Not Like You

He walked into his expectant family’s meeting in the crowded living room. “I won’t be knitting, sewing or crocheting sweater vests for the rest of my life. I will not be continuing a company like our family’s one.”      

His father scrunched his bushy eyebrows and started to say something, but he insisted. “I will not subject myself to such boredom. I’m more than that. I’m a leader. If anyone wants to object, know I won’t listen.” He swung around and proceeded to cross the hallway to his room. After shutting the door, he headed for his cellphone, hearing some accusers tell each other he will be needed at tonight’s meeting to discuss such ridiculousness. But he plopped down at his computer, first googling something of interest to him—his high school sweetheart was probably busy getting ready for some important date with some more handsome guy. Anyway, he wouldn’t have to continue a dreaded factory job like that owned by his well-to-do aunt’s uncle and his late father.      

Grinning the very instant he read its description, Chester fell back against his chair, looking up at the tiled ceiling. But what kind of job do I want to do for the rest of my life, exactly? What resume do I want to give my company? Then he bolted upright. I’ll pull off my own company! I’ll be its own CEO!

Chester dialed his high school sweetheart’s number to tell her the amazing plan. She’ll at least help me with an idea, he knew, as he bounced one of his long jeaned legs under his desk. Dialing was cut short by her voicemail. Strange. He frowned at the iPhone. She always answers although she’s constantly going to something important. That’s weird…  

Stevens called. Talked away about his huge project for Physics. Chester just nodded and said, “Yeah.”

“Dude. You gotta come over.” He inhaled and concluded his ramblings. Chester snorted.

Noises of plastic soda cans being crushed and clothes being kicked around his room made Chester shake his head as he listened to Stevens’ fierce involvement in his wires and diorama of a power line outage. After what seemed like fifteen minutes of describing how the electricity now flowed through the two makeshift power lines, Stevens then exclaimed, “If you don’t help me, I’ll fail it. It’s, like, a huge part of my grade.”

“First, you need to chill. It’s just a cla—”

“Just a class!” Stevens spazzed. “Well, your family business isn’t just a family-owned company. What’s wrong with that? Don’t ditch it just because it’s owned by a family…you know and love.”

Chester had his mouth open to protest, but he slowly closed it—he was forsaking the family business, but, he pointed out, it was because he wasn’t like the rest of the family. “I’m into creativity and imagination. I like to explore. Remember all those times we used to climb trees and pull hysterical pranks on the co-leader as Cub Scouts?”  

“Yeah!”

“What’s wrong? It was before Ned and them.”

“High school’s still a nightmare for me. Seeing you be pounded again and again by Ned and his goons into lockers, sinks, toilets and janitorial closets makes me—”

“We’re not there anymore.” Chester averted his eyes to his computer. “Anyway, I have an amazing idea. I thought, well, we’d actually do things together—I help you with your project, and you help me with me create my company. Deal?”    

“Dude. What’s with the pun?” Stevens was deadly serious. He didn’t like finance?    

“Everything okay?”

“I’m an atrocious leader. You need to be one on your own.” He pointed out that all great leaders did their own journeys. “So, yeah,” he concluded. “Don’t go asking when you can just ask yourself.”

“Profound, man. You should be a poet or a speaker.”

“Don’t start with me.”

Chester smirked. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not. Anyway,” he interrupted when Chester laughed, “I’m almost done. Come on over!”

Chester imagined Stevens waving his hands all about, explaining and demonstrating all kind of ways he had wired the wires so the electricity would flow well through the currents. His stalk of an Afro probably already stood even more rigid with the amount of excitement and passion he had and careful attention to the unnoticed areas.     

“Uh-huh.”

But Stevens just laughed, repeating himself about needing Chester to marvel at his glorious creation. Chester pictured his tall, basketball uniform-clad self shake, and his large, soft brown hands covering his mouth. He could already hear the laughter that was going to continue right after this conversation.    

“Dude, I hear it.”

More so-called muffled laughter.

“Okay—business is calling me—”

“Okay, okay.” Stevens took a deep breath. “Physics me.”

“Yeah, right.” Chester hung up just as Stevens was about to initiate another hour-long conversation, and let the ringing phone clatter onto his desk. He started forming some thought-provoking, creatively engineered plan onto the dark blue background. After designing some of his website, Chester looked for feedback on Youtube and other search engines, hoping others could possibly critique his work. He caught the attention of two pals from high school.

“Hey! Looks interesting.”

“Wow. Cool.”

Chester hesitated before answering. They were two of Ned Classical’s friends—the very guy whose fists found their fun in repeatedly ramming his ribs and stomach back in tenth and eleventh grade. Chester reread their comments and then typed Thanks. He even chanced asking for input, but they didn’t respond for weeks. When he had asked whether they could take a quick look and comment about a design or slogan when Stevens and he saw them in the frozen food section, they just waved him off and strolled down the cookie aisle. Stevens looked at him.  

“Dude.”

Chester motioned for him not to make a big deal of it, and left. He told Stevens he’d best be thinking about his project with someone else’s help. Stevens laughed the whole ride, telling him he wasn’t the guy to heed such a calling in his life. “Like, if you start being this leader of this incorporation, I’ll be your assistant manager.” Falling back against the passenger seat, he slapped his ripped-jeaned knee, his eyes squeezed shut. Chester, nodding jerkily to some staring passersby, muttered for him to stop when he got gas and then quietly pulled up to Stevens’ parking lot.

“Oh, man.” Stevens, inhaling now, got out of the car with his few groceries and signaled that he’d be in tonight to check up on Chester’s dream of a career. Chester warned him not to call because he’d be in a family meeting. Stevens just pantomimed knocking on the door, and chuckled some more as he walked backwards and then turned towards his open garage.

“Yeah—good talk, man.”

Chester maneuvered the car away towards home, his eyebrows raised and scrunched, and his grip tight on the steering wheel. After the front door slammed closed five minutes later, his mother perked her blond head up. But he brushed her request for dinner to be made tonight away. “I got to do something special.”

“Uh-huh.” She continued folding clothes. “What is that?”

“It’s for my future career!”    

“I would like to know about it!” His mother’s curious voice made Chester jerk around and rush that he needed to get it done tonight before chores and homework got in the way. But his mother pointed at the kitchen. “Get everything ready, while I finish piling these clothes up to the ceiling.” A slap of the jeans snapped Chester’s voice off, and he rolled his eyes, trudging there, hands jamming in his pockets.          

After piling his finished paper on top of some homework sheets, Chester looked at his project and then down at his pajama knees. He knew it wasn’t just putting a few words together and calling it a logo. No company was finished in a day. He looked up the quote Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Neither is this company. Chester exhaled, tempted to laugh off his dream of becoming an independent contractor. But he straightened and added more logos to the website, seeing whether at least one of the five would work best. He reminded himself he wasn’t going to be someone his boss hounded to fulfill even more tedious tasks—only to be droned on the next morning by this monotonous employer. He’d be his own boss, commanding those under him to do as they should.  

But not like Ned’s friends.

He gave his website everything a company could promise, asking a couple peers from his business classes at the local community college to review it. They told him some things and then looked at him like he should just study his class notes. In fact, Chester spent night and day (even before and after classes) completing his website and then blueprinting it all on a construction worker’s layout page.

“Someday, you’re going to lead people to the top!”

A construction worker slapped his left arm with a dusty, dirty orange work glove.

Chester thanked him along with thousands of other people helping him accomplish his dream. It felt like just days until he stepped into that office as the official CEO of his own corporation, grinning before all his employees at an office table. He raised a finger, explaining how proud he was that they wanted to work for a company that had such talent, such underlying values and such meaningful impact on the community at large. “Thanks, everyone, for making my dream come true!”

One of them jerked a nod but said something that made everyone else’s heads bob. Like Chester was the king, and everyone else his simple servants.

“You don’t have to bow to me.”

The employee, smile fading, nodded down at the oblong oval office table.  

“Yes.” He glared at Chester’s turned back. “We do.”

As the years went by, Stevens worked in Chester’s company, making it to Executive Officer. However, he pulled Stevens aside one morning, asking him to briefly explain his stupid way of working with his clients.   

“Well, Chester, I think I have my way of doing things.” Stevens crossed his light coffee-colored sleeveless arms. “I am the E.O., am I not?”

Chester stared at him and then shook his head. “Your way is not the company’s way.”

“Well, I do run things—”

“Unlike that of the company. I’m the CEO. You’re one step below me. You need to abide by the rules. I let you work here, become the E.O. and you treat me this way?”

“No.” Stevens crossed one leg over the other, pushing his swivel chair back and smirking. “No!”

“Stevens, you work here, you listen. I know you used to be a Physics major, but now, you’re into business—but only because you’re extremely smart—” Chester pushed a button on the overhead projector, and a white board high above them and the oval table slowly came down behind Chester. He swung around and got up, clicking a few things on the overhead projector first. Once maps and charts of business deals and progress in the last couple of years displayed themselves, Chester pointed out that Stevens was actually at the bottom when it came to the way deals with clients were actually made.

“Bottom?” His voice was shrill. Chester narrowed his eyes and jabbed his finger at him.

“Yes! And if you make a rhetorical comment like that again (Stevens motioned that he didn’t mean it like that), you will find yourself out of this job faster than you can make up for that stupid little—”

“Fine!” Stevens flew up and jabbed his finger. “If you’re just going to throw away all you’ve ever done by imitating Ned, I’m done. Maybe these people should, too.”     

He stormed towards the office’s glass door, whipped it open, let it bang as he descended the stairs and exited the whole building—promising in a loud voice that Chester would regret ever inventing a piece of crap like this business.  

The front door slammed, some people cringing and then everyone scurrying back to their individual seats and cubicles after watching through the glass wall. Chester stood shocked. He then blinked and ordered someone, by phone, to drag Stevens back into his building. “On it.” Swarms of security police surrounded and indeed dragged a kicking, yelling Stevens back into the first floor hallway. Chester shoved the door outward and demanded Stevens to calm down before he fired him.

“No one’s telling me what to do!” Stevens yanked away from one of the policemen, but Chester cut into the madness by ordering Stevens to get out of his building. For the rest of the year and those following, Chester didn’t hear of or see Stevens; in fact, he had received an email saying Stevens had quit and started his own small company somewhere else—far in Wisconsin. Selling delicious cheese.

Chester smirked. Yeah, maybe he’s selling it with his stupid friends, Ned and his goons. He continued running his company, his employees just nodding and wearing forced smiles. They exchanged glances and covered their mouths when shaking from laughter because Chester had already told them earlier he was not going to copy Ned and his friends—a group of high school bullies who had made his academic life a total nightmare for two whole years before the freedom of graduation. He often reminded them of that before shooting his finger in their faces the very same day. He did this more than he made and received calls from people from his office phone. The next few years, Chester and Stevens talked, but Chester would raise his voice and slam his fist on his office table pretty frequently.

He would also slam down the phone after each call. One day, he warned him to never call him again.

“I want each of you to stop whispering about me behind my back.” Chester pulled employees in one at a time to his office, jabbing them in the chest.

“Sir, you’re such a hypocrite!” One woman retaliated by sticking her finger in Chester’s face. Pretty soon, she started threatening to sue Chester if he didn’t respect them. “Even some left this company, openly apologizing to you for ever considering your business!”

Chester stared at her, swallowed, and then ordered her to leave his office room.

“Should be mine.”

Chester glared at her and then received a call saying that four other employees had quit behind his back. Widening his eyes, Chester slammed down his phone and demanded to know who quit.

“You know if you stop running over us!”

Chester opened his mouth to say something, but the same employee shot her finger in the air. “If you disagree, know I won’t listen.”

Chester closed his mouth. His own younger self’s voice came into his head: If anyone wants to object, know I won’t listen. It was true—Chester, like his family, had no interest in others. He was selfish, but, more importantly, a follower—he was copying Ned and his goon’s way of treating others. In other words, he was following in Ned’s footsteps.  

He looked back at the employee. The next day, he called for a meeting.

“I’ve been…a stupid kid this whole time.” He began. “Ned and his goons would congratulate me as one of his friends.”

He left Stevens a voicemail, apologizing for bullying him. “I accomplished my dream. But I’ve become a follower, not the leader I always wanted to prove to my family.”

Stevens responded, but his return to Chester’s company was something Chester actually wanted very much. However, Stevens claimed he liked it here in Wisconsin.

“Yeah.”

Chester sank into his chair one meeting and sobbed. He visited him, but he didn’t understand Stevens’ conversion to a factory. A cheese factory.

“Because that’s who I am. Just like you did with your company.”

“Yeah.” Chester stood there, in a business suit and tie but hands in pockets. He bit his lip and wished he could start over with his employees. Especially Stevens.

Stevens turned away. “Think about it, man, you know?”

Chester soon said that if he didn’t run his company well, he would be fired from it. He did, but some of the employees continued quitting without his notice. He clenched his fists and told everyone they’d be fired if anyone else secretly left. His words fell on deaf ears. He soon quit.

“Fine.” Stevens replied to Chester’s desire to live close to him. “But you’re not working with me. Neither me with you.”

As assistant manager of a cloth factory, Chester shook customer’s hands, telling them a piece of his own story.

“Wow.” A teen stood with his hands in his jeans one day, studying the sign above the factory. “I want to be just like you one day.”

Chester sighed. Be who you need to be.

Decades went by before Chester and Stevens retired from their factories. Settled somewhere not too far away. The men gazed at Stevens’ factory one day, reminiscing aloud.   

“I hope either I or that boy has generations of children or grandchildren becoming the next leaders of our factories. I hope one day, my children’s children will follow in my footsteps…to become the right leader.”

Stevens bobbed his head. “Hope it works out with either of you.”

Chester’s grandchildren did follow his footsteps…right down to becoming CEOs of their own Fortune-500 companies. Chester strived to discuss their horrible choices of abusive leadership and corrupt generosity with them, but they ignored his advice. Because, they claimed, they were different—they didn’t want to follow the family tradition.

Chester told Stevens the whole venture one night on his front porch. “They don’t care.”

Stevens shook his head and smirked. “Yeah.”

Chester smiled—but then crinkled his face and put his head in his hands so Stevens wouldn’t hear his muffled crying.