Cold Turkey

As soon as the plane touched down, I realised why my Mediterranean holiday had come so cheap. Istanbul was unseasonably frigid. I had decided to take a vacation to escape the stresses of my emotionally draining occupation as a skiing equipment salesman in the sahara.
My little firm has a staff of one; me and like many small organisations, the working environment can get crushingly intimate. Being both boss and employee has forced the firm into a truncated corporate structure which makes dealing with conflicts of interest something of a challenge. Recently there was what would be modestly described as a mutiny at the office. The boss was making unrealistic demands on his employee, expecting him to single-handedly improve turnover in the next quarter for the first time in the company’s six-month existence and return a profit no less. The employee upon whom these demands were made just happens to be a cynical slacker whose apathy is legendary.
There was no way the CEO’s rabid realism could share a room with the staff’s mulish realism. There was a falling out and no matter how hard I tried to bring them together (literally) I’m ashamed to say I failed. Things came to a head one fine Friday in Timbuktu the employee quit just as the boss was preparing to fire him. Then they simultaneously booked a vacation in turkey with different travel agents (the twits!) and here we are, I playing the reluctant diplomat to a family feud.
Istanbul was freezing just as tempers were flaring.
It didn’t help that labour had packed suitable clothing whilst management had brought only swim wear along. One was too proud to ask whilst the other was too stingy to offer and don’t get me started on the credit cards and traveller’s cheques they had brought with them but were constantly bickering on what to spend the money on.
Coincidence? had it that we were all booked in the same hotel room at the Istanbul Orient. we too our baggage off the carousel and boarded the same taxicab. The animosity was so palpable in the rear that the initially chatty cabdriver hunkered down in his seat and turned the volume way up on his tinny radio. We rode int town to the sound of Arabic music; ‘ride of the dervishes’ would be a more appropriate term for that incident. checking in was like a waking nightmare, Management wanted to leave the doorman and porter a tip but labour was having none of it – at least not until he got a raise.

 

We are still in the lobby now, More updates as events warrant.