96 Rocks. Ron Ph.D Hummer
His blue black hair was sticking out at right angles, testifying to the fact that he had repeatedly raked his hands through his hair throughout the morning.
“You always have a question,” Pearson responded. “That’s because you ask too many questions.”
“It’s about the vacation packages that are being given away over the air.”
“You’ve been here, about what, 7 months now?” Pearson ventured.
“Yes.”
“Yet you always have questions. When do the questions stop?”
“I’m just saying that I’ve heard that a lot of people have been complaining about the vacations.”
Pearson rolled his eyes, clenched his teeth together. “What kinds of complaints could people have about a free vacation that we’re giving away. And how do you know that there are any complaints?”
“Terri was telling me this.”
“Is there any reason why you’re talking to our receptionist about this instead of making calls and going out on meetings.”
“I just heard.”
“I don’t care what you heard,” Herman barked. “Terri is busy answering phones and I expect you to be busy doing your work. I’ll speak to her after this meeting to tell her she should not be discussing these things with you.”
“I didn’t mean to get her in trouble.”
“Well, I guess you just did,” Herman replied, biting his lower lip. “Maybe you should be more concerned about yourself and bring up your sales figures since they were down last month.”
“Maybe he should have a bigger territory,” Marge said, her voice full of sarcasm.
Herman knew that she was referring to the fact that Tim Harrelson had a larger territory now since John Carlton and Mary Spellman were fired.
“If you want, Marge, I can have Raymond work part of your territory.”
“I don’t think it’s fair that Tim should have a larger territory than the rest of us,” she replied, brushing back her dark hair from her forehead with the heel of her hand.”
“Not that I need to explain anything to you but I am considering hiring another person since I still have so many resumes to choose from. I can always look for 2 candidates if you don’t like it.”
Herman leaned back in his chair and noticed that there was silence in the room now. He could hear a pin drop. He told himself that he would have a talk with Marge later after the meeting to put her in her place.
“It’s not like any of you have been blazing any trails in increasing your sales,” Herman continued.
“The economy isn’t helping us either,” Lester Hammond replied, wiping perspiration from the back of his bald head with the palm of his hand.
“Oh, then maybe what I should do is fire everyone and hire you back after the economy improves,” Herman replied.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Lester said.
“Well, I’m not sure that is good enough.” Here his voice grew louder. “Maybe all of you should concentrate on making more calls and going out on more meetings. More client lunches to see if you can get more business. You saw what happened to Mary. If you’re not careful, the next job you’ll have is cleaning toilets. Is that clear enough?”
Everyone in the room shook their heads.
“Christ. Let’s have some pizza.” Herman stood up, opened the first box, saw that the pizza was covered in mushrooms. Gritting his teeth, he opened the second box, saw that was plain and half sausage. He shook his head, opened the third box, saw that it was plain. He slammed his fist on the table, then stormed out of the conference room and headed over to Joan’s desk.
“I just opened up 3 boxes of pizza and you know what I found,” he screamed.
“No,” she said nervously.
“No pizza with anchovies and pepperonis.”
“I told them over the phone to put that on one of the pies.”
“Show me your pad with the order I gave you,” Herman shouted.
Joan opened her pad, her hands shook. She showed him the page with the order.
“You read it to them exactly as you have it there,” he yelled.
“Yes, I did,” she replied, trying to hold back the tears in her eyes.
“Did you have them read it back to you.”
“Yes, I did.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
“Next time, have them read it back twice. No three times. Three times. Do you understand?” he screamed.
“I’ll call them…”
“Why,” Herman interrupted, “so they can take another half an hour to bring me the pizza that should have been here the first time.”
“I’m sorry,”
“Maybe you not concentrating on your work hard enough.”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” he mimicked. “That’s all I ever hear. I’m surrounded by incompetence.” He glared at her, his upper lip twisted. “You better get your act together fast or you’ll wind up cleaning toilets with everyone else in this company.”
She clenched her lips together, continuing to hold back her tears.
Herman turned and went back into the conference room.
Chapter 6
Joan Muller
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 2:25pm
If it wasn’t for the fact that I could do voiceovers for commercials after work and during lunch, Joan muttered, I would have walked away from that son of a bitch after the first month. She pressed her lips together, shaking her head. Arrogant rotten bastard.
She considered the idea of confronting him about his behavior, voted against it. The one time she did, his answer would be you stated in your resume that you did this kind of work before. Do the work right and I won’t have to yell at you.
Joan wiped a tear from her eye, staring at the advertisement for 96 Rocks. She hit the print button, walked over to the copy machine and saw that the page came out and black ink was all over the page.
She turned, went over to the closet, opened the door. She reached for the box which had the toner bottles inside, then closed the door.
“Joan,” Herman said over her shoulder, did you print out the ad yet?”
Joan looked at Herman, noticed that his brown hair receded and as a result of his refusal to wear a hat or a cap, the top of his head and forehead had black spots that were the size of dots and freckles. He was shorter than Joan, about 5-4, thin, a fact his gray suit and built up shoulders failed to conceal.
“The machine was out of toner. I’m getting the new one now.”
He watched her go over, opened the box. She took the gray bottle, looked at it against the machine.
“Well?” he said.
“I don’t know how to put the toner in the machine.”
“Jesus Christ. Can’t you do anything? I’ll get Ron.”
Go to hell, Joan thought. Herman was back with Ron. He walked over to the machine, rubbing his blonde mustache with his forefinger. “What’s the problem?”
“Not sure