Shots from the Hip: Sex, Drugs, and the Tao by Daniel Reid

Author:Daniel Reid [Reid, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lamplight Books
Published: 2020-02-22T15:00:00+00:00

Most of the members and board of directors at the ACC were unaware that I’d quit until after I left. When they asked, “Where’s Daniel?” when they wanted something done the way only I could do it, the staff just shrugged and said they didn’t know. Finally, a few weeks after I stopped coming to work, the board member who’d hired me away from the Taipei Hilton with the promise of promotion to the general manager’s job called me at home and invited me for lunch at a restaurant near the club. He wanted to know what happened to make me quit and asked me to speak frankly, which was easy because I wasn’t wearing a suit and tie.

I told him the plain and simple truth, starting with the Texan’s hand-slamming harangue in the boardroom and his withdrawal of my promised promotion to general manager, which triggered my abrupt resignation. I also told him about the lout’s boorish behavior and routine abuse of his position as president of the club, which members and staff alike had been complaining about since the day he took office but the board had turned a blind eye to, such as his standing order that the best table in the dining room be held in reserve for him on all special occasions like Christmas, Easter, and the weekly Movie Night, regardless of whether he showed up or not. The waitresses I assigned to work the men’s stag table in the boardroom at lunchtime grumbled a lot about getting their butts pinched when they served him, and the bartenders reported that he often walked off without signing the chits for his drinks but didn’t dare put it on his bill for fear of getting fired. And there was the matter of frequent pilfering of items from members’ lockers by his brat son while they were out swimming or playing tennis, which the staff got blamed for but were too cowed by the Texan’s temper to report as his son’s malfeasance.

The man who’d hired me was appalled when he heard all this, and he promised me a pay raise and immediate promotion to general manager if I agreed to come back to work. He sweetened his offer by promising to have the churlish Texan removed from his post as president and replaced by a more civilized board member. “We need you there, Dan,” he said. “The club’s not the same without you.”

But it was too late for that now. I’d tasted the sweet fruit of freedom, and I was hooked on it. Instead of waking before dawn to the bleat of an alarm then rushing off to work, rain or shine, the first sound I heard in the morning was birdsong, and rarely did I leave my house before noon. I’d declared my independence and liked it.

Thanking him for his generous offer, I politely declined and went home to do some gardening, while he went back to work at his office.

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