A Dirty Job Chapter 2 Free Essays

2 A FINE EDGE There’s a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality – there’s mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin. So Charlie was barely even aware of his own shrieks in Rachel’s hospital room, of being sedated, of the filmy electric hysteria that netted everything he did for that first day. We will write a custom essay sample on A Dirty Job Chapter 2 or any similar topic only for you Order Now After that, it was a memory out of a sleepwalk, scenes filmed from a zombie’s eye socket, as he ambled undead through explanations, accusations, preparations, and ceremony. â€Å"It’s called a cerebral thromboembolism,† the doctor had said. â€Å"A blood clot forms in the legs or pelvis during labor, then moves to the brain, cutting off the blood supply. It’s very rare, but it happens. There was nothing we could do. Even if the crash team had been able to revive her, she’d have had massive brain damage. There was no pain. She probably just felt sleepy and passed.† Charlie whispered to keep from screaming, â€Å"The man in mint green! He did something to her. He injected her with something. He was there and he knew that she was dying. I saw him when I brought her CD back.† They showed him the security tapes – the nurse, the doctor, the hospital’s administrators and lawyers – they all watched the black-and-white images of him leaving Rachel’s room, of the empty hallway, of his returning to her room. No tall black man dressed in mint green. They didn’t even find the CD. Sleep deprivation, they said. Hallucination brought on by exhaustion. Trauma. They gave him drugs to sleep, drugs for anxiety, drugs for depression, and they sent him home with his baby daughter. Charlie’s older sister, Jane, held baby Sophie as they spoke over Rachel and buried her on the second day. He didn’t remember picking out a casket or making arrangements. It was more of the somnambulant dream: his in-laws moving to and fro in black, like tottering specters, spouting the inadequate clichs of condolence: We’re so sorry. She was so young. What a tragedy. If there’s anything we can do†¦ Rachel’s father and mother held him, their heads pressed together in the apex of a tripod. The slate floor in the funeral-home foyer spotted with their tears. Every time Charlie felt the shoulders of the older man heave with a sob, he felt his own heart break again. Saul took Charlie’s face in his hands and said, â€Å"You can’t imagine, because I can’t imagine.† But Charlie could imagine, because he was a Beta Male, and imagination was his curse; and he could imagine because he had lost Rachel and now he had a daughter, that tiny stranger sleeping in his sister’s arms. He could imagine the man in mint green taking her. Charlie looked at the tear-spotted floor and said, â€Å"That’s why most funeral homes are carpeted. Someone could slip.† â€Å"Poor boy,† said Rachel’s mother. â€Å"We’ll sit shivah with you, of course.† Charlie made his way across the room to his sister, Jane, who wore a man’s double-breasted suit in charcoal pinstripe gabardine, that along with her severe eighties pop-star hairstyle and the infant in the pink blanket that she held, made her appear not so much androgynous as confused. Charlie thought the suit actually looked better on her than it did on him, but she should have asked him for permission to wear it nonetheless. â€Å"I can’t do this,† he said. He let himself fall forward until the receded peninsula of dark hair touched her gelled Flock of Seagulls platinum flip. It seemed like the best posture for sharing grief, this forehead lean, and it reminded him of standing drunkenly at a urinal and falling forward until his head hit the wall. Despair. â€Å"You’re doing fine,† Jane said. â€Å"Nobody’s good at this.† â€Å"What the fuck’s a shivah?† â€Å"I think it’s that Hindu god with all the arms.† â€Å"That can’t be right. The Goldsteins are going to sit on it with me.† â€Å"Didn’t Rachel teach you anything about being Jewish?† â€Å"I wasn’t paying attention. I thought we had time.† Jane adjusted baby Sophie into a half-back, one-armed carry and put her free hand on the back of Charlie’s neck. â€Å"You’ll be okay, kid.† Seven,† said Mrs. Goldstein. â€Å"Shivah means ‘seven.’ We used to sit for seven days, grieving for the dead, praying. That’s Orthodox, now most people just sit for three.† They sat shivah in Charlie and Rachel’s apartment that overlooked the cable-car line at the corner of Mason and Vallejo Streets. The building was a four-story brick Edwardian (architecturally, not quite the grand courtesan couture of the Victorians, but enough tarty trim and trash to toss off a sailor down a side street) built after the earthquake and fire of 1906 had leveled the whole area of what was now North Beach, Russian Hill, and Chinatown. Charlie and Jane had inherited the building, along with the thrift shop that occupied the ground floor, when their father died four years before. Charlie got the business, the large, double apartment they’d grown up in, and the upkeep on the old building, while Jane got half the rental income and one of the apartments on the top floor with a Bay Bridge view. At the instruction of Mrs. Goldstein, all the mirrors in the house were draped with black fabric and a large candle was placed on the coffee table in the center of the living room. They were supposed to sit on low benches or cushions, neither of which Charlie had in the house, so, for the first time since Rachel’s death, he went downstairs into the thrift shop looking for something they could use. The back stairs descended from a pantry behind the kitchen into the stockroom, where Charlie kept his office among boxes of merchandise waiting to be sorted, priced, and placed in the store. The shop was dark except for the light that filtered in the front window from the streetlights out on Mason Street. Charlie stood there at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the light switch, just staring. Amid the shelves of knickknacks and books, the piles of old radios, the racks of clothes, all of them dark, just lumpy shapes in the dark, he could see objects glowing a dull red, nearly pulsing, like beating hearts. A sweater in the racks, a porcelain figure of a frog in a curio case, out by the front window an old Coca-Cola tray, a pair of shoes – all glowing red. Charlie flipped the switch, fluorescent tubes fired to life across the ceiling, flickering at first, and the shop lit up. The red glow disappeared. â€Å"Okaaaaaaay,† he said to himself, calmly, like everything was just fine now. He flipped off the lights. Glowing red stuff. On the counter, close to where he stood, there was a brass business-card holder cast in the shape of a whooping crane, glowing dull red. He took a second to study it, just to make sure there wasn’t some red light source from outside refracting around the room and making him uneasy for no reason. He stepped into the dark shop, took a closer look, got an angle on the brass cranes. Nope, the brass was definitely pulsing red. He turned and ran back up the steps as fast as he could. He nearly ran over Jane, who stood in the kitchen, rocking Sophie gently in her arms, talking baby talk under her breath. â€Å"What?† Jane said. â€Å"I know you have some big cushions down in the shop somewhere.† â€Å"I can’t,† Charlie said. â€Å"I’m on drugs.† He backed against the refrigerator, like he was holding it hostage. â€Å"I’ll go get them. Here, hold the baby.† â€Å"I can’t, I’m on drugs. I’m hallucinating.† Jane cradled the baby in the crook of her right arm and put a free arm around her younger brother. â€Å"Charlie, you are on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not acid. Look around this apartment, there’s not a person here that’s not on something.† Charlie looked through the kitchen pass-through: women in black, most of them middle-aged or older, shaking their heads, men looking stoic, standing around the perimeter of the living room, each holding a stout tumbler of liquor and staring into space. â€Å"See, they’re all fucked up.† â€Å"What about Mom?† Charlie nodded to their mother, who stood out among the other gray-haired women in black because she was draped in silver Navaho jewelry and was so darkly tanned that she appeared to be melting into her old-fashioned when she took a sip. â€Å"Especially Mom,† Jane said. â€Å"I’ll go look for something to sit shivah on. I don’t know why you can’t just use the couches. Now take your daughter.† â€Å"I can’t. I can’t be trusted with her.† â€Å"Take her, bitch!† Jane barked in Charlie’s ear – sort of a whisper bark. It had long ago been determined who was the Alpha Male between them and it was not Charlie. She handed off the baby and cut to the stairs. â€Å"Jane,† Charlie called after her. â€Å"Look around before you turn on the lights. See if you see anything weird, okay?† â€Å"Right. Weird.† She left him standing there in the kitchen, studying his daughter, thinking that her head might be a little oblong, but despite that, she looked a little like Rachel. â€Å"Your mommy loved Aunt Jane,† he said. â€Å"They used to gang up on me in Risk – and Monopoly – and arguments – and cooking.† He slid down the fridge door, sat splayed-legged on the floor, and buried his face in Sophie’s blanket. In the dark, Jane barked her shin on a wooden box full of old telephones. â€Å"Well, this is just stupid,† she said to herself, and flipped on the lights. Nothing weird. Then, because Charlie was many things, but one of them was not crazy, she turned off the lights again, just to be sure that she hadn’t missed something. â€Å"Right. Weird.† There was nothing weird about the store except that she was standing there in the dark rubbing her shin. But then, right before she turned on the light again, she saw someone peering in the front window, making a cup around his eyes to see through the reflection of the streetlights. A homeless guy or drunken tourist, she thought. She moved through the dark shop, between columns of comic books stacked on the floor, to a spot behind a rack of jackets where she could get a clear view of the window, which was filled with cheap cameras, vases, belt buckles, and all manner of objects that Charlie had judged worthy of interest, but obviously not worthy of a smash-and-grab. The guy looked tall, and not homeless, nicely dressed, but all in a single light color, she thought it might be yellow, but it was hard to tell under the streetlights. Could be light green. â€Å"We’re closed,† Jane said, loud enough to be heard through the glass. The man outside peered around the shop, but couldn’t spot her. He stepped back from the window and she could see that he was, indeed, tall. Very tall. The streetlight caught the line of his cheek as he turned. He was also very thin and very black. â€Å"I was looking for the owner,† the tall man said. â€Å"I have something I need to show him.† â€Å"There’s been a death in the family,† Jane said. â€Å"We’ll be closed for the week. Can you come back in a week?† The tall man nodded, looking up and down the street as he did. He rocked on one foot like he was about to bolt, but kept stopping himself, like a sprinter straining against the starting blocks. Jane didn’t move. There were always people out on the street, and it wasn’t even late yet, but this guy was too anxious for the situation. â€Å"Look, if you need to get something appraised – â€Å" â€Å"No,† he cut her off. â€Å"No. Just tell him she’s, no – tell him to look for a package in the mail. I’m not sure when.† Jane smiled to herself. This guy had something – a brooch, a coin, a book – something that he thought was worth some money, maybe something he’d found in his grandmother’s closet. She’d seen it a dozen times. They acted like they’ve found the lost city of Eldorado – they’d come in with it tucked in their coats, or wrapped in a thousand layers of tissue paper and tape. (The more tape, generally, the more worthless the item would turn out to be – there was an equation there somewhere.) Nine times out of ten it was crap. She’d watched her father try to finesse their ego and gently lower the owners into disappointment, convince them that the sentimental value made it priceless, and that he, a lowly secondhand-store owner, couldn’t presume to put a value on it. Charlie, on the other hand, would just tell them that he didn’t know about brooches, or coins, or whatever they had and let someone else bear the b ad news. â€Å"Okay, I’ll tell him,† Jane said from her cover behind the coats. With that, the tall man was away, taking great praying-mantis strides up the street and out of view. Jane shrugged, went back and turned on the lights, then proceeded to search for cushions among the piles. It was a big store, taking up nearly the whole bottom floor of the building, and not particularly well organized, as each system that Charlie adopted seemed to collapse after a few weeks under its own weight, and the result was not so much a patchwork of organizational systems, but a garden of mismatched piles. Lily, the maroon-haired Goth girl who worked for Charlie three afternoons a week, said that the fact that they ever found anything at all was proof of the chaos theory at work, then she would walk away muttering and go out in the alley to smoke clove cigarettes and stare into the Abyss. (Although Charlie noted that the Abyss looked an awful lot like a Dumpster.) It took Jane ten minutes to navigate the aisles and find three cushions that looked wide enough and thick enough that they might work for sitting shivah, and when she returned to Charlie’s apartment she found her brother curled into the fetal position around baby Sophie, asleep on the kitchen floor. The other mourners had completely forgotten about him. â€Å"Hey, doofus.† She nudged his shoulder with her toe and he rolled onto his back, the baby still in his arms. â€Å"These okay?† â€Å"Did you see anything glowing?† Jane dropped the stack of cushions on the floor. â€Å"What?† â€Å"Glowing red. Did you see things in the shop glowing, like pulsating red?† â€Å"No. Did you?† â€Å"Kind of.† â€Å"Give ’em up.† â€Å"What?† â€Å"The drugs. Hand them over. They’re obviously much better than you led me to believe.† â€Å"But you said they were just antianxiety.† â€Å"Give up the drugs. I’ll watch the kid while you shivah.† â€Å"You can’t watch my daughter if you’re on drugs.† â€Å"Fine. Surrender the crumb snatcher and go sit.† Charlie handed the baby up to Jane. â€Å"You have to keep Mom out of the way, too.† â€Å"Oh no, not without drugs.† â€Å"They’re in the medicine cabinet in the master bath. Bottom shelf.† He was sitting on the floor now, rubbing his forehead as if to stretch the skin out over his pain. She kneed him in the shoulder. â€Å"Hey, kid, I’m sorry, you know that, right? Goes without saying, right?† â€Å"Yeah.† A weak smile. She held the baby up by her face, then looked down in adoration, Mother of Jesus style. â€Å"What do you think? I should get one of these, huh?† â€Å"You can borrow mine whenever you need to.† â€Å"Nah, I should get my own. I already feel bad about borrowing your wife.† â€Å"Jane!† â€Å"Kidding! Jeez. You’re such a wuss sometimes. Go sit shivah. Go. Go. Go.† Charlie gathered the cushions and went to the living room to grieve with his in-laws, nervous because the only prayer he knew was â€Å"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,† and he wasn’t sure that was going to cut it for three full days. Jane forgot to mention the tall guy from the shop. How to cite A Dirty Job Chapter 2, Essay examples

The Harvard Graduate Student Housing Survey free essay sample

The problem faced by Harvard executives at Harvard Real Estate Services was how to achieve the business objective of increasing the volume of graduate students who rent Harvard houses over private homes by 40%. The Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) team wanted to know how their development of new student housing property that is at the designing stage, better appeal to Harvard students, and help attain the goal of obtaining their residency. For this purpose a marketing research was conducted with the objective made more specific to which characteristics are the most important in obtaining students to choose residency from Harvard rather than private housing, so as to decide how to design the housing, which attributes students care about most, and if designing the housing in some specific ways would better guarantee that students would choose to live in the Harvard student housing over private housing. From a prior 2001 survey it was seen that cost, space, and location were the 3 most important attributes to students. We will write a custom essay sample on The Harvard Graduate Student Housing Survey or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page So the new survey was framed to get information about whether these three factors are still the most important for the students’ housing decision and their respective weights, does the housing affect the choice of school, and to what extent are cost, space, and location of housing actually considered by students in their research and decision making to make a choice among schools to attend. As the marketing research objectives and topics of this survey were attempting to learn market characteristics like interest, desires, perceptions, behaviours of the target audience i.e. students, the research design was descriptive. The HRES team had several options as to which survey method to use to carry out the research -telephone interviewing, personal interviewing, mail interviewing, or electronic interviewing. Cost and familiarity, greater chances of reaching to students, made HRES go with electronic interviewing. Secondary research like past research performed on student housing, internal and external data sources such as research performed on competing schools housing, articles on student opinions of student housing, and specifically Harvard students can also be built upon. The design of the survey questions should be such that they are relevant but not include questions about attributes that do not relate or can be easily assumed. The flow of questions could be from general to specific to build a comfort level and then extract maximum information. As with any good survey, it needs to be simple, clear, easy and attractive for  participants to understand and answer. To apply the information gathered to the problem at hand, the responses to the survey should be measurable and scalable. Questions have to be framed such that they return measurable and scalable results on a nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio scale.

Animal Farm Book Report Essays (215 words) - British Films

Animal Farm Book Report The novel Animal Farm by George Orwell was a very interesting, complex, and informing novel. In the novel, George Orwell uses farm animals to portray people of power and the common people during the Russian Revolution. The novel starts off with Major explaining to all the animals in the farm how they are being treated wrongly and how they can over throw their owner, Mr. Jones. They finally gang up on their owner and he leaves the farm. Then they start their own farm with their own rules and commandments. Originally the two people in charge of the "Animal Farm", which they titled it, were Napoleon and Snowball. Napoleon was really greedy and wanted all the power to be his, so he got the animals to turn on Snowball and make him leave the farm. After Napoleon took over the pigs started disobeying the commandments that the pigs, as well as all the other animals, organized and wrote down at the beginning of their take over. Soon the pigs have disobeyed, and/or changed every law there was from the beginning, and the pigs start acting and looking like humans. After that "Animal Farm" slowly starts to loose power and Mr. Jones takes back over. This is a style analysis of Animal Farm.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Review

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Review The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about secrets, ghosts, winter, books, and family. This bestseller is a book lovers book, with much of the action taking place in libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is Setterfields debut novel, for she makes the words come to life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills. With a mug of cocoa and The Thirteenth Tale, contentment isnt far away. Synopsis of The Thirteenth Tale Margaret Lea works in her fathers bookstore and is haunted by a loss in her past.One night Margaret is summoned to the home of the most famous author in England to record her autobiography.Vida Winter, the author, tells a layered tale, with stories within stories, keeping Margaret (and readers) curious. Pros The writing is poetic.The characters are unique.The story is interesting, imaginative, and exciting. Cons You will want to drink lots of cocoa while reading (this is only a con for the weight conscious). The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Book Review The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is reminiscent of classic British novels, like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It has tragedy, romance, moors, and dark, stormy nights. In a way, The Thirteenth Tale is a homage to these and all other great works of literature. The power of books and stories is foremost in the novel, and as the main character gets lost in one story, youll find yourself lost with her in the story within a story (as well as the story surrounding the characters story). This is not a realistic book. It isnt meant to be. The aura of fairytale lends power and mystery to the writing. While place is utterly important to the book, time is not. Dont  try too hard to figure out when the novel is supposed to take place. It could just as easily have been now as a hundred years ago. Perhaps all this talk about place, time and story seems roundabout to you. Perhaps you want a synopsis of plot and a straightforward review so that you can decide whether to read this book. Heres what to expect: A good story written by a very good writer about a good story told by a very good writer. This can be a fun read for a book discussion club, especially for the autumn and winter months. See a list of questions you can explore with your book club for The Thirteenth Tale.  The audiobook version is well-received for those who prefer to listen rather than read. The book was adapted for a UK TV movie released in December 2013, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Colman. Setterfields second novel, Bellman Black, (2013) does not garner as good of reviews. Hopefully, her further works will be back up to the standard she set with her first.

The Auditing Profession - Accounting vs.Auditing & the Auditing within Essay

The Auditing Profession - Accounting vs.Auditing & the Auditing within the IRS - Essay Example We mention the opinion of Richard Brown, cited by two world-class specialists (Mautz and Sharaf, 1961) indicating that audit has its roots in the past, only a little beyond the origins of accounting. Every time the society progress has made it necessary for a man to be entrusted with the property of another- to some extent, the need of a certain type of its loyalty control become obvious. The textbook definition included in the Report of the Committee on Basic Auditing Concepts of the American Accounting Association presents auditing as â€Å"a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between those assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users† (Media Wiley, 2003, p.4). To emphasize the essence of financial audit, its meaning and scope, we present the definition of Arens and Loebbecke, two high-class American specia lists: â€Å"audit consists of gathering and evaluating evidences to determine and report the degree of compliance of reported with a series of predetermined criteria. The audit should be conducted by a competent and independent individual." (Arens&Loebbecke, 2003, p.11). Many of the indicated features are common to all forms of audit. There are various types of audit, such as operational, technical, ecological, but in the vast majority of cases, the term refers to the audit of financial statements. Table 1: Main features of various types of audits Type of audit Financial statement audit Compliance audit Audit report and internal control Operational audit Assertion about economic actions and operations Presentation of financial position, results of operations and cash flow Claims or data pertaining to adherence to policies, laws, regulations, so on. Adequacy of system of internal control over financial reporting Operational or performance data Established criteria GAAP Managementâ €™s policy or laws and regulations COSO criteria for evaluating internal controls Objectives set by management Communication of results Opinion of independent CPA Summary of findings or assurance regarding degree of compliance Opinion of independent CPA Summary of findings regarding efficiency and effectiveness observed Interested users Investors, creditors and others Management, board of directors and others Investors, creditors and others Management and board of directors Source: Media Wiley. Auditing and the Public Accounting Profession-Integrity of Financial reporting, 2003, p.7 Note: COSO=Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission; GAAP=Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; CPA=Certified Public Accountant. Table 1 summarizes main differences between various types of audit: financial statements audit, compliance audits, audit reports on internal control and operational audits. As presented, financial audit is an examination conducted by an independe nt, competent professional, in order to express a justified opinion on the validity and correct application of financial-accounting internal procedures established by managers and on the real, complete and accurate nature of a unit’s financial statements. Financial auditors analyze and compare accounting reports and other documents in terms of conformity with established standards and regulations such as GAAP

Control Mechanisms Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Control Mechanisms Paper - Essay Example Planning incorporates different control mechanisms and their impact on the system. During a planning stage, management develops several approaches in order to respond to possible changes and threats. Concurrent control influences decision-making process and further implementation. Budgetary controls determine allocation of resources and time spent on each activity. Planning and control procedures are computerized and take advantage of the explosive growth of inexpensive, commercially available budgeting, scheduling, and resource allocation software (Frame, 2002). Feedforward and feedback control influence implementation and organizing. In order to cope with this ever-changing character of needs, managers first recognize that it exists. Feedforward and feedback control influence selection of techniques and methods of organizing. Beyond this, they are aware that the changing nature of needs that may require changes in the plan once implementation takes place. Concurrent control does not have a great impact on organizing but requires that immediate changes and variations will be immediately accepted. Plans are rarely static statements of how things should be done; instead, they are dynamic instruments, allowing staff to manage change in an orderly fashion (Starbucks Home Page 2007). Concurrent control helps to foresee that variance from the plan will occur when the plan comes up against the real world. Budgetary control influences coordination and resource control. Control mechanisms influence the directing function and help to make necessary changes and amendments. In Starbucks, managers pay a special attention to feedforward and feedback controls which help to detect threats and errors. Directing depends upon concurrent control and possible variables. The environment in which planning is carried out is complex. Also, budgetary controls stipulate limitations and financial constraints. Starbucks managers first of all are aware of the limitations of the

Do a Case Brief of a news article Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Do a Brief of a news article - Case Study Example The allegations that have been brought to court comprise of detailed testimonies from managers at Wal-Mart, who claimed to have visited strip clubs to conduct company meetings and did not see any downside to visiting Hooters for the purpose of a business gathering. One female employee reported an incident where her male supervisors had told her to â€Å"doll up† and apply more makeup and dress appropriately. Dukes hence became the face of a case that was gathering momentum in court and making waves, mostly because of the fact that the case involved sworn statements from over a 100 female employees who claimed that they had faced discrimination, harassment or had to perform in a hostile work environment simply because of their sex and a failure of Wal-Mart management to address these problems. They went as far as to state that they were not given equal opportunities as their male peers and so hired a statistician to evaluate Wal-Mart’s payroll data to analyze the ratio of men who were progressing compared to female employees. So the allegations made were that women represented two-thirds of hourly employees, however it was seen that approximately less than 14 percent of them became store managers. On average, a woman employee waited 4.3 years to be promoted to the post of an assistant manager whereas for men the process took 2.86 years. Similarly men were promoted to the title of store manger in 8.64 years compared to the 10.12 years women employees had to wait. Lastly the allegations stated that women earned about 5 to 15 percent lesser than men, across all job categories. The ruling of the US Supreme Court, according to ‘The Guardian’, rejected these arguments which stated that there was a common policy of unfairness against women at Wal-Mart. Senior US judges came to the decision that this 10 year long gender bias case was in complete failure to meet the requirements for class action cases. Also a maximum number of conservative judges ruled that the