HIGH MAINTENANCE
Tiffany loves her brother...dearly. She's the baby sister of the Safavieh rug and furniture store family that dominates the home furnishings industry. Their headquarters and warehouse are on Long Island in Port Washington, NY. Tiffany's also a little bit nervous.
It was her brother's Birthday and she called me that morning to do something for the afternoon. She kept calling back to change the costume at least a half-a-dozen times. Then the bombshell hit when she said her brother was going into Manhattan for a meeting, but was coming back out at the end of the work day. I was a little skeptical because, he lives in Manhattan, it IS his Birthday, so why would he come back out to the warehouse if he left early to go into the city? And my policy is that I need 48 hours notice for cancelation, so it couldn't be canceled. I'd be happy to re-deliver, but if he wasn't going to be there, why waste everybody's time? She insisted he would be there.
The last costume change was from a Rapping Gorilla to a Mick Jagger/Ozzy Osbourn-type rock star. The problem was that the rap had already been written and there was no time to re-write it, so the rock star was going to rap out the Birthday song.
Complicating things was that I had House Seats to see "War Horse" on Broadway that night and I was taking my daughter to see it, so we had to be there by a specific time. Tiffany kept calling me as I was driving to the delivery, giving me traffic updates as to where her brother was as he headed back to the warehouse. As I pulled into the parking lot , Tiffany calls me, very nervous that Jonathan will see me upon his arrival. It's a huge parking lot and I told her that unless he was specifically looking for a surprise, and based on where I was parked, it was highly unlikely Jonathan would spot me. And that's exactly what happened. Jonathan arrived and went straight into the building.
Tiffany decides to come down to the car to give me more last-minute instructions. It was then I got to meet her face-to-face and she got to see me sitting in the car with a 16 year old! I offered no explanation and Molly just smiled and waved to her. It was the first time all day that she was speechless.
But she quickly recovered and started to give me the scenario about how I should wear my costume and that maybe I shouldn't wear the spiky-haired 80's glam-rock wig I wear for such deliveries. I finally had to stop her and say, "Tiffany, please let me do my job. I know exactly what to do."
With that, I walked into the showroom/warehouse and started talking very loudly about how I was a rock manager and needed to furnish my airplane with Safavieh carpets, talking in a really bad over-the-top cockney accent. When Jonathan turned the corner, he didn't know what to make of me. I then told him I was the lead singer of a Rolling Stone cover band called, "Gathers No Moss" and that I heard it was his Birthday, so the boys and I wrote a little ditty and rapped it.
Jonathan just beamed from ear-to-ear. He told his sister it was the best gift he had ever been given (I don't think that was hyperbole!), and baby sister Tiffany was pleased. She was so pleased, that she called me about four more times on my way into Manhattan to tell me what a great job I did and that her brother can't stop talking about it. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said. "You were right".
(a la rapping style)
Let's celebrate, you're 28, knock me off my kiester
You're such a macho guy and yet you're a big fashionista
You're into bath & body goods, on that you should be dwelling
Stick candles underneath our nose, then ask, "How is that smelling?"
"Competitors are criminals", of that you scream and shout
On every website you delight, "Make sure you're whoring out!"
Soon you will go on QVC, where they sell Coach and Gucci
Your dream, by far, to be a star, bigger than Susan Lucci!
Kerry
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