We're all a bunch of psychopaths!

I had a couple of teachers in when I was in school who sure seemed like psychopaths.

 

I pay 80 cents to go to work. Eighty cents, every day. Three quarters and one nickel slid into a parking meter four blocks from my office at 4:25 p.m. The heads face me. I do the nickel last. I have a routine for paying to go to work, paying for that hour and 35 minutes before the spot is free.

The walk isn't so bad in the summer. The jackass hot dog vendor yells at me as if he doesn't see my cold shoulder five times a week. I stroll past the parking garage full of my bosses' cars, awaiting them in 35 minutes so they can return to their loving families and prime-time television. The walk is worse in the winter. But it's not winter.

Six floors on the elevator. I catch the same one as that human resources bitch. Every. Single. Day. "Two, please." She's heading up one flight to grab her jacket. Her shift is done. "Have a nice night."

My desk is cluttered. I prefer it this way, as there's a method to the stacks of special section proofs and future Sunday edition dummies laid out. Brent, in the desk next to mine, prefers things tidy. He keeps one red pen, one blue pen and one pencil on his desk at all times. He's less happy than me. I take solace in that.

Jerry strolls in late, again. He bikes to work. He likes to remind us of this on a daily basis. Mostly through his odor. Also, his whistling. It's not that Jerry is a bad guy. He just sucks. He sits across from me and eats a sandwich without mayo or cheese for dinner every night. He gnaws on carrot sticks before and after the sandwich.

I'm not in the mood tonight. The game comes on at about 8. Football on a Thursday. Goodell hates us. I'm finishing up 1C when the news side comes. They can't fit our 1A story anymore, Cheryl says. Cheryl is a fat bitch who bakes cookies by the dozen and eats them by the handful. She's a news copy editor, which means she is incompetent on deadline and incapable of logical communication.

I strip the story across the top of 1C. It's some bullshit about concussions in high school soccer. I run it with a photo of a kid taking a header.

It's 9:47. First deadline hits in an hour and 58 minutes. The phone rings. "Why isn't that concussions story running centerpiece?" Tim is a dickhead with a thick skull. He's also my boss. He's also a drunken pervert who has harrassed every woman to step foot in this office.

The centerpiece switch is complete. Forty-two minutes until deadline. Then the system crashes.

I won't go into every detail here. Suffice it to say I started with Cindi, the dumb part-time slut who wrote "ironic" on her proof of 1C next to the soccer photo. I grabbed Brent's blue pen and jabbed it into her esophagus. I should have grabbed the red. Next up was Ken. Ken keeps a pica pole on his desk because he's a nostalgia-addicted douchebag. He likes to tell me I don't know what this industry was like in the glory days, even though he's six years older than me and spent most of his career at a 7,000-circulation weekly. I took the pica pole and made quick work of his throat.

At the end, I sat down on Brent's still-warm body, draped over my chair with the butt of a pencil sticking out of his nose. I restarted the system. My work had been saved.

I beat deadline by three minutes.

 

Verse, you got some talent.

That was good. You-ought-to-be-published good.

 

Verse, I don't know whether to feel impressed, or fearful. I guess I'll feel neither.

 

Take a bow, Verse.

 

You shut your dirty damn mouth.


Oh, and verse......that was a thing of beauty.

 

True.

There is some sort of inferiority complex with them.
I suspect it stems from the Village People not having a chef on staff.

 

Versatile - a little frightened of you now but also oddly attracted as well.

 

How the hell is politician NOT on this list?

 

Great job, Bret Easton Versatile!