Part 5: Accountable My contract with Microsoft ended after 18 months. I’d gone to work for one person who’d handed me over to another, whose boss had turned against his boss with me caught in the middle. The volatility made… Read More ›
writing
Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 4: Heaven Audrick’s boss Gianna had a Mercedes too but hers was a model I’d never seen before, matte-black like the Batmobile. Gianna wore tight jeans and lots of make-up and jewelry, perfect hair. A decade earlier she could… Read More ›
Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 3: Separating When Audrick fired me he did it through his business manager Dale. I knew Dale was up to no good when I got the meeting invite with the fishy subject line. Dale and I had never met… Read More ›
Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 2: Retaliation I got the contract work at Microsoft through a friend of Dawn’s we ran into named Lindsay. It was going on two years since I’d been out of work. My run at Starbucks lasted almost 20 years… Read More ›
Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 1: Henchman After almost 20 years working at Starbucks I moved into the tech industry with a six-month contract at Microsoft. I didn’t understand anything about the technology or what anyone said, I just nodded and scribbled. The alphabet… Read More ›
Make-ahead memories
There is also something intensely masculine about cooking large cuts of meat, or the entirety of an animal, like a turkey. I do it because no one else in my family will. It falls in the same category of dad… Read More ›
The chime of the city clock
I don’t mind having more of the bed to be on when Dawn is gone, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it. I spread out like a starfish and sink into a deep sleep. But when the clocks toll downstairs… Read More ›
The cat-faced canker
There is nothing like a chainsaw to make a man feel like a man. I caught myself in a dramatic pose sinking that steel into the side of a fallen tree, slinging it like a weapon, wondering how ominous and… Read More ›
Change my life
It’s the strongest wind storm of the year and I do something I’ve never done before: drag a chair outside and sit by the front door with a blanket and coffee watching it come in. The sound is like the… Read More ›
Don’t fall on me
If there’s any month in Seattle I really struggle with the rain it’s November. It’s not a mist or a drizzle but full-on sheets of rain, sideways rain, cold, blowing rain. Rain that gets through old roofs and runs down… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 