The ABC’s of Work, Part 1

Fuuuuuuuuck. I don’t want to do this. Not right now, not today. I’m still hung over and the last time I checked, Snapple’s Asian Pear Green Tea is no substitute for tomato juice and charcoal…pills or whatever. I don’t fucking know. I’m at work. God I hate work. Why can’t I be in bed? I can do my job just as well there. Work sucks.

Does this sound like you? If not then you are one of the 0.00047% of people who love their job. That’s a statistical impossibility. Therefore, no one loves their job. In conclusion, you should be thinking of what I said in the first paragraph every day for the rest of your life.

There’re some things about work you should know.

Applying
What a hassle this part is. Just because 1 convicted sex offender thief who cheats on taxes got hired, now everyone under the sun gets a FBI personality profile made with a cavity search on the house. Shit, what happened to just firing someone? And the interview portion! Every question is secretly laden with enough high school pep rally belongingness to smother a cult. “Why do YOU want to be a member of the Orbital family?” Because I can’t find work as a ditch digger. Because your rival company Teletron is full of dickless, nutless faggots. Because I like monies. Gimme monies.

Bring Your Child to Work Day
Formerly the sexist “Bring your daughter to work day”. My mom always got stuck with me. She used to manage clothing stores that tailored to high-end fashion for women. Not the most appropriate place for a little boy whose hobbies included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and fire. Every time, she would stick me in the back room with a TV, some videos, and a McDonald’s lunch. And all day I would sit there, occasionally walk back and forth, and daydream. Sometimes I would draw or doodle on whatever piece of nonsense lying around that was disposable. I was always alone. Completely alone.

I must admit that Bring Your Child to Work Day adequately prepared me for a job in the real world and I say this without a hint of sarcasm.

Customers
“This job wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fucking customers” – Clerks

What, I gotta wake up at 7:30 and deal with people? Despite the gross insensitivity of what I’m about to suggest, this is a little trick I developed where you can fuck with customers, be totally incompetent and lazy, and everything will be completely fine. In fact the customer will be really appreciative and smile at you. Here it is: pretend to be physically handicapped. Not mentally. Physically. And be really cheerful, too.

See, no one gives a shit about Johnny Healthybody because he’s too stupid to get a real job. But if you’re little Timmy Sickwell, well then God bless your sweet, sweet, underdeveloped heart. When I worked at a bakery, I used to get shit from bitchy yuppies for pronouncing crescent “cre-sahnt” instead of the uber-french “cweh-saah!” This one time, just to fuck with people, I started walking on the side of my right foot, hunched my left shoulder up, and curled my left arm into a weak little T-Rex arm. Some dude asked for a loaf of rye sliced. Normally it would take me 45 seconds to do. This took 5 whole goddamn minutes. I couldn’t have been slower or intentionally fucked up his order worse. The bread was all rustled, the bag was sloppily tied closed, and it took far too long to prepare. The guy looked at me right in the eyes, gave the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, and said, “Thank you! You have a terrific day!” Hey you too, buddy.


Don’t Dip Your Pen in the Company Ink
I hate this phrase because it makes us sound like we are all writing memos with quill pens about the conference room schedule changing like we haven’t invented fucking electricity yet. Or it sounds like 19th century bankers would go around shtooping every co-worker, who were invariably dudes, since that was before women’s lib and the death of euphemisms. How about “don’t fuck co-workers”? Or better yet, “don’t fuck people you really shouldn’t fuck if you’re not willing to deal with the consequences of a psycho you created in an enclosed space that you can never leave”? Yeah, that’s much catchier. And it applies to high school, too.

The Economy Sucks Shit Right Now
CNN reported today that almost 700,000 jobs were lost in the month of February, the single most jobs lost in a month so far. What the hell?! How can there be so many? It’s the shortest month of the year! The market is toxic. If no one can find a conventional job soon then something tells me there will be a slight rise in demand for movies about bank robberies.

Fantasizing
I wonder what it would be like to hook up with the hot girl, or the girl who looks like a hot chick swallowed a bathtub. Or even Dianne. She’s got that whole, bossy, bitchy, librarian thing going on. What if she marched up to me one day, grabbed me by the collar and was like, “Now.” So she leads me to the supplies closet…and we are just going at it. Like we’re 15. Not like fucking or anything, but just making out really, really hard. We’re just 2nd-basing the shit out of each other. And then it all abruptly stops. She shoves me aside, marches out of the closet and doesn’t even look at me until about a month later when this whole episode repeats itself.

This is how I get through my day. I think of this stuff constantly.

Go-Getters
I hate these guys and their shitty attitude. They’d fit right in on the screen of some soviet-era communist propaganda film about meeting grain-harvesting quotas. “Work! Work ‘till you tire! And then work some more!” Hey assholes, unless you work on commission you’re not getting paid extra. You’re making the rest of us look bad and hate you. The fact is the system is so broken that my job actually encourages me to be lazy. My 3 bosses don’t need me to bother them every time I finish whatever meaningless, repetitive task they just gave me. I got fired, aka never asked to come back, from one job because I finished, literally, a week’s worth of busy work in 2 hours. Nothing points out the weakness of the job you hold by showing just how easy any idiot can do it. Are you trying to lose your job? Then stop working. Duh.

Human Relations

The guidance councilors of the work world. Every job has one. At a construction site it’s some guy named Joey who yells whenever a fight breaks out “shut the fuck up and quit bein’ dicks, ya fairies!” At my office, it’s an entire department devoted to making sure no one touches each other or declares that they will touch each other or hints at declaring that they will touch each other. So, in conclusion, human relations exists to ensure that there aren’t any.