John Deavensmit was not having a good time. After an incident involving a coffee spill, he'd been sued for $50 million, and somehow the jury had ruled against him. There was no way he could pay that much money; he'd go bankrupt.
Naturally, he filed for an appeal, but the winner of the case was already beginning to hound him for money, hoping to get at least something before the judgement was overturned. John was nearly at his wit's end before he found an unusual package in his mailbox.
It was from a couple of his friends, who all went on to law school when John left to create a startup. They'd all been very successful, and had gone on to be justices at various levels, from courts in a small county in Wisconsin all the way to the Supreme Court. When he opened it up, he was surprised to see an ink drawing of a thick wooden stick. It was signed by his friends, and accompanied by a note:
> Hey John, > > We're sorry to hear about your loss in court last month. We met up at a judge conference in the Davison Center, and we thought that we'd do something special for you. We met up in the Grapefruit Room and all worked together to draw this. We hope you enjoy it! > > Your friends
Now, John had been to D.C. a few times, and knew about the Davison Centre. It was renowned for its very offbeat architecture. The Grapefruit Room was one of the weirdest: it had been constructed by taking a world-record grapefruit, carving out the flesh, and preserving the rind. The result was a walk-in fruit, and it always smelled of citrus.
It took John a while to work out the significance of the gift, but when he realized it, he was overjoyed. His good friends had seen fit to grant him a stave judge-men penned in a peel.
We were in pre-service prayer time hanging out for everyone to come into the room when this conversation.
Pastor 1: "John and I were getting donuts and discussing theology..."
Pastor 2 (from another church): "glad you were having donuts, they're a holy food."
Pastor 1: "man, that joke is really sweet."
Pastor 3: "man, you guys are really on a roll."
I laughed, their were many moans and eye rolls.
and things are going great for the first few days, handling deliveries, putting cuts into and out of storage, etc. After his first week, coming in at 8am to work with the Butcher's supervision, the Butcher decides that he can trust John with a little more responsibility. The Butcher is a bit of a perfectionist and he tells John that he has to be there by 6am Monday morning because a delivery of fresh beef was due to arrive at 6:15 and it needed storage and processing immediately. John was incredibly excited and set extra alarms Monday. He snoozes his 5am alarm, but his 5:15 alarm gets him going, and he arrives at the shop at 5:55, tired and slightly panicked. He gets into the back room and takes a catnap.
He is shaken awake at 7:45am by the Butcher, who is asking where the cuts are. The deliveryman didn't see John and so the beef wasn't delivered or cut. The Butcher was incredibly disappointed in John, and had to fired him because he had caused too many missed steaks.
Co-worker of mine has a tent that he carries around. We recently moved spaces and my boss asked how it was going.
I said, "Not too stressful. John only has the one," as I point to his tent on the corner.
Boss looks at it, "Does it take up too much room?"
"No," I replied, " but if he brought in another one it would be two tents.
Me: I couldn't get to sleep for ages because there was a beetle in my room that kept flying at me.
Dad: Was it John, Paul, George or Ringo?
Me: Oh jesus christ...
Commence him laughing heartily.
