The Fine Art of Subversion

Less than a week previous, I had pointed an accusatory finger in Tom’s face and declared, “You are going to have to deal with Beanie Babies eventually,” and stormed away leaving him mystified. This encounter must have occurred to him when it finally reached his attention that the metro area had been assaulted by a flier campaign announcing a large Beanie Baby sale at The Store of Knowledge in the local mall; the store at which Tom was General Manager, and I his subordinate. No doubt these fliers caused Tom no small degree consternation, which he didn’t bother to hide – as this was at the height of the Beanie Baby mania that found mindless, trend-swallowing mobs swarming and trampling one another for the opportunity purchase a Beanie Baby, any Beanie Baby at all, and at any cost. This – compounded with the fact that The Store of Knowledge, a Public Broadcasting Station affiliated store specializing in educational toys and books, didn’t actually carry Beanie Babies, and had no intention of ever doing so – made Tom’s voice quaver as he tried to extract incriminations from co-workers I remained friends with.

And the interrogations didn’t go so well. Sam told him to go fuck himself, and Sam was probably the mellowest of the lot, having already been well into a solid heroin habit, viewing the world with sedated, glassy-eyed, chemical pacifism. The Drunken Murphy was later embarrassed that he dignified Tom’s accusations with denials, but he did at least openly laugh at Tom’s distress.

On the day of the sale, Tom was stuck in front of a savage stampede of desperate consumers. He attempted to placate the mob with coupons and apologies. These were a people who were quick to outrage, bolstered in their perpetual indignation by a religious philosophy of customer inerrancy. Tom knew as he saw them collect in front of the store before it even opened, with hungry expressions overwhelming their otherwise vacant features, that he was in for a day of hell. I couldn’t help but call him later in the day from my other job and mock him. He finally broke, and I daresay his speech turned somewhat unbecoming and vulgar.

Fact was, I hated Tom. We all hated Tom. And it was Tom’s fault that Tom was so hated. Tom had removed me from the schedule for three consecutive weeks, each week claiming that “next time” I’d be re-instated. By the third week, I was more than mildly nonplussed – my financial status having turned desperate – and confronted Tom in person. That was when he told me that he still couldn’t “deal with” me just then, and I told him that he’d have to deal with Beanie Babies instead.

Fortunately, my other job was in an office supply outlet equipped with graphic formatting software and copy machines. Using the letterhead from my check stubs, I made a convincing Beanie Baby flier and ran thousands of copies. People I knew were happy to distribute them, and several paper-boys agreed to put them in every copy of the newspaper.

The flyer campaign was so successful that a newspaper article reporting the hoax noted that the store had received over a hundred calls in one day. The store had only one customer phone line. A Store of Knowledge spokeswoman from Los Angeles speculated that the whole thing must have originated from a disgruntled customer.

I never returned to the job, and shortly after the event, Tom disappeared too.

But there are plenty of Tom’s in this world, and they need to be broken in much the same way. There are whole companies of Tom’s operating in America today, adversely affecting their employee’s lifestyles, and greedily benefiting from their sociopathic behaviour on a far grander scale. Unfortunately, few people understand the power that they hold as low-level employees on the inside. One need not hold a sale to hurt a company – I did that for dramatic flair – it’s so easy to just lose a company money. When loss is the goal, it’s easier to achieve than theft, and can be nearly undetectable.

We can control what the corporations are doing, all we need to do is assert our insidious, covert authority to punish the irresponsible…

– doug mesner