Jean walks into the bedroom, not a lick of makeup on her. She slips on a simple one piece dress and fastens the name tag proclaiming her a Account Management Professional.
Cell phone on table
Courtesy of Pixabay
Her cell phone vibrates on the dresser. She answers it, “Hey, girl!”
“Where are you?” Sandy asked nervously.
“Just about to leave the house.”
”You better get here fast! Mr. Lance is on his way in!”
Jean’s rolls her eyes and slams her finger to hang up. She rushes out the door.
..........……………………………………………………………………….
Bugatti Royale
Courtesy of Wikipedia
He rolls his eyes at the line of cars. He taps on the glass. The window rolls down.
“Is this going to last much longer?”
“No sir. The navigation says it will clear up in the next mile.”
“It better.”
The window rolls back up slowly. Gregory pulls out his phone and dials. A sweet lady’s voice waifs through the car. “Yes Mr. Lance?”
“Any word?”
“No sir. Boss is still out.”
“What does Jesse say about the board?”
“They are supporting your bid to take over sir.”
“Next month it’s all done then.”
“Yes, sir. Unless the boss shows up, he’s out of a job.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, you take care Mr. Lance.”
………………………………………………………………………….
Call Center
Courtesy of Flickr
Jean rushes into the call center. Sarah glances up and smiles as she approaches. “Thank you for calling Epoch Bank, where finance finds friendly. My name is Sarah and I will be assisting you today.” Sarah shoots Jean the thumbs up and Jean sighs in relief.
Jean settles into her cubicle and looks at the picture of her as a man with her son. The smiling facade seems as fake then as it does now. She slips on her headphones just as a flurry of action pours into the office.
A manager clears her throat at the front of the room. “Everyone, please log out of the phones. Mr. Lance is here!” Worried expressions abound in the room. Sarah stands up and looks over the cubicle wall at Jean.
“It’s your first time meeting him isn’t it? Ready for the bastard?”
“Is he really that bad? I heard he was nice…”
Sarah laughs shortly, “You have no idea. There’s a reason he’s called “The Fireman!”
“Well, hun, I’ve been through hell for 40 years. Ten minutes with an ass isn’t going to do much to me.”
A hush washes over the center and Gregory enters. “Good morning everyone! I trust you are having a good day!” Murmuring in acknowledgement can be heard throughout the room. “Unfortunately, as you may have heard, we will have to make some changes in personnel due to the business climate.”
A shout erupts from the back of the room. “Man, this is bullshit!”
Mr. Lance looks toward the back incredulously. “Excuse me?”
Ronald, a stocky older man with a Vietnam veteran hat, moves slowly to the front of the group. “You do realize, without us you have no way of helping your customers. We are the foundation of this company!”
Mr. Lance smiles a warm inviting smile. He gestures openly to the whole room. “First off I would like to tell you that we are going to make sure we are keeping the best people for the company, this will not be indiscriminate. My concern is my company and keeping it productive and profitable. Secondly,” he motions to the older man, “you're fired.” He gestures to the security team that had filtered in, “Escort him out please!”
Sarah sucked in a short breath of air. Gregory hears the noise and his piercing eyes aim directly at her. “Do you have something to add?”
Sarah looks flabbergasted, “Me? Not at all sir.”
Gregory measures her up and finds her wanting, “You’re fired too.”
Sarah bursts into tears. “I need this job!”
Jean stands up slowly and turns toward Gregory. “How dare you treat people like this!”
“You want to be fired too?”
“I would run the company better than you!”
Gregory laughs heartily. Slowly his laughs die down, “You. Could run it better than...me!”
“That’s right, I could.”
“Why not. Why don’t you just take over.”
Jean is not amused. “Mr. Lance, I left a job like that because I wanted to be myself. I did not want the stress then nor do I want it now.”
“Oh come on. You could be chairman of the board! Take over!”
“Don’t be silly. These are good people here. I have worked here for the past year and they all are doing a fabulous job representing Epoch.”
Gregory walks up to her and studies her closely, “Alright,” glancing down at her name tag, “Jean,” he flicks the tag lightly. “Tell you what, I have run this company to record profit since Nick left. But you think you can do better...whatever you are...so tell you what, I’ll give you this call center. You run it, you make the choices and fire your friends. How bout that?”
“Excuse me a moment.” Jean grabs her purse and fishes out her cell phone. She punches in a number and it dials.
Gregory is startled to hear his phone ring. He fishes it out. The display says Nick Epoch. Gregory points an accusing finger at a manager, “Deal with her!” He punches the accept button as he rushes toward a conference room. “Nick! Buddy where have you been? We’ve been worried….”
“Cram it Greg.” The voice on the phone matched the voice in the room. Gregory turned slowly to face Jean. “That’s right Greg, it’s me, and it’s Jean now. It’s time for me to come back and run my company.”
Gregory’s contorts in confusion. “You can’t just...”
Jean cuts him off. “I can, I did. Gregory, you’re fired.”
Corporate Cecilia
Self Portrait of rjrgmc28 on DeviantArt
AUTHORS NOTE: This work of fiction is inspired by the story Mahabali from The Ramayana by R.K. Narayan. The story is about a ruler who takes over in the absence of Vishnu. He is a tyrant that is abusive to his peoples. Vishnu cloaks himself in disguise and goes to Mahabali. Mahabali tries to appease the god and return the kingdom to him. Vishnu refuses so Mahabali lessens his offer give him the land of three paces to rule over. Vishnu accepts, grows to emense height where his pace covers all land and the second covers all heavens, the third forces Mahabali into the afterlife.
I chose this story because of the interesting combinations of events that occurred to get them there. I began to think what disguises could be used that truly wouldn't be seen through. Today the biggest disguise that is put on is people of the LBGT community while they are in the closet. The disguise last years, thus why I included the part about living 40 years of hell.
I also thought the "world" could be changed. In the environment of big business, the business is the entire world. Thus I chose to change the location and setting to current times to bring the story to a new level of understanding of big business. In the world of big business you also have to consider what death is. Truly it is getting fired from your job and having to find "life" somewhere else. I wanted to put references to this in the text, however I ended up having to cut about 500 words from the story.
The Ramayana, R.K. Narayan, 1972, Overview of Narayan Ramayana
This is a good way of retelling the story! As I was reading the story I was able to picture these images clearly. It was a good idea to change the story into what seemed a direct dialect between multiple people. I really liked how you used the LBGT topic as a way to connect it to the disguises of the actual story. It was a good comparison! I actually had a hard time reading the actual story. The way you chose to change the environment into a business setting was a good way to simplify the complexity of the actual story. Well at least in my opinion it seemed a bit hard to understand. What were you other ideas? What if you added a bit more of the LBGT issue into the story. I think you should add more information about the images. I had a hard time understanding what the images meant to represent. It took, me a while but I got it! Maybe you should think about adding a bit more information
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment Alexis! I greatly appreciate it. I will start adding more information about what the picture is supposed to convey in regards to the story in the future, thanks for the note on it!
DeleteI'm glad you liked the change up of the story. I agree that the original story was a bit harder to read, which is why I wanted to bring the story more to life in a situation that we can understand more readily.
I can't remember what the other ideas for the story are now. LOL. I've been doing nothing but constant work for 5 days since I got back from the cruise.
I could have added more LBGT into the story, however I didn't want to use it heavy handedly. My goal is to portray LBGT people in their routine lives, showing they are just average people who have to do laundry, go to crappy jobs, and fight with traffic just like the rest of society.
I like what you did with this story! I feel like I was able to connect with this story so easily because you put it into a modern environment. I really liked the twist at the end. I was definitely caught off guard. The dialogue style made me feel like I was in the room with the characters. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Taler. I am glad the story flowed well for you and the dialog kept you in the moment. Changing the stories to different time periods or making them into other types of characters has been very fun!
DeleteHi Sean, just finished reading your story, it was great and it was different then any of the others I have read. The wow moment was the first sentence when you said a man in the middle of transitioning into a woman. That was a very catchy sentence because you want to know what someone has to say after they say something like that. You begin to go on to quotes and I wondered how would the story be without the quotes. Another wow part is when Mr. Lance so quickly just fired the older man Ronald but what if he did not fire him but treated the situation in a different way. Another wow moment was when at the end when Gregory walks up and tells Jean to take over and make her own decision about running the call center. Its great to see you fire Gregory at the end and he has no idea that Nick is now Jean.
ReplyDeleteThomas
DeleteThank you so much for taking the time to read the story. I am glad you saw so many great things about the story.
I am assuming by quotes that you mean the dialog in the story. I really felt like something like this needed to be more personal and have interaction with the characters, so I believe the conversations actually support the story-line.
Thank you for the great suggestions and I will think about them in future stories!
Hi Sean!
ReplyDeleteI love the topic! You did a great job of explaining the motivations in the author's note. While I was reading it I felt like I was watching a television show. I was suspicious of the plot that was lurking beneath that was going to have a twist and surprise. You did a great job of pulling off a very great story with an important message. Thank you for sharing this story!