profits and prosecution

Where I work, office meetings tend to contain about ten minutes worth of original content which is then re-phrased and repeated over and over for the next fifty minutes, occasionally broken up by random tangents. This is the formula for every meeting my boss holds. No agendas, no bullet points. Just a sprawling stream of consciousness, verbalized as fast as the thoughts pop into his head.

While this does sometimes lead to interesting stories…like the time he got drunk at a charity event and ended up puking in a bathroom stall right next to Jerome Bettis…more often it results in an extremely unproductive afternoon. An afternoon when sales are impossible to make because we’ve spent hours in a meeting listening to him complain about how not enough sales are being made.

This meeting was no different, and in between reprimands that we were all slacking and that our sales were stagnant, he suddenly stopped his diatribe and went off on an unexpected tangent.

“I’m sure you all remember Cara,” he announced. At this, all ears perked up. Cara’s name hadn’t been mentioned around the office since she was fired several months ago for pretending to be on sales calls while, in reality, she was sitting at home on her couch.

“Well,” he continued, “as it turns out, she’s suing me. Apparently, she thinks that I owe her back commission for the time that she worked here.”

He glanced at me and, clearly mistaking my look of surprise for one of concern, said, “now this is nothing that any of you need to worry about. The company will be just fine. I can guarantee that I don’t owe her any past commissions.”

And, of all the bullshit that he has spewed during the multitudes of meetings I’ve sat through, this I knew was the truth. I began imaging what my testimony would sound like if I was subpoenaed by Cara’s prosecution to help her case.

“Well, your honor, I have to admit that I really don’t think Cara was cheated out of any money. Besides the fact that she didn’t sell anything during her last two months of employment, our boss is incredibly cheap. The way his sales structure is set up, barely anybody earns a commission at all.”

“Don’t worry,” my boss told us again, snapping me out of my daydream. “Roy, a friend of mine who’s also an attorney, has helped me out in the past and he’s assured me that I have nothing to be concerned about.” He paused at this point and told us, “you know, I probably shouldn’t have said anything about this since it is a pending legal issue. So forget I mentioned it.”

And to be honest, I really don’t think my boss has too much to worry about. Because even without my testimony, I have a feeling that he and Roy have seen the inside of a courtroom many times before…and I have an even stronger feeling that it won’t be the last.

So while my boss doesn’t pay me much, it’s comforting to know that he’s keeping Roy in business.