Book Review and Book Excerpt Memoirs of a Road Warrior

Title: Memoirs of a Road Warrior

Author: Fred Klein

Genre: Humor

Andrew Livingston, a young, naive college graduate gets a job as a sales engineer for a crazy company. Set in New York in the corporate raider 1980’s this humorous book is a recounting of all the strange history of a high-tech company with an eccentric CEO.

This character gathers together a strange assortment of employees who endeavor to manufacture and sell their products to an equally strange collection of customers. The book tells of their amusing conflicts and experiences throughout the decades.

Follow the company’s encounters with Chinese agents, horse trailers, rocket fuel disasters, con-men, bedbugs, and airplane crashes. Learn how not to run a business!

Review: This book was hilarious! Andrew Livingston never thought his first job would turn out this way, through encounters with Chinese agents, horse trailers, and even airplane crashes. There's always one adventure waiting for him after the next, and it's all extraordinarily funny. 

Book Excerpt

Chapter 12 (Vince’s Girls)

In the case of Vince’s girls, I am not referring to Vince’s daughters. When the corporation moved to its final location (New York, NY), there were two places at the office to hear the latest corporate gossip - the coffee machine and the sales support cubicles. Early on the talk was about the late night meetings that Vince had with the then Sr. VP. Mabel who was in her thirties, about 5’7” in heels, and was somewhat attractive except for bad teeth.  They had frequent late night meetings, and sometimes Mabel had the same clothes on the next day. At some point Vince and Mabel had a falling out, and Mabel left the corporation.

Later on the talk switched to the new secretary for Vince. She and Vince also had so-called late night meetings for dictation. One time I saw her in the hallway, and she was carrying something.

“What is that?” I asked her.

“Don’t you know a vibrator when you see one? I need to get some new batteries.”

She moved up the ladder right away and soon became the corporate secretary. The power seemed to go to her head, and soon she was acting just like Vince at the lunches. She also had a very, very large mahogany desk put in her office. Vince didn’t seem to mind that, but when she started buying many personal things (rings, TV, furs, BMW, etc.) and putting them on her corporate account they finally fired her. We found out she later married one of the TVC engineers.

After Vince opened the European sales office the gossip started about the long trips he went on to Germany. There was talk about Vince maybe getting friendly with the attractive administrator who worked for the Manager there, Adolf Hissler. (Of course we nicknamed him Herr Hitler.)

After all Vince took large cash advances with him for his long trips to Germany but put his expenses on his Corporate American Express card. We thought he must be doing something with the extra money and the long time.

Vince’s wife Gabrielle, put up with all this while Vince was in charge of the corporation and making loads of money. Later when he lost control of the company and they ousted him from the board, his wife divorced him and took the remaining stock and money.

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