amphibi.us

Bob Willis, who was George’s boss, stuck his head over the cube wall.  “I
have a question,” he said. “It isn’t really work related.”  There was
nothing new about that. He moved a few steps over and came into George’s
cube.  He had a word written on a piece of paper: ETAGERE.  “You know about
all these sorts of things.  What’s an etagere?”

“Sort of a display shelf,” George replied. He cursed himself as soon as he
said it: the company provided a Webster’s to each of its employees. He might
have been able to think of a tactful way to get his boss to use it.
Instead, he’d reinforced this kind of thing one more time.  Bob was always
coming to him for friendly advice, which was another way of saying Bob
thought George was his friend and was a royal pain about it.

“It’s my wife’s lawyers again,” Bob said. “She wants it as part of the
property settlement.”

“Sounds like something you don’t want all that badly.”

“I guess not.” Bob wandered forlornly out of his cube.

Later that day, they drove together in Bob’s car to a meeting a few miles
away. They left early.  Bob decided to stop on the way at a tire store,
where he talked earnestly for half an hour with a salesman. It seemed he’d
carefully figured out the number of uphill left turns versus downhill right
turns he made on his daily commute, and they didn’t balance out. So he was
concerned that maybe he needed to have different tires on the two sides of
his car, and he wanted the salesman’s advice.

As George idly listened, it occurred to him that if Bob drove home by the
same route he went to work, all the uphill-downhill right and left turns
would cancel themselves out. There would be no need to have different tires
on each side of his car.  But that was typical of the way Bob would get
bogged down in details and never see a simple solution. And even if Bob
thought he really needed the tires, George reflected, he wouldn’t actually
buy them; he was too cheap, and that divorce, his second in a short time,
wasn’t far off.

They wanted so much more than your time.

© John Bruce, 2010

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