Chapter Two

It was a year before the shiitake mushrooms hit the fan that I was informed that I was being sent to a struggling Co-Op in South Central Wisconsin to see if I could salvage my joke of a career.

“This is the ideal assignment for you,” my dispatcher and direct supervisor, Nicholas Green had told me. “It’ll give you experience overseeing the revitalization of a floundering community and help you make a name for yourself in the Midwest!”

Nicholas Green gave me the mild mannered, patronizing, smile I had slowly come to hate with a searing passion over the past few years. Nowhere else but in the “natural” and “sustainable” marketing industry would he have been elevated to his position on the corporate food chain.

Yes, my business is corporate, no matter how much they would have you believe otherwise.

“Besides,” he continued. “It shouldn’t be too difficult for you to turn things around in short order.”

When I graduated with a double degree in marketing and customer relations just shy of a decade before these events, the future seemed bright. I had been the only member of my graduating class who had effectively flipped a business before graduating. My unofficial mentor had handed me the reigns to her struggling bakery, Grandma Anita’s, and working together, we were able to increase profits by five hundred percent. It wasn’t that hard; the product was good and all she needed was more competent marketing.

Unfortunately, I was about to find out that most businesses I was destined to deal with had the opposite problem. My official mentor had encouraged me to get into flipping businesses that specialized in sustainable and natural products. That’s where the money was at! In fact, he had a friend who was hiring people for that very purpose. What a coincidence!

Being young and naïve as I was, I took the bait, not realizing that even a university faculty member might not have the purest intentions when it came to the recruitment of talented, young, individuals for the workforce.

In the end, I was sent to cold pressed juice shacks and purveyors of essential oil, up and down the coast of California. They all had the opposite problem of dear, old, Grandma Anita: inferior product and subpar customer service. Even though they spent more money on marketing and advertising than on maintenance and product, they would consistently fail due to a pitiful number of repeat customers. Nobody wanted to pay twenty dollars for two splashes of essential oil sold by a shopkeeper who would yell at them about the flaws of “the system.”

“The Fresh-Faced Co-Op is a large natural food store out in South Central Wisconsin,” Nicholas Green explained to me as he tossed a folder across his desk. “They haven’t been selling quite at the rate they would like, and they contacted us for our services.”

I thumbed through the papers.

“There’s a lot of spoilage reported,” I noticed. “Even for a business that doesn’t have any preservatives in their products.”

“Not a lot of people in Milwaukee see the need to keep their family’s food organic and GMO free,” Mr. Green explained. “They need to be convinced to do so.”

I frowned at the data in front of me. One of the key things I knew about business was that a potential customer shouldn’t have to be convinced of anything. A potential customer already knows what they want; they just need to be informed that they want it. This was just another example of the ineptitude of Nicholas Green.

“Why are they hiring us?” I asked. “Aren’t there closer consulting firms out by them?”

Mr. Green shrugged. His suit was a size or two too large and his jacket awkwardly shifted on his tiny, frail, shoulders.

“I guess they just heard of our services and wanted to ensure they got the best,” he said.

I was more dubious than I could ever say. It was clear that Nicholas Green wasn’t buying his own line of bullshit, either. I hadn’t been in the business long, but I learned to pick out a person’s “tell” when I was working with the vendors who supplied items to my clients. Mr. Green’s tell was that he would smile, far too much and far too wide, when he was lying to you.

Of course, I couldn’t call him out for lying to me because he was my immediate superior.

“So, when will I be heading out?” I asked.

Mr. Green smiled so wide, I could have sworn his head was a fleshy watermelon sliced directly in half.

“Tuesday,” he said.

“Tuesday the eighth?” I asked.

That was only a week. He wasn’t giving me much time at all. I didn’t know if I could prepare everything that fast in that amount of time.

“No,” said Mr. Green. “Tuesday the first.”

“That’s tomorrow,” I said.

“Why, so it is?” Mr. Green said with incredulity that was obviously faked. “How exciting!”

Once again, the fact that this man had somehow risen higher than me in the company ladder hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Well, I guess that means you really don’t have any time to spare,” he said, practically pushing me out the door. “I’ll have Shelby set you up with all the pertinent information!”

Shelby was Mr. Green’s personal assistant. This meant that she basically did the majority of Mr. Green’s job, which was a good thing, I guess, because he would undoubtedly screw it up royally if Shelby weren’t there to keep things together.

As soon as I was promoted, I planned to poach her from him as quickly as I could. Well, in my ideal world anyway. The primary trouble with all my plans, and my rivalry with Nicholas Green in general, was that the consulting firm was officially titled “Green and Associates”.

No. That is not a coincidence. Is it any wonder that Nicholas Green shot up the corporate ladder with very little effort and competence? I didn’t know the exact relationship he had with the firm’s founder, but word around the water cooler was that he was somebody’s (not so great) great grandnephew.

However, this didn’t stop me from dreaming of persevering and climbing my way to the top so that I didn’t have to answer to guys like Nicholas Green. With direct access to the paperwork and clientele inflow, I would turn the productivity of the firm around in no time flat. I wouldn’t even need an exceptionally nice office. If I had Shelby as my assistant, I could rule the world.

That isn’t to say that I would employ her help in the same way Mr. Green did. I would certainly do my job. I just wanted Shelby to know what it was like to actually do the job she was paid for without having to do the job Nicholas Green was paid for. Though, I would be sure to give her all the credit that was due. Shelby should have been promoted years before that as I should have been promoted from my position years before. On top of all that, she made a damn fine cup of coffee.

“I can tell by the bewildered look on your face that Mr. Green dropped the news on you,” said Shelby.

Unable to come up with any response that adequately communicated how I felt at the moment, I nodded.

“Well, come on then,” said Shelby. “If we’re going to go through all of this, we may as well do it over a cup of coffee.”

I wordlessly followed Shelby to the private break room meant for executives. It was superior to the one meant for us peons in that it had an espresso machine. Technically, we weren’t supposed to be in there, except in the company of an actual executive, but Nicholas Green and all the other higher ups had coffee makers and mini refrigerators in their own offices, so they very rarely used it, anyway.

I sat down at one of the tables. Rather than the typical plastic and clapboard tables popular in most break rooms across the country, the ones in the executive break room were modern affairs made of blonde wood. The walls were spare save for a few bamboo adornments. It was just sparse enough for me to tell that some interior designer had been paid a rear end full of money to decorate it.

But I wasn’t paying any attention to the fashion victimhood of the room. My eyes weren’t even open as I slumped down at the table and allowed my head to loll back. As was in her nature, Shelby allowed me to decompress as she went about making me a latte (which, by the way, she was fabulous at). If anyone knew how frustrating Nicholas Green could be, it was his assistant.

I swear to God, the pressure from the frontal headache I was experiencing made me see fractals forming and warping from behind my eyelids like a kaleidoscope.

The “click” of the coffee mug being placed on the table in front of me alerted my senses away from my reverie.

Sugar, I thought the most volatile euphemism for a curse word that I could force myself to think. Sugar! Sugar! Sugar!

I hoped that if I had closed my eyes long enough and allowed myself to space out hard enough, I would wake up in a completely different consciousness. At least, that was what my most recent client had claimed she had been able to do. Once again, it appeared as if I were simply operating on a lower psychic level or that all my clients were full of bull sugar.

“It’s not so bad,” Shelby tried to reassure me. “This one shouldn’t last too long. You’re really competent; the company would collapse without you. They shouldn’t try to keep you away if they know what’s good for them.”

“That’s the thing,” I quipped back. “I’m not sure they do know what’s good for them.”

Shelby frowned. She had experienced incompetence at the upper management level, so she knew I was right.

“Well,” she said. “Take a look at the files. It should be a quick fix if everything is as they say it is in here.”

“That’s the thing,” I repeated myself. “It rarely ever is.”

Poor Shelby. I could see that my snotty attitude was bringing her down. All she was trying to do was help. I offered her a warm smile.

“All right,” I said. “Show me the damage. Hand over the file.”

She slid it across the table and I began the peruse the paperwork while taking a sip of the exceptional latte she had just concocted for me. It was pure heaven, even as I faced what was my boarding pass to the innermost circle of H-E-double-hockey-sticks.

“The overview should give you a pretty good idea of what you’re dealing with,” Shelby went on to explain. “It’s a natural food and holistic healing provider.”

I had to force myself not to role my eyes at this one. Natural food products were one thing; people could spend egregious amounts of money on an organic, locally grown, free range, antibiotic free, pear as much as they wanted. That was their prerogative. But I had just finished consulting a woman who had tried to pass off non-FDA approved tea tree scented fragrance oil as a topical treatment for external infections. I nearly gasped in horror when I first saw her pitching it that way. Someone was bound to require an amputation thanks to her. I jumped in immediately and told her not to do that ever again. She never did it again… in front of me, but I’m pretty sure she returned to her old, stupid ways as soon as I left.

I tried not to delve too deep into the memory of it all. The last thing I needed was to start this assignment off on a note sourer than it already was. Everyone in my life was always telling me to “stay positive”, that it would make me feel better and thus, I would do better in life. I was determined to maintain a positive attitude about this for as long as I possibly could.

It just turned out that “as long as I possibly could” was thirty seconds into looking into the overview.

“They want to expand?!” I exclaimed in terrorized confusion. “They’re this far into the red and they’re looking into building brand new state of the art locations?”

I scanned the proposal for expansion once more.

“And in areas where the real estate is ridiculously inflated right now!” I practically shouted. “They shouldn’t even be hiring us for my services! They’d do better to hire a bankruptcy attorney.”

Shelby attempted to calm me down.

“That’s right,” she said in a soothing tone. “Let it all out now while you can. It wouldn’t look good if you lose your temper when you get there.”

“These people must be absolutely insane!” I proclaimed.

Every single sum total at the bottom of the summaries from accounting were in red. I barely glanced at the prices of the products and saw that they were marked up several times their value.

“Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems,” Shelby tried to assure me. “Remember when the documents from that incense and essential oil trader seemed obscenely grim, but then it just turned out to be a matter of the accountant not adding in loss from an official disaster.”

I sighed.

“Even in that case, I had to deal with that incompetent accountant,” I said. “That guy should never have received his license. Heck, that guy should have never passed sixth grade math!”

“You’re in a lively mood, now!” said Shelby.

“I’m positively worked into a lather!” I confirmed. “Why did our company even accept this client? It’s pretty clear that any other consulting firm would reject them! That’s probably why they had to hire us from all the way out here! Shelby, whatever check they pay us with is going to bounce and I’m going to be the one to get blamed!”

Shelby sighed. She was holding something in. I could tell.

“Shelby,” I said. “Are they trying to find a way to force me out.”

The bewildered personal assistant didn’t say anything. She just did everything in her power to avoid eye contact with me.

“Okay, that tells me all I need to know,” I said. “I’ll be taking that as a 'yes'.”

Suddenly, as if her resolve had returned, Shelby snapped her gaze back at me.

“Okay, but this is off the record,” she said. “Understand?”

I nodded solemnly. Shelby already knew she could trust me; she didn’t need to swear me to secrecy. Then again, something told me that the environment of the workplace hadn’t been as ideal for her as she would have liked it to be. She was in a position where she simply couldn’t trust anyone. For her to be reaching out to me spoke so many truths about who she was as a person.

Shelby leaned in and lowered her voice so that she could not be heard should anyone happen to pass by.

“They’re tightening things up at the executive level and Mr. Green is worried about his position,” she said. “He’s been going through productivity rates of everyone at your level. Do you want to know how those look, Ron? Do you want to know who has the best turn out with the clients?”

“It isn’t me, is it?” I asked.

Shelby said nothing. Rather, she nodded in silent confirmation.

“It can’t be!” I exclaimed without realizing I had raised my voice.

Shelby shushed me.

“It can’t be!” I said again, only whispering this time. “The recent consultations I’ve been doing have been going nowhere!”

“Do you think that’s an accident?” Shelby asked. “You’ve been assigned lemons this whole time because Nicholas Green has been trying to put you into volatile situations. He wants to justify letting you go to his direct superiors.”

“But why?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything to him and I don’t think I’m a threat in any way.”

“Not yet,” said Shelby. “There’s been talk of promoting you for years.”

Even though this was flattering it was also incredibly frustrating. I had always suspected that I was being sabotaged, but I couldn’t talk about it with anyone at work, and any friends or family I had told asserted that it was all in my head.

“Every time it comes up, Mr. Green and some of the others squelch it,” said Shelby. “It’s gotten harder and harder as time has passed though, because you’re taking all these lemons they’re handing you and turning them into lemonade.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why would they want to prevent my promotion? I didn’t do anything to them!”

Shelby sighed and cast her gaze downward.

“They’re scared that you’ll outperform them,” she said. “Especially now that upper management is looking to trim the fat. They’re afraid that if you get promoted, your numbers will be such an egregious outlier, they’ll all look like hacks in comparison.”

I was struck dumb with this revelation. I had always felt that there was some sort of conspiracy, but I could never come up with one that made any sense. The answer was wilder and more alienating than anything I could have ever imagined.

“But they are hacks!” I argued back.

“All the more reason why they want to bide their time,” Shelby asserted. “They want to pass the time continuing to be mediocre.”

I looked down at the latte she had made me. The foam had merged into the rest of the drink, rendering it a cup full of pale, taupe liquid.

“Look,” Shelby said. “I shouldn’t have even told you any of this. Honestly, I’ve probably already told you enough to get myself fired.”

“I appreciate you telling me regardless,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “I didn’t plan on telling you all this, but it just sort of came out. This is all a long way of saying ‘watch your back.’ I know the cards are stacked against you right now, but you need to pull through this for your own sake.”

For the first time since I started working for the firm and had met Shelby, I wondered what her life was like outside of work. Her icy blue eyes pierced through thick false eyelashes. I realized that she wore a lot of make-up and, looking at her close up, she was much older than she appeared from far away. I wonder if this protective side of her came from her kids. I had seen pictures of children on her desk outside of Mr. Green’s office, but I only understood them from the perspective of them “belonging” to her in a vague, nonspecific way. Were they her own? Were they nieces and nephews? Where they the children of a friend? Heck, maybe those were just the stock pictures that came with the frames.

Shelby’s hand, as small as a child’s and covered in chunky rings, reached over. For a moment, it hovered over my own. I could tell that she was apprehensive about making contact. Every professional impulse in her body was screaming “No!” However, what I believe was the maternal part of her won out and she let her hand rest on mine for a fraction of a second before she pulled away.

She then stood up.

“Look over the files,” she said. “Learn everything you can. Plan as much as you can. If anyone owes you any favors, call them in. If you’re lucky, this will be a gauntlet: something you can boast about in your later days.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise. I’ll do anything I can.”

I meant it, but at the time, I had no idea what that would entail. I think Shelby knew it in that moment, too. She regarded me with a steely gaze. It was as if something inside of her was letting me go; like a farmer learns to disassociate affection and care from the animals he sends to the slaughterhouse. It was unnerving.

“I wish you more than luck,” she said.

With that, she turned and walked out the door.

I could not have asked for a more appropriately ominous foretelling of my time at the Fresh Face Co-Op.