is that a cell phone jammer in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

I continue to work horribly long hours at my new consultant gig at Gigantic Institutional Investor. There’s a lot I don’t like about working so late. It’s going to be a while until I am able to sit down and have dinner with the family or make an 8:00 curtain. The New York economy is still a wreck so this is how it must be for now. But there are small pleasures to be had from working late for a Big Corporation.

The days of corporate excess are not completely over. They feed us pretty much whatever we want for dinner. For instance, last night I had a BBQ duck burrito with black beans and rice. Dee. Lish. Us. If I work past 9:00 p.m., which is pretty much every night, I don’t have to deal with Penn Station and New Jersey transit to get home. They provide a company car and driver. It’s a nice black sedan. The only people at Penn Station at that hour of the night are the residents. Once, I walked into the men’s room at 10:30 p.m. and saw a man rinsing a sandwich off in the sink. I feel awful for our downtrodden citizens, but it’s not what I need to see after a 13-hour shift.

Last night was a beautiful, warm, night in Manhattan. I sat in the back seat and rolled down the window as we drove south on Park Avenue and then west across Seventh Avenue, through the fashion district, towards the Lincoln Tunnel. People were out walking in droves. Girls in short black dresses. Hot town. Summer in the city.

Once we’re on the Garden State Parkway, my drivers have an annoying habit of chatting on their cell phones while I’m in the back seat trying to read the paper or meditate or bang out a blog entry. You know the remedy for that, don’t you?

Say hello to my little friend. [And that quote is from…? anyone...? anyone...? Bueller?]

They’re professional drivers and if I asked them nicely, they would certainly stop their calls. But where’s the sport in that?! If you thought people on trains were easy marks, you should get a load of these poor guys. Knocking out a cell phone call is easiest when your intended victim is a mere few feet away.