His boss might have been an Egyptian slave driver in a former life who watched and salivated, waiting for his slaves to take an unwarranted break or to show up late in the morning so that he could whip them into unconsciousness. Luckily, Gene’s boss wasn’t allowed to use brute force and violence in this century. Instead, his punishments were verbal reprimands full of condescension. Rarely did he close the door to his office while he made an example of an employee. Why waste an opportunity to indirectly threaten the other employees into quiet and productive submission? Gene was thinking all of this as he came quietly into the office like a man who wished he were invisible. Of course, since he was an unusually affable character in an office full of near-zombies in dress clothes, it was hard to avoid hearty hellos from secretaries and the loud stares from men and women in cubicles by which he passed on the way to his own who were eager to know who was late and whether the guilty one looked disheveled and ashamed or was smiling at himself about his quiet rebellion. Waving and nodding to coworkers who looked or glared his way, Gene predicted to himself that a note would be waiting for him on his keyboard.
Sure enough there was a note. It read:
‘If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, I’d like to see you in my office. I hope this doesn’t waste your precious time.’
--Gary
With an incredulous smirk on his face, Gene crumpled the note and tossed it in the trashcan. He turned on his computer monitor. Then he stood and headed toward whatever punishment awaited him in the office at the end of the hall.
As his boss spoke of Gene’s lack of enthusiasm and how it was adversely affecting his productivity, he remembered their first meeting at the initial interview. The bull of a man with a neck thick as a thigh and lined with ropy veins, who spoke as though he thought others were deaf, had told Gene: “You have a bright future with this company, and you can rise to the top with determination and a good attitude.” He’d also said that insurance was something everyone needed and it would be Gene’s job to convince people of that. With exaggerated gesticulations, he’d compared the company’s salesmen to angels whose mission here was to protect and educate humankind about the salvation afforded to them by the company’s policies. This man with his sweat stained armpits, fat belly, wrinkled shirt and necktie which seemed to cut off circulation, was obviously mentally deranged. But the salary would support Gene’s new little family and pay his big new bills. So he’d taken the job and never looked back. And now here he was again in the same chair in the same office with the same man, only this time the boss was telling him his act needed to improve dramatically or he’d lose his job.
“I should fire you right here right now but I won’t. I’m a Christian man and, well, you’ve got a family to feed. I can’t just throw you out on the street. So, I’m putting you on probation. Gene, are you listening?” His boss said with irritation at Gene‘s indifferent expression.
Gene hadn’t truly heard a word his boss had said. However, the words ‘fire you’ seemed to burn into his mind. When he heard his name he awoke from a dream in which he’d stood up and pulled down his pants and pissed all over his boss’s desk while his coworkers cheered him on from the doorway. Now he was back in reality, alone in the office with his frowning boss who demanded an answer to his question. So Gene gave one. “Not really, no. But I do apologize for being late today. You’ll see that it won’t happen again. I had to take my daughter to school this morning. That’s why I was late. She missed the school bus.”
His boss snorted derisively. “Your lack of punctuality must be hereditary. You’re teaching your child that it’s okay to be late, to keep people waiting, to walk through life like every day’s a Sunday afternoon. Damn shame, if you ask me.”
On his way to a picnic table on a little patch of grass which seemed to be sprouting cigarette butts, he passed an elderly woman who dropped her cigarette right in front of him and waddled away to the front door and slipped inside. Without really thinking, he bent down and picked up the smoking butt. He inhaled, coughed, threw it back down, and stamped the cigarette out.
He’d quit smoking years ago but every once in a while the craving returned. A stupid habit, he now mused, which I once used to excuse myself from dinner tables and as a way to get a moment alone.
He was determined now to catch up on some neglected work. Getting anything done inside with all those busy people typing and chatting on phones and whistling and smacking gum, all the usual office noises, was like trying to solve equations in a cage full of baboons. He couldn’t concentrate in there. He couldn’t sit still. Better to come outside with his files than to lose his mind and start smashing computer monitors and flinging feces.
The first file in the stack was thin. Easy to knock out. A standard recommendation for termination of a life insurance policy was the top page in the file. All it required was Gene’s signature and then it could be mailed to the policyholder for his records. Payments on the policy had stopped over five months ago. This termination’s almost one month overdue, he thought. How’d I get so behind?
Curiosity made him look deeper into the file rather just signing and sending it. The policyholder was Armando Garcia, age forty-three. Married father of four children. His health insurance policy was canceled last year. His curiosity satisfied, it was shock that made Gene continue reading now.
Mr. Garcia had terminal cancer and only four months to live. Because of staggering hospital bills, no doubt, the poor man had been unable to afford the two hundred dollar monthly life insurance premium and so his coverage had lapsed. Only four months from now he would die. His family would be left with nothing. Without a miracle the grieving family would be homeless before the year was done.
The saddest thing was this was happening all over the country. In such grand proportions, however, it was easier for the people in charge of the country to overlook the damage incurred by the rising costs of healthcare on real, hardworking Americans. Insurance companies would never be charitable organizations in a capitalist country. Politicians would never transform themselves into knights in shining armor if they cared about their careers. Insurance policies will never feed, clothe, or give shelter to the homeless or the indigent. Gene thought about all this and shook his head. America seemed to have all its priorities backward. Socialism could never work here without a complete overhaul of the economy and the government.
A woman in a black jogging suit, black hat and dark sunglasses stopped on the sidewalk to let her dog wander onto the grass. If she were in Washington, she might have been mistaken for a Secret Service agent guarding the President’s dog. She did not notice the man sitting on the picnic table nearby and pretended not to notice that her dog was squatting down and leaving a nice pile of excrement on the grass. If she didn’t see it, no doubt, it would not reflect badly upon her as a person if she left it there for someone else to clean up.
She was probably a politician, Gene thought. Or maybe she was in the upper echelon of an insurance company.
That dog was doing now to the grass what his company was doing to Mr. Garcia‘s life. Taking a s**t all over it. The dog, like the company, had no concern for the consequence of such an action. And it didn’t intend to stick around to find out the consequence. Or to help clean up the mess.
Gene looked back into the file and found a yellow post-it note, which his boss had signed, stuck to the recommendation for termination. It read: ‘Payout on the account is imminent. Extension must not be granted!’ He wondered if his boss would get a bonus or a promotion or anything at all for ruining the Garcia family. Over this case, however, his boss wielded no power. It was Gene’s file and Gene’s decision whether or not to grant an extension. His boss’s orders, in this case, were just a suggestion.
Gene looked behind his back at his office building as though making sure no giant eyes had appeared to watch over him. He tore the recommendation for termination into little pieces, but saved the blank half of the second page. He used it to scoop up the mess the dog had left behind. He folded the paper around the mess so that it was concealed. Then he made his way back inside.
Back at his desk, having disposed of the dog’s droppings in a creative way, Gene printed out an extension form with Mr. Garcia’s information filled into the blanks. He signed and dated the pages and put the forms into an envelope onto which he stuck a stamp. All Mr. Garcia would need to do was sign the forms and return them and his extension would be granted. By the time his suffering ended, there would be no way to cancel his policy. His family would get no consolation from the money; Gene had no illusions about that. At least they wouldn’t be homeless, too.
For the rest of the day Gene worked with tireless energy, reviewing files, signing and dating forms, stuffing and stamping envelopes, until the pile on his desk had dwindled to nothing. To display his renewed enthusiasm, he went and told his boss that every file was caught up and all was as it should be.
“Now I just need to go find something to eat. I skipped lunch and now I’m starving. Did you have a nice lunch today, Mr. Green?” He asked with a smile that would’ve been suspicious to anyone who’d watched from a window while he picked up the pile of dog mess and hurried inside.
“Fantastic. My wife sure knows how to cook chili. She usually doesn’t put so many kidney beans and chunks of meat in there, but today it was full of them. She must’ve used some new seasoning this time, I betcha. Whatever it was did the trick,” The fat man said as he leaned back in his chair and patted his belly.
“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” said Gene. “Maybe I could get the recipe from her and make it at home.”
“She’s kind of secretive about her cooking. She’s got old family recipes and secret ingredients. We’ll have to see.”
Gene knew all about secret ingredients. He had recipes of his own.
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