At night Sonny built woofers; during the day he attended classes in American Studies. It wasn’t the best of times nor was it the worst of times. Richard Nixon was no longer in office, so things weren’t as interesting, but work was like a form of Zen meditation.
The woman he worked with was a faster assembler than him but he prided himself on his quality. This was why he calculatingly sharpened the angles of the crooked twos he marked on the bottom of every magnet indicating the woofer was a two-ohm driver. Irene looped hers. But she almost doubled his output every night and so Irene had been chosen to head up the two-person department—which was slated soon to be three.
Recently, though, there had been an excess of customer service returns, mostly speakers with two-ohm drivers, and mostly woofers marked with twos quickly looped. Bill, the supervisor, knew Irene had built these woofers. So he let her know Sonny was going to be appointed foreman instead now. She didn’t take the news well, and quit on the spot.
Just before she left, she came by to say her goodbyes to Sonny. “I know you marked your twos deliberately different for a reason,” she said with just a trace of accusation in her voice. “Are you proud of yourself?”
“No,” Sonny replied while chewing gum and working diligently on a two-ohm woofer.
“Well, that might be the correct answer,” she said. “But double-mint boy, I got some news for you. Your shit stinks and your college days are numbered. Woof!”
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