Kevin was surprised by the phone call. “Randy Myers put me down as a reference?”
“Yes, as his former business partner,” Lisa Klein of Klein Industries said, shuffling papers on the other end of the line. “Honestly, I don’t normally follow up on references. I’m just so impressed by Randy’s candidacy, so I wanted to see if I was missing some other facet to him.”
Kevin decided to play along. “Did he come across to you as a friend to all and someone who can really deal with adversity?”
“He did. Is that not all true?”
“Randy is certainly a friend to all,” Kevin said. “Of course, his real name is Douglas. He took on the nickname Randy because he behaved so randomly all the time.”
“He was inconsistent?” Lisa asked.
“He would wear a cowboy hat on a Tuesday or order four different crunchy tacos from four different Taco Bells,” Kevin said. “Random, right?”
Lisa laughed at this. “Randy talked to us about building a business from the ground up.”
“He did,” Kevin said. “He burned a business to the ground with a lot of shortsighted, random decisions. Then he was able to miraculously rebuild it by making the same sorts of decisions.”
“How did he burn it to the ground?”
“It was a combination of NFTs and sports gambling,” Kevin said. “One fed the other.”
“But he stopped those activities?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, when he went to jail for embezzling,” Kevin said. “In fact, if he does get the job, let me know because I should be getting a percentage of his salary to pay me back for that.”
Lisa was silent for a second. “Why did he put you down as a reference?”
Kevin laughed. “Randy is random.”