It's No Wonder That Anybody Can Be President

Steve had the dream job.

Steve was a member of the crew of cleaning gnomes that visited my accounting office every night, excavating the waste left by about 50 CPAs who spent the day spilling coffee on the carpeting and piss on the linoleum. The other CPAs in the office never met the cleaning crew that cleaned up their messes, but I met Steve as the result of deftly morphing my work schedule over the years. I had trained the firm’s partners to tolerate my propensity to wander in about 10 a.m., then work late into the night. This schedule allowed me to minimize time spent in the company of other CPAs, a motive that begs no explanation if you’ve ever met one. It also allowed me to introduce a casual dress code for myself, long before casual dress codes became fashionable, after all of the silk ties had gone home for the evening.

Steve’s responsibilities included emptying the wastebaskets in my little corner of heaven, and I always looked forward to his rounds. He covered ground quickly and he was always in the midst of a heated verbal exchange, although his debate opponent was invisible to the naked eye.

Steve rode the short bus to work. Apparently he was mentally retarded, but I saw through the sham. I think he used the retard thing to land a plum job, and I regularly accused him of such. He got a kick out of it, and we shared some good conversation night after night. We didn’t talk about pension benefit accruals or deferred tax liabilities. That’s the kind of stuff I discussed with the college educated retards I worked with during the day. Steve and I talked about interesting stuff, like cars and broads.

Occasionally, Steve’s supervisor would show up out of nowhere and take him to task for neglecting his wastebasket-emptying duty to talk to me for a few minutes. Steve called her The Bitch. I did, too. And she was. She rode shotgun on the short bus, and was proof of the Principle of Hierarchy. No matter where you work or what you do, there’s always somebody who gets to ride shotgun on the short bus and hold it over you. That somebody may be the cleaning crew supervisor or the Director of Human Resources, but they’re damn proud of riding shotgun on the short bus.

Steve and I were above office politics, though. Neither of us were strangers to negative performance evaluations, and neither of us cared. Neither of us had careers; we had jobs. So we hatched a plan.

One night, The Bitch was on another floor of the office building, lording her 3 point IQ advantage over the urinal-scrubbing crew. Steve and I seized the opportunity to cast our own Eddie Murphy/Dan Ackroyd Trading Places sequel. I was preparing the personal tax return for one of my community’s elite industrialists, and I thought Steve might want to get a feel for the glamorous work of a CPA. I needed to input a list of miserly charitable contributions into the tax preparation software, and I was sure Steve was up to the task. I sat him down at my computer, gave him a quick indoctrination, assisted him with the first few entries, and off he went on a bean-counter spree. And off I went on a wastebasket-emptying spree.

As I traveled the perimeter of the office with my rolling master garbage can, I could hear Steve cussing and complaining in his usual manner. Only now he sounded like every other CPA sounds while inputting a monotonous string of numbers into tax preparation software. More proof that Steve was faking the retard thing!

I think, as a result of our little role exchange, Steve developed a greater appreciation for emptying wastebaskets. I know I did.

Steve has since transcended wastebasket duty, and I have transcended public accounting. He now works as a box boy at a small, independent grocery store about a half mile from my house, and I dig graves for fun and profit. Whenever Steve’s employer has Jack’s pizza on sale for two bucks, I stop in to load up a cart and check in with Steve. It’s been about 12 years since his CPA gig, and I recently revealed to him the name of the mucky-muck whose tax return he helped prepare.

Steve’s eyes widened in recognition, given that this client was, and still is, a member in stellar standing of our town’s celebrated, elite Mutual Admiration Society. He seemed nervous. "I didn’t make any mistakes, did I?"

"I don’t know."

"But…but…what if I did?"

"Who cares? We’re both out of the business now. You now handle foodstuffs before they’ve become garbage, and I handle people after they’ve become garbage. I’ll tell you what, though. It’s highly unlikely that this honcho will ever come into this store, since he employs a bevy of illegal aliens who take care of everything from shopping for his groceries to wiping his ass. But, on the off chance that you ever see him, here’s what I want you to do: introduce yourself to him and tell him how much you enjoyed preparing his 1993 tax return. Then you ask him if you made any mistakes."

That’s the headline I want to see:

Community Leader Stricken With Heart Attack In Grocery Store