Startup Beatdown, Chapter 9 -- Leaving Early

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 9 – Leaving Early

The rest of my week went like this: On Thursday, I tried my best just to get through the day, spending most of my time there staring at the little clock in the corner of my screen, wishing it were 6:00. Though, technically, I was supposed to work from 9:00 to 6:00 every day, leaving on time was often a crapshoot (and leaving early was an impossibility). Basically, it all came down to this – if Sean Etin made it in to his office before 6:00, I could count on staying at least an extra half hour (though it was not uncommon to stay an extra hour or two). If he didn’t arrive at 6:00, I could slink away. Sometimes, I heard the door that separates the home part of his house from the work area where we were situated slam open, the heavy, quick-paced sound of his footsteps, and his barking orders for those unfortunate to be in his sight to stay – while I quietly tip-toed down the spiral staircase and out of harm’s way. There was one time, in particular, when I heard him scream my name through the walls of his house as I was getting into my car (needless to say, I jumped in and gunned it out of there).
Other times, I was not so fortunate, with his entrance coinciding with my turning off my computer or putting on my coat. “Stick around. I’ll need to speak to you for a minute,” he’d say, brushing past me and getting back to the phone conversation on his bluetooth earpiece. “You too,” he’d tell whomever else he happened to bump into.
At times like these, I would follow him into the senior staff room and then wait with the other unfortunate souls, as Sean Etin continued with his phone conversation and stepped into his private office. And so, we’d wait, standing around like cattle in a pen. Sometimes we’d wait ten to fifteen minutes, listening to him bark about “destroying that piece of shit,” orchestrating some power play to deal with some troublesome board member, or tell an off-color joke. Usually, though, it would take much longer, and we’d all stand around, literally with nothing to do but grit our teeth and silently wish him harm.
Once his call had ended, he’d call one of us in – usually one of the senior staff members like Flo or Joel. The rest of us would continue to wait, leaning against the office desks and quietly chatting to ourselves. This would usually last another half an hour or so. Oftentimes, Flo or Joel would come out of the office after their meeting, look at their watches and say, “you guys can go,” as we hear Sean Etin back on the phone.
It might seem like a frustrating occurrence to stay an extra hour or so every couple of days without any overtime benefits and then leave without being told why you were asked to stay, but the alternative was much worse. Sometimes, Sean Etin was insistent on speaking to one of us and then the process would be much more arduous. For one thing, the waiting involved was about twice as long, as we had to wait in turn to meet with him, and these meetings were almost always sandwiched in between more phone calls. In these cases, I would usually be the last person called into his office, but finally, at 7:30, or 8:00, or 8:30, I would be beckoned and take a seat across from him, his cluttered desk thankfully keeping me out of arm’s reach. It was extremely rare for him to bring up the progress of a project I was working on, or asking me to do something that needed to be done that night. More often, he would call me in just to babble at me. I can’t tell how many times I’ve heard him say how “the wheels are spinning” or “the pendulum is swinging” and how “we’re about to exit the startup phase.” He would continue to spew his stream-of-consciousness platitudes until he receives his next call, at which point he’d say, “I have to take this. You got everything I said, right?”
“Yes,” I’d lie, briskly stepping out of his office and heading home before the call ends and he calls me back in. It was once in the blue moon where I was asked to stay late for the purpose of doing actual work that could not wait until morning.
Occasionally, Sean Etin would also call impromptu staff-wide meetings. This was the case on Thursday evening. At 5:58, as I was packing up to go, Sean Etin lumbers in and tells everyone to meet him in the senior staff room. So, we all gathered together as Sean Etin began, the senior staffers sitting at their desks while the rest of us (consisting of myself, my three buddies in the creative department and the omega wolf, Hempstead) stood.
“I called you all in because I have some big news,” Sean Etin began. I briefly wondered if this was related to some of the things we had discussed on the day I was locked in his car (was it only two days ago?), or if he had heard about my “power play” the day before. These thoughts were only made in passing, as I stopped caring. I just wanted to leave. “The pendulum is swinging and we’re about to exit the startup phase.” I felt stupid for wondering what the meeting was about, as I should have known. It wasn’t about anything.
Sean Etin continued to ramble, hitting on a wide range of topics, such as his upcoming trial with a certain large internet corporation, his previous battles in court, playful (and uncomfortable) jabs at his sister, Rita, and how much money we were all going to make – but he elucidated us with no new information.
When I got to know Flo a little better, she told me about a game she and a former employee used to play at meetings like these. As Sean Etin conducted the meeting, they would take a piece of paper and start drawing circles. Every time Sean wandered onto a new topic, they would create a new circle, but they were not allowed to complete a circle until he came to a definite conclusion to a topic. If he meandered on any topic for an extended period of time without getting to a point, they would draw a spiral. At the end of the meeting, they would count how many spirals and incomplete circles they had and compare them to the number of spirals and incomplete circles from previous meetings. It sounded like a good game, but I never played it. The symbols seemed too sobering a metaphor to play with.
Back to the meeting, Sean Etin would continue his oration, spewing words that seemed designed with the sole purpose of killing time. I imagined tiny, microscopic letters – assorted ‘g’s and ‘k’s and ‘e’s – coming out of his mouth and attaching themselves to the hands of a clock, destroying it like a virus destroys a healthy cell. He spoke for nearly two hours, only stopping when his cell phone rang. “I have to take this,” he’d say every time the phone would ring. “Nobody go anywhere.” Still standing and having not moved from the spot where I stood when the meeting began, I was now swaying in place, relieving pressure on one foot and then the other. While I only gave my watch discreet, furtive glances during the first hour, I was unashamedly staring at it for the second, thinking “end now, end now, end now . . .” for every second that ticked away. Towards the end of the meeting, Sean Etin got to what I could only assume was the point of calling us together, talking about stock options and how there was only a limited time for us to invest at the ‘startup price’ of something like $30 a share. I didn’t really understand much of it, other than the fact that he was asking us to pour money into a company that we saw was failing on a firsthand basis everyday, and which I personally wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to succeed. I stored this information under ‘crap I’ll never need to know’ when Rita began pushing Sean to wrap it up. He thankfully did, with the only bit of information that was worth anything to me – he announced that the next day, Friday, we would only have to come in to work for a half the day.
To me, having gone through the week I went through, this was perhaps the sweetest words I could hear, besides perhaps, “Joel and I have contracted a rare form of anal warts that cause us extreme discomfort and will keep us from coming in to work for the next year or so. Here is a big pile of money for all of you.”
So, I left work relieved at the prospect of not having to be there for a full day tomorrow. I called up my friend and arranged to go to Best Buy with him in the early afternoon. There were some good sales and I thought I deserved to treat myself to some DVDs from the money I earned from work, which I was not really spending.
Even with the news that I would only have to suffer through five hours of work instead of nine, I still didn’t feel like interacting with anyone. I didn’t speak to my parents since the night after I got locked in Sean Etin’s car, even though we were living in the same house. I felt combustible. Unstable. On edge. The idea of the half-day relieved some of the anger I felt, but I didn’t know how much. For the last two nights, I went straight to my room, without speaking to my parents, without checking my email and without having dinner. I would lock the door and watch the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies. That night, I watched all three and a half hours of The Two Towers and went to sleep.

The next day, I went in to work and once again watched the little clock on my screen, waiting for 2:00 to come. At around midday, Sean Etin made a rare pre-6:00 appearance, but only to get something from his office and announce he had to leave somewhere. “Great,” I thought. With Sean Etin gone, I could leave early on time.
As 2:00 approached, and I began packing up, a call came through. “SeaShel Productions, this is Danny,” I said, as one of my many unofficial job functions was as the office receptionist.
“Put Flo on the phone.”
My heart sank. It was Sean. I transferred the call.
A few moments later, Flo came into the hallway and announced, “nobody leave until Sean gets back.”
“When is he getting back?” I asked.
“He said very soon.”
As 2:00 hit and I found myself trapped in my seat, a sudden wave of anger washed over me. I was more angry than when I was stuck in his car for five hours. I was more angry than when I was “put in my place” by the senior staff. I was more angry than when I stood for the two hours after work and listen to Sean Etin prattle on about nothing. I had looked at leaving early as a karmic reward for the horrible week I had, and for every minute of freedom that was denied to me, I increased in vitriol.
An hour had passed and I had to call my friend and tell him that our trip to Best Buy was cancelled. “I’m stuck at work,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else. I felt like screaming. I hung up and stared daggers at the little clock.
Usually, in the call of office-related injustice, my first inclination would be to join my three friends in the back room (or, if it were lunchtime, the basketball courts where we usually played quick pickup games) and bitch about it. The bitching would turn into joking and I would feel better. I couldn’t do it this time. I was afraid, once I started complaining, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I felt that if I tried to release some of my anger, it would all come out in a maelstrom of unbridled rage.
At 4:00, I found myself unconsciously clenching and unclenching my fists and toes. By 5:00, I was surprised to find that I was breathing much heavier than normal. I don’t know what it was. Surely, not being able to leave early wasn’t nearly as heinous an injustice as anything else I had to go through that week (or, really, any week), but somehow, this bothered me more than anything else I had to go through up until that point. Maybe it was a buildup to everything I went through. Maybe I hated my job so much that being denied leaving at the only time it seemed like a sure thing put me over the edge. Maybe it was that this seemed to be an outright lie as opposed to the duplicitous equivocation I was used to.
Perry came to my desk.
“Hey, man.”
“I am so angry. I am so goddamned angry,” I mumbled to him as quietly as I could. “He lied to us. He lied.”
Perry looked at me incredulously. “Are you really surprised? Did you really think we were going to leave early?”
“I did.” I don’t know why I did, but I did.
“I never believed it for a second. He’s promised us half days before and never once delivered. In fact, he once said that every Friday would be a half-day. I really can’t believe you believed him.”
I couldn’t really either. I felt even angrier.
Perry left and I went back to clenching, staring and breathing heavily.
At 6:05, Sean Etin came charging into the hallway.
“Nobody go anywhere,” he said, as he rushed by us to his office. I stayed in my seat and turned off my computer. There was no doubt – we were staying for no reason. I sat there and waited.
Twenty minutes later, Flo stepped into the hallway. “All right,” she said. “You guys can go . . .”

At home, I went straight to my room, locked the door and put in “Return of the King.” Some time later, my mom, who had not seen me in days, knocked on my door. “Danny, can I come in?”
“No.”
“Danny, what’s wrong?”
“Leave me the hell alone!” The second it came out, I regretted it. I ran to the door, unlocked it and apologized. I told her about the rest of the week. My mom listened and said, “You need to quit this job.” My dad, who came in as I was telling the story, put in his opinion. “Don’t you dare quit until you have another job lined up. You can’t just sit around and do nothing. Don’t be stupid about this.”
I recognized the sense my dad made. I had already gone through long periods of unemployment, and that wasn’t very fun either. Besides, my health and dental insurance kicked in in a matter of days. (I actually wondered if I was treated so badly this week because they wanted me to quit before my benefits kicked in…) I was determined to stay, at least until I took advantage of my insurance, but I needed to find a release to my frustration or I would go crazy. I didn’t want to yell at my mom again for no reason, or do worse (I later found out that this was a comparably light reaction as compared to what a former employee in a similar job situation did . . .). At any rate, I knew that I had to find a way to make my job more bearable. I had already stopped caring about the work done there. Now I needed to find the time I spent there tolerable, which was difficult, since the only thing I learned to look forward to was leaving . . .

On Saturday, I called up my friend and we ended up going to Best Buy. As opposed to the $20-$30 I was planning on spending, I ended up spending over $200 on DVDs. I felt a little better. It didn’t solve my problem of what to do at work, but it at least gave me something to do when I got home . . .

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 8: Riding With the Devil, Part 2

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 8 – Riding With the Devil Part 2

In a way, the drive back from DC was worse than the ride there and the five hours I spent boiling in his car. This wasn’t because something horrible happened on the way back. No. The ride back was worse because it gave me hope, which at SeaShel Productions, was much worse for my long-term well-being than merely being yelled at, or fearing for my life while Sean Etin recklessly bruised his way down the road. Even being stuck in the man’s car, not being allowed to use his air conditioner in near deadly heat for five hours had no long-term detrimental effects (hopefully . . .). No, the great carcinogen in an environment where misery is reality and all good things are will-o’-the-wisps, is hope that things will improve.
Of course, when Sean Etin first came back to the car, I was still burning with rage and absorbed heat, having just minutes before learned that what I thought was an important business meeting that kept me locked in his car for five hours ended up being a dentist’s appointment. For some reason, one which I still can’t fully explain, I was willing to “take one for the team” (even though I hated the team I was on . . .)if it meant something positive for the company, but the fact that Sean Etin was wasting my time and putting me in bodily harm for his personal business filled me with palpable anger, which I could taste in the back of my mouth and caused my vision to blur. (The anger I felt when I was forced to perform these personal tasks comes into play in later stories to a much larger degree . . . so look forward to that . . .).
“Well, that was hell,” Sean Etin said, getting into the car and turning on the ignition. “They pumped me full of pain killers, but I think I’m good to drive.” I was happy to hear him say that, as I did not want to do anything for this man and honestly did not trust myself to hold his life in my hands by driving him home. I didn’t respond. He peeled out of his illegally parked spot and began driving out of DC. As opposed to the ride there, and all the other times I was a passenger in his car, I didn’t fear for my life. The sun had fried my brain and my anger supplanted my survival instincts. I was no longer clutching the upholstery of the passenger seat, or darting my eyes back and forth for signs of oncoming collisions. It just didn’t matter. All that mattered was rage.
I think that Sean Etin sensed my anger, because after a few minutes of driving in silence, he said to me, “the reason why I had you come with me today was so I could talk to you.”
“You fucking liar. The reason why you brought me here is so I could wait in your car of your illegally parked spot, you selfish pig,” I thought to myself. “Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. I want to know what you think we could be doing to make this company more productive. Things just aren’t getting done and time is fast approaching when we’ll be making the move from being a startup to a real corporation. You’re my only employee with actual experience in children’s cartoons with your work at Sunbow. What do you think we need to change around here?”
I was shocked. In all the photocopying, driving his children, moving boxes around, caring for the company chameleon and all of the other piddling tasks that took up my days at SeaShel, I thought he had forgotten that I had actual experience in the field of his business, and that everyone else that worked there didn’t. I was beginning to forget myself . . .
“I, uhh . . . there are a number of things that I think can make the company more productive.” I thought back to my time at Sunbow Entertainment. Things weren’t perfect there, but things were so much less chaotic. I told him about the bi-weekly development meetings and the general accountability that people had for each project. I told him how they utilized interns and diversified their creative slate by constantly scouting for new projects.
As Sean pulled over for gas, he said to me, “You know, the things you’ve been saying are dead on. I’ve been telling Flo to get us some interns for over a year. I have no idea why she hasn’t gotten on it. But look – if you’re willing to take the bull by the horns, you can spearhead all of the initiatives you mentioned.
“Okay. That sounds good,” I said, actually meaning it. The prospect of doing real work excited me. Seeds of hope, long since buried and seemingly asphyxiated in the untillable soil that was my job, began to sprout, seeking out the surface for sunlight, water and air. I felt that the worst of my job was over – that the five hours baking in his car turned me to dust and from the ashes, I was reborn with a fresh start. I felt energized and, for the first time since I began working at SeaShel, was excited about coming in the next day.
When we returned to his house and I got into my car to go home, I found that I was no longer angry about my tortuous day (in fact, I was already finding it kind of funny). I didn’t mind the fact that we had returned over an hour after work was supposed to end (which really just meant that the rest of my co-workers got to leave on time, since if he were actually at the office at six o’clock, there was a good chance he would have us all stay late anyway) and I didn’t mind that Sean skimped out on treating me to lunch like he had promised. I didn’t even choke my usual mixture of revulsion and amusement when Sean told me about his ‘other’ idea (‘idea’ should probably be in quotes too . . .) for a show – an animated series of Romeo and Juliet, but with the Montagues as dogs and the Capulets as cats (or, as I believe he called them ‘Catulets’) – which ranks, now that I can think more clearly, as the worst show idea I’ve ever heard in my life. I was just excited to implement the plans we had talked about.
***
The next day, I found that my excitement had not abated. I came in to work and immediately wrote two emails. The first one was to Flo, stating that I wanted to meet with her regarding the possibility of getting interns through the local colleges. The second email was addressed to Joel and regarded the implementation of creative meetings. I knew there was a chance that Joel, whose draconian mind was convinced I was after his job, could interpret this email as overstepping my bounds, so I was very careful in what I wrote. I constructed it as submissively as I could, and tried to make two points crystal clear – that he would be in charge of the meetings and that the request for these meetings came directly from Sean Etin.
Finishing my emails, I next went about mapping the planned creative meetings. I thought of the different subjects we could go over during the meetings. The only actual creative property SeaShel ever seemed to work on was the atrocious Googles From Goop, but there were a lot of different projects in the works milking this horror of an idea. In the time I had worked there, I heard many, many projects mentioned in passing – a new music album, a cartoon show, a live-action show, a live show (possibly on ice), a web-only show, an interactive children’s website, video games, children’s books, novellas and, of course, the assorted merchandise and advertisement tie-ins (who wouldn’t want Googles American cheese?) Joel was in charge of overseeing all of these projects, and I knew the progressions of none of them. I wrote these projects down as a list, making room under each topic for writing notes. The idea for creative meetings would be very simple. The creative staff would get together for fifteen minutes or so, every two weeks, and we’d simply go down the list, marking the progress of each project. I also made space for new projects, hoping that someone would pitch an idea that would steer us away from the Googles and on to a project that doesn’t make me imagine toddlers burning their TVs in protest. I would even settle for astoundingly bad, but hilariously entertaining show ideas. I imagined Sean Etin pitching his Romeo-and-Juliet-as-cats-and-dogs idea and the rest of us trying, for the sake of our jobs, not to burst out laughing. I imagined, after meetings like this, having a second meeting, this time just my friends at work, on the basketball court during our lunch hour, making fun of the bad ideas of our employers. “If you liked my Romeo and Juliet idea, you’ll love this!” I imagined one of us saying, imitating Sean Etin. “It’s an episodic show about the Titanic, only – get this – with dolphins instead of people!”
A flashing icon on my computer snapped me out of my (kind of lame) daydream. I had a new email. I was half-expecting this. A letter from Joel, stating I had no authority to organize a meeting like this – that my experiences at Sunbow means nothing here and that, in between the lines, there was no way I was going to take his job or tell him how to do it. “Try to stop me, asshole,” I thought to myself as I clicked open my email program. The devil himself (Sean) was behind me, and Joel, for all his slimy, bullying, conniving ways, did not want to tangle with a more powerful, smarter and more underhanded version of himself.
The email wasn’t from Joel, though. It was from Flo. I opened the email. Like all of her emails (and, really, everything she did in the office), this letter was professional and to the point. The content, however, surprised me. It read:
“Danny – You do not ask to have a meeting with me. You request it. I am a senior level employee and certain protocols must be adhered to. Please keep this in mind for future reference. – Flo.”
In thinking about my plans on changing the company and the best way to deal with Joel, I did not give any consideration to Flo. I checked the email I sent to her and, sure enough, I didn’t request a meeting. I worded it as “I’d like to meet with you about . . .” Flo was the one member of the senior staff that I did not want to disappoint. As opposed to Sean and Joel, she didn’t delegate by intimidation and bluster. She was professional. I didn’t know whether or not she liked me as a person (I heard rumors that she was one of the people most put off by my student films (see Chapter 2)), but she always treated me with respect. Over half of the work that came my way was under her jurisdiction, and I would have wished her to by my sole boss if not for the fact that her tasks were always clerical, always mind-numbingly boring and not at all related to my interests or skill sets. Plus, if there was a way to be bad at photocopying or collating, I somehow managed to find it . . .
Flo was an interesting lady. She was a Southern Dame. A lady of the land. She rode horses and went on a vacation to small towns in Canada to take in various rodeos. She spoke in a heavy Southern twang, and had a propensity for saying colorful colloquialisms like “this is stickier than fly paper in a glue factory” (that was one I made up. Hers were better . . .). It shocked me when I later found out she grew up mere miles from where I did, because even though Maryland is technically below the Mason-Dixon line, I didn’t know a single person who spoke with a Southern accent or considered themselves to be a Southerner. She was petite and in shape for a lady of about fifty, with cropped brown hair and beady, squinty eyes. Though she never complained, there was an air of frantic stress about her, but because she was always so professional, she would never say what was bothering her – which I always assumed, due to the nature of her job as Office Manager, was her having to deal with Sean Etin more than everyone else. She also never talked about politics or religion, but I could tell she had strong Republican leanings and was devoutly Christian. Because she never pestered people about religion and, from what little she revealed to me, acknowledged a high-and-mighty hypocrisy in some of the more fervent followers, I was never put off by this. She once told me at lunch that her ex-husband was extremely religious and a pillar of the community. “He’d go to church and was about as anti-abortion as you c’n get, but what do you think he asked for when he found out I was pregnant?” she’d ask. “A cigar?” I responded, being a smart-ass. I sometimes wondered how she felt working for a Jew, but I later found out that before she had this job, she worked for a Jewish non-profit. She was also, at one point, a cop. Like I wrote – an interesting lady.
I hit the reply button on my computer. I wanted to patch things up with Flo as soon as possible. This was a simple misunderstanding that came out of careless writing – though, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that her response was uncharacteristic of her and a little bit petty. It smelt of a power-trip, which wouldn’t have been so surprising if it had come from Sean (though his response would have been more explicitly cruel) or Joel (his would have been less professional and coherent). Maybe I didn’t understand Flo after all, but I still didn’t want her to be angry with me. I wrote, “Flo – Please excuse the careless writing in my last email. I did not mean to put your authority into question and I will be more careful in my choice of wording in the future.”
With that done, I tried to concentrate on the sweeping changes I was planning to make, but before I could get too far into my fantasy, Joel came out of the senior staff room and into the hallway where I worked.
“Danny,” he told me, “you need to do more stickers.”
“Oh God no,” I thought.
On the first day I worked at SeaShel, I spent most of the day ‘doing stickers.’ The employees at SeaShel, before I started working there, printed out a bunch of colorful, four-page advertisement booklets for, say, when they had a booth at a children’s industry convention and wanted to give out a short, punchy keepsake of who they are and what they do. Since their only property was the Googles From Goop, most of the pamphlet was about them. But, the back page enthusiastically promised work on many other colorful characters and creative properties – the Frizzles from Flooze, the Woozles from Wooze, the Floogles and other similar-sounding names that I never once heard anyone ever mention at work and just assumed didn’t exist. The only problem was that one of the names was already copy written by someone else and had to be taken out. Apparently, at this point, thousands of booklets were already printed and instead of throwing them away, they decided to make sheets of one-page corrections that needed to be cut to the right size and pasted onto the pamphlet in a way that made it look like the original page. So, the original back of the pamphlet, which read like this:
“The Googles™ will soon be joined by a whole stable of other, colorful characters kids will love – including the Frizzles from Flooze, the Woozles from Wooze and the Floogles – a wacky group of aliens who are truly out of this world!”
To this:
“The Googles™ will soon be joined by a whole stable of other, colorful characters kids will love – including the Frizzles from Flooze, the Wozzles from Wooze and a wacky group of aliens who are truly out of this world!”
Yes – they got rod of the potentially troublesome name and didn’t replace it with anything else. Yes – they kept the description of the characters that they removed. Yes – it’s stupid, but I didn’t bring it up with Joel because by the time I noticed the stupid, stupid sentence, I had already changed over 100 pamphlets and didn’t want to redo them. ‘Doing stickers’ was an extremely horrible task and the less I did, the better. It involved grabbing a pile of long, glossy sheets of paper, which had eight ‘corrected’ copies of the last page printed on them and carefully cutting each out. If the cuts weren’t exact, they had to be thrown out. The next step was applying glue from an aerosol adhesive spray can. The can shot a toxic spray of aerosol chemicals and glue particles. I would turn over each cut out sheet and evenly spray the backs with the glue spray. I then carefully put the glued sheet to the offending page in a way that made it look like it was a part of the original booklet. Because the sheets of paper were so numerous and delicate, and could not risk being blown by the wind or sullied in the dirt, I had to use this glue spray indoors, by an open window of the kitchen. My fingers would be caked with glue that wouldn’t come off until I shed a week’s worth of skin, and the fumes would make me headachy and dizzy. Though I was not asked to do this often, I was still the only person who was ever told to perform this task. I hated it.
“How many do I have to do, Joel?”
“Sean said we need ten thousand.”
The process of ‘doing stickers’ is extremely slow and profoundly boring. That, exacerbated by the fact that I can’t ‘do stickers’ any time anybody else needs to use the kitchen (because it’s bad for their health . . .) means that, if I’m lucky (and I use that term loosely), I can do about one hundred stickers a day. That means it would take me one hundred full work days to get this done. I don’t know how much they think they saved by reprinting only one page of the pamphlet, but I’m pretty sure that it was not equal to one third of my yearly paycheck. I needed to change the subject.
“Joel, did you get my email?”
“No. I’ll read it later.” And with that, he walked away.
There was simply no way I was going to spend my time ‘doing stickers’ on the day I was charged with fixing the company. To pacify Joel – to show him that I still respect his authority (even though I didn’t), I decided to ‘do stickers’ for an hour. So, I went into the kitchen to pay my sacrifice to the god of office politics . . .
***
I was just finishing up my hour of ‘doing stickers’ when Rita, another senior staff member (and little sister to Sean Etin) came in to the kitchen.
“The chameleon looks hungry,” she said.
Another task that I, and only I, was asked to do was feed the office chameleon. I had to feed it because the thought of feeding disgusting-looking creatures alive to another disgusting-looking creature was icky to my fellow employees. It was icky for me too – but when I noticed that absolutely nobody else fed it and it would literally get as thin as my finger, not to mention turn a sickly yellow color, it became one of my regular job tasks. I was also in charge of going out and getting food for the chameleon. This usually consisted of going to the pet store and having an employee there scoop crickets from a crate to a plastic bag like they were bulk food to be weighed by the pound. Occasionally, for the sake of variation, I was asked to purchase super-worms. Super-worms were like regular worms, only more disgusting. They were shorter and fatter than regular worms and jet black. (Apparently they are not worms at all, but actually some kind of gigantic beetle larvae given a snappy new name by some marketing genius . . .) The reason I was given for not feeding the chameleon super-worms too often was that if the chameleon was not careful, the super-worms would try to eat his eyeballs. Not that I needed an excuse for not buying super-worms. Those things grossed me out big time.
The ‘creature’ (as I simply called the chameleon) was totally out of ‘food.’ I was actually going to go to the pet store the day before, but got side-tracked (and heat stroke) by my adventure in Sean Etin’s car.
“So go to the store and get food for the thing,” (which I guess is what Rita called it).
I didn’t know much about Rita, beyond the fact that she was Sean Etin’s sister. She looked to be in her early forties and, like Sean, was ‘big-boned.’ By that, I mean she is the kind of person who, if she lost the weight she probably wanted to, she would look grotesque and diametrically opposed to the nature of her being. Her large bone structure simply needed meat around it. She was fairly tall for a woman (perhaps five foot nine or ten), had shoulder length, blond hair and always wore heavy, dark mascara around her eyes. Her main feature, though, was her expressions, which were always dour and a little malicious (this was probably a family trait). When I first started working at SeaShel, she seemed to regard me especially coldly and was a part of the meeting in which I was accused to being a rapist (again, see Chapter 2). Since then, she never did anything to make me have any feelings for her one way or the other, but we never engaged each other in pleasantries and the great majority of our conversations began and ended with ‘hello.’ She seemed to be good friends with Joel, which put her in the category of ‘enemy,’ but on the other hand, she was the only member of the staff who would stand up to Sean. During his long-winded, meandering, I’m-keeping-everyone-that-works-for-me-here-late-because-I’m-on-a-total-power-trip speeches that he would often stage, Rita would be the one to try and break it up. “Sean, we want to go home,” she would say. Sean would usually counter with something cruel, like, “Why? What do you have to go home to, huh? When was the last time you were even on a date?” To which Rita would respond, “if we’re staying, then I get to tell everybody about summer camp in 1972. Remember, I have dirt on you.” This back-and-forth had a kind of nasty naturalness that can be found between a brother and sister, but I honestly couldn’t tell if they liked each other or not.
Rita was the head (and only member) of the HR department and had no jurisdiction over my day-to-day activities – but, she was a senior staff member and if she ordered me to do something, I had to do it. So, I left to pick up crickets from the pet store.
***
“This is exactly why we need interns in the first place! I can’t keep doing this shit!” I fumed to myself as I thought back on my last two job tasks. I powdered the crickets with some sort of flour-like nutrition supplement and dumped them into the creature’s cage. I then checked my email. Joel still hadn’t gotten back to me, but I had a new email from Flo. It read: “I am free to meet with you at 4:00. Be prepared to discuss interns with me in the kitchen. – Flo.”
Since nobody but Sean Etin had a private office, all private meetings were held in the office kitchen with the door closed. My job interview was held in that kitchen. That should have been my first hint that this was not a professional company . . .
***
At 4:00, I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Flo. I had done my research, looking up all of the area schools and the contact information for their internship departments. When Flo came in, I quickly told her about my conversation with Sean Etin the day before, and ran through some of the universities I thought would be the best to get interns from. “I figure we could have an administrative intern, and entertainment intern and maybe even an intern for legal. We could even have multiple interns for each department, since they’d only be working 10-20 hours a week.”
Flo listened to my presentation without word. After I was finished, she stayed silent for a moment and narrowed her tiny eyes as if to gather her thoughts. Finally, she spoke.
“You know, Sean asked me to get interns a long time ago.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that.”
“I never did, because . . .” she paused. “It just wouldn’t be fair to them. First of all, where would we put them? I mean, we already have you working out of the hallway. More importantly, the kind of work we’d be asking them to do, the office environment, the nature of a start-up, Sean’s managerial style . . . well, let me put it this way – if you were still in school and you interned here, how would you feel?”
I thought about it. If this were my very first job, and I thought that all work was like this, AND I didn’t get paid for it, I think I’d spend all my money on lottery tickets and if I didn’t win, jump in front of a bus.
She continued. “You and I get paid for being here, but they’d be working for free.”
“Actually,” I interjected, “they’d be paying to work here, since they have to pay their school for each credit they ‘earn’ here.”
“There you go, then.”
It was weird. I think I wanted an intern as much as Sean did. Of course, not for the same reasons – he wanted someone to take his abuse without having to pay him or her for it, and I wanted someone else to be the office bitch – but for this brief moment, he and I were on the same page. It disgusted me. Of course it wouldn’t be fair for an intern to work here . . .
“So, what do I tell Sean?” I asked.
“You don’t tell him anything. He shouldn’t have put this project on you to begin with. I’ll take care of it.”
Flo then looked over my shoulder. I turned around in my chair. Joel and Rita were standing in the doorway.
“You done with him yet, Flo?” Joel asked.
“I suppose so.”
Joel and Rita came in and Joel sat down next to me. He held a piece of paper in his hand, tick-marked with numerous little highlighter swatches.
“Danny, we need to have a talk.”
“Oh God,” I thought.
“This place is a team,” Joel explained to me.
Silence. He expected a response. “Okay.”
“And in order to survive here, you need to be a team player.”
More silence.
“I am a team player.”
“A team player wouldn’t have written this.”
He put the damning evidence on the table. It was a printout of my email, with each time I used the word “I” highlighted.
In my efforts to be as submissive as possible, I littered the email with phrases like, “I was wondering” and “I wanted to ask you.”
“Look at how many times you used “I” in this letter,” he ordered.
I looked. It was disproportionally high, compared to some other letters, like ‘q’ and ‘z,’ but, I felt, not high enough for a sane person to bring attention to it.
“You’re . . . kidding, right?” I asked, knowing full well he wasn’t.
“If you want to survive here, you’re going to have to learn that this isn’t all about you,” he told me.
“This isn’t all about me! Look at the letter and ignore the ‘I’s. Look what it’s about! It’s asking for biweekly progress meetings so everybody is on the same page. It’s for strengthening the team. The very idea that I – Look,” I said, trying to cut to the heart of the topic, “I want to make this absolutely clear – this was NOT some mad power-grab by me. I’m not gunning after anyone’s job. I’m just trying to do my own. These tasks I was given came straight from Sean. He wants these things done, and he’s the boss.”
“Sometimes, Sean doesn’t know what’s best for the company.” I turned my head, shocked that those words came from Flo.
“You can say that again,” Rita said.
“You see, Danny,” Flo said, “Sean is the idea man, but when it comes to the day-to-day stuff he’s – “
“Insane,” Rita added. “And we don’t need someone reporting every little thing we do to him or we’ll go insane.”
My intern plan was already shattered, but the creative meetings – the only way I could think of to find out what this company was actually doing, and have a chance of using my experience and skills and do something that was worthwhile – this I was willing to fight for. “I’m not going to be some kind of spy for Sean. I’m not going to be his – “
“Gestapo,” Rita said.
Did she just call me a Nazi? I tried to move on. “Having creative meetings is a good idea. We did this at my old company. It works. People get together, find out what everyone is doing, and come up with new ideas. I really think that if we give it a chance, it will be really good for us.”
“We DID give it a chance,” Joel said. “Before you came here. It didn’t work.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t do it right.” The words escaped before I had a chance to stop it. “What I meant to say, is that I have experience in these kinds of things, and I really think I can make it work.”
I then played the last card I had. “But, I’m a team player. If you guys don’t want to do this, who am I to say we will?”
“Good to hear,” Joel said. “We’re not doing it.”
And with that, my hopes of changing the company into a tolerable work environment came to a puttering end. It took less than a day. The phoenix, which had risen from the ashes in Sean Etin’s car, was immediately shot, bludgeoned, eviscerated, burned with acid, chopped up into a million pieces, and scattered across the vast reaches of outer space. It would not be returning again. I knew then that no matter what I did to improve my chances at happiness, this job would make me totally miserable. I was there for not quite three months at this point. In a little more than a week, I would have medical and dental insurance. “Take advantage of them like they do to you,” I thought to myself. “Don’t do anything stupid. Get a checkup. Go to the dentist. Find a new job. Then walk away.”
Clarity washed over me. I looked at Flo, Joel and Rita. I felt like I finally understood them. They hated Sean Etin like I hated him. They hated me like I hated them (actually, I didn’t hate Flo . . .). We were all very much alike – trying to find comfort and stability in an uncomfortable and unstable place. The major difference between us was that they had found a measure of comfort with their jobs, and they weren’t going to give up an inch of it for me. Not if it meant more work. Not if it meant more Sean Etin. Not if it meant a change in their habits. Not if, in the case of Joel and Rita, it could possibly reveal that they did nothing to earn their paycheck. This, to them, wasn’t about making the company better. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the progress about the company. It was about making their lives easier and a steady paycheck.
“It’s six o’clock,” I said. “May I go?”
I stood up and walked out of the house and to my car. After being triple-teamed by the senior staff and having my hopes for improving the company dashed, my thoughts turned to how things would resolve themselves with Sean Etin. A smile surprisingly crept across my face when I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 7: Riding With the Devil, Part 1

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 7: Riding With the Devil, Part 1

Sean Etin drove his car like he lived his life – with the pedal to the floor and a reckless disregard for everything around him. I had the terrifying displeasure of riding with him a few times, and each time I got out of the car, I would want to get on my hands and knees and kiss the ground (mixed with the need to throw up on it). Sean Etin would drive as fast as his car could go, no matter what the road (it was not uncommon for me to swerve to the side of the road as I came to and from work, as Sean Etin zipped through his own neighborhood, where his own children played, at 60mph). He would bob and weave his way through traffic, never using his brake and never EVER using his turn signal (which is a big pet peeve of mine). On one-lane roads, he would practically ram the cars in front of him, sticking to their bumpers like glue, even if he were already going way over the speed limit. He would then impatiently honk his horn as if to say, “Move out of the way! I’M driving. ME! Sean Etin!”
The first time I ever rode with him, I was sandwiched in the back seat with a bunch of other employees, as Sean Etin drove us to the train station, where everyone would travel to New York (except me and Hempstead, who had to drive the cars back). On the way there, Sean needlessly cut someone off, and at a red light, the woman in the other car pulled next to us and gave Sean the finger.
“Hey, Bossman, I think you made someone angry,” Joel said, as he pointed to the woman.
“Oh really?” Sean Etin remarked. “Watch me make a new friend.” And with that, he rolled down his window and began yelling at the woman. “Hey lady! You have something you want to say to me? HELLO? Don’t you want to be my friend? Roll down your window, lady!”
The woman did not roll down her window, and tried her best to keep her eyes forward as Sean Etin made cutesy (in this case, cutesy = horrifying) faces at her, tilting his head down, rolling his eyes up, pursing his lips and putting one of his sausage pinkies to a corner of his mouth. “What an asshole,” I thought to myself, as Sean swiveled around, looking at each of us for validation that what he just did was the funniest thing in the world, his red potato face beaming with joy.
Sean Etin drove an Escalade, which suited him perfectly. It was the biggest, heaviest, most-expensive SUV on the road. It’s 8-miles-to-the-gallon says to the world, “I can afford to piss my money away, and the environment isn’t my problem – it’s yours!” I have since noticed that, like dogs, cars can say a lot about their owners. Escalades are for the rich and extremely aggressive. To this day, I have yet to see an Escalade us its turn signal. Seriously.
The Etins, of course, owned two Escalades – one for Sean and one for Shelia. During my time there, Shelia’s Escalade was replaced by an Escalade of the same model and year, but a different color. They also owned a pickup truck and a two-seater Lexus sports car, which never left the garage.
Well, that’s not entirely true . . . the one time I saw it driven, I was in the passenger seat. It’s (surprise!) a crazy story. It goes like this:

It was lunchtime at Seashel Productions and, being the stingy person I am, I brought my lunch in a brown paper bag, which was waiting for me in the company fridge. I was on my way to the kitchen to eat it, when Sean Etin barged into the hallway from the private side of his mansion, which we worked out of. It was extremely rare to see Sean enter this side of the house any time before 5:30 (at which time, he would order his employees to stay late on most days) and any time he appeared before then meant trouble for the person he was looking for.
“Just who I wanted to see. Danny, you need to come with me to Washington.”
“When?” I asked.
“’When?’ Now!” he said, amazed at my stupidity.
Flo, who was going to join me in the kitchen, interjected. “Danny just started his lunch break, Sean.”
“Well, I have an extremely important meeting that starts in forty-five minutes, and if I miss it, I’ll never get another chance to meet with this guy. Danny, I’ll treat you to lunch on the way back, but we need to go NOW. Meet me outside in three minutes.”
He marched back to his side of the house and Flow gave me a “sorry kid” expression before she made her way into the kitchen. I sighed deeply and made my way down the spiral staircase and waited for Sean in his driveway.
I had to accompany Sean on a trip to DC once before. That time, he pulled me and Joel from what we were doing and threw us in his Escalade, where he harangued us on all the things that needed to be done. In the forty-five minutes it took to get him to his meeting, he didn’t stop listing random tasks (in random order) in the rapid succession of machinegun fire. “I need someone to write Marc Lasseter. We need to get round to titling the new Goo songs, and it needs to get done yesterday! Find the contact information to Colin. He’s a child actor. Maybe his name is Kevin. Nabulla needs to come in tomorrow and work on the phones. Enter into the Webby Awards, and me sure we win! Bring me the head of . . . “
I furiously scribbled down as much of what he said as I could, but I was only able to get about two-thirds of everything down. Later, I copied what I wrote in an email and sent it off to Joel, who, as far as I could tell, never got to work on a single thing Sean mentioned.
Sean’s upchucking of tasks wasn’t why we rode with him, though. He actually had us accompany him to DC so we could drive his car back (Shelia, who was in the city, would pick him up when his meeting was over).
So, with a notebook in hand, I was prepared to write down notes on the way there and drive his car on the way back. This plan was strengthened when Sean rumbled out of his house and asked me, “which car should we take? The Escalade or the Lexus?”
“The Lexus,” I quickly said. Riding in an Escalade was one thing, but driving one was quite another. I imagined myself in the driver’s seat, barreling down a steel decline, smacking old ladies and dogs and rolling over other cars like a monster truck, me slamming on the brakes to no avail. No, driving an Escalade wasn’t for me.
“The Lexus? How do you feel safe in that thing?”
“It’s your car!” I thought very hard, but did not say.
“Well, okay. If that’s what you want . . .”
So, Sean Etin and I got into his Lexus. He entered in the destination in his navigation system (with some difficulty – either mentally or due to the sheer size of his fingers) and we drove off. I had little hope that Sean’s comments on the Lexus being a less safe car would mean he would drive more carefully, and he did not exceed my expectations, peeling out of his neighborhood and making a left turn at a stop sign without stopping (and possibly speeding up).
Unlike the last time I rode with him to DC, I had no need for the notebook. From the moment he began driving until the moment we reached DC, Sean barked and honked on his cell phone’s bluetooth headset. He made about five or six calls in rapid succession. He would simply end his call and dial the next person without saying a word to me. This made the ride slightly more pleasant, though there were numerous times, as he swerved and sped and nearly rammed his car, where I thought to myself, “this is not how I want to die . . .”
It was interesting to listen to him work on the phone. On one call, he was the raging brute I knew so well. On another, he was charming and affable. On another, he played dumb. It reminded me that he didn’t get rich by bullying millionaires out of their milk money. He owned an ability that most successful people possessed – he could change his personality to suit the environment. This is an ability I sorely lack, owning only two basic personalities – the silly goose and the quiet creep. Neither have been terribly helpful during the course of this job (or in any aspect of my life, upon further inspection . . .).
Sean Etin didn’t get off the phone until we were already in DC. He probably would have continued his calls until he was opening the door to his meeting, but there was a situation. In addition to having trouble programming the navigation system, he also had trouble following its directions. Every time Sean Etin made a wrong turn, the machine would recalculate, only by the time it did, Sean (not a patient man by any stretch of the imagination) would already be making another wrong turn, and the machine would pause again to recalculate. “Stupid, fucking machine,” Sean Etin muttered. He looked at the clock on his dash and saw me from the corner of his eye. “Danny, you had better get me to this meeting before I’m late.”
Not being the one driving or a navigation system myself, I thought it was an odd threat to make, but I nevertheless took it seriously. I did not want to drive back with this man if he had missed his meeting. What was I supposed to do, though? I didn’t know the DC area and I didn’t know where we were going. What I did know was that not helping him meant trouble I did not want to deal with. I looked at the navigation system. While the screen was still frozen, recalculating (or possibly just giving up), our position on the screen was still there, as was the general direction of our destination. “Turn right here, Sean,” I told him with as much authority as I could muster. I didn’t know exactly where we were going, but I knew that our destination was to our north and west. I promised myself, as I continued to direct him to the general area of where he needed to be, that I would never sound unsure of myself and never have him turn around. Any sign of weakness and I was done for.
Fortunately, in heading him blindly in the right direction, I spotted the street we were supposed to be on. “Turn left here and just keep going ‘til we get there,” I said, feeling pretty good that my gambit paid off and that I didn’t give a crazy, violent, very large man a reason to take his anger out on me. I, of course, got no ‘thank you’ nor did I expect one.
Sean pulled his car to the side of the building, illegally standing his car in a yellow-marked loading zone right in front of the entrance. He was exactly on time.
I was set to drive his car back to his home, but Sean said something that changed my plans. “Stay in the car and drive it around the block if the police ask you to move. I have satellite radio. Feel free to check it out. I don’t know how long this meeting will be – fifteen minutes, an hour – but this should keep the cops from asking you to move the car for a while.” And with that said, he reached into the middle compartment of his car and pulled out a handicapped sign, which he attached to his rear view mirror. “I took it from my mom,” he explained. The situation and the wording of his explanation were so despicable that I have no idea how I was able to keep my contempt of him from reaching the surface. Perhaps it did, and he simply didn’t notice. At any rate, I couldn’t wait for him to leave the car so I could listen to some soothing oldies on his XM. In fact, I hoped to God that his meeting would take over an hour, and God, that irascible scamp, complied, but not before this happened:
“Uh-oh,” Sean said, as he was getting out of the car. “Looks like I’m running out of gas. You’re going to have to leave the car off.”
And with that, he was gone.
I remember finding it amusing at the time. I was nearly three months into my job, and was well used to the ridiculous abuse that I went through. Of course I’d be left sitting in an illegally parked car with no power in the middle of DC . . . “It’s just another typical day at Seashel Productions,” I thought to myself . . .
Within minutes, I found my situation to be much less entertaining. It was just past high noon, in late August. The sun was shining brightly directly above the car and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was over one hundred degrees out and for those of you unfamiliar with DC summers, the humidity is such that you feel like you’re constantly walking through thick spider webs headed by a blow dryer. Sean Etin’s tiny sports car soon became an oven, and without power there was no air conditioner. With no radio, I had no way of entertaining myself other than mentally counting the degrees going up.
I was suddenly wishing that Sean’s meeting would be of the fifteen-minute variety. That amount of time I could stand, but a solid hour in a baking car – I didn’t know if I’d survive.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then another fifteen. The heat and the boredom were getting to me. I searched Sean’s car for something to occupy my time, but the only thing I found was a novelization of the ‘Xmen 3’ – a movie I hated to begin with. I threw the book back, hoping that I wouldn’t become bored enough to read it, when it hit me – I still had my cell phone! With my spare time, I could call up some old friends and catch up. So, I called up some friends – people I haven’t spoken to in months or even years. Nobody picked up. Perhaps they didn’t recognize my number. Perhaps they did recognize my number. Most likely, they didn’t pick up the phone because it was Tuesday afternoon and they were at work (and probably at a job that did not trap them in cars). With the seventh call, I closed my phone and angrily threw it in the bucket seat next to me.
It was now a full hour since Sean had left me in his car, and my sweaty shirt was now acting as a bonding agent between myself and the upholstery. I had a brief moment of clarity and mentally kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier. I put the key in the ignition, turned it and rolled down the windows. Horribly hot air sucked out of the car, replaced by slightly less hot, but stickier air. It felt great, but I needed more. I stuck my arm out the window, letting the slightly cooler air dry some of the sweat on my forearms. I let my hand jut awkwardly out of the car for a few moments, enjoying the sensations, before I rested my arm on the outside of the car. I could swear I heard the sizzle of burning flesh as my arm made contact with the outside metal of the car. “Aaahgh!” I pulled my arm back in and rolled up my sleeve. A reddish pink welt was appearing where I contacted the burning metal. “Oh, that’s it,” I said, putting the keys back in the ignition, rolling up the windows, blasting the AC and flipping to the oldies station on his XM radio.
“You didn’t have to be so nice,” I sang along, “I would have liked you anyway . . .”
I enjoyed the cold jets of the air conditioner and the radio for fifteen solid minutes. The oldies had done the trick and I calmed down. The last thing I wanted to do was to have Sean come back and find that his car was out of gas. He had been gone for nearly an hour and a half and I figured he had to be coming back soon. I had decided, in case he didn’t, that I would ration air conditioning and radio. I’d leave everything off and open the windows for twenty minutes. Then, for eight minutes, I’d pull up the windows and turn everything on. It seemed more than fair, I thought.
So, with renewed vigor, I attacked my cell phone, calling every name in my address book. (If you were my friend at the time and I had your number, yes, I did give you a call). Nobody picked up, but my mom, who was at work.
“Guess where I am,” I said to her. My mom worked in DC and as it turns out, I was about fifteen blocks away from her. I told her my situation and silently wished that she could take care of everything. I imagined her marching over to my boss’s meeting, giving him a piece of her mind, grabbing me by the arm and taking me home. Sometimes, it sucks being an adult. “He left you in the car for nearly two hours without air conditioning? It’s a hundred degrees out! You wouldn’t do this kind of thing to a dog. I really don’t like this boss of yours,” she said.
“Me neither.”
“If he doesn’t come back soon, and you’re bored, give me a call.”
That was all she could do. “I will,” I told her. I hung up and continued down my list of people to call. Nobody picked up. Twenty minutes had now passed and I rolled up the windows and turned on the car.
“Georgia,” I sang along, “sweet Georgia . . .”

By the third hour, I found myself reading through the first few chapters of the Xmen 3 novella, which only reminded me of how much I disliked the movie. I hadn’t heard a word from Sean Etin since he left and I was growing more and more miserable. I had forgotten that I didn’t get to eat lunch, and my stomach was now strongly reminding me. I had considered getting out of the car and getting food. There was a hot dog cart in the far distance, but I decided not to leave the car. For one thing, I knew that the second I was out of the car’s sight, Sean Etin would come out, and drive home without me, teaching me a lesson about abandoning my post. Or, the police would come and write him a ticket, which I would have to pay. The point is, I knew my luck, and I knew leaving would cause me added grief. Besides, Sean Etin owed me a lunch and I was going to make sure I’d order as much food as possible . . .
As these thoughts were running through my head, a police car slowly drove towards me.
“Yes!” I thought. I’m illegally parked. They’ll order me to move. Then I can find a gas station. And find a nice shady spot somewhere. I threw the worthless book to the side and looked hopefully at the approaching squad car. As they slowly crept by, I looked into the window, trying to make eye contact with them – trying to connect with their minds and souls. “Ask me to move,” I silently implored them. “Help me! Save me!”
They averted their gaze and rolled past Sean’s car. “Arrest me! Come back!” But they were gone. I guess I could have celebrated the fact that had I left the car when I wanted to, there very well could have been a parking ticket written, but I’ve never really been a glass-is-half-full kind of guy. Instead, I cursed Sean Etin’s mother’s handicap sign, cursed myself for not being sharp enough to take it down in time, and gave an especially invective curse for Sean Etin for simply being the kind of man that he was. Then I turned back on the car.
“Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on . . .”

By the fourth hour, I was seriously wondering if Sean Etin would ever come back. I was beginning to wonder if something had gone awry. Maybe his massive body gave out on him. Maybe he was murdered by someone he had wronged in the past (perhaps he had left this person in a car for four hours . . .). Or, maybe he had been the one to do the murdering. This seemed more likely . . .
I had decided to do some investigating. I called the office. Joel picked up (which was a very rare occurrence). I didn’t care that I hated him almost as much as I hated Sean – I told him about my situation, emphasizing the fact that I was stuck in the car for over four hours and that I wasn’t allowed to use the air conditioner (which I didn’t tell him I was using anyway). He had sympathy for me, and I hungrily took it. “That’s messed up, man,” he said, chuckling a little. “Wooo . . .”
I asked to speak to Flo, who had the best chance of knowing Sean’s schedule. Joel connected her and I immediately told the story again. Flo was too much of a professional to ever badmouth her employer over the phone and in front of other employees, but I could tell she sympathized. “Hang in there, Danny,” she said in her southern drawl. I asked if she knew when Sean would be out of his meeting. She didn’t. Sean did, indeed, state that he didn’t know how long his meeting would take, but by mentioning fifteen minutes and an hour, certain expectations were made – the main one being that I wouldn’t be in the car for over four hours. I asked Flo to call my cell and keep me informed if she hears anything, and hung up.
I then called my mom again. “You’re still in the car?!?” she asked in disbelief. I told my mom my situation. “Have you tried calling him?” she asked me.
“What am I supposed to say when he picks up? Where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting in your car for over four hours? He knows this. I think it’ll only get him mad, especially if I’m interrupting an important meeting.”
“Well, you yourself said that you don’t know what happened to him, and it has been four hours. You should call him and say that you’re concerned that something might have happened to him.”
“I guess that . . . might work.” The only thing I was questioning was my believability in pretending to care about him.
My mom ended up staying on the phone with me, keeping me company while I waited in the car. She told me about the legal cases she was working on and read me lawyer-related jokes that were forwarded to her work email. Forty-five minutes flew by with my mom on the phone, and when I hung up, I decided to follow my mom’s advice and call Sean Etin.
I took a deep breath and dialed his number. One ring. Two rings. Three—
“Hello, what is it?” Sean Etin barked.
“Yeah, Sean, it’s Danny,” I said, trying hard not to sound meek, but probably failing. “I’m calling you ‘cuz it’s been a while since you went in there, and I was getting . . . concerned.”
“You were getting ‘concerned?’” Sean Etin asked, contemptuously. “What do you think could happen at the dentist’s that would warrant concern? ‘You were getting concerned.’ Really.”
I was going into shock. He was at the dentist . . .
“I’m going to be done soon. Is the car still in front of the building?”
“. . . yeah . . .” He was at the goddamn dentist . . .
“Good.” He hung up. The phone stayed at my ear. He was at the mother-fucking dentist. He had me wait in a car for five hours with no power, in oppressive heat, while he was at the dentist . . .
I closed my phone and turned on the car. “Big girls doe-wont cry-eye-eye They don’t cry. Big girllls doe-wont cry-eye –“ I turned the car back off. I wasn’t in the mood for music and I no longer felt the heat (though, to be fair, the sun was beginning to set at this point . . .). He was at the dentist . . .

I later told my dad about my misadventure in the car. “Why didn’t you move the car anyway?” he asked. “Better yet, why didn’t you show some initiative and fill up his car for him, so you wouldn’t have to bake in there.” The answer to those questions are, “I don’t know.” It seems incredibly obvious now, but those thoughts never occurred to me while I was in the car. Maybe it was because my brain was pretty fried from the heat within a half an hour. Or, maybe, it’s just because I’m not the kind of person that thinks that way. This could be the reason why, in my opinion, I’ve taken more job-related abuse than anyone I know. Most people would have driven somewhere else and lied about it, or filled up the tank, or bashed Sean’s fat face in with a tire iron. Not me, though. When the fight or flight response is supposed to kick in, I simply take it, hoping only that, when all is said and done, that it makes a good story at the end.

Anyway, this was how my worst week at Seashel began. I still had the ride back to deal with and a couple of other bad things that happened to me, but that’s a different story (the next chapter, in fact). But, needless to say, I never did get treated to lunch . . .

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 5: Joel Vs. Hempstead

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 5: Joel Vs. Hempstead

The first person in the office everyday was a man by the name of Sean Hempstead. Sean Hempstead was the omega wolf of the office. Sure, I was given the shittiest jobs to perform, but most of the time, people treated me with at least some respect (to my face, at least). Hempstead, however, was treated like worm-infested shit. All bad vibes, baleful thoughts and evil juju were inevitably focused at this man like a beam. Perhaps it was because he would take it, when any normal person would have quit or killed everyone in a shooting rampage. . .

Sean Hempstead had a desk next to mine in the hallway. He was a tall, rather thin man, with a shock of blond hair, thick glasses and the demeanor of an uninvited houseguest who made himself at home. Oftentimes, I would find him stretched out in his chair, casually shelling peanuts and pooping them in his mouth, while surfing the Internet. Though he looked to be in his thirties, Sean Hempstead was in his fifties, a Vietnam veteran and a grandfather. He was also an incredible geek. He was Seashel Productions IT specialist, and would mention the Macintosh’s superiority to the PC so regularly that I thought he was perhaps receiving a second paycheck from Apple.

Nobody ever called Sean Hemstead ‘Sean,’ or even ‘Mr. Hempstead.’ Instead, everyone just called him ‘Hempstead,’ or, to be more precise, ‘HEMPSTEAD,’ as it was usually yelled. I would hear his name harshly invoked numerous times on any given day, usually followed by a vitriolic, “why haven’t you . . .” or “the goddamned machine is . . .” And Hempstead would shrug off the abuse with an “oh, what-would-you-people-do-without-me” attitude that probably only made people hate him more.

Hempstead arrived at work at 7:30, a full hour-and-a-half before everyone else. It took him over an hour to commute to the office every day, which mean he left his home before 6:30. When I found out he came in so early, I asked him why. “It’s in my contract. I come in at 7:30, and I get to leave at 4:30.” When I pointed out that I had never once seen him leave at 4:30, he added, sheepishly, “Or as needed. It says, ‘4:30 or as needed.’ They kind of got me on that one, huh?” True enough, Hempstead usually left after I did, and I averaged leaving between 6:30 and 7:00.

“As needed” also included being called back to the office in the middle of the night. One night, some co-workers and I were working late. Hempstead was excused to leave at around 7:00, but by 11:00, Sean Etin was bellowing for him. “Where the hell is Hempstead? Why isn’t he here?!?” Flo explained that he was excused and left. “Well, get that piece of shit back here. Now!” And sure enough, Hempstead was back in the office a little over an hour later. This apparently happened often . . .

One morning, something strange happened. I had just gotten in and was slowly sipping a Mountain Dew, in my usual morning stupor, daydreaming about still being in bed. As usual, Hempstead was already at his desk, next to mine in the hallway, and was trying to engage me in a conversation about the superiority of the Macintosh. “You read today’s article in CNET?” he asked me, oblivious to my mental state and lack of interest in the subject. “More viruses found in PCs. Windows is gonna need a patch. Of course, Macs aren’t affected . . .” As usual, I gave my nondescript grunt, symbolizing both everything I felt on the subject, and nothing, and usually the only way I could communicate that early in the morning.

In order to get to their desks in the morning, all Seashel Employees had to squeeze past me and Hempstead in the narrow, cluttered hallway. Joel, the second meatiest member of the Seashel staff (only Sean Etin himself out-massed him), sashayed past our chairs as we scootched into our desks, and went into the senior staff room. A few moments later he roared, “HEMPSTEAD!”

Hempstead swiveled his chair in the direction of where the ugly noise was coming from. “Yes?” he asked in a conversational manner that suggested he was quite used to Joel’s tone.
“My goddamned password won’t work! What the fuck did you do?!?”

Patiently, in his slight Southern drawl, he called back, “There was a security issue with the network this morning. You’re gonna have to create a new password.”

“No, Hempstead, no! I’m sick of this shit! Get over here right now and give me my old password back.”

Hempstead leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “I can’t do that, Joel. Just make a new password.”

Taking a page from the Sean Etin book of intimidation, Joel charged out into the hallway like a bull, but unlike Etin, who would get right in someone’s face, his immense body hulking under his suit, while spittle and vitriol rained down upon his victim, Joel stopped short at the end of the hallway. In terms of intimidation, it wasn’t nearly as effective, even with his large build (he probably outweighed both Hempstead and I put together) undulating angrily with every breath.
“Hempstead,” Joel said in a controlled tone akin to someone speaking to a disobedient dog, “I want you to get up off your ass and do what I say.”

“Joel, listen, we can’t just –“

“Just do it! I don’t want to hear any of your idiotic excuses!”

To be fair, Hempstead always seemed to have a windy, circuitous excuse or speech handy for why we should or should not do something that it was simply too early in the morning to deal with, even with this exchange quickly sobering me up. What Hempstead said next shook off whatever sleepiness that still remained.

“You’re the idiot,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What did you say?!?” Joel was incredulous.

“I said you’re the idiot, Joel!”

The timorous, inured Hempstead was gone. The loud, bellicose Joel was still there, now enraged. Hempstead stood up from his chair, clenching and unclenching his fists. Violence was imminent. Two phrases were pounding in my skull – “Get away. You’re a witness. Get away. You’re a witness. Get away. You’re a witness.” I was with the company long enough to know that I did not want to be involved in any way with whatever insanity came from this confrontation. I needed to get away.

“YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” Joel screamed.

“Go ahead and try!” Hempstead countered.

“I’m, uhhh, gonna see what’s going on outside . . .” I mumbled weakly to no one in particular. I got up and left the house – down the spiral staircase and out the door. It was sunny and pleasant outside. I sat on a patio step for about 15 minutes, watching crickets*1 hop around, and listened for screams or crashes. With no noise emanating from the house, I came back in. The hallway was now empty. I peeked my head into the kitchen and saw Hempstead making himself a tea, mumbling angrily to himself, his fists still clenching and unclenching. I decided to leave him alone . . .

At lunch, I played basketball with my three friends who worked under Joel in the creative department (which I was sort of a member of as well). They secretly saw and heard the whole exchange from their room at the end of the hallway, and filled me in on what I had missed when I left. “They were yelling at each other for a while and then Joel went into the senior staff room and came with the time clock*2 and was like, ‘I’m gonna bash your fucking head in with this time clock!’” CJ said.

“So, Joel threatened him with something physical? He could get fired for this!” I said, rather excitedly.

Nobody else got their hopes up. “Not gonna happen,” Perry said. “If anything, they’ll fire Hempstead.”

I realized he was right. Knowing how this company operated, and how much everyone seemed to despise him, Hempstead was probably on his way out.

I didn’t want Hempstead to be fired. I didn’t necessarily like the man, but I didn’t hate him either, and in this company, that said a lot. Sure, he was annoying, but he wasn’t conniving or evil or needlessly cruel. With the abuse he took on a daily basis, it probably was best for him to leave, but I wanted him to do it on his own accord, not fired for being nearly murdered.

I went back to the office with the guys, not looking forward to what would probably happen when Etin bulldozed into the office at the end of the day – though I did feel confident that I had managed to sidestep any chance of being sucked into the insanity that would follow his arrival. Hempstead was now sitting at his desk, looking much calmed. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. “I’m on my way out in an hour or so.”

“Oh?” I guessed the ax had already fallen.

“I have a dentist appointment, and I made it a month ago. If they think they can get me to cancel it, they can think again. I know my rights!”

Hempstead was still worked up. Without prompting, he added, “I wish Joel did hit me. I would have sued him and the whole damn company!”

For a moment, I wished Hempstead had been hit too. The idea that he would be the one to take down the company (or at least Joel) had a ‘Made-for-TV’ eloquence that I appreciated. Of course, this ignored the facts that Seashel Productions was in innumerable lawsuits already, that Sean Etin loved fighting them, and that he and Joel could lie better than Hempstead could tell the truth. Perhaps it was better that Hempstead wasn’t hit, and that he was leaving for the day. It would give everyone a chance to calm down and even delay whatever inquiry was bound to occur for another day.

Of course, I was wrong on both accounts. About an hour after Hempstead left, I heard the hoofs of Sean Etin, as he power-walked from his side of the house to the worker side. I scootched my chair into my desk just in time as Mr. Etin charged through. Thankfully, he didn’t acknowledge me, and I returned to whatever piddling task I was working on. About ten minutes later, Flo came into the hallway and spoke to me. “Danny,” she said, “can you please join us in Sean’s office? We’d like your account of what transpired this morning.”

As I walked to Mr. Etin’s office, I was weighing in my mind just how much testimony I was willing to give. Was the slim prospect of getting Joel fired worth getting myself entangled in whatever craziness they had going on? As soon as I reached the office, I realized that the answer was a resounding ‘no.’

Forgetting where I worked for a moment, I somehow expected this to be a private meeting between myself, Sean Etin and Flo. Instead, the entire senior staff was seated in his cramped room. Rita: Seashel’s HR person, Sean Etin’s sister, and a good friend to Joel. Jim Heff: Seashel’s roly-poly paralegal who often acted as Joel’s lackey. Mike Hahn: Seashel’s comptroller and former college and European basketball player, who, despite is towering height, managed to make himself invisible during the office conflicts and craziness (which I greatly respected and envied). Last, but not least, sitting mere inches away from where I was standing was Joel himself, looking smug and relaxed. Being in this room with all the senior staffers made me notice for the first time that Hempstead was the only worker above the age of thirty-five who didn’t work in the senior staff room. Throwing a kangaroo court where the defendant wasn’t even there to defend himself seemed horribly low, but it was nowhere near surprising that it would go down like this.

“Tell us what happened this morning, Danny,” Flo said.

I wanted out bad. Anything that I said that would disparage Joel (such as the truth, for instance) would cause me problems in the future. Everyone in the room hated Hempstead to begin with. My need to defend an innocent man and save his crappy job was superceded by my need to avoid any added discomfort at work. I wasn’t going to sell Hempstead out, but I wasn’t going to stick my neck out for him either.

“Joel and Hempstead had an argument,” I replied, trying my best to stay neutral.
“What did they say to each other?”
“They were arguing. A lot of things were said.”
“Did Hempstead really call Joel an idiot?” Sean Etin asked.
“I’m sure both Joel and Hempstead said things in the heat of the argument that they regret.”
“Did he call me an idiot or not?” Joel prompted me, impatiently.

My defense of Hempstead ended there. I wanted out. “He did, and I left immediately after, so I don’t know what happened after that. Sorry I can’t be of any more help, but I didn’t want to be around an argument. Am I free to go?”

They dismissed me, and I ran off, ashamed that I didn’t do more to help Hempstead. I realized as I left, that there were three other witnesses who saw and heard the entire conflict in secret, and could do a much better job defending him than I could – but forcing my friends to come forward, into the maelstrom of chaos if they could afford to avoid it was unfair to them and not my call to make. So, I just left for the day.

********************************************

I came in the next day, expecting it to be Hempstead’s last. During lunch, Joel invited me and my three friends to eat with him. Being our immediate boss, we decided to accept his invitation. Joel spent the hour badmouthing Hempstead, quizzing us on how much we disliked him, and ending the lunch by announcing that Hempstead won’t be with us for much longer. It was awkward, and thankfully, the only lunch we ever had with him.

Joel was wrong about Hempstead, though. The worst of the storm had passed, and Hempstead had weathered it with no punishment other than his usual dose of verbal abuse. Things were back to ‘normal’ that day, with Hempstead asking me if I had seen the new Mac commercial . . .

There are different kinds of survivors. Some, like Joel and Sean Etin, survive by kicking, clawing and gouging their way to the top, and using whatever means necessary to ensure that no one can take them down. Then there are those like Hempstead, who, like a barnacle, could withstand wave after wave of punishment and still hang on. I was later shocked to find out that Hempstead was technically the most senior worker at Seashel, having been there twice as long as the next most tenured staff member. He’s seen countless employees come and go, unable to handle the insanity of the workplace (even Mike Hahn, who managed to avoid all conflicts, left suddenly, shortly after this events took place). Hempstead would just, for the most part, simply keep his head down and take his daily beating. Had he stayed here for no reason, I would have felt pity or even anger at him – but he had a plan. Hempstead worked there for nearly two and a half years. After three years with the company, an employee can take advantage of profit sharing. I don’t know if he thought Seashel was due a huge monetary victory in their major litigation, or if he sincerely believed in their products eventually being profitable, but he was determined to stay. He would be the only employee to take advantage of this service, and, in this way, he could get his revenge on Sean Etin, who, for the most part, treated him worse than anybody else. Whatever success Sean Etin achieved from that point on, Sean Hempstead would get a cut. The idea of this must have made Etin furious (as many things did). I had actually wondered if Etin had consciously treated Hempstead so poorly in order to get him to quit, and if Joel’s argument (which really did come out of nowhere) had been an entrapment that didn’t go as planned.

Of course, it was hard to say. His shabby treatment could have just come from the fact that many of the members of the senior staff were dicks . . .

Either way, his stick-to-itiveness elicited a mixture of respect and repulsion in me. Certainly, it was something I could never do. In fact, I promised myself that the moment I was treated like Hempstead was, I would quit. They may give me bitch work, but I will not be treated like a bitch. And I’m happy to say, when was inevitably I treated like a bitch, I left . . .








*1 – The crickets that I watched were most likely put there earlier by me. One of my tasks was to go to the pet store a couple of times a week and buy crickets to feed to the company chameleon (which was the house chameleon before Etin’s kids lost interest in it). I would have to put the crickets from a plastic bag, into a cricket cage and from there, into a tube, where I would coat them with powdered calcium and feed them alive to the chameleon. Any time I had to transfer the crickets, I would do it outside, just in case they managed to get away. In the beginning, this was a good idea, since I was not very good at getting them smoothly from one place to another, and some managed to escape. When I finally got the hang of it, I still set one or two crickets free, probably to make myself feel better about causing so much death at work . . .

*2 – Every day, we had to time clock punch when we entered, left and ate lunch. This was to make sure that we worked a full nine-hour day, (though usually we all worked for much longer) and there would be hell to pay if someone came in late or left early. I was later told that as salaried employees who got no overtime, this was illegal.

Startup Beatdown, Chapter 4: How to Be a Corporate Spy

Chapter Four: How To Be A Corporate Spy

Like many powerful people with questionable moral compasses, Sean Etin was a very paranoid man. Often, he spoke of crazy plots and conspiracy theories against him, whose authenticity I cannot aver to. I heard everything from catching a former employee wiretapping his house, to a daring act of corporate robbery, in which men in masks and business suits absconded with boxes of important legal documents. Of course, nothing so exciting happened while I was there.

Nevertheless, Sean Etin tried his best to guard against future acts of corporate terrorism. He had a systems expert, an African from the Congo (aka: Zaire) named Nabulla, who was often in the office, working on a security system of tiny cameras, located all around the outside of Mr. Etin’s house (and very possibly inside as well). Nabulla was a good guy, and we would often talk politics or about his home country.

“Being the son of a diplomat makes you very important in Zaire,” he once told me. “My friend, who was the son of a very important diplomat went to the airport with me, and demanded to be taken to some other city. So, the airport kicked everyone off a departing flight and flew us there immediately. We had a very nice time.”

He also once suggested I visit Libya. “People there treat you very kindly,” he said, not realizing I would probably be killed the second someone learned I was American. Or Jewish. Or (most likely) white.

Sean Etin also guarded against “revenge” plots from former employees (of which, I found out, there were many. In three years or so, they had about 100 employees, with no more than about 20 working at one time). Knowing how he treats people, I could only say that any safeguard was understandable. When I was first hired, I was asked to bring in my high school yearbook to prove I didn’t know three former employees that went to school there. “I had to fire them after I caught them snorting coke off the hoods of their car,” Mr. Etin told me. “Not that I necessarily have anything against drugs,” he added, in what I can only assume was an attempt to sound cool.

“It’s more likely they were fired for drinking coke inside their cars,” one of my office-mates, Perry once joked, knowing Mr. Etin’s propensity for (to put it kindly) bending the truth to fit his purpose. Not understanding how my yearbook could prove I knew these people (I didn’t), I nevertheless agreed to have my privacy invaded, instead of doing the smart thing by just saying that I didn’t own one.

My yearbook was promptly lost in the man’s giant pigsty of a house. “It got lost in the black hole,” Mr. Etin told me, motioning at the assorted boxes of crap littered around after I continued to press him on it. “I’m sure it’ll come up sometime.”

This was in stark contrast to whenever he couldn’t find anything for himself. “It’s GONE,” he would say loudly, and to no one in particular, whenever he couldn’t find what he was looking for immediately. “Yet ANOTHER object of my personal property SOMEHOW managed to walk out of my house.” He would then eye his employees as if we were filthy pickpockets from off the streets of Bangladesh. Of course, whatever it was he was looking for would eventually be found, as would my yearbook (months later).

The point, though, is that Sean Etin was paranoid, and no moment was more evident of this fact than the time I was thought to be a corporate spy . . .

It began during lunch. Everybody in the company was out to lunch, except for me and Perry, as we had brought our own. Perry, along with the other two members of the creative staff, worked in a secluded nook of a room at the end of the hallway that I worked out of. They had the best spot in the house, as they were often spared from the overall insanity of the office, and were, in fact, left alone sometimes for days at a time (besides my coming in multiple times a day to shoot the breeze with them). Oftentimes, I found them in there playing video games on their computers. Perry had recently broken his foot while saving ninjas from a burning car, and couldn’t really move around much. So, the two of us had our lunch in the back room, talking about video games and badmouthing the company. We were alone for perhaps a half an hour, and nothing out of the ordinary occurred, except for the fact that the Etin’s rottweiler snuck into the ‘work side’ of the house for some desperately needed attention and petting. Seriously, I’ve never met a more needy creature in my life (and, yes, I include myself in that statement).

The dog eventually left, as Flo and the rest of the employees began trickling in from their lunches. The muted echoes of a commotion came in through the walls, but at this point in our employment, both Perry and I knew not to get involved in anything that didn’t directly involve us in some way. As we were finishing our lunch, Flo poked her head in the door. “Did either of you boys go into the Senior Staff area while we were gone?” she asked.

The Senior Staff area was the large room at the end of the hallway where the ‘important’ people in the office worked (besides myself, the creative team, and one other person, this consisted of everyone else). I had been told at different times that due to the sensitive nature of the information kept there, I should never go in that room unless I had explicit permission, only to later be scolded for my constant asking to enter if I needed to speak to someone or get something. “Just come in!” they would tell me in exasperation. It was my general policy to stay away from this room (and most of the people that worked there) if I could.
We had answered “no” to Flo’s question. “Did you see anyone go into the senior staff area?” We told her that we didn’t. “Did you see anyone or anything out of the ordinary while we were gone?” I told her about the dog.

There was a heavy silence in the air. Perry and I knew that in the natural order of conversation, one of us had to ask the question, but we dreaded doing so, afraid of being sucked into whatever insanity that was happening on the other side of the wall. The need to ask this question hung in the air like a noxious, soupy fog, stifling me. It had to be asked, and finally, I did. “Why?”

“Because someone broke into Jim Heff’s computer and pulled some information. If you can think of anything to help us figure this out, let me know.”

Jim Heff, SeaShel’s paralegal, was a portly fellow and (I thought at the time) a nice enough guy. He was about my height, but outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, and his face was piggish, with watery eyes and an upturned nose. For some reason, Sean Etin came to call him ‘the Heffster’ and soon, everyone followed suit, even though we could tell he didn’t particularly like it. Cruelly, some of us referred to him as ‘the Heffer’ behind his back, or simply as ‘piggy.’ I almost never spoke to him beyond pleasantries, mainly in order to keep me away from whatever litigation news he might feel free to share. In theory, Mr. Heff was the busiest and most important employee at SeaShel, as lawsuits seemed to be the only thing they produced, and the fact that it was his computer that was ‘hacked’ into sent everyone there into a tizzy.
I myself was pretty excited. This was certainly the most interesting thing to happen there since I joined. I was curious to know what happened and how it was done. Who could have snuck in, during the half hour in which there was the least amount of employees on the premises, knew which computer belonged to the paralegal, found whatever information he or she needed to get, escape, and do it all while Perry and I were there? I spent the rest of the day trying to figure the mystery out in my head. It was like those murder mysteries I used to attempt to solve as a kid – “A man was found dead from a stab wound, but no weapons were found. Next to him is a puddle of water. Nobody entered his house and he could not have hid the weapon. Solve.” I thought about the computer case, and quickly realized that I was the prime suspect. Perry, with his broken leg, never left the back room, and I told them so. In fact, the only time I had left the room was to go to the kitchen and microwave his food. Certainly, with Perry incapacitated and no one else in the office, I could have easily gone to Mr. Heff’s computer and took what I needed. Furthermore, I was relatively new there and was, at least in their eyes, a rapist, among other unsavory things. Lastly, I went to the same high school as the three former employees who were allegedly fired for doing drugs. Surely, I could have been a mole, implanted by them, waiting for the moment to strike . . .

Or, on the other hand, maybe the dog did it . . .

I reveled in being their prime suspect. It made me feel cool, and it kind of made me wish I actually were a corporate spy. I got a kick out of their pussyfooting around their thoughts of my guilt. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to add that can help us figure this out?” Their eyes implied other questions, such as “how could you be such a little shit?” and “why don’t you just confess already?”

And I didn’t care. Watching them squirm and follow false leads was cathartic. The idea that someone might have gotten their hands on something that could bring the company down was delicious. Plus, they might just fire me. This was the best day I had at SeaShel Productions . . .

This all changed with the thunderous arrival of Sean Etin. He stampeded in at 5:00 – a full hour before he usually stampedes in. “What’s this I hear about there being a corporate spy in my house? Flo, get everyone together. Now.”

We gathered in the Senior Staff area. Those employees who had their desks in there sat. The rest of us (excluding the hobbled Perry) stood.

“Okay,” Sean Etin said, “tell me EXACTLY what happened here.”

So, Flo told the story. Sean Etin asked me the same questions I heard all day, and eyed me suspiciously. Not getting the answers he wanted, he moved on. “Do we know what they got? Do we know how they got it?”

“The only way the data could have been purloined was, ostensibly, through an in-house manner,” Marcus, the company’s vice-president said in his needlessly verbose way.

The company’s IT guy agreed. “It had to be done in person, on the computer.”

Sean Etin faced Mr. Heff. “Did you change anything on your computer since you got back, Heffster?”

“I haven’t touched it since I got back from lunch,” he replied proudly, probably not realizing that his statement also meant that he hasn’t done any work since then either.

We all took a look at his computer, and I was immediately crestfallen. Jim Heff’s computer screen was totally blank, with no open programs except for the search bar on the upper right side. In the search bar, Mr. Heff’s cell phone number was typed in. What was once a cool mystery became incredibly lame.

“Why would anybody search for Mr. Heff’s phone number?” I found myself asking, which was strange since I no longer cared.

“Whoever it was may have thought it was the fastest way to search for important documents or emails.” It sounded like they were trying to convince themselves that this weak excuse for an explanation made sense, but quickly moved on to a different subject before anyone could think about it too hard.

“Whomever hacked onto this computer was no neophyte. Knowing how to use this advanced search function proves that we were infiltrated by a professional.”

“Of course we were,” Sean Etin spat. “ knows that I’m the only person that can bring their evil company down. They know how close I am, and they’ll stop at nothing to stop me.”

It became obvious to me then that I was not the only one who used this event as an escape from the drudgery/usual insanity of work. The mystery. The intrigue. The feeling of self-importance. These things obfuscated any clear judgment. The idea that this was a prank, or a computer glitch, or that Mr. Heff accidentally pasted his number on the search bar was as impossible to them as it was for me to get excited about it anymore. Still, I tried. I don’t know if it was the disappointment of the supposed ‘mystery’ or if it was simply one of those moments where I felt the need to make an ass out of myself. Whatever the reason, I interrupted one of Mr. Etin’s spittle-flecked diatribes.

“I have something to announce,” I said, placing my fists on my hips dramatically. “I am the man you’re looking for. I am the corporate spy!”

Nobody expected this development. Sean Etin’s eyes bugged out as if I had just blown up a balloon inside his head, and his fatty face turned an even deeper shade of red. His natural inclination, to snap my head off my neck, was tempered with shock.

I continued, “Yes, I was hired by to infiltrate your organization after my three friends from school failed their mission. It was a simple matter of arranging to have Perry’s leg broken and waiting for everyone to go to lunch to strike. I knew that all I needed was Mr. Heff’s cell phone number to get everything I needed for me REAL employees! Bwa ha ha ha!”

I looked around the room. Most everyone was rolling their eyes or shaking their heads at my little display. Perry flashed me a look that said, “you are the stupidest person I know.”

Sean Etin’s expression did not change, however, besides his face now being tinged with a shade of purple. “You . . . you admit it?!?” he sputtered.

It took me a moment to soak the fact that he was still taking me seriously. “Sean, I was just kidding. I’m pretty sure real corporate spies don’t ‘bwa ha ha.”

His expression changed from shock to anger. “Well,” he snapped, “if you didn’t do it, maybe you can help us figure out who did. If this were a spy movie, how would you think this happened?”

“Sean, I’ll be honest with you. If I saw this happen in a spy movie, I would have walked out of the theatre and ask for my money back.”

“Well,” Mr. Etin blustered, “surely SOMEONE has something useful to say! We’re not going to leave here until we have this figured out!”

Though he wasn’t exactly true to his word, he did still keep us there until 8:30, trying to figure out in what way his enemies had gotten to him without outright accusing any of his employees of betrayal. I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the meeting. I had thought about making the suggestion to check the security cameras Nabulla had set up, but I remembered something from earlier in the day. For the first and only time, my dad drove to where I worked in order to take my car for an oil change. It was right before lunch. I pictured the grainy, gray footage from the security tape, showing me exchanging something small (my car keys) with a strange man, and decided to keep my mouth shut. By the end of the meeting, those of us who were standing were swaying in place, trying not to fall over. Sean Etin announced that anyone who didn’t lock the door after themselves would be fired on the spot. This meant, as the person closest to the door, I spent much of my remaining days there going up and down the thin, spiral staircase, opening the door for whoever needed to be let in.

***********

Months and months later, Perry called me to his computer. He had me sit down at his desk. “Press ‘control/spacebar’,” he told me. I did. The search feature came up. “Now press ‘control/V’.” I did and a set of numbers appeared in the search bar. “Now, imagine having tiny, chubby fingers that might actually press the ‘V’ and the ‘space-bar’ at the same time.”
I gave a little smile. “Case closed.”