Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Nine

The worst job in America

Curtain up.

An office in disarray, 27 DAYS handwritten on a whiteboard. GREGORY,mid-50,overweight enters stage left.  ANDY,mid-20s, follows.

ANDY
AGAIN!

GREGORY
It’s in the lexicon kid.

ANDY
Hoover’s in the lexicon, Kleenex is common vernacular. We’ve got the President of the goddamn USA dumping our brand in the shitter.

ANDY waves a newspaper, PRESIDENT LASHES WALL STREET.

ANDY

Whatta the clips like?

GREGORY
Papers running hot, rolling across every channel.

ANDY
Spoon-faced lobcock set us back a month. 

GREGORY
We’re getting the speech.

The stately MR PERKINS enters.

PERKINS
I pay you boys don’t I?

GREGORY
Sir.

PERKINS
Then why, while sipping morning Pink-Lemonade did I read “President says Wall Street’s drinking the Kool-Aid,”?

ANDY
We’ve had 27 good days.

PERKINS
There’s nothing good about failure son.

GREGORY (whispered)
I hate the speech.

PERKINS
When my great-grandpappy left his mother’s homemade-lemonade out and returned to find it dried up, he found the idea of our lifetime. In 1978, 200 folks chug the powdered-drink Flavor-Aid mixed with poison, not Kool-Aid boys, mark my words, Flavor-Aid. So why, when someone has a great idea, why don’t we say they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid?

ANDY erases whiteboard.

Curtain.