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


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove me out of
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more