He sat in the back corner, the farthest away from the big boss as possible. Thomas "Tommy" Bines had no intention of making himself known at the meeting by speaking or being conspicuous in any way. It backfired immediately when the big boss rolled into the "good morning... I said good morning!" bit that big bosses like doing, and when the second response was still lackluster he looked to the back and said "Tommy, can you hear me?" because he was all the way in the back. The ensuing "getting to know [your new big boss" PowerPoint slide made no mention of music, and so we can probably safely assume that big boss was not making an intention reference to the Who's rock opera.
But that PowerPoint made a few other things perfectly clear, clearer than they had been even before, when Tommy tried to escape this big boss's chain of command but accidentally got promoted into another chain of command at the same time that big boss was getting promoted and swallowing that chain along with the promotion, so that he was still here, still at these godforsaken meetings, still sitting in the back corner praying he would be ignored while big boss boomed bullshit. Tommy knew how he operated. All talk in public, weaselly snickering in the shadows. There's no way around any of it. His presence loomed too large. His ego was like a black hole, all dense and pulling at everything around it constantly.
Tommy couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand any of it, any of these fucking people. The big boss and the little bosses, they all represented everything that sucked about this fucking job. But there was a chain of command and he listened to it because he needed the paycheck, and so he sat in the room and listened to big boss and his minions crack inside jokes and all the while Tommy fumed and wished he were anywhere else but here. He looked out the window and saw a pigeon stare at him then hop backward off the ledge and hit the wind mid-drop, soaring away, to somewhere, parts unknown, in a way that made Tommy jealous.
Big boss was still talking about his history as a person, his alma mater, his slow climb through the ranks, making sure to underline how he deserves this, how he worked hard and cares deeply about the game. Tommy wasn't denying that. It's easy to care. You have to be inhuman not to care, and Tommy knew that big boss was human. A deeply flawed human, sure, and a vastly annoying one, yeah, but human nonetheless. You can be a human and an asshole at the same time. You can care about what matters but also care about shit that doesn't matter too. It's possible. Here was big boss, proving it every day.
Big boss's existence and modus operandi had a way of holding Tommy accountable, which, when you honestly thing about it, was probably a good thing, though annoying as fuck too. There was an incident a couple years ago when big boss leapfrogged two spots down the chain to call Tommy personally, about some fucking case (Tommy couldn't even remember the specifics), about the kid on the case and how big boss was taking a vested interest in the case for whatever reason, and Tommy froze up when he got the call. It was intimidating, to be at the center of big boss's attention, ain't that the fucking truth.
And Tommy must have said something that rubbed big boss the wrong way. It wasn't clear on the phone call what the issue was. If you had asked Tommy after big boss disconnected the call, Tommy would've shrugged and said that it went well. Except that, two weeks later, Tommy's direct boss (the only good and decent person in this whole goddamn building, thank god, the only person without a great ugly pulsating ego attached to his fucking forehead) whispered to him that word got down to him that big boss had actually taken issue with Tommy's interpretation of the case. Tommy had no fucking idea. This was all through back channels.
And Tommy must have said something that rubbed big boss the wrong way. It wasn't clear on the phone call what the issue was. If you had asked Tommy after big boss disconnected the call, Tommy would've shrugged and said that it went well. Except that, two weeks later, Tommy's direct boss (the only good and decent person in this whole goddamn building, thank god, the only person without a great ugly pulsating ego attached to his fucking forehead) whispered to him that word got down to him that big boss had actually taken issue with Tommy's interpretation of the case. Tommy had no fucking idea. This was all through back channels.
But and yet—and this came with a year of relitigating the scenario again and again in his mind as he stood silently in the shower, thinking, thinking—maybe this had a way of strengthening Tommy's skills as a worker, too. Because that whole fucking thing that happened with that particular case, it never happened again under Tommy's watch. He knew that protocol like the back of his fucking hand, just in case big boss ever leaptfrog down the chain of command again and called Tommy and asked him. He would be ready with answers, would be ready to deny big boss the pleasure of talking shit behind closed doors.
Big boss was yapping about some nonsense up there, sans microphone and only two out of every three words intelligible, and Tommy started daydreaming a little bit, thinking about that time that big boss had burned him, and also thinking about the episode of television he had seen the night before, and how this particular episode of the American sitcome Til Death felt relevant. The tall guy, what's his name, uh, you know, the dude from that 2018 movie Gloria Bell, um, Dustin I think his name was? Dustin and the piefucking guy are teachers at the same school, Tommy recalled, and suddenly piefucker becomes principal, and starts "asserting himself," and ends up suspending Dustin Bell from his teaching position because Bell is cracking one too many jokes at the teachers meeting.
Big boss was yapping about some nonsense up there, sans microphone and only two out of every three words intelligible, and Tommy started daydreaming a little bit, thinking about that time that big boss had burned him, and also thinking about the episode of television he had seen the night before, and how this particular episode of the American sitcome Til Death felt relevant. The tall guy, what's his name, uh, you know, the dude from that 2018 movie Gloria Bell, um, Dustin I think his name was? Dustin and the piefucking guy are teachers at the same school, Tommy recalled, and suddenly piefucker becomes principal, and starts "asserting himself," and ends up suspending Dustin Bell from his teaching position because Bell is cracking one too many jokes at the teachers meeting.
Tommy wasn't sure how the showrunners were trying to frame it, but Tommy knew how he framed it in his mind. Dustin was wrong. It ultimately didn't matter that piefucker was power-tripping. It was Dustbell's responsibility to know that, and to work around it. He should've known that the teacher's meetings were important, that piefuck had important news to share, stuff that was actually integral to running a good school, not beyond but parallel to the power-tripping thing. Dustel should've known. He should've known!
But and but and but you can also see how this is no way to operate, in the chain-of-command structure. No sane boss acts like this when they get big. And don't you fucking start thinking that he was doing this on purpose, big boss, trying to give "tough love" to Tommy by busting his balls but also ultimately getting the work out of Tommy regardless. The end does not justify the means. Tommy fucked up by not knowing but that's no reason to be a fucking asshole about Tommy not knowing. It might in a perverse way make him a good boss but it unequivocally makes him a bad person. And it's wild that he couldn't see it, fucking wild!
Still... note that Tommy was in the back corner of the room, trying to stay small. Still. And that's because he accepted some core truths, that there were things that he could control and things that he couldn't, and he tried as hard as he could to have the wisdom to know the difference. He knew that there was no changing big boss now. There was nothing he could do. Tommy was at his mercy, always has been, and always would be, at least until big boss retires, which should give Tommy a solid eight years of existence in this agency without boss's looming presence. In the meantime, he's shutting the fuck up, and answering when called upon, and smiling a fake smile, and feeding egos when they need feeding, and shutting the fucking fuck up otherwise.
Tommy started thinking about the sitcome episode again, and how Dustball's extremely hot wife and the indelible character actress Kat Foster were sitting on the couch sipping wine and bonding over how silly the boys were being, but then eventually came to verbal blows because neither one of them could see the other's POV. Everyone is entrenching in their own worlds because they cannot find the strength to be humble and to consider the possibility that they themselves are wrong in some way. When everyone's wrong and everyone lives in a world that seems hellbent on making everyone feel "right" all the goddamn time, then you're gonna have constant conflict. And Tommy did not want to live this way.
He couldn't live this way. It was untenable. He couldn't live his whole goddamn life thinking he was completely right and big boss was completely wrong. Thinking you're right all the time has a way of creating a toxic acid that eats right through your skin and your bones and your soul. It was healthier being wrong sometimes. And it's functionally more convenient to be wrong sometimes too. He saw the compulsion to be right everywhere around him, and it made Tommy sick. Everyone in this room, that's all they can do is be right, all the time, muttering to themselves about how right they are, without anyone even listening to them. Tommy sees it on the TV, Til Death and otherwise, sitcomes and real life, Dustman and piefucker and all the rest, people just constantly vying for rightness, never admitting wrongness. Tommy saw it in his own family, all up and down the family tree, his only brother especially, god rest his soul, felled at the hands of a compulsion to be right.
The irony of the situation now was that this revelation made Tommy better at his job than he ever was before. In admitting he was wrong, he stood out. In his ability to soothe egos, he rapidly moved up the chain. Years later, a big boss himself, he would remember this moment, right before the meeting in that long-ago room hit its stride, and try to remember what it even felt like to think that he was right. He looked out from the glass window of a wall in his corner office and it all felt wrong, which was, in a way, righter than ever.
GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5
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