My Reputation…

He started it.

On a sunny August morning in Paris at the French offices of a multinational corporate octopus I unknowingly brought a gun to a knife fight.

This happened a few years before I was chosen to be the controller of the octopus’s largest home healthcare division headquartered north of Chicago.  The octopus’s management  wanted to make me the bull goose loony managing their bean-counters. Proceeding the coronation, I had lunch with my new boss.  She seemed to be a nice person, always dressed in a perfect business suit and a bit of a striver.

I drove us to a nearby restaurant in my minivan.  When she got out of the kidmobile there was a Fruit Loop stuck to the Brooks Brothers skirt covering her tush.  I thanked God and whichever of my sons left it on the seat, while I watched the Fruit Loop bob on her butt as we walked into the restaurant.

After a fairly standard business lunch she had one more question, “I have heard that you have an unusual sense of humor.  Could you tell me about that?”

“I prefer to think that it is the sign of a very active mind,” I answered, not sure if she’d already heard the story.

That tale begins several years earlier in South America.

I was part of a four person team auditing the Brazilian operation.  We spent three weeks looking under the rocks in the Sao Paulo accounting department.  The group started with me and Paul, another senior auditor drone.  In the middle of the second week a supervisor, Rick, and our manager, John, flew down.  We did not need John, but he showed up at exotic places so he could have a new stamp on his passport, get away from the family, and drink unusual booze.  

If we went to really interesting spots like Sydney or Singapore, our director, the department’s lord high commissioner, Sam, arrived.  He was responsible for finding the best restaurants, wasting our time, and vacationing in the South Pacific or Bangkok on the company dime.  Sam did not show up in Sao Paulo.

In Brazil, I worked  long hours and ate every meal with these schmoes.  They also expected me to go out drinking each night. The social side was tougher than the work.

At the end of the second week we quit early and drove three hours to Rio.   That meant I drove because the rental car had a manual transmission and the three stooges couldn’t drive a stick.  Driving in Brazil involved chaos at every intersection; one’s masculinity was constantly challenged.

We stayed at a five star hotel overlooking the string bikinis and speedos down on Ipanema Beach.  After checking in we met for more alcohol abuse at an outdoor cafe overlooking the ocean.  The weather was perfect and the scenery pristine, unless you looked at the favela climbing the sides of the mountains one mile to the west, the massive slums that clung to the hills.  Those were ungodly.

At the next table four beautiful young women sat wearing outfits that required barely any fabric.  They used too much makeup.  Hair cascaded in waves over bare shoulders and rested on exposed cleavage. One definition of prostitute reads, “to put one’s talent to unworthy use.”  These four were very talented.

I  was a naive 25 year old and one talented lady kept making eyes at me.  It was distracting and my pals noticed.  They kidded me about it.  I thought, “No big deal.”

After a few pops. Curly, Larry, and Moe wanted to go to a steak place a couple blocks inland.  I was physically exhausted and tired of their company.  So I begged off saying that I was opting for room service and an early evening.  They scoffed and left. 

The next morning while I chauffeured them up to the statue of Chris the Redeemer all three of my co-workers complained about their hangovers and asked me how she was.  I insisted I had slept alone and forgot all about it.  Mom would have been so proud of her good little Catholic boy.

But my coworkers didn’t forget and gleefully told the story behind my back when they made it back to the octopus’s main office near Chicago.

I now had a reputation.

A few months later in Paris, Paul and I had completed tramping through the books of the French subsidiary and set up  a conference call with a group back at headquarters.  Sam and John were on the call along with the company’s controller, and other senior princes from the corporate bean-counting castle.  

This was my first chance to impress these muckety-mucks, but as the call started, Sam decided to give me a hard time while everyone listened.

“Tony, did you see that woman on the corner in Paris last night?” he asked, “The one with the mini skirt, halter top, and fishnet stockings?”

That was a low blow, but  I grew up with four wiseass brothers and a bigger wiseass for a father.  I had worked several years at a small CPA firm in Chicago’s loop surrounded by wiseasses from the Southside.  I spoke fluent wiseass.

Sam was in over his head.

Perhaps I should have thought about all the grand poobahs on the call and the effect on my reputation before I took out my metaphorical gun and said, “No, Sam, I have not seen your mother.”

That day my reputation became legendary.