http://www.sdmahaney.org/bogarc/20090319-Private_Nut-Nice_Guys.html or
http://www.sdmahaney.org/bogarc/20090412-Private_Nut-Behind_the_scenes.htm ]
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Private Nut: The Corporate Life, Pt 1
I couldn't get motivated any more.
I used to love this job. Sure the hours were long, the nuts were stale, and nobody ever wanted to see me. I always meant bad news. Nobody wants to find a private investigator on their tail, even if that PI has a cute bushy tail. The spying and sneaking around and scampering from angry husbands would be a grind - if they weren't so much fun. Now it seemed like all I did is put records in the computer all day.
Not that it was all peaches-and-pecans before. What had been getting to me was all the rest of running my own business. I had to keep all the books myself, after that rather attractive accountant insisted on all the taxes being paid (I still shoulda asked her out...). Then there were employees, always wanting to get paid, on time even. So when nuts were tight, it seemed like a good idea to pay my long time associate dicks in shares instead. I thought I kept control of enough shares, but then it happened.
We were bought out.
It was a consortium based somewhere out East. They turned out to be mostly skunks, and a few weasels. They smelled like a bunch of Continentals and had the business ethics of... of a scruffy rodent I guess. I got peanuts for my shares, and not literally. Something about an 'accounting disaster' they claimed. So they took over and I had to stay on.
I wondered how well they knew the business, the kind of business I knew so well. I spent my days tailing deadbeats and nights staking out strip joints. Well, usually it was a stake out. The door men let me in free as long as I said it was business.
But these new guys had been doing mostly corporate work, spying on bird-feeder makers and such. They didn't get their paws dirty. When they went out at night, it was on the corporate NutEx.
It turned out they didn't care about the details of one kind of business versus another. Nuts were nuts - and they were going to crack mine. A bunch of them flew in and made changes right off the stork. (Yes, the storks do cargo and passengers too, in between the baby gigs they did for us pretty often).
They told me I had to get rid of my secretary. I told them it would be a bad idea to let Grace go. They insisted. So I pulled the cord to let Grace go. Two skunks and a weasel were mauled on their way out. I never mentioned that Grace was a German Shepherd.
I hadn't hired Grace for her stenography.
I sat back and thought about what I wanted to be as a little fuzz ball kit. It certainly wasn't a desk-bound paper-pusher...
But now the yard below my old oak tree was littered with weasel fur. Would I get fired? If only I could be that lucky.
[To be continued!]