Horse's Ass
Chapter Twelve
Mike stepped from the building at the end of what had certainly been the most unusual day in his life. The crisp fall air and sunshine were refreshing after the recent rain, and a day spent indoors under fluorescent lights. Dreading the drive home in his Yugo, Mike chanted a small mantra to Saint Frances of Rome, patron saint for safe travels, “No flat tires, no flat tires.” He then expanded his mantra to a less precise but more realistic incantation given the state of his soviet-bloc auto, “Please let me get home alive.”
He had the donut tire on the car with no spare in the trunk, and had been driving on it for a few weeks already. Slowly working his way out of debt, it’d still be a while before he’d be able to clear enough space off his credit cards to replace the tire. As he neared his car, Mike saw Rico and called out to him from across the lot. Mike was dying to tell someone about his day, and Rico was the only employee at the company who still talked to him after his involvement in the color wheel downsizing. Rico stopped and Mike began walking towards him. They met with Rico speaking first.
“Dude, what happened? I thought for sure you got canned.”
“No, promoted. It was long overdue. They gave me Alan’s job. I’m no longer a special guide. I’m either the CFO, or the Exalted Leader of Finance.” It occurred to Mike he had no idea what his title was.
“You took over for the little man? What’s up with that? I didn’t know you knew anything about Finance.”
“Well this is one of those types of jobs where you learn as you go. They gave me Alan’s old office, so I got an office now. They gave me Alan’s secretary, so I got a secretary now. I’m attending Doug’s staff meetings, which, based on a sample of one, wasn’t filled with the brilliant rhetoric I’d expected. I’m better suited to the CEO role. That’s my calling. With my executive mind fully engaged you’re going to want to hang on to your options. Up, up, up, that’s where the stock’s going.”
“Right, like I’m invested in the company. You get to use the executive elevator?”
“That wasn’t mentioned, so I’m assuming not. You raise a good point though. For the time being I’ll probably take the stairs. There is only one chair in it, and my promotion to CEO, at this point, is really a foregone conclusion. It’s only a matter of time.”
“You get to use the executive parking lot?”
“Seriously? Have you seen the car I’m driving?” Mike pointed at his broke-back ride. “It’s not in my best interest to flaunt my inability to secure a livable wage now that I’m in charge of the company’s finances, or whatever I do as CFO. I may be the first executive in the world who drives a twenty five year old Yugo by necessity. The car the show Car Talk deemed the worst of the millennium.”
“A millennium is one thousand years. That would make it the worst car ever made. That’s the car that blew off the Mackinac Bridge?”
“Correct. I’d like to point out the car was stopped at the time it was blown off the bridge, thereby magnifying the terror of driving it.”
“There’s an office pool going on how long you’re going to drive on the mini-spare. Sizable number thinks you’ll eventually end up with all four wheels as donut tires. I’m going to tell you straight up I didn’t even know they made car tires that small.” Rico pointed at the Yugo’s pint sized spare.
“That tire’s not really made for a car,” Mike confessed. “It’s a lawn mower tire. With the track record at hand, it’d be a fool’s move to bet against the possibility of four donut tires. However, a contrarian might consider whether the car has another two hundred miles left, and an opportunity to be fully donuted.”
“I’ll have to reconsider my wager. You feel like hitting Collings to celebrate?” Rico knew he was Mike’s only friend at work and offered the invitation for which Mike longed.
“Drink beers instead of racing home to watch TV in my parent’s basement? I’m using the word racing figuratively. “
“It’s safe to assume I puzzled that out. I’d also like to comment that your parents have some culpability. They created an incentive to hang around when they heated the basement and carpeted the cement floor.”
“I’d have been out of there years before with a cement floor and no heat.”
“No. You’d be sleeping on the living room couch.”
“Probably right. Anyway, beers at Collings would be great. I’ll meet you there.” Mike figured it would be an opportunity to get the insiders perspective on the legendary hatred between Cuddy and Mary. Mike considered Rico an expert on hate, given he recently completed the court ordered anger management class.
Because Rico had no aspiration to rise through the corporate ranks, and really didn’t give a shit who was herded into the conference room and fired, he was one of the few employees in corporate America absent the ubiquitous fantasy of: a.) quitting his job and telling his boss to fuck off; b.) quitting his job, telling his boss to fuck off, and making a ton of money; and, c.) quitting his job, telling his boss to fuck off, making a ton of money, and running into his boss while driving his new Porsche. Void of any corporate ambition, Rico wasn’t envious of Mike’s change in fortune and didn’t consider Mike’s promotion a measure of his worth in the world. Rico couldn’t care less if Mike was promoted. All Rico wanted was to write one great song before he died.
By the time Mike arrived Rico was already inside, seated in a booth, and headed into what looked like his second, or third, beer. Rico always sat with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out on the bench itself to make it easier to watch the girls walk by. Looking up, Rico told Mike that he thought he’d skipped out.
“No, no. In my over exuberant state I accelerated to almost forty miles an hour at which point the radio fell out of the dash. When I moved my hand from keeping the windshield in place to grab the radio, the windshield fell into the car and knocked the steering wheel off the column. It was stupid of me. Above thirty miles an hour the windshield has a history of crushing the driver.”
“The steering wheel came off?”
“Yeah. It’s happened before. I keep a pair of channel locks at the ready to grab onto the steering shaft and pull off to the shoulder.”
“So, how did you fix it?”
“Got lucky. Guy in a Gremlin and another guy in a Renault stopped helped me out. Words of wisdom from both were,’ Today you, tomorrow me.’ While I put the windshield back in, one guy took care of the radio, and the other guy reattached the steering wheel.”
“You did get lucky. That’s twice today.”
Mike slid into the open bench seat, and, like Rico, sat with his legs stretched out and parallel to the table. Mike ordered a pint of Guinness when the waitress dropped off Rico’s beer. Sitting sideways in the booths, both watched the waitresses walk to and fro.
“After my promotion I’m in a meeting with Mary and Cuddy, and the hate is so thick you could feel it in the air. Mary is subliminally given Cuddy the finger, and he’s playing with himself to piss her off.” As he spoke Mike fiddled with the salt shaker. He poured a small pile of salt on the table and balanced the shaker, diagonally, within the pile. He then blew the loose salt away to create an optical illusion. The shaker appeared to defy gravity and balance on its edge.
Rico laughed. “Man, you don’t know the back story? In the history of acrimonious relationships, I’m not aware of any as caustic as that between Cuddy and Mary. Lennon and Nixon got along better.”
“No. My job as special guide carried a price. No one really talks to me at work.”
The waitress dropped off Mike’s beer, and having overheard part of the conversation weighed in, “Poor baby.”
Rico raised his glass, “Cheers.”
Mike clinked the glasses together, “Cheers.”
“Well, sit back and let me tell you a tale of hate. Their hatred stems from a series of escalating events over the last few years. If you had to reduce it to its essence, Mary hate
s Cuddy because he’s fat, ugly and gross. Cuddy hates Mary because she’s a threat to his shot as CEO.”
Mike smiled, encouraging Rico to tell the tale. “So what were the escalating events?”
“Unlike your well deserved turn of fortune, Cuddy crawled his way from the bottom, stepping on everyone to get to the top. He, Doug, and Alan, weathered the hard times after the company first went public. It wasn’t that they turned the company around, it was success through attrition. They were unable to find other jobs. In dire straits, and with no one interested in running the company, the three stooges were promoted after their predecessors left for greener pastures. A couple weeks after Cuddy parks his fat ass on six, Mary randomly appears as the VP of Sales. Rumor has it that this was her daddy calling in a favor before he went to the big house. So they hit the top of the ladder at roughly the same time, albeit completely different paths. They are peers, everything is copacetic, and they are playing nice. At least it appeared that way. Then came, ‘the call’.
Back in the day, once a year, Mary had an all hands teleconference. Every employee was required to participate and the call ran for an hour. The Board, key shareholders, patients and the press all dialed in. The call was the consultant’s brainchild. It was intended to manage The Board and keep them off Doug’s back, but Mary owned it. It was her baby and she loved the attention. The objective of the call was the same year after year. The press gets a few kernels about our strategy and key initiatives, The Board understands what we do for a living, and the staff and patients feel they’ve had a say in their healthcare. If all went well, The Board left Doug alone for another twelve months. The call ended with the verbal equivalent of a group hug. Everyone thanked everyone, and all cheered at the money to be made. There were probably one thousand people on the call.”
Rico took a deep draw from his beer, and went on, “So, on the day of the call everyone dials in and Mary gives a read out of our promising future. She’s all peaches and cream, profusely thanking everyone that works here and the patients. Anyway, in the middle of the call Mary is droning on and on about a series of strategic programs we are planning to launch, blah, blah, blah. In the background, growing louder and moving to the forefront of the call, is someone taking a huge piss. It sounds like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Mary keeps raising her voice to compensate, but the piss gets even louder. It’s the world’s longest piss, and finally Mary gives up. You can hear the suds in the bowl, and then the flush. Dude the toilet flushing sounded like a jet engine. Everyone on the call is laughing and talking about how gross it was. Mary screams the call’s over; only she doesn’t hang up. She thinks she’s hung up, but she hasn’t. Then we hear her frantically dialing and cursing, and she inadvertently conferences Cuddy onto the teleconference.”
Rico played both Mary and Cuddy as he replayed the conversation.
“’Cuddy Macdonald speaking.’
‘You fucking twat.’
‘Don’t get butt hurt sister. It wasn’t me. That sounded like Doug.’
Cuddy was laughing uncontrollably in a high pitched squeal. From the sound, you could picture him holding his belly with one hand, the other bracing him on a table, bent at the waist. It was that crazy noise he makes that gets the cleaning crew crossing themselves.”
Mike nodded he understood, for he too had made the sign of the cross the first time he heard Cuddy’s squeal.
“From Mary’s perspective, Cuddy suggested the unthinkable. If Cuddy was correct, Doug would rather piss than listen. And if Doug was willing to piss in the middle of the most important hour on Mary’s calendar, then clearly she was number two, or maybe three, in line for his job. Mary’s so flustered she hangs up, but you can hear her mumble in an exorcist voice that she will be avenged. We were all pretty creeped out.
So now, Mary has lost face. She looks like an idiot in front of her boss, her boss’s boss, her staff, the patients, and the press. To rebound Mary starts hounding Doug to hold a corporate retreat. Mary believed that if everyone met her, they would immediately realize Cuddy was the problem. So, to keep peace, Doug agrees and lets Mary book a corporate retreat at one of the local forest preserves.
The retreat is the usual corporate bullshit: Catch me If I Fall, Everyone Over the Wall, and Teamwork Through Obstacles. The day ends with the Tube of Trust. The tube is a tunnel that runs about fifteen feet long with a diameter of a couple feet. It smells like hell and is kind of muddy on the bottom. Anyway, before anyone can go home, they need to pass through the Tube of Trust. So Mary picks this poor overweight manager from accounting to go first. The girl’s in tears. She knows she won’t fit but doesn’t see a way out. Mary’s barking into the megaphone, ‘Trust, trust, trust.’ With the girl kneeling to enter the tube, Mary announces Cuddy is next. Behind Cuddy she randomly assembles another half-dozen employees. Cuddy’s screwed. He can’t get out of it since Doug is right there, and if he doesn’t go he looks like a total puss. He’s so pissed you can see the veins busting out of his forehead.
So the manager gets on her belly and starts to crawl into the tube. As soon as her feet disappear, and mind you she’s probably a third of the way into the tube, they send in Cuddy. Well she gets stuck. I mean stuck. The company running the show thinks it’s a matter of trust, so as soon as Cuddy has his shoulders into the tube two of the company’s workers grab his feet and start pushing him forward. They are using him like a battering ram to clear the block. While all this is going on Mary’s still screaming, ‘Trust, trust, trust,’ pumping the air with her fists and marching in tight little circles in her blue business suit.
After about two minutes, Cuddy’s head is wedged against the manager’s junk. The poor girl can’t go forward, and she can’t go backward. She starts to panic, trapped in the dark tunnel, and shits herself and Cuddy’s head. So now the tube begins to emit an unbelievable toxic event, and you can hear the horror in Cuddy’s voice. He’s squealing like a stuck pig.
So Cuddy and the manager are wedged in the tube. Cuddy’s hands are at his side, so he can’t wipe his head or move himself backward. He truly is,” Rico paused for effect, “a pig in shit.
The idiots with the company realize they’re never going to clear the tube going forward, and reverse course. You can see the worry on their faces as they grab Cuddy by the ankles and start to pull him out. By now the entire company has gathered around.
Well, they finally free Cuddy from the tube. His glasses are broken, shirt ripped, and one of his shoes is off. He looks like a Dairy Cream ice cream cone dipped in chocolate. He is so pissed he is shaking. Probably the only thing that saved Mary’s life was Cuddy can’t see without his glasses. Then Doug starts to laugh. I mean belly laugh. Like this is the funniest thing he has ever seen. Behind the laughter you can still hear the hysterical screams of the manager stuck in the tube. I heard they had to dig the tube out of the ground and cut it in half with the Jaws of Life to get her out. I guess a lawsuit is pending. So now Cuddy is the most humiliated executive in the company, not Mary. All in, the retreat becomes a huge coup for Mary.
Cuddy doesn’t wait long before he strikes back. Mary is obsessed with looks. I am talking obsessed. Watch her. She gets twitchy and erratic if an unattractive person nears her, like it will rub off. When she sent that poor manager into the Tube it wasn’t that she wanted anybody to go before Cuddy, it was the girl was homely and fat and standing way too close to Mary. Cuddy realizes this, and in retaliation he leverages Human Resources, which reports into him.
With Human Resources under his direct control, Cuddy is tasked with filling Mary’s open positions. At the time we didn’t have all the sales people we do today. Mary’s furious, all she can do is specify the qualifications; education, work history, willingness to travel, that sort of thing. It’s against the law to specify race, religion, or what Mary really cares about, looks. So Cuddy embarks on a campaign to staff Mary’s organization with the ugl
iest people he can find. He was trying to fire the hottie, Sue. That should give you some insight into how far he is willing to go.”
Having listed to Rico’s tale without interrupting, Mike commented, “Dude, she is smoking. I was in a meeting once and she yawned. Every guy in the audience yawned with her, including Doug. He was at the podium.”
“Yhea, she’s about as hot as it gets. Anyway, Cuddy begins hiring the most repellant humans on the planet, the physical characteristics of whom make people involuntarily wince. Imagine every circus freak and carnie dressed in ill fitting polyester. There’s even a dude that can stick his finger in his nose and have it come out the hole where his eye used to be. He hired him for one of Mary’s key accounts.”
“Seriously, he can do that?” Mike asked.
“Yhea, it’s bizarre. But Cuddy’s not done yet, in fact, he’s building steam and he keeps hiring. Girls with skullets, you know that weird mullet thing where you’re bald on top. He hires those with noses like cucumbers, teeth the size of playing cards, six hundred pounders, and the asymmetrical. He’s got a lobster girl, bearded lady, missing link and wolf boy. It’s like Mary’s team fell from the ugly tree hitting every branch on the way down, only to land in the road and be run over by the ugly bus.
Mary is oblivious to what Cuddy’s doing because all she gets is the number of positions he’s filled, and in this age of political correctness no one says a word. Finally, the go live date hits and all these new hires show up in the lobby for their ID badges and transport to the hotel for orientation. That’s when Mary meets her team for the first time.
She walks into the lobby, where they are waiting, a couple minutes late. The place is packed, and you can see Mary holding back the vomit as they surround her. Most of them are too fat to fit in the cars Mary had lined up to drive them to the Marriott. Mary’s screaming like hell for utility vans and a flat bed truck.
Cuddy scored again, but unintentionally, when he inadvertently doubled her travel costs and its killing her budget. Each time they travel she has to buy two seats for most of them to fly, and pay the airline up-charge for the seat belt extender. So finally they get them all to the hotel and begin to settle in for orientation. As fate would have it, the Marriott is hosting the Preventing Lookisms Society at the same time the fuglies arrive.”
“The what?”
“The fuglies. Not just ugly, but fucking ugly.”
“No I know what fugly is. What’s the society?”
“The Preventing Lookisms Society? It’s a national, not for profit organization aimed at preventing discrimination, harassment and bias on looks. It also advances the cause of the ugly, and is a friend to ugly. Kind of like an NAACP for the unattractive. Most of the fast food chains, inventor of jeggings and the Segway are big contributors.”
“You know, you learn something new every day.”
“In an instant, Mary’s new hires and the Preventing Lookisms Society are thick as thieves. As fate would have it the Society is meeting to decide who should be the recipient of the annual Preventing Lookisms Award. The Society has a press conference scheduled for late that afternoon to announce the winner. G.O.D.’s new hires can’t say enough wonderful things about Mary.
The minute the Society sees Mary’s team they immediately rescind the award they planned to give all McDonalds franchise owners and unanimously vote for Mary. So the Society calls Doug, who’s out playing hoops and can’t be reached. The call gets routed to Cuddy who not only enthusiastically approves, but calls CNN and a half a dozen other news agencies to capture the event live.
While Mary is droning on during orientation about the corporate history, back to the audience in a state of denial regarding her team, the doors are thrown open and in comes the Preventing Lookisms Society and half a dozen national news organizations with flash bulbs popping. Starting with the evening news, and into the following morning’s papers ,there is Mary, sobbing in her Chanel suit, arms straight to her side, staring at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face as she is awarded the Preventing Lookisms Award. The Society assumed it was a lifetime of caring which has brought her to tears. Anyway, this pretty much waylaid Mary’s ‘Ralph Lauren-Hermes’ vision of specialty pharmacy. For a while Cuddy had the pictures enlarged and hanging in the lobby. The pictures came down after the modern art incident, but Cuddy still has a bunch in his office.”
“That explains that guy I always see with the head that looks like an eggplant.”
“The one who wears the mustard yellow overalls and train cap?”
“Yhea, that’s him.”
“That’s a girl,” Rico corrected. Cuddy’s mastery of the art couldn’t be denied.
Mike and Rico both ordered another beer, decided to settle in for a while, and picked up the dinner menus. Flipping front to back on the laminated menu Rico opted for the meatloaf sandwich.
Mike vacillated between the Reuben and the turkey burger, eventually deciding on the burger. His budget didn’t normally allow for the extravagance of a meal out, but with his promotion he decided to indulge himself.
Rico moved to the end of the tale, “At this point, it comes down to whether or not anyone can implement the cursed new computer system. I’m guessing with Alan’s death the IT project will probably get passed to Mary, and the CEO’s job will be hers to lose.”
“You’re right, Shap works for Mary now and Mary’s been assigned the godforsaken project. So what does Cuddy do?”
“Cuddy’s screwed. Mary won’t give him any IT support unless he concedes defeat and signs off on the new system. No doubt he’s scheming, but this Alan thing probably rattled him. Alan was unpredictable. He’d side with Mary on some things and Cuddy on others. But now that you’re in the mix I’m sure Cuddy and Mary are trying to figure out how to gain your allegiance. Doug is all about the path of least resistance, and he’ll side with whoever has two of three votes.”
It occurred to Mike that he was about to inherit Alan’s problems. At least those associated with G.O.D.’s bad debt and inability to get patients to pay their co-pays.
The waitress dropped off a large white plate with the meatloaf, and a red plastic basket with the burger. Mike was starving. He’d underestimated the nutritive power of crustless finger sandwiches and could feel the beers. As the waitress bent over she caught Mike trying to peek down her shirt. Rico kicked him under the table and quietly called him an asshole for getting caught.
With Mike rubbing his shin, Rico closed out the story, “So, Cuddy’s points include urinating during the all hands call, the fuglies debacle, and Mary’s Preventing Lookisms award. Mary’s scored with the Tube of Trust, now has the IT group moved under her control, and stands next in line for CEO. That is, if she can complete the system project.”
“So what’s next?” Mike asked anxiously.
“Who knows? Cuddy has been slowly trying to undermine the IT group, and Shap seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Cuddy’s not the brightest bulb in the drawer, but he knows what works. Rumor has it he’s somewhat responsible for Shap’s ongoing feud with the law.”
Rico reflected on the moral to his story. “You know why Cuddy and Mary have all this time and energy to wage war against each other? In their world they don’t know the competitors. As a result, they’ve begun to compete against each other for Doug’s job. Their competition isn’t about outperforming the other, which would be too difficult. It’s about undermining the other. They celebrate when the other fails. Only one seat at the top, and when one screws up the other’s odds go up a bit. On top of it all, neither one wants to work for the other, which would be demoralizing. My advice is to keep Cuddy close, but not too close. I’m also suggesting, quite arbitrarily I’ll concede, you decline any dinner invitation to Cuddy’s house, aka the Pig Farm. He’ll try and draw you in, but I’m telling you to ‘just say no’.” Warning Mike, Rico rubbed his stomach to quell its unrest at the painful memory.
Mike couldn’t leave the vague warning alone, “One reason, you gotta give me one reason to decline the invitation to dine at the Chateau du Cuddy.” Mike smiled, second time today he’d used his French.
“His wife can’t cook. She burns water.” Rico paused as he built up the courage to tell the tale. “She drove around with a whole chicken in the trunk of her car for a week before serving it. Everyone at the dinner was admitted to the hospital. I spent 3 days in the ICU. Learn from my mistake. Reason enough?”
Rico added in a few more details on the fateful meal and Mike agreed, “You’re a great person Rico. You may have saved my life.” Mike pushed his bottle forward and clanked Rico’s bottle noisily, “A votre sante’!”
“I didn’t know you spoke French.”
“I’m pretty fluent. Une autre bier?”
Rico agreed to one more beer, but was getting antsy. He wanted to figure out the bridge for a cheesy ballad he had been working on. With his glass empty, Rico shared a final thought as he rose to go, “Alan’s death will fuel the war as they battle to oust Doug.”
Mike contemplated Rico’s words as he nursed his beer. He wasn’t in any hurry to resume his drive home.