Tuesday 29 September 2015

Fire Away



Oh, no, I think, I can’t even get up and walk away.

I laugh to myself, kind of nervously. You know, if that is your first thought when somebody approaches you at work, it is probably time to get a new job.

It is what I think when Pony-Tail HR Chick approaches me with "that" smile on her face. "That" smile that told me that she wants something. (Oh yes, as HR chicks do, pass it on, just keep passing your work on.)

I reach for my mouse and click on Seek. The mouse, the modern day equivalent of the ruby slipper. Click your mouse and say three times. "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here."

Poof! Whoosh up into the sky. Whirling around and around and around until I land somewhere new and exciting, where that is nobody knows. Come on, thrill me...

I open one eye. Nothing. Pony-Tail HR chick is still barrelling towards me, Doh! "That" look still on her face.

I look up and smile. Oh, yes? What? 

"Hi. How are you?" I say. Smile. The smile isn't even forced, says the spider to the fly. I have been doing this long enough to know how to fake a sincere smile, as I mentally plot someone's death.

She shrugs and scrunches her nose, clearly, she thinks she is Tabatha Stevens, only half a life time of years, and far too many days in the sun, to pull that one off. 

“Can I ask a favour?” she says.

Oh, here we go, the dreaded favour. “Sure.”

“I have this small problem.”

You want me to do your work for you, but you are not sure how to get me to do it. “Fire away.” I wouldn’t classify your problems as small.

I love that expression. I mentally picture 6 men standing behind her with shot guns, each blindfolded. They all fire at once.  I can see the bullets spinning through the air. Her head explodes like a watermelon hit very hard, red pulp covers everything, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, as the bullets destroy the back of the head, simultaneously. She falls to the ground like a bag of shit.

“I have a contract that I just need to…”

Just as I thought, do your own work. I stop listening. Blah, blah, blah blah is all I can hear, set to Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I really should listen, I guess. But, I am astral travelling high above our heads. There is purple and red and blue shooting through the crisp air brightly and shiny, like streamers flung of electric magical colour. It is brilliant. It is gorgeous. Everything is beautiful I’m inside one million neon signs...

“So, what do you think?... Josh?”

Come on you target for faraway laughter... The beautiful light suddenly fades. The music stops. Gone. “Oh, um, er, I don’t know.” I stare her in the eye and dare her to question my response.

She folds like a failed bluff in poker. “Oh... um... rightio then... I’ll investigate... um... a little further then... shall, I?”

“Okay,” I say.

There is a moment where we both just gaze at each other. She is not quite sure of the answer I have given her. But, I am sending thought blockers through my death stare straight into the cavity where her brain ought to be. She is wondering if she should question me further, but she is not really sure what question she should ask. My mental mind fuck is working its magic on her, she is putty in my hands. Oh! Yuk! She is white gloop on my fingers, I shake her off, she rematerialises in front of me.

Her lip curls.

She is a deer caught in headlights, such is my mind control. I am staring at her unblinking. I am beginning to imagine ants eating out her eyeballs. She spontaneously rubs her face. She rubs again, she is not really sure why she is touching her eyes. It is as if she has hey fever, but worse.

“Okay,” she says. She shrugs and scrunches up her nose again. It still has no effect on me, that cutesy nose move, nice try Tabatha. The crow’s feet appear at the corners of her smiling eyes, momentarily. Crease, crease. He skin reminds me of brown paper. She makes big eyes. I imagine what she'd look like with myxomatosis. She opens her mouth and her tongue makes a kind of clack noise, which I am not at all sure she means to make. She backs away.

I spin around back to my screen. I can feel her presence less and less behind me. I am a star ship commander, the two screens in front of me morph into the universe. I say, "Engage." The milky way around me melts into liquid light as we hit warp speed and I am suddenly a thousand light years away from the mundane problems of the day.


Friday 25 September 2015

What Does this Bitch Want?



What does this bitch want?

You know, if that is your first thought when somebody approaches you at work, it is probably time to get a new job.

It was what I thought when the fat HR chick approached me with "that" smile on her face. "That" smile that told me that she wanted something. (Oh yes, as HR chicks do, pass it on, just keep passing it on)

I reached for my mouse and clicked on Seek. The mouse, the modern day equivalent of the ruby slipper. Click your mouse and say three times. "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here."

Poof! Whooshed up into the sky. Whirling around and around and around until I land somewhere new and exciting, where that is nobody knows.

I opened one eye. Nothing. Fatty HR Person was still barrelling towards me. Doh!

I looked up and smiled. Yes, bitch? "Hi. How are you?" Smile. The smile wasn't even forced. Said the spider to the fly. I have been doing this long enough to know how to smile sincerely as I plot someone's death


Figuratively speaking, of course. I don’t really want to kill her. Well, you get caught, don’t you. Life in prison. I hear prison isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, being Maddog's bitch for the rest of my life? No. Not worth it, I think, as Fat Carla approaches me.

“You got a minute.” Those dreaded four words from an HR professional, enough to make the most hardened amongst us quiver.

Depends whose asking, apparently, isn’t the answer. You can get sent to HR for that. Ha ha. “Yeah, sure.”

“I need those figures…” I put the gun up to my shoulder, looked through the eye piece, lined it up with her left eye and squeezed the trigger. And her head exploded all over the white wall behind her…

“Today, if possible,” she said.

“Ah… sure.” What the hell 'figures' is she talking about? I thought.

“Are they ready now?”

“Ah? Just remind me.”

“Remind you?”

“Yes, if you can.”

“The remuneration budget.”

“The remuneration budget?”

“Oh, Jesus, so they are nowhere near ready, are they?”

“You asked me for these when?”

“In our meeting?”

“Our meeting?”

“Oh, you have to be kidding,” said Carla. “Why is it always like this with you?”

“Um, we never had a meeting.”

“Phone meeting.” Carla rolled her eyes.

“We never had a meeting, phone, or otherwise?”

“Jacob, I am really disappointed with…”

“I’m not Jacob.”

“What?”

“I’m not Jacob.” If I told you I was suddenly loving this, you had better believe me.

Carla pulled her head back at the neck, tucking her chin in, and widening her eyes, wider than I thought possible, you know, pulling her mouth into such a position of someone who had just crapped their pants. I could see her feeling it running down the backs of her thighs for the first time.

I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the criminally uptight and the perennially incompetent being caught being criminally uptight and the perennially incompetent.

I could feel my eyes narrow in anticipation of her response.

“You’re… not…”

“No.” That was possibly the most satisfying 'no' I have ever uttered.

“Jacob?” 

Watching her squirm came in a close second in the delightful stakes to the previous 'no'.

Here was a, senior, HR professional who didn’t know who the staff were. And I was pretty sure knowing who the staff were was really a minimum requirement of senior HR professionals. They were all ‘professionals’ now, not directors, not managers, all professionals, they thought that made them more accessible to the staff, whatever that means.

I felt my head shake. “No.”

I would have thought knowing who the staff were would make them more accessible than any title they care to use. But what would I know… Carla. I was smiling, I could feel it in my face.

Was she going to ask me if I was sure I wasn’t Jacob. Oh, please, ask me that, I thought, behind my smile.


Tuesday 8 September 2015

Try To Be A Good Person




I tried to be a good person, I really did. But, the world is too awful a place. There are too many horrible people in charge. There are too many terrible people making decisions. 

What’s good for society? What is good for them? Right and left hand up and down? Up and down? 

"I might just go with what is good for me? You know, this once?"

This once of one hundred times? Easily justified, in the selfish mind.

It is hard, you know, when you see the Prime Minister of this country spew lies every time he opens his mouth and makes an utterance. He has made it okay to lie. He has shown us that you can base your entire career on a pack of lies.

"I don't need to tell the truth, when the guy with the top job doesn't"

Australia is now such a cruel and hard hearted nation. "Tow the boats back, tow that wretched scum back to the hell they deserve." We're alright Jack, we live in privilege and we intend for it to stay that way. Build a wall? Get bigger boats to drive them away?

Don't you dare come and crap on our good fortune.

Who do you think you are?

We don't care about you, Jack. We're okay.

That is what we are saying to the rest of the world.


“That is how the rest of the world sees us.”

“The rest of the world?"

“Yes.”

“I don’t think poor countries see us that way.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I think poor countries would be looking elsewhere to flee to…”

“Are you saying you agree with ‘fortress Australia’?

“No, I am just saying that people in need who are looking for a better life, would be looking at somewhere that is easier to get into....”

“That sounds like agreement.”

“I’m not talking about the moral stand, I am talking about simple facts. People will attempt to flee to countries where there is a chance of them succeeding.”

“You understand it is a political tool?”

“What?”

"Conservative politician’s use, what is essentially racism, to win votes.”

“A deliberate strategy?”

“Yes.”

“To win votes?”

“Yes. Use the weakest and the powerless to look tough and protective and the punters vote for you.”

“You don’t think it has anything to do with a country’s right to choose who and when people come to that country.”

“No, not at all. It is about winning votes.”

“There is no ideological basis for the policy.”

“There is, win votes by any means you can.”

“So, you are saying the conservative side of government stands for nothing?”

“Other than wining votes and gaining power, yes, it stands for nothing.”

“It’s not about serving the people of this country.”

“No, it’s about gaining power at all costs and then servicing it’s political donors who will in turn make them part off the rich and powerful elite.”

“That seems pretty shallow.”

“What can I say?”


“Well, I don’t think you can say conservative politicians stand for nothing.”

“No, you are right,” I say. “I can’t say they stand for nothing, because they stand for less than nothing…”

“Oh, come on? I’m not a conservative voter, but…”

“They are all about cutting regulations for their powerful mates. They set out to destroy the unions and collective bargaining to suppress wages for the workers. They froze universal healthcare rebates to doctors. They cut taxes ostensibly for the rich which ties into their bigger plan of no longer being able to fund services for the poor.”

“Seriously.”

“IPA (conservative free-market think tank) wish list.”

“I see.”

“They are dismantling the progressive tax system with their next round of tax cuts. They are suppressing the dole and refusing to lift welfare recipients out of poverty. All policies designed to pander to the rich and disadvantage the poor, bringing about greater inequality the likes of which we have never seen before, in this country.”

“So, they are the big boogey man, you say?”

“They are worse than that, they are denying climate change, pushing fossil fuel. The Prime Minster is suggesting using the clean energy fund to explore new gas options. They are pushing nuclear power generation simply as a point of difference to denigrate renewables. They are proposing that solar and wind turbines production is bad or the environment.”

“The science isn’t…”

“When 98% of the scientists in the world agree, the science is set.”

“People would disagree.”

“And to my wider point, how can you expect the population to be good citizens when you have conservative politicians being duplicitous with what they are doing, only pushing the agenda of the very few. Tell me that?”

“If they don’t like it, they can exercise their right and vote the conservative party out of govt at the next election.”

“How does Joe Average be a good person when so many of his role models treat the weak and the vulnerable as not worth their time?”

“The weak and the vulnerable don’t build a strong economy.”

“Surely, the government’s only real job is to make society more equal for all of its citizens?”