Underemployed
Short Fiction, Published by Pearl Editions, LLC
Copyright 2010 Georgiann Baldino
Discover Georgiann's other titles at Smashwords
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Underemployed
By Georgiann Baldino
Rollins stumbled from the podium. The room swirled before his eyes.
“You look terrible. You okay?” the buyer asked.
Rollins didn’t wait around. Any sales pitch he gave was doomed to fail. No doubt the customer would buy from someone else. He bolted toward the subway.
After more than a year of unemployment, a job in sales was all he could find. No way he’d ever fill his quota, and then he’d be unemployed again.
He needed to find a good job before this one self-destructed. At the newsstand he grabbed the paper and thrust the money down. He turned to go, but a magazine caught his eye. “MIND CONTROL: Three easy steps to ultimate self-assurance.” With a trembling hand he flipped the pages.
“Hey, you gonna pay for that?”
He forked over the dough.
In the privacy of his walkup, he promised to keep an open mind. The author of the article used Mohammed Ali as an example. The Champ was a master of self-motivation. He trained his mind as relentlessly as he trained his body. If he wanted to reclaim the heavyweight title, Ali knew he faced the worst beatings of his life. He adopted a unique sparring style. Ali leaned against the ropes and let the sparring partner pummel him. Ali perfected his “rope-a-dope” and, in the process, trained himself not to lose.