Sit Back

Another weekend in the office, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I was doing what I always did at the end of a long working Sunday: leaning back in my office chair, bouncing a tennis ball off the wall, and thinking of ideas… big ideas.

When my phone rang, I tapped a button to answer on my earpiece with my off hand, so I wouldn’t miss a beat with my throwing.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“Mr. Business?” said the meek voice on the other line.

“Please,” I said. “Mr. Business is my father. Call me by my first name.”

“Profitable,” said the voice again.

“That’s better,” I said.

Profitable Business. It was my real name, and every morning I thanked my mom and dad for it. So many of my friends’ parents honored grandfathers or great-aunts and the like, but my parents didn’t wallow in the past. They looked to the future and gave me a birth certificate that was a blueprint. They’d done the same for siblings as well. There was self-serious All, socialite playboy Risky, and of course my shy baby sister Noneofyour.

“Sir, it’s Jenkins,” said the voice.

“Right,” I said. “What do you got for me, Jenkins?”

“There’s been a bit of a… development,” Jenkins said. “Sir, are you sitting down?”

I laughed. “Jenkins, not only am I sitting down, but my posture is perfect, and my back isn’t too sweaty. You see, I’ve got a Black & Decker Cooling Gel Lumbar Cushion. With its Slow Rebound Memory Foam, it provides the exact support my spine needs, whether I’m in the office, or driving home, or working in my home office.”

“Um, okay, great,” Jenkins sniveled. “Look, sir, it’s about your recent business idea…”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I’m very excited about that one: a micro-commerce-center, offering a curated selection of goods and services, catering primarily to car-bound temporary nomads.”

“Exactly,” Jenkins said through the phone. “So, it turns out those places exist. They’re called convenience stores, and they’re, well, everywhere. Like, at just about every exit of every highway.”

“I see,” I said.

A normal businessman? They’d be overwhelmed by this news. It would take months if not years to recover from such a blow. But me? Profitable Business? I didn’t linger in the bad times. Already, ideas flooded my mind. New businesses. New ventures. New products.

“I’m glad you asked if I was sitting down,” I said to Jenkins. “Because it’s given me a sense of where to go next. Remember what I said about my posture? And my back not being too sweaty? What if we made a product that helped people achieve the same thing?”

“Sir, you just yourself mentioned owning that exact prod–”

But I hung up before he could finish. I had an email to write to R&D.