Читать книгу Does This Island Go To The Bottom? - Eric H. Pasley - Страница 7

It seemed like everyone was getting canned. People that had ten, fifteen years experience were either getting booted out the door or offered a job in one of the company’s offices in Houston, Texas or Greenville, South Carolina. It had been about a year since that fat bastard puked all over himself. In that time, I earned my instructor rating and was teaching part time at Liburdi’s Scuba Center. So I was ready for the axe to fall on my head; I had an ace in the hole.

I was talking with “Q” who was visiting me in my cubicle.

“You’re really going to do it?” she said, looking at me with her soft blue eyes.

“And what are you going to be doing?” I asked. “Are you staying here or did they offer you a spot in Houston?”

“I’m staying here,” she said.

“That’s good because I hear Houston gets very hot and humid.” I was about to say something else when my phone rang. After a brief conversation, I hung up the phone.

“Was that them?” Q asked.

“Yes.”

“I could tell by the ring it was the dreaded phone call,” she said.

“Dreaded? Hell no, Q. That was the freedom call,” I said getting up from my desk.

Q smiled and said, “Are we still on for lunch?”

“Of course. I’ll pick you up at he same time,” I said.

“Okay, Pasley,” she said as she got up and walked out of my square coffin with me. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Eric?” A cartoonish female voice said. I was sitting in the human resources lobby looking at a Cosmopolitan magazine. I loved smelling the perfume sample pages. There were about four other employees who all had that doomsday look on their faces sitting across from me.

“Yes,” I said, putting down the magazine and looking up at the HR worker.

“Follow me please,” she squeaked. Man, despite her cartoon voice, she was a good looking girl with long legs that resembled a Barbie Doll.

In her office, she started rambling on about how the downsizing is necessary due to the fact that the offices in Texas and in the east are getting most of the job bids, and that all the overhead and California taxes are playing a part in all of it. Then she asks me about transferring.

“Transferring?”

“Yes,” Barbie Doll Legs said. “What do you think about transferring to our Houston office?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think that sounds good.”

She seemed a bit shocked at my answer. There was an eerie pause. A moment of awkward silence. Then she said, “Oh, do you have another job lined up?”

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But what I do know is that I got a one way ticket in my pocket to the United States Virgin Islands and I’m kissing this place goodbye.”

She looked at me in dumb muteness as I got up, smiled and walked out the door.