Herschell Ostrepeller’s Frustrating Day…

Alan J. Schwarz
12 min readSep 15, 2021

The alarm hadn’t gone off and Herschell Ostrepeller was lying in bed trying to make sense of the awful dream he just had. He was walking in a hallway and in every room he looked into, there was blood and other gross things, like a deer hanging upside down. He wasn’t a hunter and didn’t get the correlation to his life. What was with all the blood? It was while he was trying to figure things out that Sondra walked into his room. ‘’Jeez Herschell, are you on some kind of holiday? You should have been washed and dressed a half hour ago. You’re going to be late for work, and that Mr. Peterman is going to cut your balls off. Remember last month when he told you he couldn’t stand tardiness. You need this job, so get your ass out of bed and get moving.’’

Herschell absolutely despised his job. Some people loved what they did for a living, he wasn’t one of them. He worked with some grade A jerks and Todd Peterman led the pack.

Herschell was an Account Executive for the International Digital Bank. His job was to make sure that people who were into Cryptocurrency used IDB for converting their tokens into cash. He found the clientele for the most part sleazy and he always felt like he was contributing to something illegal, even if IDB was continually providing documentation regarding financial transfers to bank regulators.

Sondra refused to allow him to grab a cup of tea and a piece of toast. She said he was being self-indulgent and should worry more about keeping his job, they couldn’t afford for him to be fired. That was a rub, Sondra’s family was one of the wealthiest in Canada. On their Wedding day, her Father made Herschell sign an iron clad prenup. Her Dad told Herschell he was always going to protect his daughter and for that reason he gave Sondra an endowment of ten million dollars with the caveat that Herschell couldn’t touch the money.

Sondra would say to Herschell every once in a while in a laughing but serious tone, ‘’What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.’’ When he complained about his job, she would say ‘’Put on your big boy pants and suck it up buttercup. My Dad made his own money, you can do it the same way, work hard. You’re supposed to be a provider, provide.’’

As he got on the subway to head to the office, some idiot beside him kept…

Alan J. Schwarz

Alan Schwarz loves life. He is the founder of JAMS Productions, a television production company based in Toronto . His passion is writing.