30) Saturday, the Fifteenth 6:59 – 7:09 AM – “Open Up the
Gates! OPEN UP
the GATES!”
Before the gates to the One World Mall, the early-birds had twittered
and craned their necks towards Giga-Plex with such birdbrained intensity that
Tenison briefly feared they’d just come crashing through the glass into the
pyramids of marked-down ordinary HDTVs – and, after, would come the lawsuits. Not a few tugged beat-up, trade-in gear, many
more, it seemed, were hauling new, perhaps defective converters… stuff bought
off the street or in the close-out stores at half price, or less, Mark
observed, but some still in the boxes that Giga-Plex had sold them in. Some of these actually did pound on the GP’s
glass and the metal gate, causing Mark to smile for the benefit of the troops,
let the lawyers and insurers worry about litigation…
“Curs!” he smirked.
“Cretins. But so long as their
money’s good, we take it. Speaking of
money,” he reminded the cashiers, “some foreign customer wants to pay in Euros,
they get a thirty percent discount, ten percent for Canadians. Anything else, call me or Mr. Tatlinger, under the Credit/Tech tent…”
He gestured like
a television variety show host might - a thin, balding temp accountant
dutifully raised his hand. Mark coughed,
then removed a sheaf of scripts from Waco, waving them in the air.
“Mr. Sonnenschein’s doing the Big Apple this morning… he’ll
appear on one of those morning talkshows, by the way,
and is expected here by this afternoon, but you can bet your jobs he’ll have
his spies and secret shoppers dropping in.
Perhaps,” he pointed outward, “some of them are already there.
So everyone… we go strictly by the book, and this is the book.” He waved the scripts again, so there’d be no
mistaking what book he was talking about.. “Only four pages, so even you don’t have any
excuse not to follow the rules.
Salesmen…” and he glared at Ray, just now ambling in from the loading
dock with Craig Synch, Pablo and a couple of Mexicans, “…I do hope the loading dock’s secured…”
“Got it!” Ray
said, dangling the keys as he gave a thumbs-up sign.
“Salesmen!” he
repeated, “…let’s make this weekend a zero tolerance weekend for the cheapskates. All departments! We got twice as many talkin’
“Luv Cubs” as last year, so get them into the hands
of customers by tomorrow night. Guy
comes in, wants a 32-inch set, bump him up to a forty, at least. Refunds… no cash refunds. More than thirty days since Christmas, make
them exchange for something bigger… Ralph?”
“I heard on the radio, comin’ in,
there’s been problems with converters…” said the ever-twitching,
underperforming Ralph Richards.
Oh yes – Mark told himself, when L. B. Sonnenschein
made his appearance, one of the first things Mark would ask, in confidence, was
whether he had any young and hungry sales trainees in Waco, ready to step up to
the big time. Transfer Ralph to
Annapolis or, better yet, out somewhere in West Virginia…
“There’s always problems with cheap pirate shit,” he finally
admitted. “Government in action… anybody asks, these were illicit models. Most of ‘em will go away, but some asshole
might say he bought it here, even had the dumb luck to save an outdated
receipt, what do you say? We’ve dropped
that model – we have apologies from Beijing, and we’ll gladly offer credit on
the purchase of any legitimate box… then, try to steer them into taking a set,
even some thirty-inch, six hundred pixel crap.
Something funny, McHale?”
“People been complainin’
‘bout the prices on converters…” Thunder said.
“That’s so
they’ll wise up, realize its stupid to throw two hundred bucks into a twenty
dollar, twenty year old Magnavox analog or Korean ordinary digital… off the
record of course,” Mark corrected himself. Thunder was just dumb enough, just perverse enough, to tell somebody the
truth. “What you actually say is that
you get what you pay for… and if they still give you a hard time, play up our
E-Z credit and send ‘em to Tats…”
The numero uno accountemp
reminded Craig of some stupid dog, fawning on the master and ejaculating over
his trouserleg as he barked, proudly, “…if they’ve
got a buck in their pockets, I’ll have it… if not, stab lab’s just across the
street…”
“Good man!” the manager tossed Tatlinger
a verbal McMilk-Bone.
“So some irate asshole starts screamin’ that
he’s takin’ his business crosstown to Best Buy or WalMart,
even, what do we tell ‘em… Total?”
“Dunno
‘bout WalMart, but Best Buy and Circuit City too…
what’s left of them… they NATITRAP too…”
“Tell ‘em you’s
screwed, dude…” Thunder reprised.
This was more
like it, Mark Tenison thought, pounding his fist into his palm as he looked out
past his underperforming team to the clowns pressed against the glass, waiting
to be plucked, like chickens. “Yes! Yes! Take ‘em down and leave ‘em lying in the
road… and if they think they’ll get a better deal at Sam’s Club,” Mark
chortled, looking at his watch as dim, pink dawnlight
crept across the atrium floor of One World, “send ‘em on their way! Nine minutes past seven… let’s give the
animals a break, get this show on the road.
Captain Capps, will you do the honors?”
Security Lester
marched to the door with two junior Eagles and three rent-a-cops… one staff,
two supplementary (there were three plainclothes lurking in the employee
lounge, ready to take on the weekend shoplifters), shaking his head at the
greedy, distorted faces pressed against the glass, still pushing and
shouting. Worse than Iraqis he’d dealt
with in the First Gulf War before taking retirement! He peered at the faces rattling the gates
from the top, bottom and side, warning the mob…
“Stop pushin’! Stop! Anybody not behavin’
like American citizens, you get tossed out and banned from the store. Banned!
Behave!”
“Open up the
gates!” they snarled back. “OPEN UP the
GATES!”
Mark looked at
his watch again, smirked and shook his head.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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