Love, Jimmie

I have a new Boss story, and let me tell you, it’s a doozy.  First, though, you might like a refresher on Boss.  Boss and I have an unconventional relationship.  We act as if we’ve been married before or as if he’s my big brother.  I hold all of his personal information including credit cards, social security numbers, mother’s maiden name, etc. and in return, he makes sure that I am paid well and have lots of benefits.   We often fuss and argue like old biddies.  We don’t take any crap off of each other and make fun of each other on a regular basis.  Remember, he once offered to christen my grave with pink sparkly champagne that he first filtered through his kidneys.

Boss can be such a pain in the rear sometimes (see above).  He’s irritating, even when he isn’t trying to be. See, he leads what I call a charmed life.  Everything seems to fall orderly into place for him, without effort or conniving.  If he has accidentally double-booked himself for an evening, for example, he never has to make a call to let someone down.  Inevitably, one of the booked parties will call him with fawning excuses to back out of the evening and promise him something ridiculous like free flights to Costa Rica for the inconvenience.  It annoys me, mostly because those things never happen to me.  When I’ve double-booked myself I end up making no one happy and have to make my own fawning excuses and ridiculous promises to make up for the inconvenience.

Also, Boss seems to have a “way” with the ladies, except I’ve never seen him actually DO anything to or near the ladies to have this “way”.  He’s not what I call a conventionally attractive man.  He never appears to flirt or make excessive eye contact with women.  Still, I can’t tell you how many times he’ll come into the office, greet the new receptionist or new client (both female, of course), and walk out of the room having no idea that he’s leaving these women all atwitter and starry-eyed.   I get immediately bombarded with giggling, breathy questions like, “Is that your boss?  Is he single?  What’s he like to work for?”  It’s ridiculous.  I stand there agog, mouth open and answer truthfully that no, he isn’t single and that he’s pretty cool to work for. I’ve never swooned over him or really understood why women get goofy over him – I think of him as the engineer version of Austin Powers without the glasses. 

Just last week we drove through a fast food place and ordered a burger and fries at the squawking box.  “I’d like a number three,” he says, and the woman in the squawking box replied, “Okay, baby, drive on around.”  Already I was raising my eyebrows at the “baby” but seeing as how the only communication was squawking thus far, I gave him a pass.  However, when we arrived at the window the woman purred “Thank ya, sweetie.  Did you have a nice visit with us today?”  as she looked directly at me, cocking her eyebrow and  all but dipping her cleavage into his French fries while raking a nail down his hand.  She had only heard his voice!  And I was in the car! I could have been his wife! Or girlfriend!  Yet his “magnetism” made waves through the squawking box, into her headset, permeated the French fry grease and oozed out of her very pores as she gave him a come hither glance.  These women are brazen.  Really I should be thankful he has no effect on me.  I’d never get any work done. 

I have followed Boss from company to company.  When he moves, I move.  We work well together despite his pheromones or whatever it is he possesses, and we have done so for a very long time.  He has taken very good care of me, and it has always been clear where my loyalties lie.  He lives in Kansas, I live in Tennessee. I support him remotely and it works well for both of us.  Or it has until now.

Boss has received an offer from another engineering firm.  It is based in Kansas and with the new work, he will have new staff.  Staff that does not include me.  Over six years of my life have been spent working with Boss, maintaining his travel schedule, his credit card balances, some of the demands his kids and girlfriend make of him.  And now we are parting ways.  There has been much chaos at work over this, and our group has been whipped about like a rag doll trying to figure out our direction, our new leadership, our purpose.  It has been emotional and confusing and certainly trying.  After many weeks of this chaos, a plan has been hammered out and a direction focused upon, and everyone has wished boss well as he embarks on this new perfect-for-him journey that literally just fell into his lap.

What happens to me, you ask, now that the person who has taken such good care of me is leaving?  Ah, I have not fared so well.  I am what you call “collateral damage”.  I was shot down in the crossfire.  I am unemployed.  There is no space for me at his new company and as I just learned, without him there is no space for me at mine. 

I won’t lie to you – crying is a part of my daily routine now.  I do my very best to remain hopeful, to fight my panic, to not be angry, to look forward to a new adventure.  It is trying and promises to be exhilarating, but the transition from trying to exhilarating takes its toll.  May I ask you, readers, to think of me?  If I weigh on your heart would you send up a prayer for me? And of course, when you hear of an Austin Powers kind of man, a kind of man with unexplained charm and extreme unending good fortune, a man who needs an assistant, won’t you send him my way?  My resume is waiting for him.