The Rhino Supervisor and AA meetings

A few weeks ago, my husband had to go to a salesman certification seminar. He showed me the literature afterwards so we could laugh at it. The method that was taught involved assigning a personality profile to yourself and your coworkers and then assigning a profile to your potential customers. The profiles were given animal names that summarized the personality type, like weasal, squirrel, rhino. My husband told me his boss (and the owner of the business) was a rhino. I said, "Really, what's a rhino?' He responded, "A really big, loud, pushy asshole." Almost every day, the rhino comes through loud and clear. Yesterday, my husband called to say he had good/bad news. He had a week off, but it was without pay. Apparently, the rhino has raised several children to young adulthood and they have some anti-social tendencies, like repeatedly drinking and driving and hitting their girlfriends. Recently, large lawyer fees had to be paid to defend one of these misfits against some charges he accrued during his latest escapade. Also, the rhino's wife and breeder of these abusive, drunken bastards had to be given a car because she needed a 'pick-me-up' after seeing her child carted off to jail. Needless to say, these necessities cost money and the money has to come from somewhere. So, the rhino decided to ruin Christmas for a few families by subtracting several hundred dollars from their income. Scrooge bastard. My husband doesn't think he actually has the nerve to go through with it. I'm willing to bet that he does.
And, in part two of this post's title, I am going to write about the AA meeting I went to last night. I know this will freak out AA people because this stuff is supposed to be anonymous, but, GUESS WHAT, if I don't use your name it IS anonymous. I go to AA meetings because I qualify (a phrase used constantly at tables) and because I can leave and be me for a while without my husband and daughter. I don't dislike the meetings and sometimes I even enjoy them. This meeting was a pretty boring one. Everybody (myself included) told their stories in the over-the-top, dramatic detail with the focus on trying to save this newcomer who had mistakenly shared she came back to AA because of her boyfriend's encouragement. In the midst of all this, I committed a faux pas. The girl sitting next to me asked if I wanted to lead the table and I declined. I didn't decline for a good reason. I have been sober long enough to lead a table and I have done it a few times, but not since I moved to the suburbs. I am not comfortable in the suburbs and I am definitely not comfortable at AA in the suburbs. I had grown accustomed to the homeless, living in a box, needle-marks on their arms, shoplifting drug addicts and alcoholics that I got sober with in the neighboring small city. I miss these bottom dwellers. The functional housewife alcoholics and six-figure-stressful job alcoholics in the suburbs are a different breed and I am not quite comfortable around them. However, my husband and daughter are really comfortable in the suburbs and I know it is a good environment for families and that is what we have evolved (regressed?) to. So, I'll have to adjust. A few hundred more meetings and I'm sure I'll be able to relate to the high class folks.
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