Everything Changes

football pool with such calm efficiency. His computer monitor soon followed, and that made a hell of a noise, a small explosion really, when it hit the ground. Bill, our boss, was too economy minded to spring for flat-screens, so Clay had the full benefit of a forty-pound Dell monitor to punctuate his fury. When the HP LaserJet 2200d followed a few seconds later, the mild, crumpling sound it made as it hit the floor paled by comparison. After that, Clay disappeared into his cube for a bit, and all we could do was listen to the mayhem as he tore up files and threw framed pictures at the wall, kicking and overturning his furniture as he went. Finally, he stepped into the hall, sweat-stained shirt untucked, tie wildly askew, face dripping and throbbing, and sank down to the floor, leaning against the wall, head in hands, quietly sobbing. He had calmed down somewhat by the time security arrived to escort him from the building, and actually appeared happy and relaxed as they led him to the elevators, nodding his head as if he could give a shit.
    Clay had it coming. He broke the 80/20 rule and he broke the lead-time rule. There are many principles we live by here at the Spandler Corporation, and you can maybe bend a few of them when the moment demands it, but there are some rules that can’t be bent at the same time, or they’ll bury you. Clay depended on less than twenty percent of his client base for over eighty percent of his revenue. He allowed his largest client to become his only client, and he compounded that error by allowing his client to pressure him into a lead time he couldn’t live with. Poor schmuck was living on borrowed time.
    I shook my head and pursed my lips solemnly like everyone else, but the truth was, I envied Clay. I envied him his violence, his release, and most of all his escape. He needed to get out, to alleviate the pressure that was closing in on him from all four sides, and goddamn if he didn’t do just that. Clay lost it, Clay was insane, Clay went postal, but the bottom line was this: Clay had stepped out of the middle. He was free.

    I go through my papers and schedules in a futile attempt to come up with some miraculous solution to the Nike problem, but I already know the score. Craig fucked up, but I’m the one who’s screwed. I can still see the expression on Clay’s face as they led him away, surprised and unsure, but maybe a little exultant as well. When you start envying people their nervous breakdowns, it’s probably time to start examining your own life a bit more closely.
    Then this: I have to pee.
    The light tickle in my bladder is no doubt the same as always, but now it’s also a symptom of something as yet unidentified, filling me with dread even as it demands release. I distractedly navigate the maze of cubicles, the hushed sounds of commerce emanating from behind the upholstered walls buzzing in my ear like an insect, and enter the restroom, where I find the unfortunately named Bill Cockburn, our group manager, scrupulously scrubbing his hands, looking every inch the head honcho, in a blue striped oxford, burgundy tie, and matching suspenders. “Morning, Zack,” he says crisply, eyeing me in the mirror.
    “Morning,” I say.
    “How’s it going?”
    “Super.”
    The trick with Bill is to say as little as possible. He is notorious for his long-winded lectures on salesmanship, and you never know when a simple pleasantry might trigger a mini Dale Carnegie seminar. You know Bill. You’ve seen him on airplanes, speaking too loud to the poor bastard in the seat next to him about the stock market, or about the latest PDA applications, or the flaw in Amazon’s business model, and you’ve thought to yourself,
If he’s such hot shit, why is he flying coach?
In his midfifties, with a fleshy, mottled complexion and an erratically receding hairline, he believes there is no problem that can’t be solved with a ten-minute PowerPoint presentation. Bill worships devotedly at the altar of corporate management, a firm believer in systems, an ardent user of buzzwords. He is forever “touching base,” “making sure we’re on the same page,” and asking to be “kept in the loop.” He is all about making the sale, closing the deal. Bill’s system of management is to dispense the myriad inspirational truisms he’s accumulated in his thirty years in the trenches, delivering these adages to us in the manner of a Zen master guiding us toward enlightenment. “Sell to the