Happy the Clown

By The Hansen Family

I was sitting through another staff meeting. Something different was in the air. The air smelled funny. The door of the conference room opened and someone walked in. Having a guest come to our meeting wasn’t too unusual. J.B., the boss, occasionally asked guests to attend our meetings. What was peculiar was that our visitor was a clown.

The clown’s face was slathered over with greasy white paint and red triangles under its eyes. It had a bulbous red rubber nose. I saw the rubber band that held the nose in place, wrapped around the back of its head. The rubber band was colored by the same white paint as the rest of its face.

It didn’t seem to be a cheerful clown. Its painted-on smile barely camouflaged its scowl. The clown’s hair was fuzzy, red, and apparently made of a synthetic fiber. Its pants were baggy. Its shoes were large. Enormous. About two feet long. The shoes got even bigger and rounder at the toes.

It was only Monday, I reflected. Business Casual was only on Fridays.

We all looked to J.B. in order to follow his lead for a reaction. J.B. kept on talking. He kept on droning on as if it was normal to have a clown walk into the room. My eyes shifted back to the clown who sat down in an empty chair and put his brief case on the conference table.

I shuddered as I thought back upon an earlier traumatic experience I had had with another clown. After my wife and I had bought our first home, strange things happened. My wife had complained that someone had peed all over the toilet seat, though I was certain it wasn’t me. There were cigarette butts on the kitchen floor and balloons twisted into animal shapes in our bedroom. Upon closer inspection, the balloons were particularly strange. They were ribbed and lubricated. We fretted that the house was haunted, but the truth was even worse. One evening I discovered that we had a clown living in our basement. It wore sad hobo clown makeup. It was hiding behind the furnace eating a ham sandwich.

"What the heck are you doing here?" I demanded.

It didn’t answer me since all sad hobo clowns never talk. The sad hobo clown liked our house and wouldn’t leave. I called the police and had it thrown out, but I found it a few days later, behind our garage, eating old food out of our trashcan. I kept chasing it off, but it kept sneaking back. Finally, after beating it with my Louisville Slugger, it seemed to get the message and stopped coming back…at least as far as I knew.

J.B.’s redheaded clown startled me out of my musings by opening the latches on its briefcase. The clown removed a rubber chicken and placed it on the table, next to its briefcase. All the while, J.B. droned on. The clown found a pad of paper in its case, put it next to the chicken, and started scribbling notes.

"Gentlemen," announced J.B. "I’d like to introduce you to our esteemed visitor. This is Happy the Clown. He’s a consultant that I’ve hired to help us run more efficiently and increase revenues. Happy is going to assist me in re-engineering the Company. We’re going to go beyond the old paradigms and we’re raising the bar. Happy will be a key member of our management team. Happy…?"

"Thank you J.B.," Happy’s voice came like fingernails on a chalkboard. "I’m going to be working with all of you over the next few weeks. I’ll be asking each of you for information and I’ll be – hee hee - Happy if you cooperate. Hee hee hee."

Happy had a typically shrill and nasal clown voice that was similar to a serious speech impediment. It gave me the creeps.

Thank you Happy," said J.B. "We’re looking forward to working with you."

A couple days later, I sat at my desk and went through the mail. I looked over a memo that wasn’t on the usual Company letterhead. At the top of the page was a logo of a carnival Ferris wheel. The memo said, "From the Desk of Happy the Clown." The memo was a request for a laundry list of information that would take a week to compile. Since J.B. had instructed everyone to cooperate with Mr. Clown, I put aside all my other work in order to comply.

Soon afterward, the restructuring of The Company began. There was a massive downsizing, or as J.B. termed it, "rightsizing." Clearly, Happy was not a clown to be trifled with.

With The Company’s re-engineering, some workers became disgruntled. Happy the Clown became a symbol of labor unrest. Human Resources issued a memo to all employees that defamatory comments about minorities would not be tolerated. Jokes or comments regarding race, religion, gender, or circus folk would be met with immediate termination.

A series of cost cutting moves was instituted. Product was stored in large surplus big-topped tents rather than expensive warehouses.

I heard rumors that Happy was "bothering" the boys in the mailroom. The stories included something about handcuffs.

The office supply room was insulated and refrigerated so that it could be used for storage of cream pies. The pies were kept in boxes that were labeled, "Caution: For Throwing Purposes Only." The toilets in the restroom became clogged and fell out of repair. Port-a-potties were positioned in strategic spots in the parking lot. This was a particular source of irritation since they were never cleaned out and always smelled of stale urine.

Several of my friends were terminated and replaced with individuals who I suspected were cronies of Happy the Clown. I didn’t trust the new sales manager, Tattooed man. I didn’t like the new office manager, Bearded lady. I avoided the new director of process improvement, The World’s Smallest Man. Some of the new employees car-pooled with Happy the Clown in a tiny little automobile. Although I was repelled by their antics, I was also fascinated by how they were able to all fit inside the car.

I particularly disliked the new director of human resources, Blinky the Clown. Blinky the Clown had the same last name as Happy the Clown and I suspected nepotism. Since I was unable to prove my suspicions, I kept them to myself. Blinky became the hatchet clown at the Company. Like the clown of my nightmares, it wore a hobo costume. Instead of carrying a brief case, it carried a stick with a bundle tied up with a red handkerchief at its end. Its face was painted with a greasy frown and painted-on teardrops running from the corner of one eye. Blinky was the type of clown that would go to a kid’s party and leave all the children crying. I was terrified of Blinky the Clown.

One by one, all of my friends got the ax. Eventually, I felt as if I was alone, like the sole survivor of a terrible carnival run amuck. All day long strange leering circus folk surrounded me. I was an outsider.

One day I was visited by Blinky the Clown. It walked into my office without even knocking. I couldn’t help but notice that its pants were pulled down, exposing its red polka dotted boxer shorts. I waited for the clown to say something, but then I remembered that Binky never said anything. Personally, I felt that the trait made it a poor manager, though other managers in the Company had similar communication skills. After what seemed like an eternity, Blinky pulled out a seltzer bottle from the baggy pants, which were still down by its ankles. It sprayed me in the face. It stood up, placed a pink slip on my desk, and left without saying a word.

"Evil clown!" I thought.

I wiped my face and packed up my things.

I moved on and got another job with another company. It didn’t pay quite as much as my old job, but at least there weren’t any circus folk. I heard through the grapevine that someone called Sideshow Geek had taken my old job. I read in the business section of the newspaper that the stockholders of the Company were disappointed in the performance of the Company’s stock price. Despite of all the changes instituted by Happy the Clown, or perhaps because of them, the stock price remained flat. J.B. was forced to resign. Happy convinced the Board that he could fill J.B.’s big shoes, and then some, so they made him the new president of the Company.

I discussed my career with my wife, and we agreed that it would be best if I went back to school. I applied to Clown College.

The End

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E-mail: MagicKirk@aol.com