Fuck, I don't want to write snippets. So I guess I'll just write about schmoozing.

Yes, I schmoozed.  We all do it.  In the corporate world it is a skill akin to hunting and gathering.  You need to do it to stay alive.

It doesn't mean selling out or kissing ass, at least, the way I look at it.  It means, to me, anyway, this:  being able to hold a decent, semi-intelligent conversation and come off as somewhat engaging.  Which, really, since I quit smoking reefer so long ago, is kinda' easy for me.  I can babble at the drop of a hat, man.  I make for a good bar friend, if you can ignore my idiosyncracies.

I walked into the meeting late.  It was a eat and greet meeting of the 'computer unit' where I work.  We were ostensibly reviewing goals.  I was there to eat pizza.  Yes, pizza.  They spared no expense.

I grabbed a few slices and made some small talk with the company president.  I like her.  There's something genuine in her that I respond to, and am able to relate to easily.  I started her talking and someone picked up on it.  I whirled around to find every seat in the goddam room taken.  Nearby was a table, with only a few souls sitting at it.  Well, in our interminable team meeting that day, my boss had said something about the segregation of the various units of this branch of the subsidiary.  I asked what he would think if I just sat down and started talking to someone from another group.

"That," he laughed, "Would be awesome."

Say no more.  I am a loqucacious bastard when it comes right down to it.

So I looked around, and moved to the open table.

"Mind if I sit with you guys?"  I asked, wheeling a chair over, not waiting for an answer.  I sat down and looked around.

And came to the realization that I had just sat at the executive table.  They looked like someone had collectively jammed a frog straight up their asses, as if they weren't sure of the policy on this, didn't know how it happened, and not entirely sure they liked it.  They gaped, open-mouthed, with nothing to say, as if the untouchable didn't know his place, and should've known better.

Well, whatever.  We are all equal.  Some are more equal than others.

And suddenly, it became sink or swim time.  My first thoughts were, "ABORT!  BAIL!", but I came to enjoy it.

I made conversation.  I guess I did my homework well, because I knew enough about the majority to keep the conversation flowing without a hitch.  Smoothly, without much of a bump, I kept at it.  The only woman at the table that I knew very little of, an older woman, has always made eyes at me.  I caught her once going through christmas donations and trying on a feather boa at the corporate site.  I made her put it on and do a turn for me, so I could ogle her then.  She loved it.

I asked her for napkins, and they provided.  In the meantime, the rest of the company is looking at me like, "Who the fuck is this guy?".  No one wanted to say anything, though.  They all figured that the rest of them knew.  A few watched me with steady stares.

Another employee came up, braving the table.  He's in a beginner class at school.  Classes that are pertinent to the field, and I am about five classes ahead of him.  He's seen as a company asset.  I advised him on his schedule.  The company president sat down next to me, and we talked breifly.

The conversation flowed.  I put my resume and skills out there.  It ended amiably when the #2 in the company agreed to meet with me at the end of the semester to go over my final project for my current class.  He may either offer me a position, I think, or rip off my ideas.  I'll manage it somehow, because if it doesn't go the way I want, in this particular area, I am fully poised to start a functioning buisness that will kick their ass.  They don't know that, yet.  As of yet, I'm the only one with the skill set that they need. 

I shook his hand and walked away after the meeting, feeling the stares of all the rest of the worker bees on my back.

And all I wanted out of the day was pizza. 

Somewhere, the poet in my soul recoils from all this.