Micro Manager

I was forty-two years old to the day when I got blindsided and the wheels came off of my life. That fateful day landed on a Monday that year, and Birthday or not, I still had to go to work. That's where things went bad, and the life I'd been living went horribly wrong.

When I got to work that day I found the shop doors had all been chained and pad locked shut, and the front door was plaster with tax lien notices. The whole place was dark and empty, and Bob Wheeler was no where to be found.

Wheeler's Pipe and Metal was the only place I'd ever worked, and now that job was gone. There was no prior notice, no letter of explanation, and no severance. Hell, I didn't even get a final paycheck. I had no idea what to do. It wasn't like I could go off and do something crazy... like retire. At forty-two retirement wasn't even a fleeting thought, not even a temporary one. I couldn't even afford to take a vacation, let alone be out of work.

It had been a Monday to end all Mondays. It was the worst birthday... no wait... make that the very worst day of my life.

Now I'd been a blue collar guy pretty much my whole life, and didn't have much in the way of savings. I still needed to eat, my home was mortgaged to the hilt, and I'd just bought the only brand new car I'd ever owned. So I did what any guy would do, and took the very first job that came along.

I guess this new job wasn't all bad. The pay was decent. I was actually making a good bit more than I was at Wheeler's. Most of my coworkers were decent people too. The work wasn't completely unrewarding either, even though I had become a small cog in a big company machine. It's true I didn't feel like I counted as much as I did at Wheelers, but it didn't take long to get used to that.

So why does it seem like I'm complaining? Well, this fucking shit show of a manager I reported to made this new job a total nightmare.

Picture a scrawny little guy who had a serious case of short man's syndrome. This bastard never outgrew being that kid everyone picked on in grade school. I had no idea why he was put in charge. Fuck, for all I knew he could have been the company owner's nephew or something. I wasn't about to ask. One of the old timers said he used to be a decent guy before he got promoted. Everyone else said that he had always been a King Kong level jackass.

I have no idea what this guys deal was, and I didn't really care. The guy just had a bad attitude, and he would go off at the drop of a hat. This guy had the kind of ego shows up an hour before he does. And, he wasn't the least bit shy about letting everyone know he is the smartest man in the company. Now I haven't been blessed with some sort of Einstein level intellect. But I do know this, that walking turd wasn't any smarter than the rest of us.

William was this fucker's name, and he insisted that everyone call him just that. Not Bill, Will or Billy, and definitely not Willy. The guy went by William, and he would go into a complete tirade if someone called him anything else. Unless of course it was one of the company's higher ups. They could have called him Dick Sucker and he would have done it. This guy was the worst combination of a maniacal tyrant and groveling brown noser I'd ever seen. We all called him Little Willy behind his back.

Little Willy was going bald which just made his weak chinned, punch me face look that much larger. In fact, that big fucking misshapen forehead of his made him look like one of those water head babies. Maybe that's why he needed that obnoxious four wheel drive truck. Maybe that was the only way he could to haul his giant fucking forehead around. Talk around the office was that he was just trying to make up for his tiny dick. I suspected they were right.

Now I'm no Adonis, but I know that I'm a damn sight better looking than Willy. I'm pretty sure the asshole knew it too. He spent way too much time trying to cock block me, and tried to shut me down if I had even the slightest attempt at romance. There were a couple of women at the company I thought I'd like to date. They were in other departments so it shouldn't have been an issue. But when Willy caught wind of my intentions he instituted a no fraternizing policy. A policy that was just for our department, mind you.

He claimed this no-fraternizing rule had always been in place. He said it had been instituted years ago to stop women from flirting with him... Yeah, right!! Who the fuck was going to flirt with that ugly son of a bitch. Why the hell did he care anyway. The asshole was married and I think he might have had a couple of kids.

One day he saw me talking to one of the two cuties I was interested in. The conversation we were having was strictly business, but he went off and wrote me up. He actually wrote me up! What the fuck? I didn't know we were still in Jr. High.

Of course I challenged him on what the conversation was about. After that he told me he would just keep that report in his desk unless I gave him a reason to take it to HR. What a fuck stick! Hardly a day went by that I didn't leave work wanting to kick the living shit out of his scrawny ass.

Then a couple of months after the write-up incident happened, he called me into his office. The bastard had written me up again. This time for being late to work every day that week. Now, I hadn't been late any of those days and he knew it. Seems this fuck head had some kind of gigantic inferiority complex, and he just had to inflict pain on someone to prop up his fragile ego. Somehow, I had become his favorite target.

After that I started checking in at the guard's desk when I got to work. I had the guard initial my entry every day. I did the same when I left. That way I had an official record of my attendance. Then I started looking for another job. Actually, I'd been sort of looking for a while, but good paying jobs aren't all that plentiful in this part of the country.

Unfortunately, the insult of having to work for this ass hat didn't stop at the end of the day. It just so happened that Little Willy lived in the same area I did. Which meant I'd see him from time to time in the stores and restaurants that I frequented. He would see me too, but would go out of his way not to acknowledge my presence. Every time he saw me he would look at me like his social standing was so far beyond mine that it was his god given duty to ignore me.

Several times I saw him out with a woman. She was no day at the beach either, but she was a damn sight better looking that Willy. The thought crossed my mind that this woman wasn't his wife. I thought that might be why he wouldn't acknowledge me in public. I figured the little bastard must have been cheating on his wife.

My god I so much wanted that to be the case. If he were cheating, I'd have something to hold over the little fucker's head. Unfortunately, a closer look at the woman I'd seen him with bore a resemblance to the homely woman in the crappy Glamour Shots photo on his desk. The woman was his wife alright. I just couldn't catch a break.

Okay, so you get the idea. This Little Willy fucker held a third degree black belt in asshole. But I didn't set out to tell a story about some jackass that I work with. There's more to this tale than what an asshole Willy is.

The rest of the story, as they say, is this...

There are two grocery stores in my neighborhood, a Pack-N-Go where I usually shop, and this fancier high priced place called Royal's. I had stopped in at the Royal's to look for my brand of coffee because the Pack-N-Go was out. That's when I spotted Willy's wife. Of course the first thing I did was to look around for the little asshole, but he didn't seem to be with her this time. That was a relief.

Once I realized the little dickhead wasn't there, it didn't take long before my cart ended up right next to hers. Now I may have had something to do with that, but I'll never admit it. That's right, meeting her came about purely by chance. That's my story I'm sticking to it.

As I pulled my cart up next to hers she had her head in one of the produce refrigerators pawing through some bagged lettuce. I took me a moment to find what I needed... which was just about anything beyond where she was standing.

"Excuse me." I politely butted in. "Could you hand me a bag of those organic radishes?" Then I smiled and kind of made eyes at her. Yeah, I actually made eyes like I was a stupid teenager. I didn't need those fucking radishes, but I wanted her to talk to me. I wanted to see if she viewed her social standing the same way that pompous ass Willy viewed his.

She stopped pawing through the lettuce and thumbed through the bags of radishes, picking one from the back. "Here, this is a good one." She said smiling as she lifted the bag for me to see. "These are nicely sized and full of vigor," she added as she handed me the bag of veggies.

Okay, she seemed like a decent human being. She was polite and actually took a bit of her time to make sure I got a good package of radishes. Of course that didn't really matter because I wasn't going to eat the damn things. On top of that she let me invade her personal space for a brief moment, or maybe I should say she invaded mine. Whomever did the invading, she didn't tense up and pull away or anything. She was nice, and didn't seem to see me as her lesser.

The next time I saw Willy's wife was in the canned goods isle. She was pushing her cart in the opposite direction as me when she stopped mid isle and looked up. That's when she turned to me and smiled like we were old friends or something.

"Oh good, you are here." She called out. "Can you reach down a can of those beans for me? I have no idea why stores have to put stuff up so high."

"Here, let me find you a good one." I grinned as I once again invaded her personal space, pawing trough the cans of beans the same way she went through the radishes for me. "Oh here this is a vigorous looking can." Then I looked her in the eyes and said, "And I see that the label is quite pretty and perfect."

It should have been obvious I was flirting. When she blushed I knew she had taken what I said about the label as a compliment. She had correctly assumed I was referring to her dress, not the paper wrapped around the canned goods I had handed to her.

"I suppose if we are going to be shopping together we should at least know each other's names." She mockingly joked about the two chance meetings we had within the first three isles of the store. "My name is Melissa," she said as she took the beans and half-ass read the label.

"I'm Mark." I replied. "Do you need more of those?"

"No, I'm good."

"I'll be the judge of that." I thought to myself. At least I think I just thought it. I hoped like hell I didn't actually say something like that out loud. At least not after just meeting her.

Okay, so why on earth was I flirting with my boss's homely wife in the grocery store? Well it's simple. I decided that I was going to try and seduce her. There was no way in hell I'd ever get away with actually kicking the douche bag's ass. Not without getting fired, and going to jail. But in that store I saw a brand new way to get back at the asshole. I was going to fuck his wife, and that would be far more satisfying than punching the stupid jerk in the face.

Now I knew I couldn't come right out and say something like, "Hey wanna fuck?" That sort of thing never works. I had to be cool about it. I had to play the game if I wanted to get into her pants. So after handing her the beans I headed off in the opposite direction.

When I rounded the corner into the next isle she was right where I expected her to be. But oddly, her cart was now going the same direction as mine. I picked up the pace and caught up so I could follow her.

As we rounded the next corner Melissa turned back to me and smiled, "See, I told you we were shopping together. Let me see your list."

"I don't have list."

"Oh so you are shopping naked today!" She grinned like it was the best pun she had ever come up with.

Deep down I knew what she said was more than some clever pun. She was flirting with me, just like I was with her. At that point I wondered if she really even needed that can of beans.

So off we went together. Her pulling the items from her list off of the shelves, and me putting similar nearby items in mine. None of which I actually needed, mind you. With each item she selected, she would tell me all about what she was going to make with it before putting it into her cart. Then she would say how wonderful it was going to be like she was enticing me to have dinner with her. At the very least, she wanted me to know that she was a good cook.

We had made our way up and down three fourths of the store's isles when out of nowhere she just blurted out... "My husband is such an asshole."

Well at least she seemed to be married to the same jackass that I knew, but I still had to play the game. So I sympathetically raised my brow and asked... "Oh really? How so?"

"He is going camping without me next weekend for what he calls his annual man trip."

That's right. I remembered Little Willy bragging about this trip he went on every year. According to the asshole, a bunch of what he called real men would all go out into the woods and live off the land just like Louis and Clark did back in the 1804. That's the way he explained it anyway.

I thought about what a bunch of bullshit Willy's claims about this trip had to be. That made me roll my eyes... and Melissa saw me.

"You guessed it. Some man trip." She smirked. "He makes me buy him Twinkies and canned chili so him and his supposed manly friends won't starve."

Well, now I had two major pieces of information. One, Little Willy was indeed making up all that shit about living of the land. And more importantly, I knew that Melissa would likely be alone next weekend.

"So he won't let you tag along to, um, fix those Twinkies?" I joked, hoping to verify she wasn't going along.

"Nope. He does this thing every year, and he always leaves me home alone."

Yup! There it was. She used the magic words, 'home alone'. She wanted to make good and sure that I knew she was available next weekend.

"You don't think he's visiting an ex girlfriend or..." I paused without finishing my sentence. "Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that he's cheating." Well actually I did mean to imply that. I wanted to plant that nasty little seed in her head. I wanted nothing more than for her to be thinking about cheating.

"No way." She came back. "Bill isn't exactly the kind of guy that can..." It was her turn to trail off and not complete a sentence.

"So you completely trust him. That's a good thing." I confided.

"Well it's not so much that I trust him. It's more like he couldn't cheat on me even if he wanted to. He has tiny little issue in the wedding tackle department." She held her thumb and forefinger up indicating that he had a less than desirable penis.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." I said trying to sound sincere. In reality I almost burst out loud laughing over the fact Little Willy does indeed have a little willy. "I didn't mean to pry. I was only making conversation."

"Don't beat yourself up Mark. You had no way of knowing. Forget about it and let's just shop."

Well, I didn't need to pry anymore. I found out all I needed to know. Or maybe she had told me everything she wanted me to hear. Either way I knew she was available, and that she was less than satisfied with her husband. I switched modes to some lighter banter as we continued to push our carts through the store.

When we got to the coffee isle I didn't see my brand there either. It seemed that Royal's was out of it as well. Not that I really cared at this point. I had found something at this store that was way more valuable than some pretentious bag of coffee.

"What do you need?" Melissa inquired when she noticed me staring at the shelves of coffee.

"Oh, I'm looking for that farmer sourced Sumatra stuff in the vacuum bags. It looks like they are out of it."

"Oh, have you tried that new coffee place down on Market Street? It's pretty good." She offered.

What the hell was that? Did she just offer to meet for coffee? I'd set out to try and pick her up, but it seemed she was putting the moves on me.

"I haven't been there yet. Do they sell bulk coffee? Maybe I can get what I'm after there." I figured she was fishing for a date of sorts, but I didn't want her thinking any old date would do. I wanted her to hear that I was after something in particular, and that thing might be her.

The next isle was the last, and was the one with stuff like soda pop and drink mixers. I stopped at the mixers and looked. Like most everything else in that store I didn't really need any of them. I just wanted to spark another conversation like the one that led to her telling me about the coffee shop.

"So, we're quite the bartender are we?" She said in a jokingly sarcastic tone.

"No, I was just thinking..." Once again I paused for effect. "Hey, this is kind of a long shot, but would you like to join me for drinks next weekend?"

"I thought you'd never ask." She smiled and tilted her head to let me know she had been dropping hints for the last 10 minutes. Then she carefully wrote her name and number on the back of her shopping list and handed it to me. "Call me Monday before 6:00pm, okay?"

"Before 6:00... Will do." I agreed.

She had no idea, but I knew exactly why she said to call before 6:00. Each and every day Little Willy would work until 6:00, even though his shift officially ended at 5:00. Staying that extra hour was one of the brown nosing techniques he used to try to impress upper management. He was such a fucking weasel.

Melissa and I pushed our carts into adjacent checkout lanes and we both made it through at the same time. I followed her to her car, pretending that we had somehow managed to park close to each other. Loosely implying that god himself must have wanted us to meet. Then I loaded her groceries into her trunk for her.

When I was done putting the last bag into the trunk of her car, she put her hand on my shoulder and thanked me. Then that hand move up behind my head and she pulled me in for a sweet little kiss on the cheek.

"Call me." She sweetly said, acting as if that little kiss would seal the deal and ensure that I would call.

Now I've said it before and I'll say it again... Melissa was no beauty. Not by any means, but she wasn't quite ugly either. She was just kind of plain. Plain and nerdy. On a scale of one to ten, I'd put her at a solid five or maybe a six. Still, I never would have expected her to be married to a prick like Willy, who was clearly just a three on a good day. How an asshole like him was able to 'marry up' is beyond me.

I suppose Melissa knew she wasn't all that and a bag of chips. In fact I'll bet that she thought of herself as maybe a four out of ten at best. She probably assumed I was just being nice, and that I'd blow her off and not call, which I'm sure is what most men would have done. That's likely what that little kiss on the cheek was all about. It was there to entice me, and I don't think she really planned it. I could be wrong, but it felt more instinctive than planned.

Now I'm not saying I've got it made when it comes to looks, but it seemed... and I was as surprised as anyone about this... that young Melissa was actually attracted to me.

****

Come quitting time that next Monday I checked to make sure Little Willy was still at his desk. Sure enough, he was heads down, brown nosing it all the way up to 6:00pm as usual. So I busted out of that place like it was the last day of school, and raced home to call Melissa.

"Hello." She tentatively answered.

"Hi, this is Mark... From the store." I added that last part so as not to seem too presumptuous.