Tag Archives: Vivek

The Perfect Kiss

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Well today was better than yesterday and that’s good. Nice to start off on a positive note. Ending on a positive note is another matter entirely.

The mellowness was from the fact that Vivek and Sanjay were in India and not coming back to the States until Wednesday, meaning they won’t be in until Thursday which is my last day of the week I think.

I say I think because I think Vivek is expecting me to work 5 days a week, which will be nice to get that money again, and also it means that the cleaning of the hallway will be done on Saturday or Sunday.

That’s not so bad. We shall see when Vivek returns.

I had a good talk with Greg Stevens and he was totally supportive of my situation, having dealt with Vivek for a number of years. His advice was very much the same as Annemarie’s and Harpy’s, hang in there. I don’t have much choice but to hang in there.

I’ve been hanging in there for so long that I am considered well hung.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to be going to Avenel with Abby. For what, I don’t know. He’s supposed to be picking me up here in Hoboken so that saves me a commute. That should make for an interesting experience.

I was planning on writing the other day about my driving experiences. I’m giving it a shot tonight. In 1981, a friend of mine, Derry Pedovitch and I had an idea to move to Los Angeles.

Derry had family there and he made arrangements to stay in Canoga Park. Derry had a van and we decided to drive Route 80 to Utah, then whatever highway would take us to Southern California.

It wasn’t that pleasant a trip. The northern route was dull, it took most of a day to get through Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a four lane highway, two lanes going east and west.

We made it through to Ohio and parked in a campground in the middle of the night. We were on the road the next day, looking at nothing but corn as we drove though Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.

We slept in Nebraska and I got into a fight with Derry almost abandoning me in Nebraska when the van’s cassette player ate one of my tapes. After that we made it to Utah, sleeping in Beaver.

Then it was onto Southern California, getting a room in Alhambra after sitting in traffic for a few hours. In Canoga Park I found Derry’s family were nice, a little rough around the edges though.

We realized once we got there that everyone travels to Los Angeles to start all over again and we weren’t so special. It was a weird couple of weeks that also included a trip to Las Vegas were I lost all the money I had.

That was also the last time I gambled, not counting playing the lottery. It was one of the stupider weekends in my life.

Our money and dreams were depleted and we headed back to New Jersey, driving the same route, only this time it was nonstop.

I went back to work, and eventually got Derry his job back in the same warehouse. 6000 miles in about a month.

I wouldn’t recommend it, but it did get me the courier position when it became available a few months later.

Derry betrayed me a year or so later and I never spoke to him again.

Headlights Look Like Diamonds

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Starting off, I don’t like the new hours. Sure, going to work at 9:00 is nice, less of a rush hour crowd, but leaving the office at 7:00, getting home around 8:00 and then having to make dinner is not my cup of tea.

Maybe I can get used to it, but on day one, I don’t like it.

The day today was a fiasco, even before I got on the bus. As it happened, I was waiting for the bus when Greg Stevens called my cellphone wondering if I was coming in to the office. I told him I was.

Then he asked if I was close to the office and I told him I was still in Hoboken waiting for the bus. He was off to a meeting and needed a letter that Vivek had sent out earlier this month, the letter stating that the company was broke and belly up.

I told him that I should be in the office by 10:00 and if he left me a fax number I would fax the letter over to him. I was there a little after 10:00, I found the letter and faxed it to wherever he was.

The day progressed awkwardly. Basically I was doing the same job as before, only 90 minutes later. Things still needed to be done and the other people in the office weren’t about to do it themselves.

The conservatives were all dressed up for meetings, I was casual since it was going to be close to 90 degrees today.

I got a phone call from Abby this morning as I sat at my desk. He asked if I was going to call the various hotels and motels that were discussed yesterday.

I told him that I still would like some help with this aspect since the people that I was calling had questions that I couldn’t answer, and I too had some questions.

He didn’t seem to hear that and asked again, and I raised my voice telling him that I requested help yesterday when he, Vivek and Sanjay (gave the business partner a name) sat opposite me at the table and all they did was nod their heads in unison, and still nothing was resolved.

I don’t want to look like an idiot and I don’t want the company to look bad.

I told Rand yesterday that it was like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, only this was worse since the hands were attached to the 8 arms of Shiva and the left still wasn’t saying anything to the right.

I did what I could, calling up the hotels and motels, and doing my best after Sanjay sat down and we did a phone call together. Still, things didn’t go as smoothly as anyone would have liked.

Some people I called didn’t know anything about what I was calling about and some simply weren’t interested. This was the equivalent of a ‘cold call’ or so they thought.

I heard from Sanjay that this was ordered by a guy who owns several of these hotels and motels, unfortunately the owner didn’t tell the managers of these places.

It was confusion on both ends.

Some people weren’t in, some people were unavailable. I had to keep calling because all of a sudden this needed to be taken care by 6:00 this evening.

‘Let’s give it to the new guy’ must have been the thinking behind that one. I called one motel manager at 4:49, telling him I’d call back in an hour to help him with the questionnaire. At 5:55 the guy’s phone was out of service.

It was truly the essence of ridiculousness.