The Brand Ambassador
I’m sitting at the big table at the rear of the Office. Oblong table can seat 10 people if you crowd them in. I’m alone at this table while the Smelly Irish dude occupies the other oblong table. Reading his apple tablet. No Backgammon buddies around. He’s alone and I don’t smell him. We’re just sitting at our respective empty tables. Holding down the fort.
The smelly Irish dude.
I’m staring at the smelly Irish dude. He looks up, I look down, he looks down, I look up, etc…I’m thinking he bears a striking resemblance to the late actor Burgess Meredith. Well, that’s a point in his favor…
It’s 12:23 p.m.. Soon I’ll need to pack it up and head across the parking lot to the Safeway and begin my booze sample shift. This is the part of my new job I dislike the most. (Other than dealing with Booze Spongers.) I’m talking about the waiting. Waiting to go to work. And once you’re at work, waiting to get off. The work controls you’re entire day. You can’t even daydream about what you might do with your time. The work dictates your thinking. The Work owns you. Fuck it. You should quit and be done with it. But you can’t quit. You’re already a loser for working this job. If you quit you’re even a bigger loser because nobody likes a quitter. That’s worse than being a Communist.
It’s enough to drive a sane man to drink.
I’m already a booze sample dude.
It’s a small leap to a stone alcoholic booze sample dude.
I mean, say they fire me for drinking on the job? How pathetic is that? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. It follows the doom loop of my blog. The progression from failure to failure. Until I’m charging my phone at the secret outlet behind the Safeway shopping cart cage. Sleeping in the meter shack behind the Tibetan restaurant. Vomiting 7/11 hot dogs. Washing up at the dripping faucet where crows bask in the sun. Ultimately, the little men with cloven hoofs stab my prone corpse with pitch forks. Thank god my death pill arrived at the Traveler’s Mailbag. Now it’s just a matter of negotiating a pared down version of my soul like trading my laptop for a more powerful cell phone. This is where AI might provide guidance…
Tuesday afternoon
So I’m offering a Vodka Seltzer. That’s easy enough. Who wants to sample a Vodka Seltzer at 2:30 in the afternoon at your neighborhood Safeway store? I figure only depraved people drink this shit. So I’m good. I can just stand here and read my phone.
No luck…
This lady insists on a belt. This irritates the dude in the chevy t-shirt.
This kid is bugging me to get him a job. He loves Vodka Seltzer. Wants to be part of my organization. Turns out he works for Budweiser. What the hell…I forgot his name. Nice kid.
This woman is telling me a Vodka story. I’m trying to listen but it’s very hard to banish the image of the can of comet she’s clutching. I keep thinking she plans to mix it with her Vodka Seltzer. Why would I think that?
She’s back for seconds!
This Dude finds it necessary to explain his relationship with the dead billionaire and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. The recluse often advised him on investment opportunities.
“I’m a fast talker,” he says.
Later in the evening, aboard Scruffy
Did I tell you I get to keep the left-overs from each shift?
My stash is growing. Before long I’ll be awash in booze. Wine, Beer, Gin, Tequila, Whiskey, more Wine…oh, yeah, and Vodka Seltzer. I couldn’t bring myself to toss it. I’m no good at tossing stuff. Even awful shit like Vodka Seltzer…
Well, Time to pop the cork on the Rose. Have that with my Pork Buns.
Oh, by the way
I found out what I am. What I call myself. This nice lady informed me.
“How do you like being a Brand Ambassador for this company?” she asks.
“What was that?”
“I said how do you like working for this company?”
“No, no, no…you said something else. You called me something.”
“A Brand Ambassador. That’s what you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I am! I’m a Brand Ambassador!”
Now she’s looking at me like I’m a nut or something.
“Here,” I say. “have another taste!”
“No,” she says, moving off. “I don’t like it.”
Well, neither do I. But I don’t admit that to her.
After all, I’m a Brand Ambassador.
It’s important to know what you are.
Isn’t it?
3 thoughts on “The Brand Ambassador”
I liked this one! That’s one good thing about you and I We both are studiers of people. Life is never boring , you are in a position to chat people up but also wrap it up when they are boring.Kinda like speed dating without the dating. I will listen even to a boring story just for the sake of hearing one.Just as long as at the end I can walk away and never have to see or talk to that person ever again. I have heard some very interesting stories from alot of random people over the years but sometimes with even the most interesting stories you get a sense that this is the persons only story and they just are repeating the same story over and over . We all do it. I’m kinda sick of my story .
Congratulations,
You’re arrived in hell disguised as Safeway. Enjoy every degree of suffering in knowing you,like Ulysses, are in transit….in terms of destination, not genre or lack of one.
Cheers,
Fellow traveler heading toward the Styx
I’m trying to recall an old movie where souls are patched up and sent back to earth. Meanwhile they drift about in a celestial way station of pleasant distractions. This is my idea of Safeway. I wish I could remember that old movie.