Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

Getting the job made Gizzard feel like a 16-year old with a new car.

Gizzard liked his boss at first.

Then he began his second day on the job.

His boss was one of those bosses. You know the kind.

The boss believed in sharing things.

He shared Gizzard’s successes by taking all the credit.

The boss shared his failures by giving Gizzard all the credit.

The boss made sure that Gizzard had to work overtime each time he learned that Gizzard had made plans for right after work. Gizzard’s workload increased swiftly. Today always began before he was through with yesterday.

The boss was prone to having a cow, for throwing hissy fits, and for epic temper tantrums. This caused his employees to suffer from both post-traumatic stress disorder and post-dramatic stress disorder.

The boss considered any food in the refrigerator in the employee break room to be his property and reveled in eating it in front of its true owner.

The boss instituted a dress code. He wanted his people to look spiffy. That required Gizzard to wear his marrying-and-burying suit. This was a dress code that the boss didn’t subject himself to.

The office was ages behind in the technology department. The boss saved money that way. It looked good in the quarterly reports, but have you ever tried to text message on a rotary phone? Gizzard drooled over new computers and software that were available to everyone but his office. He wanted updated equipment more than he wanted a telemarketer’s home phone number. The Good Book warns against envy and Gizzard was as guilty as sin.

The cubicle that was Gizzard’s wasn’t much more than a fence. If he’d have hung a picture, the walls would have come tumbling down just as they did when Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho.

The boss was an odious scold, who found great pleasure in criticizing an employee in front of others. The more people looking and listening, the harsher the criticism. He registered so many beefs, he had his own brand.

The boss had a mean streak that was a mile wide at its narrowest point. He was as cruel as that bag of chips that becomes stuck in the vending machine and leaves you without both the chips and your money.

The problem was that the higher-ups in the company, the mucky mucks and the even muckier mucks, didn’t see this side of Gizzard’s boss. They saw only the good work done by Gizzard and his coworkers and the profits from that good work. Their boss was given an endless supply of awards and gifts.

Gizzard and his fellow employees were given the opportunity to keep their jobs. Having a job isn’t a bad idea.

Still, if Gizzard had been allowed to listen to music in his crummy cubicle, he’d have listened to nothing but Warren Zevon singing, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”

He tried to be a model prisoner. Gizzard guarded his private thoughts but began mumbling quietly to himself after even the briefest encounters with his boss. Word balloons filled his brain.

“May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.”

“You must tan by absorbing the blackness of the world.”

Gizzard had been raised to be a fountain, not a drain, but it became impossible for him to maintain his cherubic demeanor.

His wife could tell he was unhappy with his job. He had developed irritable spouse syndrome.

Each morning, as Gizzard drove to work, he wished that he was merely driving toward work. Gizzard dreamed of having flexible hours that would be flexible enough that he wouldn’t have to show up for work at all.

Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

If he’d had Gizzard’s job, he’d have written only, “It was the worst of times.”

Life has no remote. We need to get up and change it.

One day Gizzard had had enough. He needed to stop the insanity. He wanted to tell his boss off and then instruct him to put it in his smipe and poke it. But he worried how it might affect getting another job.

“Could you fire me for what I’m thinking?” Gizzard asked his boss.

“Of course not,” came the reply.

“Good, because I think you are a moron,” said Gizzard with great delight.

Gizzard learned that his severance package was a $1 off coupon for the buffet at the Eat Around It Cafe.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.