Don’t Call Me Stupid
The Shredder
A young engineer was leaving the office at 3.45 p.m. when he found the Managing director standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Listen,” said the Managing director , “this is a very sensitive and important document, and my secretary is not here. Can you make this thing work?”
“Certainly,” said the young engineer. He turned the machine on, inserted the paper, and pressed the start button.
“Excellent, excellent!” said the Managing director as his paper disappeared inside the machine, “I just need one copy.”
Lesson:
Never, ever assume that your boss knows what he’s doing.
Singing the Praises of my Boss
He took me under his wing. Literally, one day, he wrapped that stinky, unwashed meat of an arm around my shoulders and imparted his wisdom.
“Tommy boy,” he said. “You stink. You’ve been pooping in your pants again, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
He walked me across the room and showed me a strange, wondrous thing. It was a door.
“Beyond here,” he said, “lies a thing known as a toilet. You pull down your pants, sit on it – make sure the lid is up and the seat is down, mind you – and go there instead of your pants.”
“Really?” I gasped. “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much! I never knew of such things. What would I do without you?”
“Also,” he added. “Don’t forget to wipe your ass. And I see you turning blue sometimes. Don’t forget to breath. Oh yeah, eat food and drink water, too. Or you might die.”
It was one of those life changing events for me. I was going to live thanks to the wisdom of my boss!
—
As I often like to say, I used to be somebody. I was in management. I was trusted to work autonomously and supervise employees on behalf of my company. And, not to brag or anything, but I also have a genius-level I.Q.
Then I moved to a small town where I had to lick ass in order to make ends meet. That’s where my boss steps in.
Is it wrong for me to feel offended when he treats me like a kindergarten dropout incapable of wiping my own ass?
One day, out of pure necessity I assure you, he took me aside and “trained” me on how to close the store. He had no choice since he wouldn’t be there.
I can still remember it. Close and lock the safes, turn out the lights, punch in the alarm code, and lock the door.
Whew. That’s a lot to remember!
Over time I even added my own flourishes to the procedure, like closing the blinds and making sure the thermostat was set for the night. (He must have not wanted to overload me.)
Here’s the rub. When he leaves early he always goes over and locks the safes. This highly offends me. It’s like he’s saying, “You can’t be trusted. I better do this for you.” It might sound petty, but if you were in my shoes, you’d know that he treats his employees like this all day long, even over things as trivial as a piece of tape.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never fucked it up, not even once. He’ll be there to impart his wisdom so your truly little brain might have a chance at understanding.
This week, he left early. He went over and closed the safes. But then he added something new. “I like to make sure the safes are closed before closing the shop.”
Really??? HOLY FUCK SHIT!!! Does the New York Times know about this? How about the Wall Street Journal? They might want to bump motherfucking Obama from their opinion pages.
I mean, who the fuck knew that a safe had to be closed and locked to be effective? I thought that even with the door open the shit inside was somehow magically protected!!!
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me this before??? How have I managed to survive so long on this planet without your invaluable knowledge and insight???
You must really love me to hire someone as woefully stupid as me. I’m so lucky. Thank you, boss. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Oops. I just went stinky in my pants again. Dammit, boss! Where are you?!?
Assholes abound
An aerial view of the property. The two trucks in the top-left belong to the property owner and are illegally parked.
You’re in for a rare treat today. Here are some pictures of the place where I work. I’ll bet you are excited now. Whoa now! Easy does it! Don’t get too excited.
We start with the aerial view of the property and a little background information.
The property is located within the city. The owner is a local developer. He wanted to build a structure that would serve as his headquarters (office space and storage) and also provide two other units that he could lease to businesses. Like the one that employs me.
And, because he wants it all, he wanted his very own parking lot, too, even though the lot size and shape made that problematic.
As you can see, the parking lot is a very tight fit. Employees are prohibited from parking in the lot because it is very hard for customers to navigate in such a confined space. But the owner wanted what we wanted so he found a way to make the lot fit – parking convenience for users be damned.
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In the left picture you can see another view of the parking situation. The final parking space is marked as handicapped, no doubt because some local, state or federal regulation forced him to provide such a thing despite his whining and tears.
In the right picture you see how he responded. He simply parks in such a way that he blocks the handicapped space from being used. After all, he does want to hassle with parking his big trucks in marked spaces and having to navigate in a parking lot that is too small.
That wouldn’t do at all!
When you are the property owner, you get to make your own rules. You know what rules are, right? Those things that apply to other people. When you don’t like the rules, be creative! Do things like inventing your own invisible parking spaces.
This concludes this reading from the Book of Assholes. Remember, they abound.
Short Story: Failure to Survive #BlogShorts
Failure to Survive
by Tom B. Taker
’Tis a peculiar fate, to live to see thine own torch snuffeth out.
The alliance had fallen.
Helplessly I watch whilst my cohorts fall in succession. The tribe hath spoken.
—
This post is part of the BlogShorts challenge. June 2011 – 30 stories – 30 words – 30 days.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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