THE SECRET OF MILTON'S SUCCESS

The situation in the office worsened significantly for Milton. The woman whom he had been hired as a temp to fill in for returned from maternity leave, and there was no word from his supervisor about whether or not they had any more use for him. It was a complicated situation. He had done so poorly at the woman's job that his supervisor had already moved Milton out of her desk weeks ago. So Milton heard about the woman's return while he was busy reorganizing the company files in a remote corner of the office. What did this mean for Milton, now that the woman he had at one time been temporarily hired to replace was back? There were still more files to reorganize, and no one had told him to stop working.

"Do you still need me, now that Martha is back?" Milton asked his supervisor one day, when they happened to cross paths in the halls. Martha was the name of the woman who had been on maternity leave.

His supervisor had been walking swiftly with his head down, and he appeared surprised to encounter Milton. "I don't know," he said with the polite stiffness that Milton was well used to. "It's not up to me. I'll have to talk with Mr. Engross."

That was as much of an answer as Milton received. He continued to show up for work until two weeks had passed without a paycheck manifesting. Then he called up the temp agency to let them know he was once again available. No one answered the phone.

In fact, there was no voice mail or any indication that the number he called was a number to a temp agency. Without anything to do, he went downtown to the temp agency to see what the problem was. He entered the building and took the elevator to the 14th floor as he had months ago when he first contacted the temp agency. The temp agency's name had been taken off the door and their former office was deserted.

What could Milton do? He went back to the office where he assumed he was probably no longer an employee, reasoning that maybe, if he used the right words and tried to be charming, his supervisor might be convinced to put him back on the payroll. As he walked into the office, he almost ran straight into Mr. Engross.

"You're late," he said grimly. "The file room won't file itself."

Milton was bewildered. He attempted to ask Mr. Engross about his pay, but stumbled over his words. Deciding the best course of action would be to get to work, and then wait until his supervisor showed up, Milton went back to his post and yanked open the day's first file. His job was to move all the files from one file cabinet to another. The company had recently lost a rather important client, and all of the files relating to that client had to be purged from the office's system. Consequently, all of the other files needed to be moved up by several cabinets, so as not to waste space. The first file Milton opened was the payroll file.

It said in big, black letters across the front: "PAYROLL." He flipped through it and found his name. There was a little note attached to the sheet of paper that had his identification numbers and his rate of pay, which read, "SUSPENDED." Milton frowned and felt a surge of frustration and anger. When were they intending to tell him that his pay had been suspended? After he finished cleaning up their files? In a silent rage, Milton ripped the "SUSPENDED" note off. Not satisfied by this, he scribbled out where it said his pay rate and wrote in $120 an hour.

The next few days he passed leisurely, waiting patiently for his transgression to be discovered. Feeling wronged by his superiors in the office, Milton had decided to leave the office badly. A week passed, then another, and then his paycheck arrived. It was for $9,000.

Milton agonized over the paycheck for another week before depositing it. He went to the bank and filled out the deposit slip, drenched in sweat. It was another week before he actually used any of the money. Nothing happened. He went back and checked the payroll file that he had altered. Someone had tossed out the copy of his payroll sheet that he had scribbled in his changes, and they had typed up a new copy with his altered pay rate of $120.

The "PERSONNEL" files were next to the "PAYROLL" files. He quickly found his and glanced through it. He was listed as "TEMP." Using the same ball point pen he had used on the "PAYROLL" file, Milton crossed out "TEMP" and wrote in "Supervisor." He then found his supervisor's file, drew a large "X" through all of the personal information, and wrote in big letters "TERMINATED."

Thus Milton took his first large step towards his amazingly successful career of bankrupting poorly managed corporate offices.

Origin of the Brown Bag Lunch Kid

James decided that for the month of December he take his lunch break at one of the cafes or restaurants around his office at least three days of the week. It was a short month of work, due to a week break around Christmas time. He worked for an insurance company that specialized in insuring churches, and in order to keep up appearances for their clients the office closed up around the holiday, and gave all the employees a week off. Business in the office the whole month long was preoccupied with a dreamlike disengagement. Few sales were made, most parishes caught up with Christmas preparation. Everyone in the office knew that, come the New Year, a rush of new clients would mean several months' worth of tedious new paperwork to fill out and file. All of this filled December with a strange, detached feeling. James didn't like it, and set out to preoccupy himself with lunch.

For the last several months he had gone to the same place for Vietnamese sandwiches every Monday and Wednesday, and Thursdays, if it was a hard week. Ostensibly, according to his budget, he was only supposed to eat lunch out once a week. But, come 11:30, he would passionately feel that he needed some sort of reward for enduring the hours of sitting still. After the first time he deviated from his budgetary instincts, his plan to save money for traveling was swiftly amended and then suspended until a later date. He loved Vietnamese sandwiches. He couldn't believe that he had lived so long without them. He would definitely make sure to visit Vietnam when he went traveling, he often thought as he slowly consumed his sandwich. Once he saved enough money, he would go straight to Vietnam and see if the country looked as indescribably good as the sandwiches that bared its name tasted. That was to say, once he could manage to stop buying all those sandwiches and put more money in savings, he would visit Vietnam. Often guiltily gorging himself with the fourth or fifth Vietnamese sandwich of the week, James would philosophize grimly over this paradox.

His co-workers teased him about the Vietnamese sandwiches during the height of his addiction. "You're going to burn out on Vietnamese sandwiches," people would warn him all the time. "Try the sushi," obnoxious Rob told him. But James didn't want sushi. Elsie, the ugly girl who worked across from him, became half-seriously concerned about him and would frequently use that concern as an excuse to invite him to lunch with her at the weirdo Bulgarian cafe. In his darker moments, James would find himself subjecting himself to a horrific anti-fantasy where he proposed to Elsie and took out a mortgage on a house. Her concern and her offer of Bulgarian food only served to strengthen James' love of Vietnamese sandwiches. He never wanted to eat anything else. Everything else tasted too dry, too bland. He would go to Vietnam and he would find a master sandwich maker, and he would train with him in the Himalayans, or whatever mythical mountain range went through Vietnam. It was his destiny.

Then it all came crashing down. He burned out in mid-November, and realized with a heart full of sorrow that he could never eat another Vietnamese sandwich. He hated them. A broken man, he went with Elsie to the Bulgarian place. He sat in morose silence while she daintily shoved an enormous mound of goulash down her throat. Repentant, he began to pack poorly-made tuna sandwiches each morning, which he consumed listlessly in the break room. Come December, he  regrouped his inquisitive spirit and his enthusiasm for exploration and set out to find a new and better lunch.

After several weeks he had bravely consumed German food, Tibetan cuisine, something advertised as Inuit stew, and many pounds of Ethiopian mush. He went to the taqueria around the corner from the office and had a burrito, and found that they made it without beans. How could you call it a burrito without beans? That was just a wrap. Frustration began to set in, quickly followed by fatigue. He got dizzy from the Chinese place, probably because of the MSG. He missed health food and began to buy organic at the grocery store. It was only December 9th and he wanted to give up. Rob suggested again that he try the sushi place.

Each day after lunch, James would discuss that day's excursion with Elsie. Gradually this daily update attracted wider attention, and it evolved into a large discussion on lunch possibilities. In this way, obnoxious Rob got involved. "If you just took my advice about the sushi place a month ago," he sleazed obnoxiously at James one day, "you wouldn't have burned out on Vietnamese sandwiches." As if he knew what was good for James. Rob was almost middle-aged, balding and utterly sleazy. The very next day, James went to the sushi place and found enough reasons to dislike the place. The decor was awful, for example. You could taste the mercury in the fish. The rice was too sticky. The wasbai was too green. Rob was scandalized when James reported back.

"You have no taste," he laughed stiffly. "You don't have mature taste for finer cuisine yet."

"So it's because I'm too young?" James asked angrily, trying to smile like it was no big deal. Rob and he exchanged a few more words before lapsing into enraged silence. The whole office lapsed into silence, for several days afterwards. Elsie asked James if everything was "okay at home," and she made a weird face when he laughed. On December 22nd, the day before Christmas break, his boss called James into his office and told him he was not going to be promoted.

James hadn't known  he was in the running for the promotion. His boss sighed and shook his head, while fiddling with the large gold cross that sat on display on his desk. "This lunch nonsense is too much, James. You've let it get in the way of your work and you're productivity has dramatically fallen. And that taqueria is the best in the City. Hands down," he said matter-of-factly.

And that is how James began his famous, near-fanatical adherence to the brown bag lunch.

"America Bang"

I had a dream that Fascists took over the world and put everyone who opposed them into a blender. It was horrible. It was a preview for a new movie, which came on T.V. in the dream. I was sitting there watching T.V. with Erin, which is unusual since I don't have a T.V. And then this preview came on. The movie was called "America Bang," or something similar. In it, the Fascists took over the world, or maybe just America, and they put everyone who opposed them into a giant blender. The Fascists would lead one group after another into the blender and made them stand there. The Fascists dressed like Blackwater soldiers. The people in the blender stood in the blender trying to look brave and calm, but then they would get all ground up.

After that terrible part of the dream, the rest of it was spent with me running around trying to decide if I was going to stand up to the Fascists and probably get ground up in a giant blender, or if I was going to submit to their rule. I was more than halfway convinced that soul-crushing submission was better than being blenderfied. Have you ever read about Victor Jara? He was a Chilean folk singer who was also a Socialist (Communist? I'm not sure). When a U.S.-backed military coup overthrew the popularly elected leader of Chile (a completely isolated event, of course), Jara was taken with a bunch of others to a stadium and tortured for three days. They either broke his hands or chopped them off, and then shot him. That kind of stuff happens all the time! What if it happens here in Oakland?

It may be evident at this point that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about Fascists. Whenever I do, the only way to make myself feel more confident is to decide to learn karate, or some other martial art. Maybe all the martial arts. I also consider moving to another part of the world, bobby-trapping my house with massive explosives or joining a Fascist organization undercover and then tricking them all into a blender before they can take over and puree me. All four of these solutions sound very plausible and helpful, and as I lay in bed last night thinking about the terrible dream, I decided to implement one of them as soon as possible. Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe I'll wait until next year, when I'll have more money and more free time. In any case, I'll figure everything out well before the Fascists take over the world, or possibly just America.