American Sun-Light News & Literature

Obie Tilden and the Art of the Noon Rout

If you wandered into the Auburn Pilots’ front office on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, you might have mistaken the scene for a low-budget workplace drama — the kind that airs at 2 p.m. and nobody admits to watching. But no, this was real life, and the auteur behind the chaos was Obie Tilden, the Pilots’ freshly minted Vice-President, barely old enough to vote.

Obie, eighteen months removed from high school and already fluent in the corporate dialect of “unfortunately,” decided it was time to prune the organization. And prune she did — with the brisk efficiency of someone deleting spam emails. First to go was Felix Starr, seventy, hair the color of a storm cloud that couldn’t commit, and a man whose tan suits suggested he had once aspired to be respectable. Felix, “Coach Felix” to those who tolerated him, served as Traveling and Scheduling Manager, though his scheduling skills apparently did not extend to his own life.

He pleaded — oh, how he pleaded — with Miss Tilden, invoking his erratic employment history, his prematurely tapped Social Security, and the looming specter of living on what he called “a practical pittance.” Obie listened with the expression of someone waiting for a latte that’s taking too long. She informed him, with the kind of bluntness that would make a guillotine proud, that management does not — and will not — factor in personal financial misadventures when making personnel decisions. His lifestyle choices, his budgeting failures, his professional shortcomings: all fascinating, surely, but none of them her problem.

Felix’s eyes glistened with the tragic moisture of a man realizing his life choices were being audited in real time. He attempted another appeal, but Obie cut him off and gave him twenty minutes — twenty — to clear out his office. If he exceeded the deadline, she said, security would escort him out, and his belongings would be mailed to him like the remnants of a failed marriage.

He looked at the wall clock. It was 11:40. The countdown had begun.

Felix scrambled, sweating, papers flying like startled pigeons. He had to hunt down boxes in a storage room, which triggered security involvement because apparently even leaving your office during a firing is now a suspicious act. Obie, arms folded, observed the spectacle with the serene detachment of a museum patron contemplating abstract art. She informed him he would be billed for the boxes. Felix choked on whatever remained of his dignity.

He made it out — barely — and security, in a rare show of mercy, allowed him to walk without the full ceremonial escort. A small victory, if one squinted hard enough.

Then came Buster Brewster, age fifty-nine, Scouting and Player Development Manager, and a man whose personality could best be described as “loudly allergic to authority.” Obie arrived at 12:10 sharp, because punctuality is the one luxury management always affords itself. She delivered the same speech, the same twenty-minute ultimatum, the same corporate froideur.

Brewster, unlike Felix, did not wilt. He flared. He protested. He performed. Obie, unimpressed, signaled to security — three guards this time, because Brewster had the energy of someone who might try to unionize on his way out.

He dawdled, of course. He made a show of it. And so, at the twenty-minute mark, the guards formed a formation around him that suggested he was either a dignitary or a flight risk. He left with only some of his belongings; the rest would be mailed, as promised. Walking to his car, he muttered about being too old to find another job, which, given the circumstances, was probably the truest thing said all day.