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“Did you buy some of the shares while they were going cheap, Garry? As our financial expert, would you suggest regular moms and dads should take a look at dipping into the stock market?”
“I can’t tell the good folks at home what to do with their money…”He pauses and stares right into the camera.“But I bought stock.”
The news program runs through a montage of everything Griffin. I’ve seen it all before, because the company isn’t exactly low-key, though it’s possibly not something you’d notice if you weren’t into the new technology hitting the market. Many folks in the street know the brand the way we know Kleenex is a tissue, and Pepsi is a drink. They know their laptops have that lion logo on the front, and their phones have the lion insignia on the back. But beyond that, it’s doubtful they think about it. It’s justthere. We’ve been conditioned for more than a decade to know that brand, so although everyone spends their money on Griffin tech the way they used to automatically spend their money at Apple, most don’t care enough to know who sits behind the helm.
Today wasn’t the first time Theodore Griffin has been asked for an interview. And it’s not the first time he’s declined. His reputation is based upon being unseen. If you Google “Griffin Industries,” you’ll see the logos, but you won’t see Theodore himself. If you ask around, many will say they’ve met him, but none will produce photographic evidence of such a meet. If you spoke to a Griffin employee, they will almost exclusively wax on about how wonderful it is – strict, hard work, but rewarding – and how they never intend to leave.
The common belief is that Griffin is good to people, but he doesn’t do press. He doesn’t do events. He doesn’t do TV. He doesn’t do any of the things the world expects of him.
And I guess I can respect that about him.
My job can often become synonymous with the press and relations with the community, but I’ll be the first to run away and hide when asked for an interview. Alex spoke to the local news anchor today about the gas station burglary. Oz claimed he was off-duty, and I hid in the bathroom, but Alex is our chief, so he was suckered into stepping in front of the camera, where he questioned his ability to be apeople person. His snapped answers made me smile.
None of us want to dance for the circus, so I can respect Griffin’s need to stay away.
I don’t deal with the stock market. I don’t do tech. I hardly upgrade my phone, and only when I absolutely must because the operating systems have been updated so much that my phone becomes a brick in my pocket.
I live a humble life and do nothing that would ever appear to be connected to my father’s world.
Big houses,nope. Fancy cars,nope. Next year’s devices,nope. I cook at home and eat in six nights out of seven, and almost never order takeout. I accept no free coffee at the local fast food restaurant, despite their pledge to feed the town’s first responders for free. And every year when we run the cops-versus-firemen charity baseball game, a game played to raise funds for the children’s ward in the local hospital, I make my donations anonymously, and play the game with the men. Because I can hit a home run with the best of them.
Turning my TV to the music channel, I toss the remote down and walk back to the kitchen to get started on my dinner. It’s late, I haven’t slept in almost forty hours, I’m spending another Friday night in. I intend to cook chicken and rice, land in bed forty-five minutes from now, and tomorrow afternoon, I’ll hit the gym like I do most other days.
I was a short little fat girl once, who was picked on by skinny bitches with attitudes far bigger than their muscles.
Now I’m average height and don’t have fat dimples anywhere. I never wear Mary Janes, I never wear dresses, I never glut on complex carbs, even after a forty-hour sleep famine, and when I get to the gym, I don’t let the offered excuse of ‘You’re a woman, you don’t have to lift that much’ deter me.
