It’s nice to work for a company with benefits.
You know the usual: Medical, Dental, Life, Vacation, so on and so forth. Most companies offer more or less the same types of perks, to greater or lesser degrees. My current job, though, totally goes the extra mile and provides their employees with the ‘Bathroom Reader Benefit.’ Yup! Every venture into the office’s restroom is rewarded with a selection of
periodicals or similar light fare for your perusal while you are in there doing your duty.
[Ew. Gross. Yuck! Fine, those inclined can get those sentiments out of the way and move along]
What a wonderful benefit! And it does so much more than just provide a useful time killing distraction; it is a statement about the office’s culture. ‘Hey! Hang loose! Relax!’ it says. ‘We’re all family here!’ You think I’m kidding? I’ve worked in places where the restrooms were clearly Not To Be Used. They were there, of course, but a vague but potent peer pressure enforced the unspoken edict of repudiation. Sanctions were baleful looks, wrinkled noses, and omissions from the
lunchtime posse.
Not here, though, where it has become obvious that not only are the facilities meant to be used, but meant to be enjoyed! And so I do.
And I was today, perusing a copy of ‘Things you Know by Heart’, a CD-sized sample of what I thought was a typical bathroom reader: factoids, trivia, did you know’s…you know, snippets of things that are easy to digest while you are undigesting. But then I’m flipping through the pages, reading numbered questions like:
38. If the phone doesn’t ring, where will you be?
488. What is the best time to look?
746. How do people in the city pass the time?
Thinking myself a somewhat proficient handler of trivia, I froze.
What the hell kinds of questions were these? They seemed so simple, so mundane, yet I hadn’t the foggiest idea of their answers.
I immediately feared a possible stroke, or similar head explosion, taking my current activities into consideration. My god, talk about the one thing no one wants to share with
Elvis! (Well, there’s that odiously corpulent thing, too…so okay, one of two things.) I popped up to look myself in the mirror and see if my eyeballs had turned red, and I made sure I still knew my name.
Blue eyes. Derek. So things were okay there.
I looked at the book again, trying to see if maybe I picked up the Existentialist’s Potty Primer, or something…but the back cover revealed something far worse.
F’in
Jimmy Buffet Trivia.
Some careless parrothead had me staring down my own mortality, the drunken bastard!
So now there’s gotta be payback. Not only for the frightening events of today, but also in retribution for the stinking way that that Buffeteer, whoever he may be, groped my girlfriend, wife, sister-in law, cousin, mom, grandma, or pet in a drunken rendition of ‘Margaritaville’ at that wedding, birthday party, karaoke bar, firefighter benefit, or bar mitzvah not long ago. You all
know the type.
And you just don’t mess with the poopin’ man.
