RichardDaub.com, November 2023

In an industrial section of south Nassau County, Carl finally located the address that the temporary staffing agency had given him for the one-week data entry assignment at the Drisdon Plumbing Manufacturing and Supply Co., Inc.

The building was a weathered brick factory with an attached office. Just inside the main entrance was a lobby that appeared not to have been renovated since the 1960s or earlier, the bare décor consisting of four wood-framed chairs with cracked leather upholstery, a glass coffee table, and a fish tank full of green, primordial water with a dead koi floating on the surface.

He reported to the receptionist and was told that Maria would be out in a few minutes. He sat across from the fish tank, the filter still running, until Maria arrived, a woman appearing to be in her forties but seeming older, her dark, scraggly hair streaked gray, no makeup, metal-framed glasses taped together on one side, thick homespun sweater smelling of cat litter and cigarettes.

“The agency said you were proficient in Lotus 1-2-3,” she said, not returning Carl’s smile, which disappeared as he vaguely recalled listing it in the “Skills” section of his résumé, having once used the spreadsheet software for three minutes in the “Computer Lab” at college for an accounting class assignment.

“Uh, yeah,” he said.

After deciding he was adequate, she led him past a row of cubicles to the office of Bob Drisdon III, the fourth generation of Drisdons to lead the company. In the middle of the room was a large walnut desk flanked in the rear by a pair of brass-poled American flags, and, on the wood-paneled wall behind the desk chair, a sepia oil painting of the founder, Boris Drisdon, a clean-scrubbed man with confident expression and hair parted straight down the middle, wearing an impeccable, pinstriped three-piece suit, appearing very much a businessman of his time who knew what the hell he was doing. There were other paintings around the room of yachts and beachside houses and some framed group photographs from the family compound in Montauk, and a large section of memorabilia from the Detroit Lions football team. The room left little impression of actual work being done within it, except in one of the corners, where, behind a sea-green privacy screen like those in elementary school nurse’s offices, there was a small desk with desktop computer and rolling desk chair, next to which was a small folding table with a laptop and a metal folding chair that reminded Carl of a kiddie-table.

“You’ll be sitting here next to me logging these invoices into Lotus 1-2-3,” Maria said, showing him the stack of cardboard Banker’s Boxes stuffed with hardly legible, handwritten, carbon copies of invoices from the past thirty years that Mr. Drisdon had tasked her with entering into the computer.

“Okay,” Carl said.

“And Mr. Drisdon will be coming in and out all day. Don’t say anything to him unless he addresses you directly, and don’t look him in the eye.”

“Uh, okay.”

He sat at the kiddie-desk and she showed him how to enter the information into the spreadsheet—company names, addresses, dollar amounts, part numbers, etc.

“You do the next one,” she said.

She talked him through it and had him do the third one on his own, which he completed without error. Then she let him start working alone but watched him while she started working on her own stack of invoices.

“Don’t make any mistakes,” she said after he’d hit the backspace button a few times.

“I’ll try not to,” he said.

Except for the buzz of the fluorescent tube lighting and soft tick of the wall clock, they worked in silence, which was fine with Carl, content to lose himself in the monotony until lunch.

At around 10:30 appeared Bob Drisdon III, a pudgy, middle-aged man with graying hair wearing an outfit from professional golfer Payne Stewart’s line of “plus-four” knickers in the color scheme of the Detroit Lions—blue sweater vest with family crest on the left breast over silver golf shirt, blue flat-cap hovering over puffy pink cheeks—a comic contrast to his great grandfather in the painting and perfect complement for the “shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves” adage.

Maria tensed before he even spoke. Carl felt his eyes on him for a moment but managed to stay focused on the invoices and computer monitor.

Smirking, sarcastic, Drisdon asked Maria, “Are you done yet?”

“Mr. Drisdon, this is going to take weeks, maybe months to finish. There are tens of thousands of invoices.”

“Well, hurry up then, and don’t fuck this up the way you fuck everything else up.”

“Yes, Mr. Drisdon.”

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

Carl and Maria settled back into their quiet routine, but Carl had lost focus and Maria had to correct a couple of his mistakes.

“Does he always talk to you like that?” he asked her, but she ignored him and kept working.

At lunch, Carl went to the McDonald’s drive-thru and listened to sports talk radio while he ate until there was a commercial break. In the silence he considered using the pay phone attached to the side of the restaurant to call the employment agency and tell them about Drisdon’s inappropriate behavior and how he didn’t feel comfortable going back, but, needing the money and not wanting to get thrown back into the temp pool waiting for a new assignment, he decided to go back and tough it out.

Back at the office he saw that Maria had eaten at her desk while continuing to work, her unzipped handbag on the floor revealing a pack of Carlton 100s, a brand he remembered from magazine ads when he was a kid but had never seen anyone in present-times smoking.

They worked quietly until 1:30, when Mr. Drisdon made his next appearance, now clad in white whale-cord pants and white polo shirt with family crest on the breast and light blue sweater tied loosely around his neck.

“Are you done yet?” he asked.

“We’re working on it, Mr. Drisdon,” Maria said without looking up.

“Remember, no fuckups. If you fuck this up, I’m going to have to write you up again.”

“Yes, Mr. Drisdon.”

He left again and Carl looked at Maria.

“How do you put up with that asshole?” he asked her.

She stopped typing and glared at him.

“Please stop talking and get back to work,” she said.

At 4:00, Drisdon came back, now wearing a pinstriped softball uniform with the full company name embroidered in baseball script across the front—Drisdon Plumbing Manufacturing and Supply Co., Inc.—and the family crest on the cap.

“Done yet?” he asked.

“Not yet, Mr. Drisdon.”

Carl was starting to pound the keys as he entered the data.

“What’s his problem?” Drisdon asked Maria.

“Please stop pounding the keyboard,” she said to Carl.

“Just make sure he doesn’t break anything or fuck anything up,” Drisdon said, then abruptly left.

This time Carl glared at Maria, then went back to work. Drisdon didn’t come back. At exactly 5:00, Maria said he could go, and she signed the daily time sheet that the employment agency had given him.

“Good night,” Carl said. Maria didn’t respond.

Back at his mother’s house, where he’d been living for the past several months since graduating college, there was a note waiting on the kitchen counter telling him to call Barbara at the employment agency ASAP.

“We received a call,” Barbara started, surprising Carl with her serious, unfriendly tone. “Is it true that you called our client, Mr. Drisdon, an ‘asshole’?”

“Uh, no,” Carl said. “Not to his face. He came in and started cursing at Maria, so, after he left, I asked her how she put up with ‘that asshole’. He wasn’t in the room.”

“But you did refer to him as an ‘asshole’ to one of his employees in his own office.”

“Did Maria tell you this? Or did she tell Drisdon and he called you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Your assignment has been terminated and we are cancelling your contract. Because of your misconduct, you are now banned for life from Dunlop-Dunhill Employment Services and its regional affiliate and associate companies nationwide. Your final paycheck will be mailed to your home address. Please do not contact us again unless you don’t receive the paycheck.”

“The guy came in cursing at us and treating us like children.”

“Our decision is final.”

“Can I appeal?”

“No.”

“Well, then, Barbara, I would like to reiterate that Bob Drisdon III is an asshole, and, on that note, I will bid you adieu. Have a nice life, Barbara.”

He hung up.

The check arrived in the mail the following Tuesday.

Eighteen months later, Dunlop-Dunhill Employment Services was charged by the IRS with tax fraud and the company filed for bankruptcy. In the months that followed, many of its regional affiliate and associate companies nationwide would do the same.

Three years later, Bob Drisdon III suffered a massive heart attack on the 13^th fairway of the Garden City Country Club and passed away. His son, Robbie, inherited the company and sold it for $10 million, which, within six months, he’d lose day trading penny stocks and foreign currency. ▪