An excerpt from Dave Dyer’s forthcoming fictional autobiography called “A Life I Could’ve Had.”
“Have you seen ‘The Mooch’ today?”, Barry asked.
“No”, I said. “What channel is it on?”
“It’s not on a channel, dumb ass! ‘The Mooch’! You know, the new guy…Tony.”
“I’m not following.” I was following; I just hate being the spineless lemming that needs to fall in line with a dominant personality.
“The new guy?”, I said.
“Man, are you in for a rough ride. You’d better get with the program. He’s been here two days and he’s already fired, three people. That’s more than one guy a day!”
“Chunky Kev”, the sitcom I had been working on, had been canceled after just four episodes, leaving me with a mountain of bills and no cash to climb it with. Two weeks after that bomb dropped, I was in Ralph’s pondering whether or not I could afford Kraft Dinner as opposed to the Valu-Time Mac & Cheese my lower GI had finally adjusted to. In order to give me time to negotiate that decision, I decided to take a walk through the produce section because, from time-to-time, they’ll sell some of the fruit that’s fallen on the floor at a discount. I saw a sign above the green bananas that read, “2nd Shift Help Needed”. I was desperate and my pride had shrunken to the size of a Stegosaurus’s brain so I asked for an application, filled it out at the customer service desk with a borrowed pen, went home and waited for a call. It came an hour later.
“David?”
“This is.”
“This is Remmy, Night Manager at the Ralph’s on West 9th. I’ve got your application here.”
I knew the job would be shit because the “interview” consisted of him asking me two more questions over the phone and one of them was, “When can you start?” The job itself wasn’t so bad; rotating bags of apples so that the most-bruised ones were on top was brainless work, but my co-workers were a potpourri of societal misfits that made the bar clientele in Star Wars look like prowling models on a catwalk. It didn’t take long to see that, although Remmy was a nice enough guy, he lacked the organizational skills needed to make a grocery store operate like a well-oiled machine…and he had a rat-tail. The higher-ups noticed this, too. I’d only been there a week when word came down that Chet, the Regional Manager, had canned Remmy and replaced him with the shortstop from his softball team….Tony, aka “The Mooch”, as I would learn later. During the mandatory introductory meeting with Tony, he managed to toss out three “F-bombs”, said “tits” twice and barely caught himself before the “C” word launched off his tongue like a base-jumper. And he wore cologne. I’m not sure what brand, but let’s call it “Red Flag”. The next day, an anonymous memo went out from Tony’s email stating that our new Store Manager could either be addressed as “Sir” or “The Mooch” and that his door was always open unless it was closed. That last comment was followed by a poop emoji. Being reasonably sure that “The Mooch” was a self-appointed nickname; I opted for “Sir”. Just saying that hurt enough, but I needed the dough. Of course, in the backroom and during off-hours, I think we all agreed that the most suitable name for him was “Fuck-O”.
