Blame it on Fazio's...

In the early 1990’s, before my Realtor days, I sold “Lifestyle” software to retail stores. That was back when people went to big-box stores to buy software programs for their desk-top computers at home. My company made cooking software, among other things. I even did some voice work for the videos. The job was all by phone, speaking with buyers who we saw in person several times a year when we traveled just to schmooze. Toronto most years and always the big CES shows in Vegas. Treasure Island, baby, now THAT was a party.

Our office was in a huge Victorian house on a historic street in St Augustine, Fl. “The oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States.” Sometimes we refer to it as “The oldest city” but I suspect any native American would take issue with that.

It was a good gig, with a laid-back owner whose attitude fit perfectly with this easy going town. A great way for me to decompress after working for too long in downtown Washington D.C.

Four of us sold software in two adjoining rooms, making calls to clients that we would party with twice a year.

Pat didn’t like the fact that his chair was broken. It wouldn’t adjust up and down. Stuck in the down position, it made him look like a seven-year-old sitting at his daddy’s desk. So Pat sat on a fat phone book. That was when cell phones were not so common and everyone still had a land line listed.

Pat topped topped that big yellow book with two pillows.

Aside from software sales, my job was to torment Pat. One day I bought a fresh Mullet from Fazio’s Fish Market, down on the waterfront, and put it between the pillows on Pat's chair. His desk sat by itself in the second room. After day three of sitting on his increasingly stinky throne, Pat started looking everywhere for the source of the stench. He checked his trash can, looked up in the AC vents, searched everything other than under his own ass. By day 6, the stench was getting too much for the rest of us too, even though we were in the next office. We were torn between the entertainment of seeing Pat desperately tearing his office apart, over and over, but never even looking under his butt, and our own inability to bathe in rotting fish any longer.

Finally, the choking stink was just too much to deal with and I had to get rid of the thing.

Jon and I were always doing stuff like that to Pat. Bill didn’t participate, he was a good guy, a Christian who walked the walk, but still, he would cover his mouth and laugh when there was simply no way for him to hold it in. Bill wouldn’t tell on us, but he wouldn’t participate either. It was up to Jon and me to stir up the trouble, and we did.

Like this picture, all of that was twenty some years ago. Now that old house is a B&B. Fazio’s is long gone, sold to a major hotel chain that never went forward with their plans once the recession pulled the financing out from under them. Pat skipped town without saying goodbye to his wife and daughters. Jon moved to Wisconsin to sell vacation packages. Bill died suddenly of a heart attack last year.

I really miss those guys, and the fresh squid that only the local Asians and I were eager to buy at Fazio’s Fish Market, down on the waterfront.