The Coaster by Erich Wurster Page A

Mountain Dew and Red Bull, plastic cups full of discarded sunflower seed shells, and five-pound bags of gummy bears.
    â€œHi, guys. This place always reminds me of my fraternity days. Except there’s no booze or drugs.”
    â€œWe keep the good stuff hidden,” answered a thin Asian-American man shooting a Nerf ball at a hoop hanging over the edge of his cubicle. “To find out the secret location, you’d have to survive a series of quests.” His tee-shirt read There are only 10 types of people in the world—those who understand binary, and those who don’t. I didn’t get it, but I think that was the point.
    â€œThat won’t be necessary,” I said. “Since I got out of college, I’ve been able to obtain my own booze and drugs. The only difference is now I hide them from my wife instead of the house mom.”
    I looked around the roomful of ironic messages in tee-shirt form.
    She’s dead so get over it with a photo of Princess Diana.
    If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
    Strangers have the best candy.
    I support single moms with a silhouette of a stripper on a pole.
    I bring nothing to the table.
    Voted Most Likely to Travel Back in Time—Class of 2057
    â€œWhat, do you guys have some kind of a hipster tee-shirt contest every day?” I asked.
    â€œNah, man,” said the Asian guy. “We just like to express ourselves.”
    â€œWell, you’re doing a better job than a guy in a suit would. Which one of you is working on the Sanitol financials?”
    A pale young man with frizzy brown hair stood up and looked over the top of his cubicle. “That would be me. I’m Eric Jacobs.”
    I walked around to the entrance to his cubicle. There was enough room for me to sit down across from his desk, but barely. It was like a kid’s room, filled with toys and posters and games, anything that might waste time during the day. I figured if the higher-ups didn’t hassle him about his unprofessional office space, he must be very good at what he did. I was surprised to see that he wore a plain white tee-shirt. “Yours is ironically blank, right?”
    â€œMine is just a tee-shirt.”
    â€œOh.”
    He broke into a grin. “I’m kidding. Isn’t it cool? I went to every tee-shirt shop in town trying to find one.”
    â€œGood thinking,” I said. “Or you could have gone straight to Walmart and bought a six-pack of them for five bucks.”
    â€œEventually I figured that out,” Jacobs said. “So what do you want to know?”
    â€œGive me your analysis on the Sanitol prospectus.”
    â€œI looked it all over again to be sure, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mr. Bennett. The numbers foot.”
    â€œFoot?”
    â€œThey balance,” Jacobs said, “meaning that if their assumptions are correct, the numbers are computed correctly. It doesn’t mean they’ll come true, but the math is good. Those enormous profits aren’t the result of somebody adding two and two and getting five.”
    â€œBut are they realistic?” I asked.
    â€œNobody ever comes in here with pessimistic projections. Nobody says, ‘Invest in our company because sales are going to suck over the next five years, as you can see on this graph I prepared.’” The kid was smart. If he was a bigger asshole, he could have been Mark Zuckerberg.
    â€œOkay. So how likely are the projections?”
    â€œIt’s impossible to say without knowing how well the process really works. If their environmental claims are true and if their cleaning effectiveness claims are true and if their cost estimates are accurate and if their patent holds up…”
    â€œThat’s a lot of ifs.”
    â€œYes, it is. But if all those ifs come true, I’d say the projections are conservative. My analysis shows they would absolutely dominate the commercial