a day in the life...

Its Tuesday night on the south side of Newton and I’m heading into a Panera Bread to network with a bunch of suits from the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve never seen a Panera with back room before, but leave it to Newton to have two of them. The rooms full of guys who wear blue stripped suit coats over shades of salmon button-ups and slicked back hair that stare out at you from their conversations, shifting their eyes to cast judging glances and licking you clean of tip-offs that might give away your worth.

They never miss a beat though; they never move their heads of change the cadence of their conversation. They don’t even hear their conversation, its been market tested by guys back at the office, and their original shpeal was heavily edited to instead choose words that linger in your subconscious. They use buzz words and stand with a posture that suggests confidence, an energetic cool that says I can do my job better than any competitor, but I don’t need your money. They gesture with hors devours as if they can’t conjure the correct word with half stretched fingers bedecked with rings.


I come in late and stare back with no discernable trait, which always comes off a little creepy, and while it may cost me business, I like to think it takes them off their game slightly. They don’t think of people as people, their to be assessed, and eye contact takes the statistic off the spreadsheet and gives it a face. These are seconds in transaction and I’m never there long enough to know if it matters. I dart toward to the food where I can eat and make small talk with the other would-be accidental salemen and talk about their miserable businesses and how their following their dreams into miles of bankruptcy litigation.


You can always tell the new ones. Their nervous, they stutter, they try. Their pitch is patched together piece-meal. The lines are smooth but they can’t connect them without sounding like a broken record. The pitch the like a concerto played by a new apprentice. He stops for too long between staves and reminds himself what mistakes he makes here and what he should do to get around it. I just see him through and let him make his sale. I tell him I call and I will as much as I call anyone else back. So he tells his boss that some guy in a suit seemed interested. Let him pay rent one more time on my feigned interest.

Then theres the rest of us who couldn’t give a fuck, they hey we’re here group. We sound as smooth as the showboats but without the radio voices. We takes turns telling stories so the other guys can eat the cheese and cracker. Everyonce in awhile some big shot whos family was just struck by tragedy gets it in his head that he’s going to be some philanthropist and come talk to us. We don’t know what his catalyst was but we don’t care. We’re immune to emotion, we take his charity as insult. To us, we’re chained to the gig and we all have to pull. We smile at him the way they do when the new guys make the mistake of walking by their in group, like a gazelle past the lions cage. With wide pearly placation that fakes interest so poorly we might as well throw our plates at him.

Tonight we’re left to our own devices . Lars (larry) jokes that we might become the prevailing power structure soon and we all shudder except for bill who sees the upside. “hey maybe we can go somewhere that has the foresight not to put mushrooms in my fucking chowdah.” We laugh and the girl at the sign-in booth shoots us a glace that says shes either too important for her job or to remind us that it’s a family establishment. Bill gives her a chance to take herself off the black list. “Oh I’m sorry do you like Mushrooms.”


She sneers and we pretend to care by telling him to “quit being a jerk.” The moons cresting the buildings and we decide its time to head out with a pocket full of business cards to show our boss tomorrow. We shake hands and talk about next month. Bill fills out a comment card and we know its best not to see the aftermath. “Must be nice to work for your father” says yells over his shoulder and from the parking lot we can see bill shoot us the bird.