Curse Of The Fat Man

I have a few more little bits of Mondo-related nonsense to share with you. These are just some small incidents involving blimp Mondo; they occurred over several years in several different places. They have been divided into three different categories: Fat, Feeble and Foul. Of course, all three are perfect descriptions of Mondo.

Fat: One night during some nameless and faceless inventory (read: I did so many of these fucking inventories that I can't remember in which one I overhead this conversation) bloated Team Leader Mondo was telling several of us auditors all about one drunken night at a local bar. He said that at one point he had tossed back so many drinks that he lost his balance and fell right off a bar stool. This must have been quite embarassing for Mondo (not to mention quite destructive to the floor. Imagine the damage a two-ton oily behemoth hitting the floor would cause) but as in many other incidents involving Mondo and something humiliating he tried to make a joke of it. "I don't know how I got up off the floor," Mondo quipped. "By a forklift?" wisecracked Gerry. Everyone laughed except Mondo. He might occasionally make fun of his morbidly obese condition but couldn't stand someone else doing it.

Feeble: Mondo ran quite a few stores as a TL, and had problems in every one of his inventories. His most spectacular failure occurred at a Cala Foods/Bell Markets inventory in Novato. Fleshy Mondo had all veteran auditors in this inventory but that didn't matter as most of us were dead tired from doing so many back to back stores. Every single one of us (including paunchy Mondo) made several mistakes while counting in that grocery store that night. Most of the errors were ones made by putting items in wrong categories: Liquor in Grocery, Grocery in General Merchandise, etc. Elephant Mondo missed a lot of these mistakes when printing out the areas, and simply handed over the error-laden printouts to the store manager, most without checking them first.

The store manager all night had received printout after printout filled with mistakes. With each muddled printout he got a little angrier and a little angrier. Finally he had had enough and confronted two-ton Mondo. He got right in Mondo's face (eeuuww) and verbally let him have it. The store manager went on at length about what a lousy job we RGIS auditors had done that night, and how he was not getting the quality inventory he had paid for. The guy was really pissed off and who could blame him? He had a bunch of burgundy-shirted zombies counting his store that night. We had done a lousy job in that Cala Foods store, and all of us realized it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we cared. All of us were worn out from so many back-to-backers and just wanted to go home and sleep. However, as lowly auditors we didn't have to experience the wrath of the store manager. No, TL Mondo, who ran the inventory, got the full blast of shit from the store manager. We peons merely stood around and enjoyed the spectacle. What fun it was to witness Mondo getting scolded and yelled at. Hurrah!

Finally, the store manager calmed down and stopped shouting at gargantuan Mondo. During the customer's tirade Mondo had not said a word. He was totally intimidated and cowed. At one point, while the customer was giving him a tongue lashing Mondo actually leaned his head against a post and stared at the floor. It was a totally unprofessional thing to do, and looked really bad, but that was Mondo.

The store manager was quite upset with Mondo and said to him, "So, as a representative from RGIS, what do you have to say for yourself, in regards to the job that you and your people have done?" Corpulent Mondo's response? He never said a word and merely shrugged his shoulders and continued to stare at the floor. Wow, a true leader. Disgusted, the store manager told Mondo, "This inventory is over," and we RGIS people quietly slunk out of the store and drove away. In front of the customer we had to appear chastened and a little sorry over the poor job we had done but secretly I was elated and relished the verbal clobbering that rotund Mondo had received.

Foul: When rumor had it in our district that malodorous Mondo was to be made the new Associate Area Manager, most of us didn't believe it. We couldn't imagine Mondo ever being able to scrub enough gunk off his huge moldy body in order to appear halfway decent as a dress-shirt-and-necktie-clad AAM. After all, it was Mondo who claimed that the reason he smelled so bad was because he was too fat to fit into his bathtub at home. That's why he never ever bathed, and that's why he smelled like a two-week old corpse on a hot summer day. How on earth would he be able to wash the funk off his carcass, if he couldn't take a bath? Helpful auditor Anna thought she had the solution. She offered to buy Mondo a shower attachment that he could hook up to the bathtub spigot. I guess she figured mammoth Mondo could sit on the edge of his tub and sprinkle himself with water, and thus wash some of the goo off himself that way.

Anna should have known better. Nauseating Mondo wasn't the least bit interested in improving himself in any way; not even if it meant moving his bulk up the corporate RGIS ladder. He was totally illogical and more than a little retarded in thinking that he could be both filthy and an AAM. Mondo said, "No thanks" to the shower attachment, and continued on his greasy way. He was eventually made an AAM, but that only lasted a few weeks, natch.

Fat: Jumbo Mondo used to have a terrible time during our summer inventories. We might be closeted in a stuffy Mervyn's back room for hours, scanning boxes of socks and racks of shirts. The atmosphere would be quite uncomfortable, as we usually did most of these inventories after hours, when the store's air-conditioning system had already been automatically shut off for the night. Most of us human-sized auditors were a bit uncomfortable, but for someone as massive as Mondo it was torture. He would be standing there, pawing through cartons of tube socks while the sweat just poured down his body in oily rivulets. TL Eric noticed the sweat gushing from Mondo's king size carcass and told him that he (Mondo) was going to melt into a puddle. "No, a puddle's too small," Eric corrected himself. "You're going to melt into a pond. We should call you Pondo." Mondo Pondo was not amused. Again, he could make fun of himself but he hated it when anyone else did it.

Feeble: Once a bunch of us were meeting at the office to commute to an early morning, out of town Long's Drugs inventory. This was during the time that half-witted District Manager Kevin was still having us park our cars in the tiny parking lot that surrounded our RGIS district office and a few other retail businesses. Kevin stood in the parking lot and directed auditors to park their cars at the other end of the lot, near Burger King. When Mondo pulled into the lot Kevin pointed towards Burger King. Mondo never stopped his Jeep. He drove to the other end of the parking lot and out the exit near Burger King, and disappeared into the early morning darkness.

It was so funny to see simpleton Kevin standing there in the middle of the parking lot with his mouth hanging open. He had no idea where Mondo had gone. In a panic he called Mondo's house but no one was there. He asked Mondo's hateful brother TL Luis where he thought Mondo might have gone, but Luis hadn't a clue. Finally DM Kevin had no choice but to leave for the inventory, minus his bloated TL Mondo.

When we reached the San Anselmo Long's Drugs about 45 minutes later, there was Mondo parked in front of the store. When questioned about his disappearance Mondo told us that when he saw Kevin pointing to the other end of the parking lot he thought Kevin wanted him to drive to the store himself. What a moron! But typical Mondo.

Foul: After we had finished an inventory in neighboring district Vallejo one night Mondo drove a company van full of us Santa Rosa auditors back to the Park-N-Ride. Riding with Mondo as a driver was always an adventure in terror, as he was both a horrible driver and a smelly one. You most definitely did not want to be sitting downwind of him, as one whiff of his gaseous fumes and you were a goner. Plus, as though his foul stench wasn't bad enough, he had a tendency to take every turn on two wheels. So one way or another you thought you were gonna die with Mondo driving.

One newbie riding in the van was already wise to the ways of repugnant Mondo. This became apparent when she told Mondo, "Hey Mondo, guess what? I had my shoe in your pants pocket." (This was not as difficult as it sounds. Two-ton Mondo flattened the driver's seat when he sat in it; his gargantuan ass was mere inches from the floor of the van) The newbie, sitting in the middle of the first bench seat, could by stretching her legs place a shoe tip in Mondo's pants pocket. One guy told her, "I'm surprised your shoe didn't melt." The newbie replied, "I'm surprised I got a shoe back." Once again, everyone laughed except for odious Mondo. Score one for the newbie.

Fat: As you may have already guessed, beefy Mondo had an enormous appetite. I once had the displeasure of riding with him to another out of town inventory. I had to ride sitting next to him in his stinky Jeep. Mondo couldn't even make it out of the office parking lot without getting something to eat. He stopped at the Burger King a few doors down from the RGIS office and ordered a double Whopper and a vat of Coca-Cola from the drive-up window. I watched in horror as he unwrapped the burger (I'm surprised he didn't just eat right through the paper) and took one, two, three, four bites without stopping or breathing and bam! the burger was gone. I mean that fat slob downed that enormous double cheeseburger in less than a minute. It was a most terrifying and disgusting sight. After seeing that nightmare I lost my own appetite for a couple of days. And after that ride with him I took care to keep my arms and legs safely away from Mondo's vicinity. Who knew when he might be hungry and need to feed again? What if we were doing a late night inventory and all the Burger Kings were closed? I didn't want to lose a limb.

Some stores that we inventoried would provide us with snacks if we took a break, and pizza or sandwiches if we took a lunch. Most of the Long's Drugs stores would give us coffee and doughnuts for our one and only break. We started counting at Long's around 5:30 am, and three hours later when we took our break the thought of a cup of hot coffee and a jelly doughnut was most appealing. Most of the auditors would take just one doughnut but then, we were human beings and not farm animals. Mondo, on the other hand, was like a pig at a trough during these Long's breaks. He saw nothing wrong in barrelling right into the store's break room and grabbing four or five doughnuts, all before any of us had even had one. He had his snout right into those pink bakery boxes, rooting around for the choicest pastries. Again, you had to be careful and not get your hands close to his mouth, lest you lose a finger.

Even foggy DM Kevin was aware of Mondo's greedy ways. Whenever we did a Kmart inventory in Santa Rosa the store was nice enough to provide us with pizzas and sodas for our half-hour lunch (This Kmart had a Little Caesar's pizza restaurant inside the store. I wouldn't touch the pizza after I'd heard that one customer recently vomited blood in the restaurant after eating the pizza. A special cleaning crew had to be called in, and thereafter I referred to the Little Caesar's pizza as "Haz-Mat pizza"). When Kevin called a lunch break he made sure to tell The Foul One, "Remember, only two pieces, Mondo." Kevin wanted to make sure that Mondo didn't inhale all of the pizza. Which he was perfectly capable of doing.

Gluttonous Mondo and pizza had quite a love affair going. While Mondo was known to consume anything (burgers, doughnuts, candy bars, possibly a small child or two) he held a special place in his oily heart for pizza. I don't think that he or his brother Luis (who lived with Mondo) knew how to cook. I believe they mostly ordered in food. I think Mondo would order a couple of pizzas at a time, and eat one immediately and save the second one for later. He wouldn't refrigerate the second pizza but instead would park it in his cold oven. He claimed it tasted better a day or two or a week later. Mondo called this "fermented" pizza. Puke!

Fat: If you had 450 lb. sweaty, greasy, smelly man asking you for a ride in your car, would give him one? Of course not. You would take pity on your poor vehicle and never think to transport something as foul as Mondo in it. Which is why Mondo could never catch a ride with anyone except his brother Luis, or maybe the company van; it was large and sturdy enough to withstand his enormous bulk. Luis' car, like everyone else's , was of average size and not really meant to cart around a hippopotamus, but Luis was Mondo's brother and couldn't refuse him a ride.

Which is why one morning several of us were treated to a most amusing sight. Me and a couple of auditors were in a car right behind Luis' car on the freeway. Even if you hadn't seen Mondo a few minutes earlier climbing into Luis' car, you would know immediately upon seeing the car that Mondo was riding in it as the car appeared to be driving along on two wheels. It was really funny to see this car tipping precariously to one side as it traveled slowly down the freeway. I mean, you almost expected to see it stop suddenly and about 30 clowns come piling out of it. But no, there was only one clown inside the car, the sad, pitiful, bloated, oily clown known as Mondo.