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 I Usually Get Paid To Shop!  (9 ratings)by Rev. Dr. Raymond W.B. Young Page 1 of 3 Companies usually pay me to shop for their products or evaluate their employees. It is an easy gig and I usually am able to put three or four jobs together each week to keep down the boredom. As you might guess, I sometimes get calls to shop at odd hours or odd places or (once) odd altitudes. On Wednesday I wasn't surprised when I got a call from a company representative who wanted me to do a job for them and it had to be done in the next 12 hours. Having less than 24 hours notice is not unheard of, it is just rather odd. My wife wasn't going to be home from work until 19 o'clock and I had already planned to order pizza and salad for dinner, I figured that a quick shop would be o.k. Grabbing the faxed instruction transparency from my printer and my hat from the hook by the door, I headed for the lift. Big Mistake, Mrs. Redbone from the 120th floor was in the lift and she has an apparent desire not to bathe or use deodorant. However I offered her a semi-polite nod and punched the button for the 188th floor garage and prayed she didn't feel like making small talk, which in her case means complaining about everything from taxes to the color of the stainless steel walls of the lift. No Luck! Five minutes later I managed to escape into the quiet, odor free, confines of my five year old GMC Anti-Grav Pacer and was nosing my way into traffic. Setting my auto control to the local robot control, I pulled out the transparency and started to learn about my new assignment. The first thing I noticed was a typo that I planned on using to my advantage; FEE: $100,000 plus travel and expenses (unlimited). As has been established in many courts, the transy is a legal document if it was printed directly from the originator and if the recipient agrees to the terms as printed. Well being paid $100K for a job that I would normally get about $50 for is just fine with me. I should have just said 'NO'. The assignment was simple; go through the security checkpoint of the Trans-Polar Shuttle to New Zealand, buy a beer at the "Flight Line Lounge" go home and write the report. No sweat, easy money and a beer to boot. As usual parking at the Boise Transit Port was a bitch, but I managed to get a spot only two kilometers away and rode the courtesy belt the rest of the way in. Sense my trip was tax deductible, I dropped $60 bucks in the slot machines as I was going by and headed for the Trans-Polar ramps. Just my luck, the lady on the ramp belt ahead of me seemed to be a close spiritual cousin of Mrs. Redbone and I got to suffer 20 more minutes of bad air and low value complaints & gossip. I didn't give her a semi-polite nod so I guess I am ahead on points. Nose in the air, I walked thru the scanner and was quite startled to hear the security alarm go off and find myself slammed to the deck and handcuffed almost before I took a second step. Looking up, I saw that I was completely surrounded by very big, very mean looking security people with their weapons drawn and was being approached by a mousy little man who made me think of accountants with a hand held scanner and a brief case. Running the scanner over me, he nodded his head once to the head security goon and I was dragged to my feet and shoved through a door. The room I found myself in contained a plain white plastic chair that looked like a piece of deck furniture left over from 20th century suburbia. Another door, the common automatic type, and a woman, five foot three inches tall, waist length red hair tied in a tight french braid, perfectly tailored mild green business suite and a very expensive pair of low heeled shoes. She didn't look happy. My handcuffs were just a little too tight. Eyeing me like I was a particularly disgusting insect, she glanced down at her Data-Padd and gave a quick nod. "Mr. Simm," she said, "my name is Astra Roe and I need you to do a little job for me." I couldn't believe it. I had just been abuse and handcuffed and this lady wanted me to do her a favor. "Fuck You" I said, and I meant every word of it. "Tut tut, that is no way to talk. I work for the IRS and I would hate to order a complete audit of you for the past ten years." My blood went cold, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, ever argues with the IRS. The Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Rev. Dr. Raymond W.B. Young, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. The author has submitted the work in accordance with and in agreement with the following Submission Guidelines. |
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