Episode 3: The Pipe Dream
Pictures shown above are at original Liberty Bell locations in LA. The Jemm Cup was in the back lot of the Hollywood location pictured on the right.
“There he is.” A strange man pointed enthusiastically at me. He was standing behind our booth at the LA Jemm Cup, wearing an apron and portioning out the pot-cake I had made with a clear, plastic butter knife. Several people stood waiting in front of our table for this inexplicable person to prepare samples of our products for them. The enigmatic man was tall and thin, with a receding hairline. He looked to be in his late 30’s.
Johnson was standing on the other side of the booth, working pot-chicken wings and engaging with some curious customers. I walked closer to the other side of the table where the cake was being carved, to go and investigate.
“Johnson and I have been holding down the fort.” The stranger shouted at me, as he cut slices into small, lopsided cubes, and one by one, dished out the servings, immediately delivering them into grasping, hungry, hordes of hands.
It was hot out, blistering in the LA sun. I had just come back from running around, handing out pieces of pot-pizza, and desserts. All I had left on my tray now, were a few, sad looking slabs of cake crumbles. Cannabis infused frosting was melting over the sides of the white, crinkled, paper baking cups that were holding together dilapidated lumps of samples, and dripping out into messy pools of medicated chocolate goo onto the tray.
I needed to ‘re-up’ on the pizza samples, which were a huge hit. They were much more interesting to many people than the pot pastries. Our company wasn’t just another cookie, we were hummus, chicken wings, and BBQ tofu sandwiches. We were anything that you could imagine making with marijuana butter.
“Do you want to come and help me cut up some more, morsels?” The mysterious man called out to me, as he was struggling to keep up with the rush.
“I need more pot-pizza please,” I petitioned, “it’s by far, our most popular product!”
“Well don’t just stand there,” The interloper ordered, “grab a knife and get some pizza!”
Who, is this intruder? I wondered, as I walked towards the back of our booth, where there was a break at the corner in between two of our fold-out tables, and just who the hell does he think he is, for that matter?
We had built a square with four tables, each covered with a cheap plastic, picnic cloth, with a classic red and white checkered pattern, and each cluttered with a wide variety of different products and marketing materials that we were featuring.
Where did this raider come from? I ruminated, he’s assailing my space, and has somehow managed to infiltrate his way into my company…
I squeezed between the tables and walked up to Johnson who was busy talking to a young couple. Johnson held a metal bowl full of chicken wings under his left arm, and was talking with the tongs in his right hand.
“No… this isn’t vegan”, Johnson explained, as he waved the tongs around, flinging drops of pot-hot sauce, all over the plastic tablecloth, “these… are chicken wings.”
Johnson pointed his tongs towards the plate on the table behind him to his right, “but we do have BBQ tofu sandwiches,” Johnson smiled as the sun beamed off of his toothy, shit-eating, grin.
“Hey Johnson,” I gently interrupted, “can you please tell me where I can find more of the pizza?”
Johnson was in charge of the savories, while I had been managing the desserts. The pizza was Johnson’s domain. What about the new guy?
Where does he fit in? I grew anxious, What’s his category?
“Sorry, dude,” Johnson shook his head, “We’re outta pizza here, but Hanson is going to bring us another supply run soon. There’s lots left, back at the pad. I told him to bring extra pizza.”
“Oh great… Hanson.” I made a stink face, “thanks, I guess I’ll head back to desserts then.”
Dave was signed up to help all day, running the kitchen for us at the apartment. For some strange reason, Hanson had even offered to assist us, by ferrying food back and forth, as needed, between our place and the pot-party.
“Why don’t you go work the crowd, with the catering creations? You’re doing a great job out there. And now we have the new guy, to take over the desserts. He’s been a big help, by the way.”
The desserts are kind of… my territory?
“Ok…” I was starting to get annoyed with this ‘new-guy situation’.
“Just take some tofu-sandwich slices,” Johnson tonged some small pieces of the same, and handed them out to his patrons on a plate, “and/or some more fudge. You’ll figure it out.”
I was sweating and feeling lightheaded. I hadn’t eaten any real food in days. Johnson and I were all-in with everything we had. Every dollar had gone to ingredients and we had been subsisting on a diet of only medicated scraps and factory seconds.
This begat a vicious cycle of eating marijuana infused items, and in turns, growing increasingly more famished and intoxicated. Cannabis consumables typically are not a cure for the ‘munchies’, but in fact, usually make the munchies, exponentially worse. The munchies led us to eat additional edibles, causing more munches, and so on, continuing this downward spiral of inebriation, ad infinitum.
Today was our big launch, and I had been sweating it all day, baking in the torrid temperatures, but I was thrilled with the reaction that we had been getting from the public.
It wasn’t just what we had on our table that was exciting to people, it was the future, and the promise of what we represented- a marriage of professional practices (which was a commitment that we could live up to at a later date, when we had more resources), with creative branding and ideas (which could we demonstrate and showcase today).
We weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we would be one of the first, if not the first pioneers ever, to apply the wheel to this wagon that we were piloting, through the frontier, and across the western plains.
I had known all along and with the totality of my being, that if we could just put ourselves out there and get started, then we could figure everything else out.
It was intoxicating to finally be here (also the edibles were intoxicating), and to see that I was right, and that people not only got what we were doing, but agreed that there was a big need and value in what we were aspiring to be.
That is, at least, we’re getting great feedback from the attendees that are cognizant enough to speak coherently, after several hours of walking around the expo, and sampling free cannabis products…
I noted this, as a putrid, vile, gutter-punk approached, and suddenly grabbed the five remaining brownie-bites off my tray, grasping them all at once with the crusty, foul tips, of his fetid, dirt-coated fingers. He seized them up into a ball with fist, squeezing the bites and dripping chocolate out all over his sweaty, stinking mitts. Before I could protest, the dumpster-diving, brain-dead, degenerate, shoved the entire disgusting fudge-wad, directly into his rancid, rotten face; raining crumbs and frosting globs all over my tray and dribbling detritus down onto his black Misfits tank-top.
“Heyja cuzzzya, dy’allchjachia knower wheraderfellar kanner getchme sommora dat-dere cackey-schvtuvvvv, so watchyaheeeer?” He wobbled on his feet, as if he might fall over and faceplant onto our table.
I quickly pointed this gentleman in the direction of one of our competitors.
“Okeee-daizeeee,” he drooled chunks of frosting down his chin as shuffled off towards the shaded area, “whatchora seemin’ likka cholprin, tolorop, can neva’ say ya’ didn’ ritriogog on ‘da main drezbeeeyawlyoo…”
Need direction in this industry?
The LA Jemm Cup was being thrown by a cannabis magazine in LA, and was being hosted in the parking lot of The Liberty Bell, which was a local dispensary in East Hollywood, founded by cannabis activist, Ed Forchion, who went by the name, ‘NJ Weedman’.
Johnson and I had targeted this event for our official coming out party as a company since the timing was right and because Liberty Bell was the closest cannabis club to our place, and to date, was also the only one that had been willing to give our pre-packaged products a try.
Johnson had landed our first sale, a few weeks before, which we had been greatly elated about, but it ended up being just a very small order, and the Liberty Bell hadn’t reordered since. Nor had anyone else bought anything from us either, in that time.
In order to sell to dispensaries, we needed to get medical marijuana cards, which were easy to acquire in Los Angeles, as long as you could afford the $200 that it cost, to rent a doctor for about fifteen minutes.
Unfortunately, I was broke, and Johnson assumed that he would be better at sales than me, so he got a medical recommendation to go into the stores himself, but he informed me, that I would have to wait until we could afford to get mine.
The event at the Jemm Cup was patient-only though, as medical cannabis was being consumed on site, so in order to vend there, I finally had a good excuse, to go and get my doctor’s recommendation, the day of the event…
* * *
I should be like, really happy, right now… I reset my platter and then went back out towards the thoroughfare to plug our products once more. Why am I not, like… really happy?
There was no denying, that this was an incredible experience and that I was having fun coming out and engaging with customers, that is, most of them at least. At the same time though, I felt unsettled, and I couldn’t shake an existential discomfort, that was stuck, crammed up, way inside my craw.
Who the fuck is the new guy, and why in God’s name, is he telling me what to do?
In my head, I knew that I was likely being neurotic, and that my concerns were probably totally overblown, but there was pit in my stomach, nevertheless. Even though I didn’t know where this invader had come from, I was paranoid, and already felt like he was out to get me and to take my place.
I had observed that I was an easy mark for the carnivorous, rapaciously mouthed, scavengers of the world, endless in their ambition and lust to feed, but lacking in the creativity themselves, to do more than just target the weak, or otherwise feast on carrion.
What lunatic-lengths must I employ to prevail, I wondered, as over and over again, I am forced to prove my worth to the world? Is this not, the very definition, of insanity?
Even though starting this company was my idea, I would need to fight to keep my seat on the life-raft. People were always discounting me and even though I was preaching a vision of professional practices, I had no background in any of the relevant professions. My only real credentials of any kind, was a liberal arts degree, from a college, that no had ever heard of before.
Worse yet, people didn’t take writers seriously in LA to begin with, since just about every waiter, valet, and bus-boy was pitching a screenplay; and a liberal arts degree in general, rarely had any practical or vocation applications in the real world.
It had occurred to me recently, that if I was ever shipwrecked with a small group of people with no food on a desert island, and there was a survey of everyone’s experience and skill sets; that as a writer, I would have been unanimously elected by the rest of the survivors, as the most useless and therefore, the first to be eaten.
“Well let’s see, this guy’s a doctor, that lady is an engineer,” I imagined being confronted by a hungry, tired, unshaven man, his bare chest sticking out of a ripped and soiled, button up shirt with a pattern of repeating pineapples, “And you… you’re a comedy writer?”
In my mind, my castaway-comrade spat on the sand in disdain, and then bent over to try to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
“I have an idea,” he continued to savage me, “why don’t you write a joke, about how funny it is, that we all lost our loved ones, and are stranded here to die?”
“Better yet” he admonished me, as he continued rubbing the sticks together, until a tiny whisp of smoke began to appear “why don’t you write a recipe, for how to cook yourself?”
In order to keep my feet out of the frying pan, I knew that it was time to deliver on my powder-keg potential, which I believed was much bigger than my small-scale stature, from the outside looking in.
I had always had to speak up and have a big voice in order to be heard. Tall people like Johnson, were always being seen and listened to. I had to hop up and down to get noticed.
And that’s exactly what I did, standing in front of the best dispensary in LA, who had their own, awesome, premier line of edibles, available in an endless variety of options, from suckers and gummies, to drinks. They had just about everything you could possibly think of, except for…
“Ganja tofu sandwiches!” I loudly proclaimed as I held my tray aloft, in front of their booth, “Come and get your ganja-tofu!”
The novelty coupled with my obvious charisma, led to my tray quickly being depleted and cleared, despite how weird looking, and smelly, that the samples were.
As each prospective customer or client took a sample, I tried to hand them a tri-fold paper menu, from out of a messenger bag around my neck.
The fliers had our contact information and product offerings, listing everything from custom catering services to our prepackaged line up of desserts. We were testing the waters and were prepared to go wherever the money took us, and put pot into whatever platform or format, that the consumers of Los Angeles wanted us to; even if that meant we had to learn how to infuse buds into botox or squeeze cannabis-coffee-enemas into our catalog.
I was getting dirty looks from behind the counter at the dispensary’s display, as I stepped on their space, encroaching on their flow of foot traffic, and hawking competing products in front of them.
It’s just like in the movies, if you’re going to prison, I rationalized to myself, they advise you to attack the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker in the yard on day number one, so that no one else will fuck with you.
Besides, I stewed in the hot, ambient, LA air, continuing to justify my actions, they stole our spot!
To be fair, this was technically supposed to be our booth. The super well-funded and well-established cannabis retailer had thrown their weight around with the expo, and had gotten us bounced at the last minute, from this nice, cool spot underneath the canopy shade, where they were now located. Johnson and I had already reserved this premium position a month in advance, but instead, we wound up at a miserable table outside, wide out in the open, and under the sun.
My frustration started to subside though, as I noticed that that grimy, grungy, gutter-punk from earlier, had somehow managed to amble over here. Bumping into other patrons, he shoved and stumbled his way to the front of the line at the sample station, before tripping and catching himself on the glass countertop. Gluing himself into place, he started to pilfer all of the free portions of products that they were offering.
The staff behind the booth exchanged perplexed looks, unsure of how to mitigate this disaster, as the disheveled delinquent continued to deeply disturb the other attendees nearby him, with his deranged behavior, heinous hygiene, and offensive odors. No one was sure what to do, as the lit, loathsome, lummox started to play aggressive defense; squatting and pushing his butt back, like a basketball player, to box out the other guests from reaching the front of the display case.
When I had directed the dog-shit smelling deviant here earlier, I had never expected him to make it, let alone launch a full-fledged frontal assault on the dispensary. This first, small token of war, had incredibly blossomed, into a wildly successfully sabotage campaign.
“Saygya,” he slurred, “whedsts da’ weedsatman? Calol ya feltog thatta com’ on’ bin stanin’ aron’ all mornin’, whachama soweeezdtat… customer service, flyaskjya?”
Gahhahahahaha, I guffawed, good luck, with that guy!
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I stopped laughing when I saw the number on my caller ID. Of course, I was happy to be getting more pot-pizza to hand out, but at the same time; Hanson, was the one, who would be delivering it.
I shuddered as I waited on the sidewalk on Hollywood Blvd for Hanson. He didn’t have his medical card so he couldn’t actually go inside; not that there were parking spaces available in this zip code anyway, so I had gone out to meet him on the street.
In a few minutes a blue Toyota Corolla rolled up and double parked in front of another car along the curb. Hanson put on his hazards and rolled down the window as I walked over.
“You got the stuff?”
“I don’t know, do got my money, bitch?” Hanson laughed at me as I stood outside the passenger window.
“The check’s in the mail.”
“Here,” Hanson picked up a Tupperware container from the passenger seat and handed it to me through the window. The clear container was filled with layers of foil and didn’t seem to be large enough to accommodate entire slices of pizza.
“What’s this?” I skeptically accepted the Tupperware, “where’s my pizza?”
“It’s in there,” he insisted, as I eyed the container dubiously.
I opened it up and saw that the pizza slices had already been cut up into neat, bite sized samples that were efficiently stacked into layers on the sheets of aluminum foil.
“Wow,” I was surprised Hanson had even agreed to help us for the afternoon, let alone did I have any expectations that he would actually be of any value, “you cut up the samples for me… that was like, really… nice of you?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “Thank you… I think.”
I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that Hanson was genuinely being a good friend and neighbor to us.
This must be some kind of trick, I tried to get to the bottom of it, what’s his angle?
“Yeah right,” Hanson scoffed, “Dave did that, you goofball. What do I look like, your butler?”
“Well, I feel better now,” I put my hand up to my chest, relieved, “at least the world makes sense to me again. I was so confused when I thought that you were just being kind.”
“What do you think I’m doing now?” Hanson shamed me, “I’m helping you jackasses, for free!”
“You must have some kind of evil agenda or ulterior motive,” I accused him.
“Well, that’s true,” Hanson admitted, “I just want to help you guys come up and be successful, so that it will be that much sweeter to tear you down, later.”
“Well thank you for that.” I waved and went back into the show. Standing near the entrance, I removed a layer of pizza samples from the container and placed them on the tray which I held with my left hand. I resealed the Tupperware against my waste, and cradled it in, with my right arm.
“Who wants pot pizza?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
* * *
I felt proud of myself as I walked back towards our booth, with an empty, sticky tray.
I’ve got to let go of my insecurities, I realized, as I took everything in, I can’t allow a panic attack to ruin this moment for me.
I resolved that I was probably just being silly and that I should approach the situation with a better attitude. Sure, it was annoying that Johnson had employed someone on the spot, without consulting me first; but at the same time, things were so crazy that I hadn’t even given Johnson the opportunity to explain himself, and possibly there was a good reason behind it?
I couldn’t think of what that good reason could be, but just the possibility that it existed, meant that I was wasting time and mental energy by getting upset over the unknown…
When I got back into our square, Johnson was talking to some freak-show wearing a full-body, foam, pot-leaf costume. I couldn’t even imagine how hot he must have been, baking in the sun in that get-up.
That poor bastard, must be boiling alive in there!
I pretended not to notice them, as I put my empty tray down on a box underneath the starboard-side table.
I’ll leave this madness for Johnson to manage, I silently delegated, as I walked over to where the new recruit was hard at work, wiping off the back station.
“Hey man,” I approached him, on the right foot, and with a friendly smile, “I just wanted to officially introduce myself, I’m Gabe.”
I offered my hand out for him to shake.
“I can’t shake right now.” He left me hanging, and then scolded me like a child, “I’m handling food.”
I am a zen-master. I am immune from provocation.
“Ok,” I took it in stride, “what was your name, again?”
“Nick,” He declared flatly.
“Nick,” I was unflappable in my positivity, “nice to meet you. Are you from LA?”
“No.” He frowned, “Listen, I don’t mean to be an asshole, but I don’t have time to talk right now, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”
“Ok.” Nick’s bad attitude rendered me nearly, though not 100%, speechless.
I AM positive, I affirmed to myself, this doesn’t bother or phase me. Not at all.
“No offense,” Nick continued, “but I hate people that just stand around, would you mind getting back to work, please?”
I AM positive, I reaffirmed to myself, I’m positive… that I’m going to kill Nick!
“Look,” I started to raise my voice, “I don’t know where you get off thin-”
“Hey Gabe,” Johnson interrupted me, calling over from the other side of the booth, “can you stop gabbing for a minute and come help me? It’s almost time for the raffle.”
Nick knowingly smirked at me but didn’t say anything else.
I was so upset that I couldn’t breathe, but I had to let this one go for now, and somehow make it through the rest of our launch event, without self-destructing, and taking my new company down with me.
I sneered at Nick and then moved on towards the other side of the booth.
To be continued…
All day long we had swapped samples and raffle tickets for email addresses and personal information. The plan was to culminate in a closing giveaway for the remaining perishable products, that we had left on our table at the end of the show.
After I helped get the booth prepped for our contest, I walked around in a circle for the next twenty minutes, chasing consumers around the vendor section, and boisterously shilling to lure people to our lottery, at 4:10pm.
We wanted our drawing to go down at that time, because almost everybody else was going to be holding similar gimmicks at 4:20, and I wanted to beat the rush.
At 4:15, as a group had gathered around our tables, I called out the numbers, reading through several rounds until someone in the soup of people announced that they held a winning ticket.
In a storybook ending to this, the winner was an elderly woman that was overcoming cancer and genuinely looked like she would benefit from our products.
After the fun was over, we broke down and started cleaning up our space. When we were finished, Johnson, in a not-so-storybook-ending, invited Nick to meet up with us afterwards to grab a beer at the sports bar we frequented, which was just around the corner.
Johnson and I hauled our stuff out front, where Hanson came to pick us up and take us back over to the apartment. We dropped everything off, and then left on foot again, to go meet up with Nick.
He was already seated at the bar when he got inside. There was an empty seat next to him, but all of the other barstools were taken.
“Hey Johnson,” Nick called over to him, “I saved you a seat.”
Johnson walked towards the open spot as Nick nodded at me.
“Sorry, dude,” Nick shrugged, “they would only let me save, one seat.”
“That’s ok,” Johnson turned back to me, “you can have it, man.”
“No thanks, it’s fine,” I fidgeted on my feet, “I don’t mind standing right now… not at all.”
Even though I had been on my feet all day, my back hurt, and in reality, I was aching to sit down and relax for a moment, I still however, preferred the crippling physical pain to the emotional torture and psychological trauma, that I’d experience, sitting next to Nick.
The bartender came over and Johnson ordered everyone a round. I got my beer and stood in between the two of them so that I could be a team player as much as possible, and try to participate in the conversation, as best as I could.
“What you’re doing here is genius,” Nick gushed, pledging his allegiance to Johnson, “I’m all in on your vision. You grasp the potential of where infused products are going, when it seems like, just about, no one else, can see it.”
I finished half my beer in one long gulp and placed it down loudly on the counter in between the two of them.
“Can I get another beer?” I flagged down the bartender, pushing my empty glass to the end of the counter.
The bartender quickly refilled my drink and I immediately started getting to work on it.
“It’s so early in the game still,” Nick leaned into Johnson, talking into his ear, so that it was hard for me to hear them. “No one is there yet, and we can be there before everyone else is. We can get there before it’s too late!”
“Let’s get some food, before it’s too late.” Johnson said, and turned to the bartender, “hey, is the kitchen still open, can we get some menus, please?”
Johnson picked up his beer.
“Cheers fellas,” He held up his hand.
Nick reached over and clinked his glass.
“Cheers,” Nick beamed.
“Gabe?” Johnson turned back, startling me, as I was lost in my petty thoughts for a moment, “did you fall asleep over there, buddy?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Asleep… cheers.” I held up my glass with half-hearted enthusiasm, but then caught myself being negative.
Don’t be a downer, I chided myself, this truly was, a great day!
“Seriously though,” I perked up, “that was amazing, we got off to a solid start! What incredible energy! I can’t wait until tomorrow to che-”
“It looks like, I got here, just in the ‘nick’ of time,” Nick rolled right over me, rubbing it in, as interrupted me. He stared Johnson square in the face, “I’m ready to help you take this to the next level, and I’m willing to work for equity, but… I want to be, your partner.”
“Well…” caught off guard, Johnson smiled uneasily, “great… thanks for… sharing that.”
“What do you say, are we going to do this thing?” Nick pressed.
Nick confidently extended his hand for Johnson to take.
“Don’t you think that’s a little… premature,” Johnson winced, “we just met today, and we barely know each other. Maybe we should you know, date for a minute, before we get married?”
“I bring a lot to the table,” Nick withdrew the handshake but plowed forward with the sale, “I’m the missing piece of the puzzle here guys!”
“I’ll talk to Gabe about it,” Johnson offered, “and we’ll get back to you.”
“Why do you have to talk to Gabe about it?” Nick seemed annoyed. He continued to look at Johnson and proceed to speak as if I were in another galaxy.
If I lose my cool, I lose. I meditated to myself. That’s what he wants me to do. I win, if I don’t react.
“I need to talk to Gabe,” Johnson slowly stated the obvious, “because he is, my business partner.”
“So, you and Gabe are doing this together?” Nick was still semi-seething, as he looked over and acknowledged me for the first time since we had got to the bar, some 45-odd minutes before.
“Gabe’s been my partner for years,” Johnson confirmed, “starting the company was his idea.”
“This was your idea?” Nick acted stunned. “Weird,” he chewed on this development, “I never would have thought that… I figured that you were kind of just… hanging out.”
I continued to ignore Nick and I set another empty glass down on the counter for the bartender to find.
A seat to Johnson’s right finally opened up, and I sat down.
The bartender came back and we put in an order for nachos and chicken wings. Nick continued to work Johnson over to the left of me, while I read the news on my phone.
“Johnson, what you’ve done is great,” Nick continued to forge ahead, “but you need help, and you need to get into a commercial kitchen, ASAP!”
“That was always our plan!” I jumped in, shouting across Johnson at him, “and we will… as soon as we can afford to.”
“You need to do it, like, yesterday,” Nick lectured me, “that would have been the first thing, I would have done.”
“We didn’t have the money yet!” I shot back, as Johnson looked uncomfortable, being caught up in the crossfire, “and we still don’t!”
“Listen Johnson,” Nick refused to quit, “I can find us a kitchen. What if we split the equity three ways? I’m fine with that. The three of us as partners would be a real powerhouse. I have a degree in business and not to toot my own horn, but I can fucking sell! And Johnson, I heard you on the floor today, you’re the ‘Salesmaster’ bro! For real! You’re good! And Gabe… he has… he has his special talents too… We’re all bringing something to the table, right? What do you say, Johnson?”
Johnson looked irritated and stretched his neck, as Nick was speaking.
“Like I already told you, just a minute ago,” Johnson was getting impatient, “Gabe and I, will talk it over.”
“You guys take as long as you want,” Nick stood up from the bar, “I’m going to the bathroom.”
I waited until I could see that Nick had actually disappeared out of sight down the hallway.
“Ok,” I turned to Johnson, “we don’t have a lot of time. How do we get rid of him?”
Johnson laughed.
“Should we just pay the check and dip out real, quick?” I doubled down, “or do you want to stiff him with the bill?”
“Be nice,” Johnson countered, “He did help us out all day, for free.”
“And I do appreciate that,” I acknowledged, “nobody’s discounting… one… entire afternoon’s worth of effort. I just don’t know if that’s worth, you know, a third of our company, is all.”
“Fuck no,” Johnson was firm in his resolve, “he’s not getting a third of the company.”
“Good.” I breathed a sigh of relief, “I’m just glad we’re on the same page.”
“He did make some good points though,” Johnson stirred the pot, “and we do need help. So, I think that we should give him a chance, and if he proves himself, then we can probably work out something more reasonable than a third.”
“He seems pretty full of himself,” I observed, “not to mention, that he has an intolerably abrasive personability that would be toxic to our company culture. No thank you.”
“I’m sure he’s not that bad,” Johnson coached, “I think he’s just trying to impress us right now.”
“Impress you.” I pointed out.
“Jesus, man,” Johnson snickered, “you really hate this guy, huh?”
“There’s something wrong with him,” I conceded, “and I don’t like it.”
“Well, you’ve made that obvious with your behavior all day.” Johnson twisted things around on me, “your body language is terrible.”
I shot up on my barstool, getting sprung and on the defensive.
“He’s the one with the problem,” I protested, “he’s had it out for me from the beginning.”
“I think you’re reading a little too much into it,” Johnson rebutted, “and anyway, you’re the one who brought him on. What did you expect to happen? You did this to yourself.”
“Wait… What are you…” I stammered as I spilled cold beer all over my lap. I grabbed a wad of napkins from the counter and starting padding on my jeans.
“I don’t think I heard what you were saying before,” I was sure that I must have been mistaken, “can you please repeat yourself?”
“It’s not that complicated,” Johnson seemed to be getting annoyed, “you’re the one who hired Nick.”
“What are you talking about?” I coughed, “I didn’t hire anybody! I just came back to the booth, and Nick was standing there. You onboarded him…”
As I spoke, Johnson’s face grew flummoxed.
“You did… right?” I repeated.
“What? No,” Johnson’s scratched the side of his nose, “it wasn’t me, I thought you signed him up?”
“Holy shit,” A lightbulb turned on in my brain, “If I didn’t… wait… so… who hired him?”
“I guess…,” Johnson chuckled, “he, kind of… hired himself?”
“So, he just randomly showed up and started working?” I asked in disbelief.
“I just turned around, and he was cutting up brownies.” Johnson cracked up, “I figured he must have already spoken with you.”
“That’s like, super… creepy.” Our story was getting weirder by the second, “I mean… don’t you think so, Johnson?”
“I don’t know,” Johnson looked impressed, “I kind of admire his initiative.”
“I mean, it kind of seems like he might be, what’s the word,” I took the last gulp of my beer, “you know… a psycho.” I stared into the bottom of my empty glass.
“Either way, you’re worried about the wrong thing,” Johnson attempted to redirect my focus, “you should be worried about sales. As great of a time as we had at the Jemm Cup and all that, we made dick in sales. All this talking, will be nothing more than a big jerk-off, if we don’t figure out how to come up with some sales.”
“Hey guys,” Nick returned, sitting down to Johnson’s left, “so did we talk about it, yet? Are you guys in, or what? Are you with me?”
“I’m going to need another drink please,” I waved down the bartender.