The owner of the factory looked at the productivity reports and sighed.
His workers were shiftless and lazy, so he decided to replace them with robots.
The robots tried to get the work done, but their output still wasn’t what he’d hoped for.
Then, the idea struck him: What if the robots were shiftless and lazy?
He had them reprogrammed and started the factory back up.
The robots turned out to be even more efficient than humans at shirking their duties. One robot could shirk the duties of ten men.
He gave up on the factory business, building politicians instead.
Tag: work
Downsizing
Remember “Peace on Earth, Good Will To All Men?”
Well, there’s a new phrase making the rounds this holiday season: “Do More With Less.”
Everybody’s suffering. Even Santa’s workshop.
He laid off a bunch of elves. Elf unemployment’s awful The cookie and shoe manufacturing industries have been automating production and moving factories to China.
He doesn’t need the reindeer either. Now he just delivers stuff through Fedex or UPS, whatever’s cheapest.
Pretty soon, he’ll just do it all through Amazon or iTunes.
Mrs. Claus wants to retire to Florida.
Real estate’s cheap there.
And not a fucking frozen wasteland, either.
Outsourced
Up until now, I helped move call center jobs to India.
But that wasn’t enough for the shareholders, and they wanted more return on their investment.
So, I worked with a friend at Temporal Labs, and we started up a helpdesk based on workers in the future.
“It’s a quantum tunnel communications channel,” I said. “Expensive, but permanent. The great thing is, they know how things turn out in the future, so they can send answers back to us.”
I guess leaving our debts to our grandchildren wasn’t enough. Now we make them answer all of our stupid questions, too.
Gum Wad
I chew a lot of gum.
And when I’m done with it, I keep it all.
Ever since I was 8, I’ve added to the gum wad in my room.
When I went off to college, I took it with me, and I stuck it in the back of my closet.
I went into the Army, somehow managing to get through Afghanistan without losing the gigantic gum wad.
Now, I’m back home.
I made my home out of the gum wad.
Here. Have some gum. Enjoy.
Just give it to me when you’re done. I want to build a patio.
Attachments
The IT Department warned us about email attachments, but have you seen what those guys have on their screens all day?
Junk. Porn. Utter garbage.
So, instead of forwarding all these jokes to everyone, we send them to everyone but those geeks.
I get the funniest jokes from people, but every now and then my anti-virus program lets me know something might hurt my computer.
I usually click the OK button, but this time I hit Cancel.
That’s when my printer started up and started printing pancakes.
I called IT and asked for help.
They brought maple syrup and butter.
The Hate Of Cake
I take the cake out to the grocery store parking lot, remove the lid, and start punching it.
Frosting splatters all over the ground and my clothes as my fists pummel the cake into a mushy pulp.
Then, I lick my fists and go back into the grocery store.
“I’d like another cake,” I say.
“You’ve bought four today,” says the manager. “And you’re covered with cake. What are you doing with them?”
“Punching them,” I say. “It’s cathartic.”
The manager looks around, sees his employees goofing off, and picks up 2 cakes.
“Mind if I join you?” he says.
Password Protected
839230
My memories are valuable and corporate hypno-spies are everywhere.
All it takes is a dazzlestick to stop someone on the street and open them up for a psychic fileclerk to rifle through.
So, I decided to protect them.
The process isn’t easy, and it takes weeks of sessions to catalog secrets for storage in secure areas of the brain.
I woke up one morning, tried to think of those things, and realized… I didn’t remember any of them.
Protected. Secure.
Perfect.
Time to go to work… Wait. Where do I work?
Hold on… thinking… Oh crap!
I forgot the password!
The Cubicle
809145
Joshua has two minutes to live.
He rubs the back of his neck, and the strange sensation there goes away for a few seconds.
Then, he passes out in his cubicle.
Only when his supervisor sees Joshua’s keystroke rate drop below the quota does he come out to the floor.
At first, he thinks Joshua is sleeping on the job. So, the supervisor pulls out his phone to call the department manager to get him fired.
Then, he reaches for Joshua’s neck.
No pulse.
So he makes another call to get someone from the next shift to come in early.
Catering
598423
Usually, when there’s a big company-wide conference call, they bring in pizza or boxed lunches.
However, this time, they brought in crates full of glowing ham-sized seed-pods to put on every employee’s forehead.
“Hell no,” I said. “I’m not going to let you mess with my brain like that.”
The secretary put the pod away and handed me a box lunch.
The box had T on W written on it. Sure enough, inside was a turkey on wheat with a side of coleslaw.
Of course, the bitch didn’t say anything about the nanoprobes.
I mean, Unit Seventy regrets any insult.
This is the way we have always done this
599997
The office goes silent as two acolytes open The Ark and the technician withdraws a cardboard box.
“This is the way we have always done this,” says the department secretary.
As the technician approaches the copier, the acolytes open the access panels.
While everyone chants, the old toner cartridge is removed and the new one slides from the box and put in its place.
“This is so stupid,” I mutter.
Oops.
“BLASPHEMER!” shouts the secretary.
“BLASPHEMER!” shouts the technician.
“BLASPHEMER!” rings though the halls.
Run!
(I’d transfer to Accounting, but the trial by walking across hot coffee burners scares me.)