Dee-Lightful Lunch

I Like Alice, Part 3

Stanley, the bartender, noticed that we hadn’t been served yet. He walked over. Dee order a beer with her a salad. She looked at me to make sure that I also ordered a beer. Usually, we don’t have beers for lunch during the week. In fact, about the only time we do is when we’re watching college sports with Duke on Saturday.

“My work is so damn frustrating,” she said, knocking the roll of napkin and tableware to the floor. “I don’t want to complain too much about it. I’ll just end up with too many run-on, vile thoughts about Mr. Dickless.”

“He’s a creep.” I said while she picked up the napkin.

“Did you know that he tries to sneak up on people to overhear their conversations? I got to get away from work.”

I said, “Work will be fine.”

Dee unrolled her napkin and put all the tableware next to her water glass. I put mine where they were supposed to be.

After finishing, she said, “What about the Dr. Marty assignment? I kind of like it.”

I rolled my eyes in complaint. She seemed to think I, too, was frustrated with her boss.

“Which assignment? My new Steven Wright album is funny.”

“Can I also listen to Steven Writing?”

“As well as I can.” I said, without correcting her.

“Actually, I was asking about the other one.”

“You mean the imaginary friend one?”

“Do you have a name for yours, yet?”

“I can’t come up with anything clever. Everything sounds stupid.”

We shelved the contempt innuendoes, which would be a great name for a song, or a band, or maybe a whole style of post-punk music.

“I used one of your tricks at work recently, and it worked great. We were trying to develop some branding concepts.”

“Branding tricks for what?” I asked.

“Our expidited service, you know, pay us a little more and you can jump the line. There was this nasty argument about what we should say about it. In an effort to accommodate everyone, the copy got longer and longer.”

“When a group of people try to brand something, it’s a gang bang. It’s a violation of common sense.”

“Instead of jumping in and arguing my point of view, I waited for the yelling to start, and for the division head to get pissed off.”

“Pissed division heads. That’s always fun.”

“He was really frustrated. I stood up and said, ‘You all are being dicks. Let the product speak for itself. What would it say. That’s the way to brand it. If you asked it for its 30 second elevator pitch, what would it say? That’s the message.’ The division head laughed and smiled. It was so cool.”

“I don’t usually call my clients ‘dicks’ to their faces. But yeah, ‘let the product speak for itself’ is a great tool for cutting through bullshit.”

“Let your imaginary friend speak for himself. Let him tell you his name. Right?” She smiled as Stanley served her salad.

And my turkey sandwich.

… continued

——

I Like Alice

Part 3: Dee-Lightful Lunch
Part 2: Dance Around The Damn May Pole
Part 1: Good Just Isn’t Good Enough