Author Archives: johnozed

About johnozed

I'm 50+ years old, 210-ish#, 6'2", reddish blonde, blue eyes with glasses (and without) masculine, funny, relatively intelligent, enjoy the company of assorted friends and family especially sordid friends and family. I love music, reading, writing, conversing, laughing, going to films, shows, concerts and smoking cigars. And I also enjoy looking nice in a suit and tie. Looking more like Lewis Lapham than Tom Wolfe. I'm sure there is more, but we'll just have to find out when I write about it. In a lifetime relationship with partner Bill Vila.

I Have Dreamed

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Bill and I just listened to The Hallelujah Chorus by the Roches. We sang our own version of it a few minutes ago. It was quite funny and ended with the both of us laughing quite a bit. Bill surprised me tonight, getting on the same bus that I was on at the bus terminal.

It was great to see him, the perfect end to a hum drum day. And the hum drum day started with the usual feeling of dread. Not wanting to go, but keeping in mind that it isn’t so bad, I would not have to deal with Calvin for four days.

He was off today and tomorrow, I’m off on Monday and Calvin is off on Tuesday. He’s going to see Prince, after the glowing review I gave last month after seeing Prince at Madison Square Garden with RoDa.

One of the things Calvin mentioned yesterday was that the staff spends too much time on the internet. So today I did not go online at the cigar shop. Neither did the Bradley or Sean. We were pretty good about that. It was a long day.

Yesterday we basically cleaned the shop, making sure everything had a price on it, as well as cleaning all glass surfaces. We do that a lot, cleaning the shop so that the cleaning woman has an easy time of it when she comes in for her 90 minutes of cleaning, Monday through Friday.

I did a lot of pacing on the floor, really. I should have been wearing a pedometer to see how many miles I accrue each day. And once again, former employee Don came into the cigar shop. He was in yesterday and left his scarf behind. Perhaps it was a Freudian thing, intentionally leaving it behind for a return visit, a ‘round two’ as it is sometimes called by former staffers. The present staff doesn’t talk like that.

And it was also the second day I had fore gone the free cigar from the owners of the cigar shop. It’s one of the perks of working there but it really doesn’t float my boat anymore. The whole experience of working at the cigar shop leaves a bad taste in my mouth and it isn’t from smoking cigars.

The cigars I enjoy are looked down upon by cigar snobs as being cardboard, despite the fact that this ‘cardboard’ pays the bills since more ‘cardboard’ cigars are sold than the top shelf cigars generally approved and given high ratings by the horrid Cigar Aficionado magazine. Lately it’s been such a drag dealing with Calvin and Marcus that I would rather just forget the whole thing.

Today since I was off the internet at the cigar shop, I went to an internet café and checked my emails, some job offers, and some red herrings. It wasn’t as expensive as I thought it would be. $2.00 for 10 minutes and I was done with what I wanted to do and went back to work for more pacing and cleaning glass surfaces.

Now I’m home, one more day of work then a day off, which of course can’t get here fast enough and will likely be over before I know it.

Not writing Sunday!





I Have But One Heart

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Well I’ve been working at the goddamned cigar shop since June 1. Today is January 14 and it was probably the worst day I’ve had so far. I started out the day, sleeping in later, not getting out of bed until 9:00. I was up at 8:30 and made coffee and poured my cereal and went back to bed.

The alarm clock was still on when I went back to sleep, and I didn’t get out of bed when Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes came on, I got out of bed when the Rolling Stones Get Off of My Cloud came on. I usually like to have 2 hours to take my time but figured I really only needed an hour this morning.

I was in a decent mood, not totally exuberant, but had a good attitude. I had it together and walked out the building at 10:15. Walked up to Washington Street, bought a Mega Millions ticket and waited for the bus as I talked to Bill on the phone.

I also ran into Linda, a nice woman who used to work at the supermarket and later Roda as I waited for the bus. A nice way to start the day, and helped put me into a better mood.

When I left the cigar shop on Wednesday night I had a feeling something was up, and today I found out what was up. Apparently my sales for December were disappointing. I only sold $50,000.00 worth of items in December whereas Calvin sold $76,000.00 and the Bradley sold about $72,000.00. They were terribly disappointed with my numbers.

Calvin feigned concern, asking me if there was something wrong, if there was something I wanted to talk about. I had nothing to talk about except to mention that it was merely the luck of the draw. I get a customer that comes in, and then the Bradley gets the next customer and so on and so on with Calvin grabbing as many big ticket sales that he could get.

He does have a wife and kid to support on the salary of an assistant manager, so his grabs could be ignored. Calvin didn’t really have a reply to my luck of the draw comment and neither Calvin nor Marcus seem to realize that there is a recession going on, and that people aren’t spending thousands of dollars on humidors like they used to previous years.

No, they just think that everything is the same as it used to be and if sales are off it must be because of me, not because people aren’t spending money like they used to. So that’s how my day started. I decided not to get upset.

I figured my time at the cigar shop isn’t going to last much longer, resumes are still going out daily. I know that’s how last year started but I am still trying to maintain my positive mental attitude. I was pretty quiet most of the day, staying out of conversations and opting to be by myself whenever possible.

Calvin spent most of the afternoon drinking, which is how most every afternoon Calvin has spent since I’ve been working there. My time with Calvin ended today with me selling a $500.00 pen. The item number wasn’t coming up in the computer, the message saying the item was inactive.

Calvin was helping me trying to find the box for the $500.00 pen and I mentioned that it was listed as inactive. The customer had no idea what I was talking about until Calvin came over and edged me out of the way and entered the pen as a ‘special cigar’.

The customer received a receipt stating that he bought a ‘special cigar’ for $500.00. The customer left satisfied and Calvin turned on me saying that there was no need to air dirty laundry like an inactive item. He seemed surprised by my reply that the customer didn’t know what was going on until he got behind the register.

Technically Calvin let the cat out of the bag. After another drink Calvin got his shit together and headed home to wife and kid, not shaking everyone’s hand like he always does. I’m glad to be out of there and will be even gladder when I am finally out of there for good.

And I find it hard to reason that Don and Raymond hung out at the cigar shop for a few hours. You can bet that once I am gone from the cigar shop, I am g-o-n-e. Never again to grace the floor of the cigar shop with the bottom of my shoe.