TaleTeller

About TaleTeller

Serialized storytelling for those inclined to follow yellow brick roads or wander through wardrobes. coffey.substack.com (https://coffey.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Kevin Coffey

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 Mar 2022

Latest episode

31 Oct 2024

Latest episodes

31 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   31 Oct 2024

   Spotting the Mermaid

   Hey everyone. Happy Halloween! Welcome to TaleTeller, the podcast where ordinary people talk about seeing extraordinary things. Each post will have a video accompanied by a recorded drawing of the astounding thing that was seen. The debut episode is Spotting the Mermaid, my story of the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Please let me know your thoughts and enjoy! Get full access to Coffey House at coffey.substack.com/subscribe (https://coffey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   9 Oct 2023

   The Legend of Mr. Snatchum

   (Narrated by Kevin Coffey) The Legend of Mr. Snatchum A boy accidentally finds the creature that all monsters dread, Mr. Snatchum, the legendary gobbler of fiends. Part 1: Prologue Get full access to Coffey House at coffey.substack.com/subscribe (https://coffey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   28 Mar 2023

   Tales of the Unemployed:

   (Narrated by Kevin Coffey) Hey everyone. I’m back with a new section I’m calling: Tales of The Unemployed. Full disclosure: like many, I’m currently unemployed and looking for a job, and decided it might be fun to post some of the stranger but true stories that yes, REALLY happened to me over the years during employment gaps that my friends like to hear me tell. Let me know how you like these! Kevin Have you ever been almost murdered at a final interview? Me either. Until I almost was. It began in a completely normal and innocent way. A recruiter contacted me (as recruiters do.) The recruiter (henceforth known as my recruiter) had a job for me they thought I matched up with well. The company was willing to pay a decent amount, the product they were selling was interesting--worth the next steps. So I went through the usual hierarchy of interviews: HR, check; future already entrenched coworker, A.K.A. my counterpart, check; The VP of Sales whom I’d report to, check. The place was okay, but the location was a bit sketchy. This opportunity had that bad juju feel to it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, because I really liked the people I met with. Anyway, I was young in my career, needed a job, and really jived with the VP, which is always critical. Landing the job seemed like it was going to be a slam dunk. The VP had given me the verbal “I was his guy,” but he had a work trip to complete, and while he was away there was one last step I needed to complete before getting things sewn up with HR: “The owner wants to meet you, go introduce yourself and get welcomed into the family! Let’s start killing it when I get back!” On the day of the interview/greeting meeting, I got an unexpected call from my recruiter. “Hey, I’d really like to go with you and introduce you to the owner, if that’s okay. It’s just something we like to own and see through.” It struck me as a bit odd to be introduced in person to the owner of a business neither of us had met before, but I went with it as it seemed little harm could come from it. We were at the window dressing phase, I thought. Now I know better. “Okay,” I said, “see you there.” The business was located in one of the two major armpit sections of our town. I called it an armpit because like tangled, unsightly hair, super highway ramps crisscrossed one another at all possible angles, looming over a maze of industrial warehouses surrounded by tall, imposing barbed-wire fences. My supposed future office building was wedged between a warehouse where a small army of welders were always spraying up a forest of sparks next door like they were building the world’s largest ship. (Perhaps they were.) On the other side was a lumber yard stacked so high with wood a devastating timbre avalanche seemed imminent. I dressed accordingly in my suit and waited for the recruiter to arrive in the parking lot. When they arrived, the recruiter casually briefed me again on how they intended to introduce me and I said fine, but my gut now had alarm bells going off. Still, I was convinced this was just a formality, albeit an awkward one. We stood outside a colorless reinforced door with a surveillance camera overhead that looked like it would most likely lead us to Area 51. We rang, and old-school looking doorbell lit up in neon urine. “Yeah?” a speaker to the side of the door asked us in an impatient sounding tone. “Oh, uh…hi! We’re here for a quick meeting with the owner. It was arranged by the VP,” my recruiter said. The metal on the door gave an irritated sounding buzz like it didn’t like being bothered, as a giant bolt made a SLOCK! sound as it unlocked. My recruiter eagerly yanked open the door, their face spreading into a much too wide smile that looked borderline manic. The reception area was deathly quiet and dark, with long shadows swallowing the adjacent corridor. It was like the atmosphere in spooky movies or video games where something awful always comes scuttling around the corner. I heard a long sigh before I saw them. Them, because, padding around the corner in the lead came the largest Doberman pincer I’d ever seen. I’m a dog lover. I didn’t love this one. It had the air like it was a couple heads taller than me and that wasn’t far off from the truth. I thought of Cujo if Cujo had been a guard dog. Worse, Cujo sniffed at the air and sized us up, carefully creeping forward like he might have been sent to get rid of any possible intruders. The guard dog stopped about ten feet short of us and sat, lightning-bolt alert with both ears straight up, awaiting possible orders.  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh,” my recruiter more or less gasped. As if all part of the grand entrance—which it obviously was—out confidently strode the owner. He had an astonishing forehead that jutted out, easily arriving before he did, almost like a polished bookshelf. A greasy, disintegrating mullet carpeted the few areas his forehead didn’t occupy. His forehead reflected the little light there was in the room and made the giant ones on Mt. Rushmore look like they were made of silly putty. “Who you people again?” Boss Forehead asked us once more like he might have just woken up, even though we had identified ourselves at the door. His eyes were naturally shaded by his swollen dome and in a permanent squint as if perhaps someone in his line had once mated with a ferret. His rodent eyes glinted from the recruiter to me like we were uninvited door to door salespeople. Worse, I noticed he had his hand resting on top of a holstered handgun! Things got blurry for me for a second. Reality did not compute. This guy, my ultimate boss to be open carried and brought his attack dog to work? Most definitely NOT reading the room, my recruiter jumped in like it was time for us to pitch our product on Shark Tank. “Oh, Boss Forehead,”—okay they didn’t really say that, but it would have cooler if they had. “Mr. Owner, I’m here and thrilled to present to you, your newest shining star in your wonderful organization, KEVIN COFFEY,” and they threw their arms my way in a sweeping, grand gesture as if I might now levitate or Boss Forehead was supposed to hand me an Academy Award. Yikes. “Nice to meet you, sir,” I said at this point with all the energy of a blown tire. I made zero attempt to shake his hand and barely made eye contact. “Don’t need no sales guy cain’t introduce himself,” Boss Forehead grunted with enough southern twang to spook a banjo. And with that, he spun around, and shuffled away. If a dog could shrug, Cujo did so, then instantly caught up to his master’s side, and they disappeared around the corner. “Uh, what just happened?” My recruiter said, mouth ajar, still half-frozen in their grandiose presentation gesture, now well-deprived of color (we both were), obviously slipping into shock. “He just kicked us out, that’s what. We need to leave,” I said with an urgent sense of calm. I opened the door, motioning for my recruiter to stop lingering and exit, not giving Boss Forehead any opportunity to label us as intruders and deal with us. Hey, it was Texas and it was a privately owned business. House rules. For all I knew, we could have been ground up into one of his products and sold on the free market. I might have become the ultimate cautionary tale for sales teams. We made a safe but swift escape and decompressed at a nearby coffee shop (but not too nearby), but there was nothing more to be done. There was nothing about the situation to save. The poor VP of the Boss’ company was beyond shocked and embarrassed to find out instead of coming back to carve out an attack plan with me (his newest shining star), he now had to start his search from scratch and face probable tension and backlash from a heavily armed and well defended Boss Forehead. The good news for me? My recruiter had done me a favor. That job was most definitely NOT the one that got away! Like this story?: or: New here? Join us for free: Get full access to Coffey House at coffey.substack.com/subscribe (https://coffey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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