Acumen

To All My So-Called Employees, 

There have been some rumblings around the office— more than those coming from Bill Boggs’ cubicle— about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, no matter what pundits and fake news sources say, The Economy is aimless! It brings on many changes. And you can take or leave it if you please. However, the good news is this: The Economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job, however, is your tragic personal life. The constant distractions from Facebook, Tindr, Pokemon Go, Grindr, FetLife and Pintrest.  Add in sick days and you’re a butt-hair away from the unemployment line at any given moment. However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests. 

Let me explain myself.  I don’t have to do this, but, in the spirit of emotional intelligence I will share something personal.  I know you all hate me. That’s whatever. But, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employees against employer, you have to understand that for every business owner, like myself, there is a Back Story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes, sideways, taking up two and a half spaces in the lot. You’ve seen my enclave at last year’s Christmas party… at least those of you who were privileged enough to be invited. I’m sure all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life, and- rest assured- my life is even more decadent and exotic than you can imagine. 

However, what you don’t see is the BACK STORY: 

I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a storage shed I rented from an old, blind spinster. I converted the space into an office so I could put forth 200% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you. Don’t forget this. It’s important. Keep in mind that, in those early days, even though I lived there, it still functioned as a storage shed so I found myself constantly stumbling over her Remington 16″ reel push mower, sometimes capsizing a shelf containing various solvents and tools in the middle of the night. You see, when I could actually sleep, I thrashed about like a madman. My diet consisted of whatever I could eat out of the garbage cans lining the alley behind the shed, because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a beat up chopper-bike that one of my burnout friends gave me for fixing his computer. It had these super-extended, front forks. I plastered AAA stickers on the back of it and bungeed some milk crates to the frame so that I could haul stuff. I’m not trying to brag, but even dirty and half crazed, I still turned the babes’ heads. But, I didn’t have time to date. I was an entrepreneur even then, preferring to remain buried in the shed for weeks, only stepping out to eat or relieve myself under cover of a towering peony bush. All this time, my friends wasted money on school, drinking, partying and getting knocked up. I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice— and all that sentimental, semi-fictional crippity crap. 

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned on bullshit and diapers. They drove flashy, leased cars, lived in expensive, cheaply-constructed condos and wore fancy designer clothes maxing out their credit. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the streets and dumpsters of the city extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed from a homeless, crackwhore’s twat. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of faux luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, money, and sanity into a business with a vision that eventually- someday- I too would be able to afford the borrowed luxuries of which so many friends availed themselves while giving a the big EFF YOU to creditors and banks by doing it, how shall we say, my way. 

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, squander company resources between short bursts of blunder and then leave at 5pm… I don’t. Unfortunately, and to ALL of our detriment, there is no OFF button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I, unfortunately, do not have that freedom. I eat, and breathe this company— MY COMPANY— every minute of every hour of every day of every week of… well you get the idea. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Only sad hours of mad money. What’s better? Every day you are all attached to my hip like a gaggle of 1 year old special-needs children. You, of course, can only envy the fruits of my garden — the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations, the streams of lovers, the inexhaustible funds for dipsomaniacal outings, the tongue rings and tattoos… you may never realize the Back Story and the sacrifices I’ve made. 

Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money- mostly in precious metals and coins stored in unmarked, undisclosed locations- have to bail-out all the trolls who didn’t. The droll idiots that overspent their minimum wage paychecks on god knows what suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed and bled stool over for decades of my life. Luxuries that I, now, DO NOT want to live without. 

Yes, business ownership has its benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds, diseases and other weird signifiers- not just of the body, but of the mind. Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why: for the legal maximum amount I can declare- after grabbing all credits of my legal systemic holding and thoroughly plundering the loopholes, of course- I am being taxed to death and the government still thinks I don’t pay enough. I have State taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and Use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers Compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Dick cheese taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Fuck it all. Just FUCK IT, I SAY! 

Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting hokus pokus that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. I don’t even have time to stop and watch you rob me blind of office supplies and time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch. Only the pleasure of continuing to serve as a very wealthy host for a plethora of ugly parasites who don’t show up on time and want to leave early. 

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 23 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country. And who, by the way, is currently stimulating me? I have a hint for you, it’s NOT some lazy, horny welfare mom. Come to think of it, all of these questions and their answers are UNSATISFACTORY. If you have to ask who’s stimulating who, then somebody isn’t doing their job right. And that somebody is probably you. 

The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded for only 50% of their hard work? That type of arrangement is only OK when dealing with artists and other unnecessary or frivolous vocations, but for working class citizens- the epoxy of our society? I can almost see the pained expression on your face- your mind straining for comprehension under a slack-jawed countenance of disbelief. Quick… take a look at yourself in the mirror; it is this type of cluelessness that puts your job in jeopardy. 

Here is what many of you don’t understand … to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. If government had suddenly mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of inserting that $288,000 into Washington’s asshole (never to be seen again), I would pay myself first. And, through the magic of economic dribble-down, my employees might have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of nickel/dime promotions and coffee mugs with the company logo emblazoned in gold on the front. But you can forget it now. Yes, I’m still getting paid… but you guys… oh… you guys. 

Business is business and bullshit is bullshit. 

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his pecker thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his brain? Bullshit is the brain of America and always has been. Business is the heart. To restart both, you must stimulate the brain, i.e., send a current through it. The trick is to traumatize the ‘moist organ,’ not kill it. This will start the heart beating again. 

Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep. I mean, sure, the poor serve our plastic food to us in Styrofoam containers, clean our waste smeared across the bathroom stall walls, pick our GMO cotton and vegetables or they fix our roofs in the terminal heat of summer… but what are they really doing? 

So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple. 

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your 1st and 2nd mortgages, your overpriced, gas guzzling SUV, and your ill-bred child’s bleak future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem anymore. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive, the degenerate and psychically disabled. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship. All that will be left is an empty office and warehouse in a dead industrial park with a note on the front door reading, ‘ADIOS MOTHERFUCKERS!’ 

So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of the political shit-storm that’s been sweeping this country in starts and fits for the last three decades. If you lose your job it’ll because they’ve wiped their ass with the constitution so many times it’ll be in tatters and caked to the point of being illegible. Everybody will have forgotten what it originally said and start making shit up. By that time U.S will have transformed into a strip-mall infested, drill pipe pocked landscape forever. When that happens, you won’t find me. Why? Because I’ll be sitting in an outpost in the Amazon basin, worshiped as a God among the indigenous people I’ve impressed with my thunderstick, my blunderstick and my western technology. To add the necessary drama, maybe I’ll bring along a strobe light and a case of flash powder. The natives won’t know what hit them. The point is, these people are only similar to you insofar as they’ll never make anything of themselves. Not a single one of them will write a great script, run a corporation, open a franchise, trade commodities or any of the things that civilized humans are meant to do. The similarities between them and you- my future ex-employee- ends there, though. Because, unlike you, these creatures will conform to my every whim, simply because I might let them have their first Coca Cola, or Sprinkles cupcake flown in from New York. I’ll shower them with glow sticks and lord over them from a solar powered tree house. Their minds and hardbodies will be captivated under my acumen, my western magics, and will, therefore, eagerly do my bidding: no matter what I ask, no questions asked.

YOU have never done that, and I’M PAYING YOU in Legal Tender- something far more valuable than glow sticks! 

With that being said, I need to conclude this letter. As you can see, I have a lot to do: passports, inoculations and packing. I suspect you do too, what with putting together your résumé and such. 

You have updated your résumé, right? 

I Remain (for now), 

THE BOSS