A young Irish American guy growing up in Brooklyn back in the early sixties had only a couple of options after high school. Option one: if you had good grades and money, you could go on to college. Option two, as my father used to say in his Donegal Irish accent: "Get a job, man!" When I graduated, I took my father's advice. College was out of the question for me; and I hated school back then, anyway.

My first job was at a company called the Morgan Guarantee Trust Company. I responded to an ad in the New York Times classifieds. I got interviewed for a teller's position and then got the job. As I was training for the position, someone from upstairs in the bank came down and said they needed a new clerk in the Government Bond Department. I got picked. A guy named Mr. Stoddard interviewed me again and I got that position instead.

I started as a bond clerk the following day. Bond clerk my ass, I was a runner -- or "gofer," as is the popular term these days. They asked what they should call me. I said Robert and they said, "No way, 'Robert' is too formal a name." I think that was the infamous day that I got the nickname Bob; and people on every job since have called me that. I hated that name back then, but what the hell, I needed the job. Unfortunately, there were three Bobs in the Bond Department. The supervisor was named Big Bob and the guy training me, who was 6'2", was "Tall Bob;" so you guessed it -- I got named Little Bob. I wasn't from an American Indian tribe so why did I get the brave-sounding name? Life sucks at times, I have to tell you. I hated the job and I especially hated Tall Bob, that tall, skinny asshole.

The building I worked in was owned by the Morgan Guarantee Trust Company and was over sixty stories tall. There were thousands of people working in that building. I had to take my lunch hour every day at eleven because Big Bob took his at noon and Tall Bob picked one PM because he didn't want to go at eleven. What an asshole he was! Well, as long as I got an hour out of that place, I didn't care what time it was at. The only problem was that all my friends working down in the Wall Street area took lunch at noon; I used to wander the streets looking for someone I knew or anybody who would be willing to listen to me and how much I hated my job.

In those days the bank had a strict dress code: suit and tie only. I got two new suits with four pairs of pants for this job. James Bond was big in the movies back then and Sean Connery used to wear a cream-colored London Fog raincoat with a belt around the waist. So I had to have a James Bond raincoat. My brother Bill brought me to a place called Lou Levy's in Chinatown and the old Jewish guy in the store said, "I know vat you vaunt," and sold me a facsimile "London Smog" raincoat and the two new suits. It wasn't the actual London Fog coat that James Bond wore but I think I looked boss in it. (That's what we used to say back then -- when something looked good, it was "boss".)

The following week, on Friday, I went to lunch at eleven o'clock as usual. Who likes to eat lunch at that time anyway? Jesus Christ, they were a bunch of assholes! Well, I walked around aimlessly for my hour in my new James Bond raincoat, my vested three-piece suit, and my new brown wingtip shoes -- Wall Street standard issue leather wingtip shoes with all those little holes all around the fancy designed stitching.

As I entered the bank building through the huge revolving doors at 11:59 AM, I noticed the security guard waving his hands and arms at me. My eyes were focused on him and not on the marble floor below my feet in the huge building lobby. The next thing I knew I slipped on something wet and flew up in the air and crashed down on the marble, sliding until I came to a stop.

The security guard had been trying to get my attention because there was something on the floor as I walked through those doors on that fateful day. Guess what I slipped on? Guess again! It was diarrhea. Yes, human fucking feces. Shit! An old messenger that had been leaving the bank right before I came in had run a huge puddle of diarrhea down his leg onto to the shiny marble lobby floor. And I slid through it like Jackie Robinson sliding into home with the security guard acting as Yogi Berra, missing the tag and freaking out. The only difference was that I was in a New York bank lobby at twelve noon and what happens at noon everyday? People go to lunch and the bank lobby fills up with people like a train station in Tokyo.

I got to my feet. I was covered in shit from the hair on my head to the tips of my Wall Street standard issue shoes. It smelled terrible and it was all over me and my new fake London Smog James Bond raincoat was ruined! Fuck!

And there were hundreds of people making a circle around me to see what happened. There were girls there, and plenty of them. A woman handed me a couple of Kleenex tissues from her purse and I started to hear snickering and laughter.

I looked around and then bolted for the elevators. This was the worst part -- waiting for the elevator to come down with more and more people looking at me. Shit! The elevator doors opened and it was full of women and they screamed, "Ohhhhh! What's that smell?" The smell was me and I was frantic and I yelled at them, "Get out of the way!" I got on the elevator, along with some stupid asshole who followed me on.

The stupid asshole was the security guard who had been waving his arms only a few minutes earlier. He was apologizing. I told him, "Leave me alone." He got off with me on my floor and tried to help me.

"Listen," I said. "Please get the fuck away from me." I ran into the men's room and started to wash as much shit off as I could. I threw my shitty James Bond raincoat in the trash can. Fuck James Bond. I took off my wingtip shoes and tried to wash them in the sink. It was a waste of my time. Remember all those little holes in the shoes that I had mentioned earlier? They were filled with diarrhea. Agggghhh! I chucked my suit jacket in the trash and washed the shit out of my hair.

I sat on the toilet in my underwear and tried to wash my suit pants. I smelled terrible, my hair was wet, and my hip was killing me from the fall I took. I should've sued those bastards, but can you imagine going to court and having everybody snickering when my lawyer explained what had happened to me? There was no way that I would allow that.

I washed up as best as I could and went to see Mr. Stoddard, my boss. I figured that when I told him what had happened to me and that I wanted to leave early, he would understand. Yeah, right. That asshole. When I started to tell him what had occured, he stopped me and said, "I heard about it already, Little Bob."

"What?" I asked. "How is that possible?" It had just happened a few minutes before, but apparently it was already spreading like wildfire through the entire building that Little Bob had slipped in shit. "Mr. Stoddard, I have to leave early. I'm so embarrassed by all this." He told me that I was exaggerating, and that if I left early I would lose my job.

I lost my job that day, but not on his terms -- on mine. I told him to go fuck himself, along with Big Bob and Tall Bob. Then "Little Bob" got on the subway and left for the longest train ride of his life. He got to 65th Street in Brooklyn, New York, and he knew that he was safe at home at last, and that it was the end of the most embarrassing day of his entire life.

-- Robert Michael O'Connor