Ventura and Winnetka by J.G. Bryan

Author:J.G. Bryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Santa Monica Press

Chapter Six

The last semester of high school began, and I had a pretty easy load, finishing each day at noon. As planned, I started working for my dad at the beginning of February. He decided that it was a good time for me to get some experience in sales and marketing, so he put me in an office with two of his employees, Glen and Larry, where I would assist them with everything from sales projections to cold calls. What I probably enjoyed the most, though, was helping put together flyers and advertisements for the company; it was where I could best put my creativity to use.

Glen and Larry were real characters, and I learned a lot about working in an office from them. Glen was Larry’s boss, even though Larry was a good fifteen or twenty years older than Larry. Both of them were addicted to coffee and cigarettes; Glen drank a solid three pots of coffee a day just by himself, and they each smoked at least a pack a day. Larry had once been an air traffic controller but had quit because of the stress, not to mention the addiction to speed. “Every single one of those guys in those towers across the country is hyped up on something, I can guarantee you that,” Larry insisted. “How else are you supposed to stay that focused for that long? It can’t be done without some form of artificial stimulation.” He seemed to make a valid point, though I suspected he was still addicted to some sort of amphetamines based on his day-in and day-out high level of energy, which at times bordered on manic.

Larry kept a goalie’s hockey mask next to his desk and, without warning, he would yell, “Rubber band fight!” He’d then slip on the mask and begin firing rubber bands at me and Glen. We’d both dive beneath our desks, using them as barriers from Larry’s missiles while we armed ourselves with the abundant stash of rubber bands we all kept in our desk drawers. Trudy from accounting was always questioning why we ordered so many rubber bands every month on the office supply request form, and Glen would just tell her it was for a secret project we were working on for my dad, so secret that she wasn’t allowed to ask my dad anything about it.

It was amazing how much goofing off went on at the office. Sure, everyone worked hard and got their jobs done, but I found the inefficiency to be astounding. I would sit in meetings for an hour that consisted of a lot of shooting the shit, company gossip, and one of the blowhards from the executive offices giving us his opinion about something irrelevant to the subject at hand, followed by ten minutes of conversation about what we really needed to do.

Even though I didn’t start work until 1:00—and despite the fact that the office was way over in an industrial part of Van Nuys due to the

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