There are many men at A.G.A. who are near retirement.
One such fellow hovers like a vulture each month for the new edition of the A.G.A. Monthly magazine, of which I am the editor. Once the boxes of magazines are delivered and distributed, I know I have only 40 minutes or so before I see his shiny head peak around my door. I am reflected in his large glasses.
“Typos on page 23, 44, and 57,” he says with pride, without pointing out what they are.
“Uh, thanks, Al. Where did you take your speed-reading class and when are you retiring?” Okay, that second part wasn’t spoken out loud, but when he finally retires two years later, I do the dance of joy.
Perhaps my crowning achievement with the Monthly is when I print the announcement of a man’s promotion in the same issue as his obituary. We have many, many announcements to include and very little space, so we have an active waiting list that can go back months. At least that’s how I explain it to my then-boss, Don B, who has just been reamed a new one on the 12th floor for this egregious error. He gives me a skeptical look and I show him the back log. He shakes his head and leaves without another word. I love Don, best boss I ever had. What he is doing at A.G.A. is beyond me. This man shares a Pulitzer Prize with another journalist from the Detroit Free Press, where he used to work.
Don's close encounter with a sub.
Don will barge into our cubicle, which seats three, and preface a question with, a cheerful, “Youth wants to know!” He tells embarrassing stories about himself, like the time as a teenager he ends up with crabs from a public toilet seat he claims he never sat on. “They jumped!” Really, Don?
My favorite is about he and his wife sailing down the Eastern Seaboard heading for the Caribbean. One afternoon, they are having a little free sex in the fo’c’sle when Don has the feeling they are being watched. He looks carefully over his shoulder and sees in the near distance a submarine that has surfaced with an array of men with binoculars watching them from the deck.
When Don makes a mistake, he admits it, like the time he hires a staggeringly boring man as an extra writer. Barry’s not there a week before everyone is plotting how to get rid of him. He shares our cubicle and listens in on our conversations. When you are hanging up the phone or the person you’re talking to leaves, he scoots right over to pick up the conversation. He is clueless to body language and irritated glares. Don earns many irritated glares for visiting this guy upon us.
He's quickly dubbed Barry the Bore and my friends and I go to great lengths to leave the building for lunch without being tagged by Barry. We all work on the 11th floor, and pick each other up at elevator bays on nine and eight. (Ten would be too obvious.) We all drink at lunch, the office is so awful, and on the occasions that Barry barges along with us, it’s tempting to overdo it.
Barry pushes my limits too far when he tells my meek editorial assistant that she’s hogging too much space. He pushes the partition over until she’s really cramped.
I determine to fix his wagon and I do.
Every couple of nights after work when most folks are gone, I move that partition back an inch or two. Takes a bit of time but eventually he has less space than originally and he never even notices.
Old timey receptor/transmitter.
Because he noses in on my conversations, I’ll wait till he leaves the cubicle, then dart over to his desk, unscrew the mouthpiece, and take out the transmitter. I stash it in Barry’s desk drawer and skip back to my desk, just in time. Sometimes it takes a while but eventually the phone rings and we are treated to Barry hollering at the top of his lungs into the phone.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? I think the phone is broken. Are you there? I’m going to report the phone broken.” We are laughing silently to the point of tears.
Barry scurries out of the cubicle in search of assistance. The minute he’s gone, I run over and replace the receiver. I’m back at my desk ‘working’ when Barry returns with the phone guy. I can imagine this guy’s expression when it is determined that all’s well.
I could do this twice a week for a year, but I realize that we can only get away with one or two of these pranks before suspicion is aroused. I successfully execute one more and then lay this tomfoolery to rest.
I do pull one more trick on Barry. He’s horribly pompous and figures he’s a great photographer. He has a few shots on his wall, each murkier than the next. One is a ‘cool’ interior photo of a jazz club (I think), with the lights all blurry and wiggly. After work one day I turn it upside down.
It only takes a week before Barry notices. “What the. . .”
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