TPS Reports

Here are the top three words that vowel-extending HR guy Dick loves to say in his care-free, sing-songy corporate patois:

3) Lift tickehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhts
2) Bloomingdaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyle's
1) 401kaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy

These are words that he uttered while orientating Buck into life at _______ Consulting Group. When he finished his presentation to Buck -- ostensibly a presentation on billing and tax information, but which seemed more concerned about the best Tahoe lift ticket deals than anything else, he said to Buck, "You know where to find me if you have any questiuhhhhhhhhhns." Buck responded, "No I don't. You're never in your office.'" This made me choke on my morning oatmeal. Now I love Buck like a sister -- he called Dick on his bullshit. Dick does no work. Zero. None. He is the biggest scam artist in the chain gang of corporate criminals I work for. His day consists of cigarette breaks with Tessie, Brad Pitt-related gossip with the receptionist, and J. Crew sales -- bags upon bags line his office. Occasionally, he reminds us when time sheets are due, a task that takes 3 minutes out of every fortnight. Still his job remains a full time position despite the fact that industry after industry takes its own life in this country, victims of corporate largesse.

I am a realist. I have made peace with the fact that a revolution is coming. It will foment in the streets. It will spill upwards through the elevator banks of our tasteful corporate edifices. And it will claim me as collateral damage, but it will make an example of Abigail, Augusta, and Dick, so who am I to complain? Dick is a man whose starched shirts have never met the indignity of sweat, and for this, all of us at _______ Consulting Group -- masters and servants alike -- must suffer. Now I don't want to die, the stuck corporate pig that I am, I don't, but each morning my temp ass drinks coffee distilled from fine Kona coffee beans and sits in a temperature-controlled office and laments all that it never became. Where is that novel, you keep talking about, asshole? It's a figment of your imagination.

Look, I know when to call a spade a spade. I get paid handsomely to mark wildly irrelevant emails non-responsive, while my corporate overlords make fake representations to the client about all the important work that they're doing. And Dick gets to lounge in his office, day-dreaming of the powdery goodness at Squaw Valley and do nothing else, knowing full well that his job is secure. Somebody has to input the hours these retarded temps write on their timesheets! When the revolution comes, I will feel sorry for myself. I will. I hope it will be quick and painless. But I know it probably won't. Still, I know that when the world is rid of me and its Dicks, when HR stops being regarded as a a life-station of middle respectability, and comes to be recognized as the deep, pustulous scourge that it is , then I will know I will not have died in vain.

Never in a million years did I think I'd say it, but my mother was right. I should have sucked it up and become a doctor. I should have done something with my life. I should have helped people. Instead, tomorrow, I will read obviously privileged communications between in-house lawyers and the client, and make heart-wrenching decisions about their emails: Was so-and-so's turkey brining recipe the smoking gun I've been looking for all this time? Who knows? Maybe I'll have to roust Dick from his nap and get a second opinion. Or else, maybe we'll duck out of work early and hit the slopes. Anything's possible when you've got a job that could be performed by a limbless and lobotomized blind homo erectus.