Working
in the cable building for David M’s Consulting for Architects (CFA) wasn’t a
hard job, just a little frustrating. This was in the pre-internet era, when we
did all our work with typewriters, primitive word processors, telephones and
fax machines. Sure, it was still effective and work got done and all, but for
instance if you needed to get in touch with the boss and he was out of the
office, you had no recourse but to say
“Let
me take a message and I’ll have him get back to ya.”
There
was a lot of that message taking on the duplicate forms back at CFA. DM was a
cool young dude about town who went out to the best restaurants and wined and
dined and did other stuff that I’ll only allude to ‘cause I don’t know what’s permissible to say and I don’t really want to bring anybody down. Back
then, a lot of partying was in the air, especially for the yuppie class -- like DM -- who had
the bucks.
I
had access to his big business checkbook and had to keep track of the checks --
though I never balanced the checkbook per se because -- many of the stubs for
the checks were blank. I had no idea of the money DM was taking out for his own
pleasure pursuits -- or anything else. Sometimes the hired guns or architects
would call and ask about payments. I wanted to help, but had to get the boss to
go over the billings, what was in the bank account, and then figure out the
payments and sign the checks.
I
have never wanted to have the responsibility of signing checks for anybody but
me.
Anyway,
when DM did breeze into the office, he seemed to have a headache and wasn’t
very inspired to work on the books and all when I was around. He’d book
architects and be on the phone, drumming up more business, but I had no idea
when the other administrative stuff got done.
He
did pay me every week, though, and I gratefully accepted -- for as long as it
lasted.
