Walking on Egg Shells July 27, 2012

  

It’s hard to read the situation as the main office, or how accurate my assessment of what transpires there.

But silence is golden when it comes to my survival.

The owner is suspicious, and I can’t tell whether he thinks he made a mistake by not firing me or he has something to hide – and thinks I know more than a really do about it.

What goes on in his head, however, remains a mystery, but something I have to be wary of. I do not want to give him any excuse to fire me – and he seems to be looking for one.

Whether on his own reckoning or on behalf of someone else.

There’s no way to find out either. Even the office gossips aren’t trustworthy when it comes to him. He is a closed book he lets nobody read. The gossips only tell me they are puzzled about why he is acting so strange. When I describe it as a fog, they agree.

Nobody can go to the other owner to ask questions. Even if she’s noticed his peculiar behavior, she isn’t going to divulge her suspicions to any of us.

The gossips say she’s unhappy with him, and that the two owners hardly speak except when business depends on it.

I dare not ask my boss because not only won’t she give me a straight answer but will want to know why I want to know.

As said earlier, she knows more about the intimate goings on in this place than anybody, which is why I suspect her of feeding GA’s blog. But even those items that appear there only hint and never explain.

It’s like walking on egg shells, some of which are filled with dynamite, not knowing if the next step will be my last.


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The accidental thief

Image
    Written late February 2013   Her third poem in so many days picked up on the theme of her budding romance with a married man, yet far less blatantly portrayed as in the previous two poems. Yet, this poem is no less powerful for the intensity of its emotions it is attempting to convey. In this poem, she paints herself as “an accidental thief,” claiming to collect the small things other people are unaware they are relinquishing to her, “glimpses of smiles” the “gestures of kindness,” the “pieces of dreams and devastation and concealed consuming passions.” All this harkens back to the previous poems to a man who unconsciously seemed to transmit his affections for her. Only in this poem, such is a statement of fact rather than mere conjecture. Things are “inadvertently expressed through eyes,” in moments when the person thinks they are unreadable. How much of this is wishful thinking on her part is hard to say. But it is clear that she is building a case as ...
Read more

Waking up to Obama Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Image
              I went to sleep and woke up this morning to the Iowa Caucuses, a relentless reminder of not how much choice we actually have in the upcoming election, but how little a field of choice we have.             On one side, we have President Obama – whose biggest contribution to America over the last four years has been to kill Bin Laden, and bring down the government of Libya , and cause even more turmoil over seas, while allowing secret government operatives even more control over the private lives of American citizens.             Instead of socialized medicine, he’s given us a new tax.             Instead of tax cuts for the middle class, he’s imposed new fees on potential home owners.          ...
Read more

The parking man can March 16, 2012

Image
  Sunlight gleams off the bright glass this cool Hudson County morning. It feels like fall, but it is not fall. It is the end of winter and the leaves have already turned and fallen and are preparing their triumphant return. Some old leaves have found their way down onto street where they are whisked up by the persistent brushes of the street sweeper. Each morning, it is the same ritual of waiting for the parking man and his ticket book to arrive and pass, the sound of the brushes brushing against this asphalt world, morning music we all come to live through, as the parking man’s van beeps out its warning for us to move or pay the price, while we switch sides as he passes, and thus wisely, learn to escape his wrath.       2012 menu email to Al Sullivan
Read more