenties with a middle management job who still wandered the streets all night with a head full of lysergic acid until the sun came up. I was supposed to crack the whip around here, to put the company first and foremost--and got paid like I did. Hell, I might have even been rich compared to the people who I ran around with that owned nothing--anything was possible. But I was more interested in getting wasted and being wicked, getting girls to smile, getting laughs, and getting crazy enough to sing with everyone and anybody.

I still felt like a champion not like a middle management wet bag who fretted over the sales numbers for a small finger nail of a massive corporate body. And this made me feel old, and slightly nervous. The idea that I’d being doing all these retail things, all this nothing, for such a long time, made me want to scream in the faces of every customer who walked through the door that was so addicted to pharmaceuticals or so completely gone that they didn’t even realize that they had shit themselves until it brought them back to life. And it made me want to cut Krause and Knoxville into little pieces for trading in their lives for their paychecks, for so complacently accepting the deal with the devil, and seemingly loving every second of it.

But, it wasn’t all bad.

The high school girl who loved me was named Evelyn, but everyone called her Eva...

Regards, Esortnom