all the others. Suddenly the manager walked past, and his burning look could have toasted a man standing in his shoes.
Why the mean look? Gerald was on his lunch break. And he also had a notion that the Union Boss just maybe had a little man to man talk with him about the abominable situation. But unfortunately the situation got worse.
A little over two weeks had gone by without any further incidents, till one day as Gerald was driving the forklift from one building to another; the manager had stopped and was glaring at him the whole time Gerald was in his line of vision. Just the fact that the manager was staring at him really pissed Gerald off, but then staying calm, decided that he could stare as much as he pleased.
Then it really escalated later on in the day when Gerald was standing at the cashier and the lady was running his goods over the scanner. She came to the cigarettes (five packs, of which only two belonged to Gerald and the other three were for other family members and a neighbor), and just as she had finished running them over the scanner, some non-smoker made a snide comment from behind him in the waiting line. “All of that smoking is dangerous to ones health!” On a normal day when Gerald was in a good mood, he would not even give it a second thought, but he was still agitated from earlier on at work, and before he even started to turn around to meet his aggressor, he had already started to lay out the facts; “Then why don’t everyone quit and we double the income tax rate to make up for the lose of taxes!” He was already turned to face the others in the waiting line and seen the manager with a hateful ‘Garfield-Style’ grin on his face, and that was when Gerald recognized the voice. He still was going to let it go by, but the manager wasn’t finished yet. “I got a real good suggestion for you. Why don’t we simply fire all the smokers in the company and really save lots of money?” He asked as he smirked. “And why don’t you go to hell?” Gerald said as he turned once again towards the cashier. “What did you just say?” The manager asked. Gerald turned around and in a split second realized that from the distance between them, he more than likely didn’t hear it clearly, and said; “I said why don’t you go get help?” They both stared at each other as if in some kind of mental war, then the manager said; “I believe we need to talk further about this next week at work!” Gerald answered; “And I believe you should keep your nose out of my private affairs!” The manager was now getting a red face and said; “I’ll put my nose into your private affairs as much as I please!” That was the worst thing he could have said at the moment and somewhere deep down inside of Gerald, something clicked. With an overly friendly smile on his face and a feeling of calm superiority, Gerald answered; “Ditto!” He swiped his bank card over the TeleCash and went to his car to pack his stuff into the bags. After he was finished, he just sat there and listened to ZZ Top playing La Grange, smoking a cigarette, and watching the doors of the store. The manager came out, packed his stuff into the trunk of his Mercedes, and raced out of the parking lot. Gerald noticed that the manager was way too elite to utilize a normal parking space, but instead, he parked alongside the building so he can race off to where ever he lived. How ignorant can one be to park next to the building where the people have to then walk around his car to enter the store? “Well if the shoe fits then put it on!” Gerald said to Eminem, who was now rapping on about how shitty he thinks his life is.
Gerald had more than enough vacation days which he really didn’t need but had to use up, so he called his foreman and said that he needed the next week off to repair some water line that had burst at his house. And then he planned for his observation next week. With his mental plan in place he went to another store to buy drinks, cookies and chips. With that stored in a box on the back seat of his car, he went to the bank to withdraw some cold hard cash and then to the hardware store to purchase the things he would be needing to teach a lesson in humility.
After a whole week of observation, the back part of his car looked like some homeless man had lived in it for a month. Although the homeless don't usually have over thirty returnable bottles of Red Bull strewed all over the floorboard and back seat, the rest of the leftover wrappers and packages were a good sign that somebody was residing in the car instead of an apartment. He had at first written everything down but after three days he quit taking notes and instead, he stored the manager’s itinerary in his grey matter, which is the only safe place to keep secrets. Saturday evening he parked the car and had only wanted to lie on the couch in the living room to rest for a few minutes before he started to clean out the garbage dump which was behind the driver’s seat and now ebbing slowly forwards towards the front passenger seat. When he woke up the sun was already high in the sky, so he took his coffee out to the car and even though it was Sunday at eleven in the morning, he started to get the car into a civilized state before going to work on Monday. Yes, Monday is also one of the days that the Boss goes shopping before racing out of the parking lot, and Gerald was going to do the first hit tomorrow afternoon.
Monday
“Well, did you get your water pipes fixed?” His foreman asked bright and early on Monday at just a little past six o’clock. Gerald looked at him and then he remembered the lie to get the week off for vacation. “Yeah I did.” Gerald answered. “Well it must have been a pretty tough job because you look like the cat dragged you in!” The foreman said and laughed as he walked away. Gerald’s body was feeling shitty from lack of sleep the past week, but his mind and his plan were sharp, and he just couldn’t wait till for it to be quitting time.
He waited in the car and listened to the radio, but now the volume was turned down so that he could concentrate and also not draw any unwanted attention to himself. Those who looked at him had seen only a man who was checking the grocery list before entering the store. From his position he had a great view of the side of the store and still, was pretty much hidden from the stores windows because of the shopping cart stall with its plastic sides and roofing. There were some kids hanging around their parked bicycles at the bike rack that were passing around a big size bottle of cola and they were munching on some snacks one of them had bought. Boss man came roaring into the parking lot and as usual, parked in his 'Elite' parking spot next to the wall of the store. As he got out of the car, Gerald had to laugh at the paunch beer-gut that the Boss drags around with him, and then he really wondered how he got that huge belly behind the steering wheel of the Mercedes! At the very moment that he went into the stores automatic door, Gerald was already out of the car with both of his utensils in his vest pockets, and walked nonchalantly towards the Mercedes. As he started to pass the bike rack, the remaining kid yelled at the others who had left him behind. “Hey, won’t you all wait up for me?” Then he cursed the lock which he had so much problem opening; “You’re going in the damn trash can because I’ve had enough of this shit!” An idea hit Gerald at the same time as the kid got his lock finally opened, and he said; “I'll give you ten dollars for the lock, which is a pretty good deal since you were going to throw it away anyways!” The kid jumped at the deal and said; “Sure thing man! But seriously, it’s a piece of crap because even with the correct combination it's so hard to get it opened!” “That's no problem because it will go on the ladder to be chained to the apple tree, and a lock that’s hard to open is hard to find nowadays.” Gerald said and pushed the ten into the kids’ hand. The kid raced off to catch up to the others who were more than likely already in town by now, and Gerald made an itsy-bitsy change to his plans for today. After he was finished, he was back in the car after only four minutes! He started the car and moved to the rear entrance of the parking lot where he again parked to get a good view. He then sat back to watch the show which would unfold, and as he waited, he slowly rotated the spray can of WD-40 between his hands to calm the intense excitement of what was to come.
Big beer belly Boss man came out of the store, hurrying along faster than his normal waddle, and like lots of times Gerald had observed, was apparently arguing on his cell phone. When he got in, he started already to drive out of h
is space, talk on his cell phone, and attempting to buckle his seat belt, all at the same time. Then someone took just a little too long to maneuver into a parking spot and Boss man had to stop for a second and wait. His arrogance sounded loudly from the cars horn, and as soon as he could get by the other car, he shot forward towards the front entrance of the parking lot at full speed.
Gerald either imagined it or he actually heard it through his open window, for as Boss man raced out of the parking lot, the bike chain lock started to scrape paint and tear pieces off of the Mercedes’ fender! But of course that was to be expected, for Gerald had put the chain through the tires rim and laid the remainder of the chain on top of the tire, so it wouldn’t be seen immediately. Either Boss man had stomped on the brakes, or the chain had somehow gotten wrapped up on the brake saddle, or a combination of both, but when Boss man had brought the car to a stop, he had already hit one of the small trees decorating the entrance to the parking lot. The poor tree was leaning at a strange angle now as