Amusement
by Jeremy Bursey
Copyright 2015 by Jeremy Bursey
All rights reserved.
Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Professionalism
Part 2: Sammy’s Assignment
Part 3: Dizzy Fuzzy Bubby
Part 4: Nippy the Cat
Part 5: Crash
Author’s Note
Ebook Version
About the Author
Other Books
Contact and Questions
Part 1: Professionalism
Sammy normally liked his job at Dinners and Waters, an investment firm with its own advertising and marketing department, as it demanded from him the starchiest elements of his steadfast professionalism, and did so at the word “go.” Whenever his bosses had asked him to complete an assignment, they expected top-notch performance out of him; they knew they could trust him with anything, for he always delivered, usually on time, as his responsibilities required. Like him, they frowned on laziness, and thanks to his determination to satisfy, it wasn’t in Sammy’s wheelhouse to disappoint those who counted on him.
But he knew he had seen the world through a different set of lenses than the common folks around him. Where most people lamented the slow ride through traffic and the slower ride up the elevator to their offices, made worse by the sound of Monday coming off their tired lips, Sammy saw the commute as a journey, a chance to experience motion in nature’s intended form: a forward trek along the straightest line through the concrete wasteland between Point A (his loft) and Point B (his office), hopefully without interruption, and hopefully with enough straightforwardness to give him time to plan his day while simultaneously suppressing unwanted memories of his former life.
He appreciated this routine, which most people would consider dull and lifeless, because, for him, it was comfortable. He knew it was a life without distraction, and devoting the maximum allotment of focus to his work meant he could excel at anything he’d brought to the firm’s mahogany conference table for review. And, if, at the end of the day, he were to deliver anything that was less than perfect, he would beat himself with a stick and restart the project from scratch, going home only after he was satisfied with the final result. Sometimes that meant spending the week in his office. Sometimes that meant shutting himself down from the outside world, cutting himself off from current events, isolating himself from people who couldn’t help, forbidding himself from eating. It was one way he dedicated himself to excellence.
His colleagues, however, insisted that his high sense of professionalism was just a coping mechanism to ward off his demons. No one else at the firm had felt so strongly about a commitment to perfection. Their unwritten motto had always been, “Whatever gets the job done is good enough.” But Sammy knew better. Professionalism was the foundation for success. It not only translated to high job quality but ensured that the job was done right, the first time. It should always be done perfectly the first time, or it shouldn’t be done at all—that was Sammy’s motto. If everyone had committed to his assignments with pride, then the world would be a happier place.
Professionalism was not a quality he believed was too demanding for “professionals.” In fact, if anything about his job had upset him, it was that so many of his colleagues were adopters of the rest of the world’s attitudes: show up, cut corners, get paid, go home. It was the overachievers like him who’d kept the company well-oiled and highly respected. But that was his satisfaction: knowing he was making the world a better place.
Therefore, it had given him great joy knowing he had his brown windowless office with the dying plants in the corners to look forward to each day, where a stack of papers sat waiting on his desk, ready for him to study, ready for him to sign, and ready for him to send back to his boss for approval. It was boring work inside a boring room, but it kept him professional. Nothing about his office distracted him from the task at hand. Likewise, he enjoyed those days where he could pinch the skin of his neck with that uncomfortable gray tie that a woman he once knew had given him for a birthday he didn’t want to celebrate, then conceal everything but the knot under a blue silk shirt and dark business coat where his professionalism could be fashionably visualized. He felt naked if he couldn’t enter his office with a leather briefcase in hand, which was often filled with antiquated documents paying tribute to a time before electronics had taken over communication and the world. Not only was the briefcase a solid accessory to his sharper image, but it contained valuable resources inside that contributed to his preparedness—an attribute of a true professional. Psychology was the mother of strong character, and knowing he looked the part and fulfilled the part ensured him that others would view him as the part and perhaps step up their own professional game. Certainly, that would give him one less thing to worry about. Following the mindless routine of paperwork and meetings also enhanced his feeling of worth, and the thought of marching toward the weekend was the only thing that brought him any sense of anxiety. Weekends were full of uncertainties and distractions. Weekends were the reasons people didn’t pay much attention to their current tasks.
Yes, his bosses kept it easy for him to seclude himself in a cocoon of contentment, but today he was no fan of Dinners and Waters or the opportunities it had offered him. Today, the firm had called for an offsite meeting with a company he did not trust. The company was remarkable in business, but lay at the bottom of the proverbial barrel in professionalism. Its employees weren’t even required to dress the part. Sammy worried that dealing with them would siphon his strict values right out through his pores and onto the shoddy concrete paths they forced their customers to walk upon. He’s seen it happen to others—good men shot down by environmental conditioning. The very thought of it made him anxious, even with the weekend so far away. For this reason, Sammy wasn’t happy with his firm’s current assignment. In fact, he was very angry, very angry indeed.