Category: Fiction/Satire

“Welcome to class, everyone. As you may have heard, Corruption University has brought me out of retirement to teach a special course this semester. My name, by the way, is Professor Words, Professor Buzz Words. And what a pleasure it is be here helping you get your degree in Misleading Business Administration.

These MBAs has become crucial to success in dodging scandal, and masking ineptness. And, as I used to tell my students, you’re going to fail at some point, and I’m here to help make sure you fail upward. You have a question, sir?”

Terri and I shoehorned ourselves into our seats for the cross-country flight, and had a drink apiece to try and dull the muscles and senses for the four hours of air travel.

I had the window seat with the redeeming feature that I could squish my nose against the little piece of reinforced plastic rather than someone’s shoulder. Terri was in the middle seat, seemingly holding up better than me. On the other side of her in the aisle seat, a sullen teen nodded along to whatever was coming through his Beats headphones.

It was late Friday afternoon when I stopped by Wilson’s office. 

“Let’s take a walk,” I said. “Coffee, my treat.”

Never one to turn down a freebie, Wilson readily agreed and we were outside walking to the coffeeshop a few blocks away. It was a little storefront, an independent place that had somehow survived the Starbucks onslaught.

“Honey, the lawn guy seems to be really upset with you,” Terri said.

“Tom?” I asked.

“Tim,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive his name is Tim. It says so on the door of his truck.”

“No, I mean are you sure he’s upset with me?”

I was in the home office, whittling away a few more precious minutes reading a story online that I really had no interest in. 

There was a lot of buzz as we filed into the conference room. Something big was afoot. 

“Whatta ya hearing?” Wilson asked, coming up behind me as I squeezed into the room with the others.

“Word is we’ll get a look at the new logo. We probably paid some ad genius, slash consultant, slash design firm, a million bucks to come up with something new. Probably because our old logo is one of the most recognized in the world, year after year. No sense letting that go on too long huh?” I said. 

Wilson was standing in front of my desk talking to me. It was a pleasant enough conversation. Weekend plans, that sort of thing. It was Friday after all. 

“We’re going to try to get a run in early tomorrow,” he said. “Then we have Rex’s appointment at the groomer. Dogs, I’ll tell you, they have the life —“