Pot Brownies for The Employees
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
I believe the statue of limitations are probably on my side, so I can now admit:
Once I cooked up a tray of pot brownies, and then took twenty employees to a Phish show.
As you can imagine, mostly, it didn't turn out well.
And so, yes, about a decade ago, The Phish from Vermont were playing at SPAC in Saratoga Springs, NY. Wouldn't it be a hoot to invite anyone at BzzAgent to come check them out?
Sure.
Sure it would.
What could possibly go wrong?
But first, let's talk pot brownies shall we?
One should be aware, it's impolite to show up to a Phish show empty handed. And as this was an era before legalization, I took one look at my 11 oz 'best-boss-ever' office coffee mug and knew exactly what to do: I crammed four sticks of unsalted, organic butter into a saucepan, set it to simmer and fed it the better part of an ounce of ground, potent-until-your-eyes-bled sativa.
Had I made pot brownies before? That's the right question, two points for you.
Yeah, once, sometime in the late '90s. They were made for my buddy Caveman (of course it was a nickname, don't be a Stu) as a housewarming gift for a party. Caveman - in a move befitting of his name - plopped them unattended and unlabeled on a side table in a mostly unlit room where people congregated to spin records and yell toward each other over the noise. Thus, a hungry unsuspecting soul ate three or four and, hours later, feeling twinged and pickled and soft about the edges, ordered up an ambulance to properly figure out just what in tarnation was happening.
(I appreciate your concern. Let it be known that this particular chap was fine. And, well, hard to say who was at fault here, the brownie chef or the careless brownie distributor. What say we let this sleeping stoned pooch lie, ok?)
Of course, time heals all wounds and memories are short, so this time around I knew better than to make the same mistake twice. And thus, upon arrival at the team condo, the Tupperware was stamped handsomely in thick indelible ink, "POT BROWNIES!" with a subscript of "Please Be Careful...". Plus there was a goofy-ass smiley face, to set the tone of course. Here I was already proclaiming innocence in case..well...in case things happened just exactly as they did.
It began with a few eager employees munching a quarter, then daring themselves to a half of a brownie, gobbling crumbs while inquiring, "just how potent are these anyway?" To which I shrugged, offering that I really didn't know, I hadn't tried them, but best to take it slow.
"Each person has to manage their own agency," I explained - just like any good Phish tour rat would.
An hour or so later and, well - it's a story as old as Jobe - those crazy kids were feeling less dank than they had hoped. And so, lappity lap, they huffed their other halves, and merrily carried themselves off to the show.
During the second set, there came rumors of some troubling meltdowns: One employee was carried rag-doll style out to the vast SPAC lawn, to lie prone while having her hair combed and caressed. Another was speaking in tongues and dancing obnoxiously, alternating between a techno robot and a noodled-out limp puppet (nothing new at a Phish show, tbh). Another became so anxious, they left solo mid-concert attempting to walk the few miles back to the team condo, via a path that would take them onto a moderate highway in the pitch black night.
This particular Traveling Wilbury of an employee did indeed traverse hill and dale and managed their way home; but once there, situated themselves as the world's greatest mime, speechless, save for a few clicks and clacks. Luckily they were astute at communicating with their hands to outline an invisible box or pull on a rope, and they blinked to acknowledge simple questions (are you thirsty?). This persisted through the rest of the next day, and still seemed to be occurring while all the employees climbed onto a bus to make their way back home.
For that evening's concert, without the pressure of the employees around, we decided to take it safe. We'd just eat half a brownie, no more. "We're pros," we noted, chuckling at their naiveté.
Expert tour math:
Let B = 1 brownie
If B = 🚑
Then B/2 = 😎
This, of course, was all well and good until the closing of the first set, when an unhinged rendition of Split Open and Melt kicked off which, to us, sounded like blasphemy and was entirely unintelligible. What did it sound like, you ask? Well, exactly like circus music - in the form of a horse-less carousel operating in reverse on rusted wheels that cackled like absurdist clowns.
Terrified to our core, we couldn't stop laughing. No really, we had been eyeballing each other during the song, in fits of laughter while concurrently begging for the music to stop, because it felt like a murder of crows stuck in the basement of a haunted house being churned by a meat grinder. Was it my time to consider calling the ol' Boo-Boo Bus myself? You're damn right I thought about it.
But instead, the experienced wook in me attempted bravery: I would ride this particular journey to the end.
And so I crawled deep inside the folds of my brain and terror-gripped the back of the seat in front of me until my fingers turned white; and I dwelled, looping like a tape player with no beginning nor end. I dwelled on Caveman's unwilling dosed houseguest a few decades ago. I dwelled on my recent employee's wordless hellscape from the night before - realizing I'd eaten merely half the amount they had.
As the show wound to an end, I had a revelation. A moment of clarity struck down from the heavens as if by the hand of Jah himself who reminded me, without a shred of doubt: When it comes to pot brownies, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.