Everybody is expendable November 20, 1985

  

In business, everyone is expendable.

With Phil, this even means close relatives. From the first day, Phil had nothing good to say about Tommy.

While there is a lot of bad things I could say about Tommy, too, there are good things as well.

I heard about Tommy before I actually met him; so, I expected him to be an idiot when he turned out to be something short of a goof ball instead.

He was a fellow with a wicked sense of humor.

Slightly taller than me and with dark hair and a thick black beard, Tom was always looking around at the girls – even when his wife was around.

His sense of humor nearly cost him a passing grade as Dunkin Donuts University since he insisted on telling jokes – which, of course, aggravated Phil to no end.

Phil hoped I would be the responsible party. But I left two months after he took over the business – caught up in school, my uncle, and a general romantic delusion that I could not make my living as a writer. Ha!

So, Phil came to depend upon Tommy – as a driver for his soda delivery business as well as his baker.

But there was always this note of jealousy in Phil’s voice every time he talked about Tommy.

“Tommy’s at it again,” Phil would say in regard to Tommy’s perpetual womanizing. No woman in the whole mall was safe from Tommy’s pursuit.

Then, Tommy left – fired or quit – I could never get the story straight, although some called it “a pardon.”

But when Phil needed him again, Tommy came tumbling back – a rowdy son of a bitch, yes, who gave as much as he got – later hired as the manager for Phil’s Hackettstown store – and while at the Willowbrook store did Phil’s dirty work to sabotage the business during that brief time Phil sold it off to a new owner with the provision that if the new owner could not make the payments, Phil would take it back – and through Tommy, Phil did his best to make sure the new owner could not make the payments – getting staff to quit as well as other dirty tricks.

Tommy once told me about Jerry’s coming, and then denied that he said it when it all came true later.

When these dirty tricks ultimate caused the business to fail, Phil came back, buying out the new owners for a fraction of what he sold the business to them in the first place.

Then, when Rich came on as the new manager, he did his best to push Tommy out.

Rich seemed to think of himself as God, and Phil seemed to support all of his moves.

But then rumor is that Tommy and Phil came close to blows, and suddenly, we got a new manager, Rich, who not only inherited Tommy’s job, house and car, but his problems as well.

It won’t be long before the whole house of cards falls in on itself since the new manager inherits all the conditions the old manager had.

But instead of rolling up his sleeves the way Tommy did, Rich dictates, and it won’t be long before someone on the staff punches Rich out.

Meanwhile, Rich moves his own people in – such as John S, one of the many lizard-like characters Rich attracts.

Only the cold-blooded survive these days; the warm-hearted break; the hotheads get tossed out on their asses.

Rich pushes his people to make them push others – to become part of the inhuman money-making machine for Phil.

It doesn’t matter who gets hurt.

The more powerful Phil feels, the more ruthless he becomes.

He’s bent on building a corporation, using cold-blooded business practices.

Those who kiss his ass will survive. Those who do not leave – as I have.

 

 1985 Menu


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