Page 13 of Meet Stan

I had to put the venom back in the cobras, and I thought that I’d come across the perfect way to pull it off. A perfect prank, a tale for the ages.

I was willing to spend millions of dollars to humble my friends, and I didn’t care what happened along the way.

What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter Six

Ivy

Normally I felt pretty good after dinner with my family. Normally, however, I don’t find out from my mother that the family business is on the verge of collapse.

I wasn’t sure what to do. Mom wasn’t sharing a lot of details about how much they owed and to whom, but I was pretty good with research. I looked up the typical mortgage, property taxes, and then took into account my father’s recent heart surgery.

If my calculations were even close to being accurate, my family was in big trouble and I didn’t have the financial means to help. My contributions would be a drop in the bucket.

I spent most of the night after dinner lying awake in my bed. I watched the moon trace shadows on the wall until it vanished behind the concrete mountains of skyscrapers. I’m not sure when I finally fell asleep, having turned my clock face away from me to decrease my anxiety over insomnia. I am sure that when I awakened in the cold light of dawn, my eyes felt puffy and tired, and I wanted nothing more than to just stay in bed all day.

I couldn’t do that, however. My tryout, the projects I was to manage—including the biggest one, Mastercraft Beer—wouldn’t wait because of some insomnia.

Fortunately, I had some coffee pods with double the caffeine content to get my motor going. By the time I got on the subway and raced away toward work, I was feeling positively human.

Not great, but human. I was no closer to figuring out how to help my family keep their business, but at least I wouldn’t pass out on the subway platform and fall into the path of a train.

When I got in the elevator at work, I accidentally hit the wrong floor. My new, temporary office was right next door to Chandler’s. That meant I was working on the same floor as the big wigs, including my one-night stand, Stan.

So far, things had gone well with Stan. He was more than willing to keep our tryst a secret, and that scored him a lot of points in my regard. A lot of people would have used it as leverage. Stan didn’t seem like that kind of person, and it made me feel a lot better about working with him—not to mention sleeping with him.

I sat down at my new, if temporary, desk and opened my laptop. Time to get to work. Only I soon found that my itinerary was far more than crunching numbers. I had meetings to schedule, among them a cursory visit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. There were new staff to transfer into our management structure, and I was shocked at how much Chandler had left for me to do.

I worked for three and a half hours, my mind lost in the numbers. It felt good to leave behind the problems of my real life for the problems of work. After all, the problems of work could be solved.

The bitter irony of it all was I could have easily moved funds around and had some stick to my fingers, as it were. Maybe even enough to pay my family’s way out of their predicament.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a thief.

Later, I had a teleconference with about seven people on the board of directors for Mastercraft Beer. Stan was on the call, too, but he didn’t say much. In fact, he seemed oddly subdued.

The Mastercraft board were keenly interested in maintaining their stellar reputation. I was quick to point out that awards didn't always translate into sales.

“Mastercraft means something,” Chairman of the Board Nils Galley said. “It’s not just a name on the label. When I agreed to sell a controlling interest to your firm, I believed it was to expand our existing formula, not compromise it.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad to win awards,” I said quickly. “I don’t propose messing with your formula at all. I’m just proposing that we look for ways to get the beer on more shelves and going home in more trunks.”

“That’s what we all want,” Stan added. “Right gentlemen? So, let’s talk turkey. How do we get our product on more shelves?”

The meeting went well, after some initial friction. Stan backed me up every step of the way. I didn’t want to be too miserly with the purse strings, and nothing that anyone requested seemed out of line.

Even when Stan extolled on the virtues of giant inflatable bears.

“You’ve never heard of a beer called ‘Hamm’s’, but I remember them because they had a giant inflatable bear at the fourth of July parade. I’m just saying, a giant inflatable mascot couldn’t hurt.”

“Mastercraft doesn’t have a mascot,” Nils sniffed. “It has never needed one.”

“Nils has a point,” I interjected. “I mean, back when you were a kid, a cartoon bear was fine as a mascot for a major beer brand. These days, they’ll try to accuse us of getting underage people to drink with our cartoon mascot.”

“Okay, I concede the point.” Stan didn’t sound bitter at all, another big plus in his win column. “What about a more mature mascot? You know, like that whole ‘most interesting man in the world’ bit?”

“It’s already been done. I would say trying to get a celebrity endorsement might be our best bet, but that can get really expensive.” I sighed. “I’m not sure this is a productive area of discussion, gentlemen.”

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