We Couldn't Take it Anymore

 

We Couldn’t Take it Anymore

We couldn’t take it anymore.  Get up, go to work, come home. Angry bosses, demanding clients, and long hours. Office work was the same old thing, over and over.  Sometimes I wondered why I did it.   My wife hated it too.  Something had to change. 

Tired of working for morons, we decided we’d start our own business and be self-employed.  The quickest way to get our own business was to purchase a franchise.  We chose the simplest type, a small restaurant in a famous nationwide chain.  It was a simple, plug-and-play system. At first, we were so proud to be independent that we didn’t mind the long hours.  Then we began getting late food deliveries, mistaken orders, broken equipment, and employee turnover.  The franchiser complained about our low profit margin, and customers gave us bad reviews.  We found ourselves back in the same old rut: angry bosses, demanding customers, and long hours.

We couldn’t take it anymore.  We sold our franchise and moved to the country.  We bought an old farm, planted corn, and raised chickens and cows.  We thought a quiet country life would be easy, but we had to work from dawn to dusk to get by.  The cows got worms, the eggs were small, and the corn got blight.  Buyers and suppliers complained incessantly.  Same old, same old.  We couldn’t take it anymore. 

The only way to avoid angry, impatient people was to find a business where people would leave us alone, so we bought a septic tank suction truck.  I drove to clients’ homes and my wife answered the phones.  Our clients were never home when I arrived because they couldn’t stand to watch, and no one called the office because they didn’t even want to talk about it.  We were like lepers.  We always had plenty of work because no one else wanted to do it.  We worked easy hours and never got a complaint.  People left us alone and paid whatever we asked.  For the first time in our lives, we didn’t mind taking people’s shit. 

Best Buy

 

Best Buy 

I walked into a Best Buy the size of Manhattan and asked the Maître De where I might find a new TV.  He pointed to the back of the store, way off in the distance.

            He said, “TVs are in the south quadrant.  Would you like to take our shuttle bus?”

I said, “I’ll walk.  It can’t be that far.”

 I got my 10,000 steps in before arriving at the wall of 100 screens.  All TVs were showing the same ultra-high-definition close-up of every pore on Jack Nickolson’s gigantic, hideous face.  That’s as good as it gets. 

I found a salesperson, who identified as an associate, and said, “I’d like to buy a TV.”

She rolled her eyes, looked up from her Instagram and said, “Whatever.”

She showed me a 45-inch Sony, a 55-inch Samsung, a 75-inch Vizio, an 85-inchToshiba, a 100-inch Musk, and a 200-inch Roku. 

I said “I’ll take the biggest TV you’ve got. The 200-incher.”

She said, “Give me your ID so I can run a background check and open an account.”

I said, “I don’t want an account, I just want a TV.”

She said, “And you’ll need a wall mount, a sound bar, and cables.”

I said, “A new TV doesn’t come with cables?”

She said, “And you’ll have to make an appointment with our Geeks to install it.”

I said, “Can’t I install it myself?”  She said, “That would void the warranty.”

I said, “I don’t want a warranty.”  She said, “You don’t have a choice.”

I said, “What does the warranty cover?”  She said, “Nothing.”

I said, “How soon can the Geeks install it?”  She said, “Whenever they feel like it.”

I said, “I need it before the Superbowl.”  She said, “What’s a Superbowl?"

            My new TV arrived ten minutes before kickoff, but it was too big to fit through the door.  I hadn’t done the math: 200 inches is almost 17 feet.  So the Geeks put my TV outside on the patio and I watched it through the bay window.  Rain started at halftime, causing all the plasma to pour out of the TV and flood the patio, so I went back to Best Buy to watch the game on their wall of 100 screens.  Dozens of other football fans, who also had leaky 200-inchers in their backyards, watched the game with me.      

            The day after the Superbowl I returned to Best Buy and asked if I could apply for a job as an associate.  I thought if I worked there, I could watch their TVs and cancel my Netflix, Prime, Apple, HBO, Paramount, Hulu, Tubi, ESPN, Paramount and Disney, which were costing half my salary.  She said, “Job applicants must get in line,” and pointed to a long line of guys with plasma stains on their shoes.