Sunday, June 05, 2011

Bad Dream: ASU's Allen Hosted Secretarial Apprentice

Let me be clear, this is a dream story, not reality. Normally the host of The Apprentice waits until the end of the competition to say "You're fired!"  That wasn't the case in my nightmare.

The antagonist in my dream was Angelo State University Vice Provost and "Queen of Mean" Nancy Allen.  She stood at a podium before six secretaries, announcing, "Your jobs have been eliminated."

She magically produced a platter of sandwiches and carried them around the room.  The first secretary took a bite and gagged.  "This tastes like dog crap."

"That's because it is," Allen replied before cackling like the Wicked Witch.  "There's good news my sweets.  You can apply for three new office professional jobs, or other positions that may arise."

My dream shifted to The Junell Center/Stephens Arena , the selection site for new office staffers.  ASU's Four Vice Presidents sat with the backs to the candidates ready to go "mano a mano" on a computer keyboard.  Nancy Allen acted as host.  She introduced the first fight pairing, Beverly and Dia.

"In this corner is Beverly, a conscientious office professional with honest intentions and a soothing phone voice, Beverly knows over 10 software programs and has already covered for her worthless boss five hundred times. Originally from Mertzon, she's worked at ASU for twenty years, always looking for that big break, which I assured she never got."

"Her competition is Dia, a 23-year-old office professional from Rowena who is half German and half Czech. Her career aspiration has been a soap opera actress on RamTV, but her considerable typing talents may steer her elsewhere. A life-long bookworm, Dia also writes novels and children's books, which by the way are crap.  She disgusts me!"

Beverly and Dia played a keyboard duet.  Beverly's composure and experience showed early, but it didn't take long for Dia's youthful speed to wow the crowd.  .

Judges used their ear to evaluate candidates, a bad sign given ASU's "tin eared" VP group.  Limbaugh took copious notes.  Blose stared toward the ceiling with a faraway look.  Reid used a spreadsheet with explicit criteria to rate the competitors.  Valerio took IPhone pictures of the younger lady's knees moving nervously in and out.

The keyboards stopped, as did Valerio's flashing.  The crowd roared, until Nancy took control with a "Shut the hell up!"  Allen followed up with a string of invectives.  When things couldn't get more bizarre, Nancy fired Blose and sat in his chair.  Beverly and Dia glanced at each other, joined hands and ran like the wind. I chased them for an interview, but saw the back of their heads as the pair squealed out of the parking lot in a blue convertible

My dream made me wonder about the key to future employment at ASU?  Note:  Any similarities between my dream and popular television shows are coincidence.  Fiction has its fractal side.

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