Some managers use the carrot-and-stick approach.
I do too, but I hired an actual carrot and stick.
The carrot just sits there.
So does the stick.
At least the carrot does something.
Even though it’s just to dry up and rot.
The stick just sits there.
“Do something, stick!” I shout.
But it just sits there.
You can’t threaten a stick with another stick.
Sticks always stick together.
Unless you rub them together and make a fire.
“FIRE!” I shout. “THERE’S A FIRE!”
Which I can use to cook the carrot.
The truth is, I’m not a very good manager.
Save The Trees!
“Save the trees!” shouted environmentalists.
So, we became a paperless business.
Other businesses did too.
We all became paperless.
The trees thrived. Forests grew thick, and they spread wide.
Birds and wildlife returned.
“Hooray!” shouted environmentalists.
They held a parade, but it was hard to walk the route because of all of the trees in the way.
Businesses noticed a steep rise in absenteeism as their employees were unable to drive to work because of the trees in the roads.
“Who cares?” shouted environmentalists, as the economy collapsed.
Pissed-off businesspeople strung up the environmentalists from trees and watched them die.
Egg for breakfast
On the first day of the conference, the hotel staff prepared sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches.
I scraped off the egg. I can’t eat egg.
On the second day of the conference, the staff prepared sausage, egg, and cheese burritos.
They mixed the ingredients together so I couldn’t scrape it off.
Fuckers.
On the third day, the staff broke into my room and pelted me with eggs.
That’s when civilization fell.
I crawled along the shore, looked up at a ruined Statue Of Liberty, and damned everyone to Hell.
But, in my opinion, the Tim Burton remake was far worse.
Dead Zone Sofa
The sofa in the hotel lobby is extremely comfortable. I could sit in it all day and work on my laptop.
But the wifi here is awful. I can’t get a decent connection. And my cel phone connection is even worse.
No data, voice, or text service at all.
There’s a two-hour break until the next conference session starts. The other attendees probably want to discuss work stuff over lunch. And my team back at the office probably wants more revisions on the project.
The alarm clock function doesn’t need wifi, right?
I set it, and take a long nap.
Weekly Challenge #592 – PICK TWO Washing, Hope, Downward, Nix, Lie, Thrive, Joy, Rhapsody
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
We’ve got stories by:
TOM
Ladies and Gentlemen, Please ….
Rhapsody Hope was a pole dance from Barstow. A perennial favorite of the Marine Corps Logistics Base jarheads. Oorah. The money she earned in her youth paid for her degree at UCLA. The strength she gain server her well and brought home the gold in her back to back Olympic showings. In the end she return to Barstow to work with troubled youths. Dr. Hope exemplifies the best of Bastow, and tonight we call all present to stand to acknowledge her contribution to this city and nation. We confer upon Doctor Rhapsody Hope the Barstow City Council’s Medal of Honor.
JEFFREY
Genetic Washing
by Jeffrey Fischer
In 2017, Iceland announced that it had nearly “eradicated” Down Syndrome. This was a lie. A more accurate description would be that nearly 100% of women carrying a child with the Down gene had an abortion. Delighted with this success, the government “eradicated” hemophilia, cancer, hair loss – you name it. Pregnant women were happy to participate – after all, who hoped for a child prone to teenage acne?
One day in 2037, the government proudly announced the eradication of all “defective” children. The press conference took place in an elementary school, where youngsters had once thrived. Now there were plenty to choose among, as no child had come to term in two decades.
CHARLIE
While tasked with all the washing and pesky maintenance for the summer writing workshop, I was hoping that my downward plummeting mood would be nixed. One little lie, and I would thrive again. There would be joy in my life, and I could henceforth spin only rhapsodic yarns as I did before I joined up with this dull group of radish growers and feet pickers that fancy themselves a writing salon.
I lied and told them that I had been asked to teach at the local university, and my pay would be what I asked for the special, fall workshop.
RICHARD
In memoriam
I won’t lie to you… Since I did away with the other half, contrary to expectations, all the joy has left my life.
Now it’s just one long downward spiral of washing, cleaning and housework – how could anyone hope to thrive on that without something fun to redress the balance.
Things were going nowhere until I discovered an old pair of her nix, tucked behind the bedroom dresser.
I still have to put up with the housework, but it’s much more fun when done to a backing of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, wearing nothing but my dead wife’s undies!
LIZZIE
Letter to Nobody
My eyes roam the land, the short golden grass dancing in the wind as the purple clouds fly away softly, caressing a bright blue sky. A lonely seagull makes its way out to sea while the waves lap gently on the shoreline. I stand against an ancient tree and try not to blink fearful this picture-perfect moment would fade away too soon. I thought the busy, fast-paced life would suddenly gain some sort of meaning. I thought, one day, things would change. They never did. And a picture-perfect lie ends now at a picture-perfect place.
Signed,
Hope
SERENDIPITY
You find me sitting in the darkness, lost in my thoughts, a widening pool of blood spreading from my latest victim.
The tools of my trade – ligature and knife – rest in my lap; their work, like mine, complete.
Whilst I wait, the rain comes, cooling and refreshing; it’s rhythmic patter mingling with the blood, washing it slowly away into the darkness.
It is a perfect moment.
The sound of the rain, the red stain of blood and the calm quiet as the adrenalin slowly drains from my system combine…
I call it my symphony: A rhapsody of death.
JON
Be Careful What You Wish For
By
Jon DeCles
Washing my hands came first, then my clothes, in the hope that the blood would just go away.
It had been a downward spiral ever since my husband suggested we might kill the king. At first I tried to nix the idea, but it began to lie more easily on my conscience. I thought how we would thrive once he had the crown. What joy we would experience. Soon the vision of being queen sang like a rhapsody in my dreams.
After the deed my dreams were not so splendid. My hands felt sticky, and I took to sleep walking.
DUANE
Hair of the Downward Dog
I found a half dozen of those little bottles of whiskey pushed way back in the cupboard. They’d been there about five years.
I finished them off in a few minutes. A warm sensation washed over my body. I felt the tension leave my shoulders and my muscles began to relax. My breathing soon calmed to a steady rhythm. My mind was floating from one thought to the next without getting stuck. For a while all the worries and troubles of the day disappeared. I had a wonderful night’s sleep.
I had forgotten how much better booze is than yoga.
NORVAL JOE
Axelrod took the stairs, downward, to the lower levels of the Galactic Battle Base. Maybe he could find an unguarded airlock and freeze out.
Hope of becoming an Assault Frigate Commander had fled with his poor Astrogation final scores.
There was no joy in daily labor as a mechanic, launch technician, or one of the other menial jobs he’d qualled for. Not like the rhapsody the pilot feels when a frig streaks out from the Base and reaches point-two-eight of light speed or jumps through a gate to a star system light years away.
No lie. Axel’s future looked bad.
TURA
Hope; Downward
———
The elevator doors opened, and I found myself looking down an impossibly long liftshaft. I fell forwards… and awoke on the floor of the elevator, surrounded by anxious, unknowing colleagues.
The vision obsessed me. How large is the world? The elevators never go more than a hundred floors, but one can take another. How far up, or down? How large is the Building, the Universe?
Our scriptures preach a Foundation and a Penthouse, but now I see that these stories are to dull our curiosity, not sharpen it.
I must continue ever downwards, hoping one day to find the truth.
PLANET Z
Medieval life was hard, but Jane had it harder.
Raped by her father, pregnant at sixteen, kicked out of her home.
She stole a tub from a nunnery and took in washing.
When the baby came, she drowned it in the tub and secretly buried it in the cemetery.
Her last hope was to lie her way into that nunnery.
She couldn’t read or write, but she listened to their prayers and songs and memorized them.
Crushed by an oxcart, she died in the road.
When they dug a hole to bury her in, they dug up her baby’s corpse.
The Muppet Dead
The great thing about Muppets is that they never die.
Oh, their puppeteers and voice performers may die, but the Muppets themselves never die.
They’re characters. They’re roles.
Just about anybody can stick their hand up Kermit, Ernie, or The Swedish Chef and make them dance.
It might take a bit of practice to do Big Bird or Snuffleupagus, but they have understudies and backup performers for that stuff.
And when the Muppet puppets or suits wear out, the workshop makes new ones.
The old ones go to museums. Or the security vault.
In case they try to get free.
Pie ala Boom
Carl Sagan once said that in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
I suppose the same is true if you want to make ice cream from scratch, too.
It’s very important that you do this all in the same universe.
Because, if you try to create apple pie in one universe and ice cream in another universe, you now have to bridge the two universes in order to have pie ala mode.
Sadly, the matter from the two universes will cause a massive anti-matter explosion.
So, skip dessert, and just have coffee.
Kid Row
Someone painted over the S in Skid Row the other day, and now the place is filling up with
five-year-old winos and toddler bums.
“Hey, buddy, can you spare a pacifier?” asks a tiny tramp in an unchanged diaper.
The church runs a soup and bread line, although they give away fruit rollups and bottles of formula to the needy.
A clean diaper, someone to tie their shoes for them.
All these kids need is a helping hand, some say.
But I’ve seen them gamble it away.
Shooting dice on the pier.
Ride the ladder up, and the chute down.
Defenders of the flag
The Kholdani and The Resistance fought each other for years.
“We are the true defenders of the flag!” said The Resistance. “The Kholdani have dishonored it with their corruption and extermination campaigns!”
“Bullshit,” said the Kholdani, and they fought most fiercely.
When The Resistance finally won, they kept the flag.
The Kholdani were driven underground, and as The Resistance became corrupt and cruel, The Kholdani became The New Resistance.
When they won the civil war, the flag stayed the same, and The New New Resistance was born,
Pretty soon, everyone was dead, and the tattlered flag flew over smoking ruins.
Dead men tell no tales
Whenever someone says that dead men tell no tales, it’s obvious that they haven’t ever been to Necropolis, Kenya.
Not only does Necropolis have a population boom problem, but they have a severe shortage of paper.
The ruling elite came up with a brilliant solution to both problems: write everything down on the skin of people who have starved to death.
Okay, so the dead really aren’t telling any tales, and it’s dead men and women.
Plus, they’re all black, so it’s kind of hard to read the ink, even on the light-skinned ones.
Let’s just ship them some Kindles.