Sometimes you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to write a column. What I have here are three stories that have nothing in common with each other except that they have something to do with me. Damn, ok scratch that, they have one thing in common, me. I'm going to stop writing the intro before I think of anything else that they might have in common, therefore ruining the theme of this column.


Locker Bomb

A long time ago I wrote a column about my old roommate Clay. It's not in the archives yet, but I will alert the media when it finally gets put back up. To sum it up as short as possible I did not like Clay and he wasn't entirely fond of me.

I decided that I needed to do everything in my power to keep the interaction between him and I to a minimum. One night when he wasn't drunk, well maybe he was a little bit but he was sober enough to have a conversation with, I opened up a new subject.

"Hey Clay, what's the worst thing that you have ever done to somebody?"

He gave me some silly story that wasn't really all that bad and it made me feel better that whatever I got into it could only get that bad. Then he fell into my trap and asked me what the worst thing I had ever done to someone was. Here is my made up story:

"When I lived in Tennessee I was a little off balance. I was seeing this girl and we broke up on kind of bad terms. She started dating this guy that I really hated and every time I saw him he had some snide comment for me. So eventually I had had enough and I snuck into the administrative office for the school and stole the master key for the locker locks. I broke into his locker after school one day and I planted a locker bomb in there. The next day I was a little ways down the hall when he came up and started to open his locker. Before he got the chance to actually open it it blew up in his face and the locker door flew off and pinned him against the wall. He had massive burning on his arms and face and he was in really bad shape. He was out of school for about a month and a half after that with them taking care of his burns and all. They never caught me but I have felt bad about it ever since." I think I deserve some sort of award for my performance because I strained my voice toward the end to make it sound like I was about to cry a little bit.

Clay just replied in a very small voice, "oh."

My plan did work though, he pretty much stayed out of the room as much as possible when I was there and he rarely said anything to me when we were both there at the same time. I kind of wonder if he still believes that story.


Sorority Girls

I probably couldn't be what you might call smart when I was in college. I did a few rather stupid things. While I was in college I had something against sororities and fraternities. So one day I took a trip up to "Flash: The University Store" which is basically a store where members of fraternities and sororities buy all of their clothes with greek lettering on it.

Without regard for the fact that I was the only non-member in this member's only store I walked up to the counter and asked, "How much would it be to get a shirt made that says 'Suck my Cock' but in greek lettering?"

The woman behind the counter looked dumbfounded, some of the couples in the store dropped what they were looking at and stared at me. I think one guy may have wet himself. It may have been me, but no one is quite sure yet.

Slowly, looking at me as if I might explode, the woman at the counter started putting the letters together in how they might look on a shirt. After several minutes of complete silence, the patrons of the store still staring at me, she tallied up her figures and told me that it would cost me 27 dollars for that shirt. I have to say that I was really impressed that she went ahead and put together the shirt.

I was a poor college student so it made me kind of upset that I didn't have the opportunity to get it, but one of these days I will revisit the University Store and buy that shirt, or get my ass kicked trying.


Stolen Car

Trevor, Kristen and I had been hanging out earlier that night and we were dropping Kristen off at home. Because of where the house was and the fact that I was too lazy to turn the car around we had to pull up to the wrong side of the road to let Kristen out of the car.

As we were pulling away after dropping her off a car pulled on to her street behind us and with a little effort Trevor found out that it was a police car. I decided to drive in my most well behaved manner and instead of u-turning at the end of the street I took the long way back to the main road. Much to my dismay the cop still followed us.

I turned out to the main road and the cop turned his lights on and was trying to get me to pull over. I had some stupid sense of empowerment after recently taking a defensive driving course and so I didn't pull over right away. When Trevor asked me what the hell I was doing I answered with, "Dude, I saw this thing where crooks posing at police officers would pull people over and rob or kill them. I am just gonna go up here another mile or so where there is some more light and then pull over so that we can see him."

"John you moron, pull over now."

I drove a little farther and then I saw the spotlight on the police car motioning me to pull over.

"John, I think that's proof enough, pull over."

Grudgingly I pulled the car over to the side of the road and waited for the officer to come up to the window. I honestly couldn't think of why he would be pulling me over. I hadn't gone over the speed limit, my registration was up to date. Who knew.

He came up to the car and asked for my license and insurance paperwork. We waited in suspense to find out if the government thought I was some hardened criminal with a warrant out for my arrest. He came back and told me that he pulled me over because I looked suspicious when I pulled out from the wrong side of the road just after he turned on to the street. Then he went on this long explanation on how his car was recently stolen and he didn't want it to happen to anyone else. For a second I thought he was going to comandeer my car and use it to replace his stolen one.

So basically I got pulled over because this guy was looking for the guy that stole his car. Vigilante justice, that's what it's all about. Long story short, he let us go and we drove home at 50 miles over the speed limit.

I was fresh out of college. People would pick me up and sniff me to smell the freshness. It was a bit creepy. So I was looking for a job because of my newfound not being in college and sent out a barrage of resumes.

I had several response interviews most of which kind of depressed me in one way or another. It's not that they weren't interested in me, it's that they were interested in me that was so depressing. Who really wants to sell industrial cleaning supplies for a living. I'm sure that there's probably good money in it, plus you probably never have to buy cleaning supplies for your house (everything might be a little TOO clean though) but I just can't imagine trying to sell that. Here's what I imagine:

"Hello Mr. Shankweilenhoffer, thanks for having this meeting with me. I couldn't help but notice how terribly filthy your offices were out front and how desparately they are in need of industrial cleaning supplies. And if you need industrial cleaning supplies, I'm your guy." (insert cheesy grin)

So at any rate I was fairly excited when I interviewed with a fairly interesting company selling software. I won't mention any names, I'll just refer to the owner as Forbes.

At my first interview Forbes kind of eyed me suspiciously and asked me about my lack of sales experience. I followed the rules of interviewing and told him that because of my lack of experience he could teach me to sell the way that he wanted his company to sell and not worry about me trying something different. Something like that, basically the rule says: make the interviewer feel like they are king.

That apparently worked because Forbes asked me back for a second interview where I made one of the biggest sales interview mistakes, telling him that I am flexible on money and that it wasn't a huge thing. Apparently managers for salespeople want money to be everything.

I was hired shortly after, regardless of my interview screw up and was given and office that was a training room. By that I mean that when my company had training classes I was kicked out of my office and sent into never never land.

So my job there was really supposed to be to go around to a variety of companies, many of which could not be imagined to be in business, the sleaziest business out there.

The job was ok, I wasn't really that into it, but then a couple of months later something happened that made it a little more interesting. Forbes hired a second sales representative that we will call Boots. We called him Boots because he was a former member of the A&M corps. That meant that he had these boots which I am assuming that the corps has some sort of homo-erotic fantasy about, because he guarded them like they were his lover. He actually brought the boots to work in a display case and set them on a table in his office.

At a Christmas party shortly after Forbes took the whole company plus spouses out to dinner. Somehow the subject came to driving and Forbes made an offhand comment that I was a crazy fast driver and that he liked it because it was usually the sign of a good salesman. Personally I think it might be the sign of a soon to be dead salesman, but at the time I didn't. I think that Boots may have overheard that and been vying for Forbes' affections because the next time I rode with him was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

Mind you, speed doesn't really scare me that bad. Wreckless driving isn't too bad, it bothers me when other people do it around me when I'm driving. What really scares the crap out of me is those two elements plus one more. The one more was the car that we were in. Boots drove a mid 90s Nissan Altima that was not meant for the kind of driving that he was putting it through. I was thoroughly concerned that the engine was going to explode and I was going to die a fiery death not of my own making. Yes, this was the nightmare of my life.

Several months later the entire company made a trip to New Orleans for a conference. I honestly don't remember much from the trip except the drinking. I drank way too much the first night we went out. I'm sure I did some stupid stuff, but this really isn't about me, is it? Some highlights from the trip were that Forbes, Boots and one of the engineers stayed up all night one night playing blackjack at Harrah's. Forbes and the engineer did pretty well. Boots had a debit card and proved that he knew how to use it. By the end of the night he was borrowing money from Forbes so that he could get his car out of the parking garage and asking me if I could buy him a sandwich for lunch.

I'm running out of space so I'm going to have to wrap this up and possibly write about it some more later, but here's the last thing that I wanted to tell you. This sums up exactly who Forbes was. After I had left he called in the sales reps and had a meeting with them. He was telling them about how their performance was a little lackluster and that he was not happy. Then it came time to give them some sort of inspiratinal message to rally them to be better sales schmucks. He surveyed the room and said, "Come on guys, when I worked for Pro-E I was a GOD!" I guess that's where my problem was, when I interviewed I acted like he was a king, not a god.

I'm sure that I will have more to write on this topic at a later date.