My name is Johnny Carsweeper. Contrary to what my last name may or
may not indicate, I do not sweep cars. Today on my way to work I
passed a bus full of citizens. They were all sitting very still,
looking out windows, and trying very hard not to spark up conversation
and accidentally make a friend. The bus driver had headphones on
and looked as if she was trying very hard to pretend that she wasn’t making
a living driving buses. I chuckled to myself as I listened to Murray
and Murray and Phalmington on the radio.
As of this day, I
had been permanent technical assistant to manager of managerial technicalities
involving the transfer of air molecules between complex B3 and complex
F for three months. It was a job somewhat different from, but not
entirely unlike, my former position as temporary technical assistant to
manager of managerial technicalities involving the transfer of air molecules
between complex B and complex A. I had spent a majority of my time
as temporary technical assistant to manager of managerial technicalities
involving the transfer of air molecules between complex B and complex A
playing solitaire on my computer, whereas I now spent most of my time as
permanent technical assistant to manager of managerial technicalities involving
the transfer of air molecules between complex B3 and F playing Quake.
I walked through the
main entrance of the Megalom Corp. headquarters building, through the lobby,
and onto the elevator. On the elevator I came across some more people
staying still, looking around, and trying very hard not to spark up conversation
and accidentally make friends. I should actually say I coincided
with them, because they didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with
the rest of the species. That’s OK, I understand that.
I got off at my floor,
floor eighteen, and walked to the fourth cubicle complex. I then
navigated my way to cubicle #157AB33theta. This, along with leaving
work, was the most difficult part of my workday. I sat down at my
tiny desk and switched my computer on. It said, “Good morning!
Go wipe your ass with sandpaper!”
I had a single message
in my mailbox. It was from Mel Appeloog. It said this:
Hey Johnny!
I heard from the office morale officer that you’ve had a few bouts with
a man by the name of Phil Pennington. As you know, this is fellow
employee
tolerance and appreciation week and there is a special meeting tonight.
The office morale officer told me to have both you and Mr. Pennington attend
tonight at 7:32:41 in room #2.5, level 3. At the meeting you will
learn to better understand your fellow employees and help keep the workplace
a
pleasant place. I am going to be there too because I’m having an
affair with my secretary and it seems to be wrecking my marriage.
They will also have
coffee and sub sandwiches. See you there!
Mel Appeloog
At this point I was
having coinciding thoughts: “Phil Pennington suck” and “free dinner.”
I decided that free dinner far outweighed Phil Pennington’s bastardliness
and I decided to attend. It was the least I could do to shoe Mel
Appeloog that I thought he was a nice enough guy to listen to. It
was only morning, though, and I had the whole day to waste before I could
eat dinner. I still had to eat breakfast.
Megalom Corp. is really
good at being convenient at certain convenient times. For instance,
you can buy stocks in Megalom Corp. from your computer. You can also
order food and have it delivered to your cubicle. The only flaw was
security, but that was something that I and a select few could take advantage
of. All information about Megalom Corp. employees, including food
and drink network usernames and passwords, was stored unprotected on the
network drive. It could easily be broken into. Just because
someone plays Quake all day doesn’t mean he can’t outsmart a computer.
I ordered a couple
bagels and some coffee for myself and then four dozen breakfast sandwiches
(eggs, bacon, sausage biscuit, ham, and cheese on a made-from-scratch biscuit)
and a pint of Guinness to be sent to Phil Pennington’s cubicle, using his
name and password of course. Just for the record, Phil Pennington’s
username is Phil294576 and his password is god. He could only know
I had done it by intuition. According to the unprotected Megalom
Corp. records, Phil294576 logged onto the food and drink network at 8:27:23
AM and ordered four dozen breakfast sandwiches and a pint of Guinness.
Alcohol consumption isn’t allowed inside of Megalom Corp. buildings, but
they still serve alcohol at all the bars and on the food and drink network.
I usually got a bottle of Corona before leaving work and that was OK, even
though it was assumed that I would be driving.
I had already beat
Quake on all three standard difficulty levels: easy, normal, and difficult.
I had now dedicated the past and present week to beating it on the secret
nightmare mode. Obviously, it is the most difficult mode on Quake.
And so that was my day.
It was now 7:30:10
PM, and my work was done. It was time to go to the fellow employee
tolerance and appreciation meeting at room #2.5, level 3. You may
wonder why rooms have decimal points and levels. When the Megalom
Corp. building was built, the rooms were too large. Each room was
equal to approximately thirty office-spaces, one on each floor. In
other words, each large room was three office-spaces tall, and ten office-spaces
wide. There were eight rooms in total, four coinciding on a “level”
at once. It was decided to erect some makeshift walls, ceilings,
and elevators until the whole building could affordably be knocked down
and rebuilt. Each giant room, therefore, was divided into the thirty
intentional office-spaces. So I traveled to room #2 (the second of
the original large rooms), rode the elevator to level 3 (the top one-third
of the original large room), and proceeded to office #5 (the fifth office
space on the third level of the original large room). That was where
the meeting was.
I was not the first
person there, which was relieving. Mel Appeloog was there with his
wife and secretary. I noticed that his wife had scooted her chair
away from him by about one yard. His secretary, however, put no space
between herself and Mel. Some other people were there as well, but
I didn’t recognize any of them. One of them was a bald man wearing
a sweaty dress shirt and greasy bifocals. Another was a younger man
in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and torn jeans. The last person was a
young lady in normal office attire. She was the only person with
a nametag. It said Gill. I found Gill very attractive so I
went and sat next to her.
“Hi,” I said, “I’m
John.”
“I’m Gill. Gill
Bates,” she said. We shook hands.
“Please excuse me,
I’m going to get some coffee and a sandwich,” I said. I got up and
did exactly as I said I would, because lying about eating is something
I never do.
The lector walked
into the room. He was wearing a sweater-vest and a bowtie.
I saw no point in liking the man and immediately took to hating him, because
everyone I’ve ever known who wears a bowtie is an idiot. That goes
for sweater-vests too. His nametag said Todd.
“Hi, everybody!” he
said cheerfully. “Ready to start the meeting? Is everyone here?”
“No,” I said, “we’re
still missing one person.”
“Who’s that?” asked
Todd as he sipped his caffe mocha vanilla cinnamon latte frappe light he
had bought at Starf*cks.
“Phil Pennington,”
I said as I sat back down next to Gill Bates.
That was when Phil
Pennington walked in. He sat on the other side of Gill, the woman
I had obviously claimed as my own by sitting next to her. It had
nothing to do with the fact that that was the only available chair.
He could have sat in Todd’s lector’s seat.
“Bill Wimbledon?”
“No,” he said, “Bill
Pennington.”
“Oh, well we’re waiting
on Phil Wimbledon.”
“No,” I said, “I said
Phil Pennington, not Bill Wimbledon.”
“Oh.” Todd looked
at Phil. “You’re Phil Pennington?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why didn’t
you say so?”
“I did. You
asked me, remember?”
“Oh. Well, then.
Let’s get this meeting started. My name is Todd Pooley. As
you all know, this is fellow employee tolerance and appreciation week and
there is a special meeting tonight. This is a fellow employee tolerance
and appreciation assistance meeting. Everyone here has some sort
of a problem and we all need help. I’m Todd Pooley, and I’m the meeting
director. It’s my job to see to it that we all establish our conflicts
and decide how to solve them.
“Now! Let’s
go around and introduce ourselves and our problems.
“I’m Todd Pooley,
and I work the forklift and compactor in the stockroom. I’ve been
having drinking problems lately and it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble.
I’m currently on a twelve-step program and haven’t had a drink in seven
days.
“Now you,” he said,
nodding at Phil.
“My name is Phil Pennington.
I am a temporary technical provider of details to the production manager
of brown paper boxes marked ‘THIS SDIE UP.’ I was told to come here
because it seems I’ve been having problems with Mr. Johnny Carsweeper over
there.” He pointed at me in a very arrogant manner to indicate whom
he was talking about. “Personally, I don’t see a problem. I
can deal with this myself.” He leaned back in his chair and looked
satisfied that he had just made an ass of himself.
“Mr. Carsewer, do
you have anything to say to that?” asked Todd.
“It’s Carsweeper.
No.”
“Well, would you like
to introduce yourself then?”
“My name is Johnathan
Carsweeper. Call me John.”
“And what do you do,
Mr. Johnwasher?”
“CARSWEEPER.
Car……” I said slowly, “sweeper. Like sweeping cars.”
“Carsleeper?”
“NO. Use a W
instead of an L. CARSWEEPER. C-A-R-S-W-E-E-P-E-R.”
“Carz-weeper?”
“Close enough.”
“And what is your
problem, John?”
“Mr. Pennington over
there just explained it.”
“Oh, that’s right,”
said Todd.
“And what’s your job
here?”
“I’m permanent technical
assistant to manager of managerial technicalities involving the transfer
of air molecules between complex B3 and complex F.”
“OK,” said Todd, skipping
over Gill. “Now you.” He nodded at the bald man in the sweaty
dress shirt and the greasy bifocals.
“My name is Graham
Gray. I’m the mail guy. I was caught reading other people’s
mail.”
“My name is Grace
Williams. I’m Mel’s secretary,” said the young blonde lady playfully.
“We’re having an affair!”
Mel introduced himself
next: “My name’s Mel Appeloog. I’m Chief of Parsonnel. Every
time I tell my wife I’m going off to sleep with my secretary she throws
a fit. Since I obviously don’t know how to deal with this, I decided
that I should come here with Grace and my wife.”
“I’m Sandy Stillwater.
I’m filing for divorce with that son of a bitch.” She pointed at
Mel.
“And what’s your job,
Randy?” asked Todd.
“SANDY. I don’t
work here.”
The last person in
the circle was the guy in the Grateful Dead shirt.
“My name’s Tre.
I work in computer programming. I’m the head of the little double-click
button fashioning department. I got in trouble for looking at pornography
on my computer the other day when I was supposed to be designing and testing
double-click buttons for Macrofleshy Words version 5.3.4.6 beta.”
“And what are you
doing about that, Tre?” asked Todd.
“Coming to this meeting
like my boss told me to.”
“Great!” said Todd.
“So now we know everybody. Did we leave anyone out?”
“Yes,” said Gill.
“Who?”
“Me.”
“Who said that?”
Todd looked around as if he could not locate noises within close vicinity,
even though this is a quality that all humans normally possess.
It was at that point that most of the people in the group pointed
at Gill and said “her.” Grace was too busy playing with the buttons
on Mel’s shirt.
Todd smiled blankly at Gill and said, “go ahead.”
“My name is Gill Bates.
I’m a computer programmer for Squeechy Zellus. Mr. Zellus has been
bothering me lately to dress a ‘little more casually.’ His examples
are shorter skirts, low-cut dresses, and so on and I’m planning to sue
him for everything he owns. I’m here to see if anyone can give me
a good reason not to.”
What a bitch!
Phil Pennington could have her if he wanted to.
“I have a legitimate
reason,” said Todd. “What about your job?”
“I’ve been offered
higher positions for better money by a number of other software companies,
like Morton, Greghead, and Sahara.”
“I have one,” I said.
“What about our jobs?”
A few people in the
group verbally agreed with me.
“Mr. Zellus should
have though of that before asking me to dress up all pretty for him.”
“What?” I said, “No.
No, I’m sorry. That’s not a good enough reason.
You’re saying that Squeechy Zellus may lose everything, including Megalom
Corp., and that I may have to get laid off, possibly live off of unemployment
checks for God knows how long, and scour the city for a new job just because
some snotty, stuck up, pretentious little twenty five year old college
graduate thinks her boss is trying to look down her shirt? No!
I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. Quit your shitty job and go
work for Morton of Greghead or Sahara Software! But you’re not going
to cause me, or anyone else, in any way, to lose our jobs by suing Squeechy
Zellus!”
“Mr. Zellus,” repeated
Gill, more bitterly than previously, “should have thought of that.”
“Squeechy Zellus doesn’t
have to think of shit!” I yelled. I was furious. Living in
my car was bad enough. “He can do whatever he wants because he’s
got more money than we can think of! He can look down you shirt,
lift up your skirt, he could rape you for all I care! And then he
can pay off every little bastard in the world to deny that any of it happened!
He-“
“Mr. Larsleaper,”
interrupted Todd.
“Shut up, fag,” I
said.
“Mr. Mars-trooper!”
said Todd, getting mildly irritated. “I’m going to have to ask you
to leave.”
“Fine then,” I said,
getting up and grabbing a cup of coffee and a sandwich, “I’ll leave.
I’m reasonable, you know. Just make sure little miss ‘I’m too sexy
for my own good’ doesn’t file a lawsuit so I can go on living in my car
and not have to take to the streets.”
I left.
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