Carbon Copy�

2003-02-27

So. . . .

I applied for unemployment on Monday. And I can hardly tell you how relieved I was. On Sunday, about 7:30 pm my boss called me. "You know, when I came back from New York, you didn't tell me anything. You didn't talk to me about 'Crime Scene Steri-Clean'. I just don't think you're a good fit for our company." I said, "I agree." What I didn't say, was 'I didn't talk to them after the first day after you left. Your mother did all of the talking. And the kits we were supposed to make, well, your brother, two weeks out of jail, he didn't tell me that he didn't finish making the kits. He told you. I thought he finished after I told him you'd said that he should make them.

I asked to speak to you the next day if you called in. And you were angry because all the kits weren't finished. I didn't know they weren't finished. No one (your brother) told me they weren't finished. What was I to say? 'I'm sorry, your brother is an idiot. He didn't tell me he couldn't finish the job I gave him. He didn't tell me he wasn't even going to start that job until three hours after I told him his sister had asked me to tell him. And she blamed me.

I knew, ten days into this job, that it wasn't for me. It wasn't that the work wasn't for me. It wasn't that the demands were too stringent. I just couldn't live where there was no space for. . . humanity. No space to be anything other than a carbon copy of the boss. Smaller and less.

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