Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

5. Intra-Office Communication

Although the question of whether or not I have a "real" job still remains unanswered, and while I'm neither husband nor father, (so far as I know. And I'm pretty confident - I still see just about everyone I've ever dated around town on a regular basis), I manage to keep fairly pedestrian hours when it comes to my "going out" habits. I'll only go out to a show or for heavy drinking on a Friday or Saturday. The rest of the week, I'm off to bed at a reasonable hour. Maybe I'll catch a movie on Wednesdays, but I won't see anything after ten. Or I'll join my coworkers for the occasional happy hour, if somebody I can tolerate will be there.

I've got bowling on Mondays. And Spliff works overnights, Thursday through Sunday, as a security guard at the Republic Plaza, so sometimes he'll sneak me in and we'll hang out, drinking coffee and placing bets on the outcome of whatever battle happens to be going down in NY or L.A. Or we'll just play dominoes in the interim, on the days when justice has been restored. That goes late sometimes. And Gwen stays over a few nights a week, but we're usually asleep by 11. Midnight, tops.

But as a rule, my Sundays are off-limits. I come from a long line of office drones, so I have a genetic propensity toward spending the ass half of my weekend curled up into a ball, dreading the start of the new week.

This last Sunday, however, Spliff managed to talk me into going out to see this technofied rock 'n' roll drag performer at the Marquis. See, he maxed out a credit card last month, buying a radio station's worth of DJ gear, only to discover that overweight white guys aren't the entertainers of choice at the city's hip hop clubs, so he's getting into new music, to diversify his playlist a little.

Which is cool, I guess. I want to be supportive. And Gwen's roommate is gay, so I don't mind hanging out with the boys, as long as I'm with a date, and she has 2 well-documented "x" chromosomes. But watching Spliff in a sweaty glaze with his arms in the air, waving them like he just doesn't care, with his shirt open down to his fuzzy, ample belly... there's just not enough coffee in the world to face a Monday after that.

So, you can understand the state of mind I was in when I got this:

To: Vaig Call Center Operations

From: Vaig_corporatecomms.com

Subject: Alton Vaig, CEO

It has recently come to our attention that many of our valued customers have questions regarding the direction of the company, now that the dynamic and exciting Alton Vaig is back in charge of our team. There have been many inquiries about the exciting new products and services we have planned for third quarter this year. (read: "Will you be diversifying into killer robots and nuclear arms dealing?" - somebody actually asked me that this morning. - jw)

Mr. Vaig has expressly asked that we communicate to you how excited he is to focus all his time and energy into bringing new broadband products to the marketplace. (read: there isn't enough money in the world to buy Vaig Applied Sciences back from the U.S. Government)

We remind all our dedicated service agents that all media inquires about our operations be forwarded to the PR team (read: The Law Offices of Sturm and Drang, who will deal with any interlopers accordingly) Please don't attempt to answer these questions yourselves, no matter how familiar you think you may be with the information. (read: or you will risk having Alton Vaig himself suck the soul from your cold, dying lips.)

We appreciate your continued diligence as we move into an exciting new era here at Vaig Communications!

And don't forget! - we're still giving out Free Movie Passes to the agent who up sells the most Expanded Basic Cable customers to the Vaig Digi-Delux Package!

VCC-

"Intended Recipients", blah blah blah. "Confidentiality Notice", yada yada yada. Whatever.

Man, this blows. It's like with every passing year, they make it harder and harder for me to screw with the callers. They should be giving me movie tickets for every time I don't tell a customer "Sorry your Internet connection is so slow, but were currently uploading a reverse-engineered, extraterrestrial A.I. through our wireless network. Please reboot your hard drive and prepare to be assimilated. "

"Corporate Communications Editor". Shit, the only way I'd ever go for that job is if they gave me complete editorial control. Besides, do they really think that Vaig's background is some sort of negative for the world at large? In this age of the NSA and the CIA, I think it's clear that people don't have a problem with the big, evil empire (tm). You just don't tell them that "Big Brother is Watching"; you tell them "Big Brother is Watching Your Back", and they'll pay their dues no matter how hard it is to find Walker Texas Ranger reruns on-demand.

Yeah, it's a living.