Dear Douchebag

Thank you so much for freeing me from your cocaine-fueled power trip. When you hired me eight months ago, I was confident that we would function as an incredible team. Unfortunately, your drug habit effectively squelched that notion. I should have seen it coming when you called out eight days in the first two months I was there.

Whether it was a car accident, that you got mugged, the airline lost your luggage, you were ‘sick,’ or you just couldn’t get your nose away from the mirror, I am simply grateful that I don’t have to deal with the excuses. I am glad that I went to HR about it and happy that HR is in the mire with you. Regardless, I got what I needed.

Fortunately for me, I am not trapped under the weight of an insane drug and alcohol problem and I have ideas that can be used outside the confines of my ego. Even if I don’t make $250,000 a year, I am much freer than you will ever be.

Cordially,
Friend of Bill W.

Dear Sneaky

Thank you for shooting down every people-helping world-changing idea I submitted to you. I made the grave mistake of thinking that an anti-poverty anti-homelessness charity actually WANTED to fight poverty and homelessness. You are the embodiment of the religious hypocrite. You are the poster-child of the 'Self-interested, Self-serving Cowards posing a good people of the World.' I hope they gave you a signing bonus for your extreme expertise. But mostly, you are a liar. I am just about done being livid about your 'little mistake' in the job description "Ooops, no, this job isn't permanent, it is temporary, and now it is over, Bye!" I am freaked out, penniless, jobless, and angry, but I am already getting over it. Many other people are much worse off than I am. So, I am going to grab some guts, face up to my unfortunate situation, and then, I am going to go and ACTUALLY CHANGE the world for the BETTER. Things are crumbling and grim. They are scary and hard. But I will survive and do well. Oh, and so will other people who aren't self-serving lazy cowards. You're on your way out buster. No one has time for people like you any more. You are a bad person. I look forward to observing your karmic fall form esteemed position to public spit receptacle.

Mr. Gorilla Boss

You look like a gorilla. You smell like a gorilla. You act like a gorilla.
You talk like a gorilla. You eat like a gorilla. You move about like a gorilla.
You scratch your head like a gorilla. You wave your big arms in the air when trying to communicate, like a gorilla. You stomp around the office like a gorilla. Because you so much resemble a gorilla, your very essence stinking of gorillaness, you have firmly established and irreversibly ingrained in me an excessively strong hatred for the gorilla and anything that remotely resembles its kind. I grace the moment you let my "chimp ass" (you f-ing bastard) go. I hope your fate matches your species, leaving you gravely in- danger-ed or behind bars.
Sincerely yours.

You were right!

Dear Not-Really-My-Boss,

I'm glad you liked my letter! It's so nice that you want to keep in touch. Let me start by saying this:

You were so right about the job market right now!

It really is an exciting time to be unemployed. It's like an episode of The Amazing Race (who doesn't love that show!!!); everybody's fighting for the same jobs, but when it comes down to it, we're really all in this together. For example, I was seated in a waiting room before an interview for a custodial technician position the other day, when suddenly this guy comes out of the boss' office, crushes a piece of paper in his hands (I think it was his resume), and spikes it into the trash can next to me. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I wanted to be supportive, so I asked him how it went. So he says to me: "Good luck getting hired by that asshole, buddy. The job's ALL yours." I mean, how nice is that? I'm waiting to hear back about that job, it's been a month but I really think I have a shot.

So I won't say that it's been easy, but I have a plan. I realized today that the fast food business must be booming because everybody's so depressed that they just want to gorge themselves on stroke-inducing grease products. I'm gonna get a job as a cashier at Wendy's while the economy's still hovering around rock bottom, and then when things pick up I'm gonna make bank. It's a foolproof plan, and in the meantime I should have enough money to live in this great bathroom I found in my local Starbucks. It's a bit small--only 5'x4' with a half bath--but utilities, maintenance, toilet paper, and WiFi are all free! I'll tell you this much, you get really good at finding bargains once you can't afford bottled water.

Anyway, I have lots more great ideas about how to get by in these troubled times. I think I might write a book; I'll call it  Just Play Dead: How Not To Get F**cked By A Bear (Market). Can you say best seller? 

In the meantime, I hope things are going well with that job you still have. Congratulations on getting that raise by the way, it must be nice to be able to fire your employees to put more money in your own pocket. Don't spend it all in one go. And if you see me at Wendy's, don't forget to be a champ and throw me an extra Washington for the effort.

Your friend,

Rich

Oh the things I'm going to miss

Dear (name redacted),

Thank you so much for everything you did for me while I worked for you. I feel as though I've gained not only a mentor, but also a friend. We've grown incredibly close over this past year and a half, and I'm really going to miss you and all of the idiosyncratic things you do when I leave. I'll miss your frowning face every day, but at least I'll have the memories of you to keep me going.

I'm not sure what I'm going to miss most because there's just so many things I adore and respect about you. The one thing I'll probably miss above everything else is doing your expense reports. The way you throw crumpled up receipts at me...or how you leave a hotel bill on my chair when I'm away from my desk. Whenever I go to process your hotel bill, I can always count on excessive mini bar charges without explanation. But most of all, I think I will miss processing the $50 worth of porn movie charges you rack up in one night at a hotel. Even though everyone knows to shut off the porn before they fall asleep, you've always done things your way and just left the porn on. I really respect that about you.

Aside from your travel habits, I'm going to miss so many other small things about you. The way you must buy a soft pretzel and soda every time you travel through an airport. The lunch receipts you give me with names of people who are neither business associates nor employees of the company we work for. The way you creep in the corner at work happy-hours and sometimes bring your bike to the bar. The way you drop dirty socks in the hallway outside your door. The way your backpack is so stuffed with belongings that you hunch over when you wear it and walk at the same time. The way your shirt is always too small and always wrinkled and also you smell.

Especially during the summer, I'm going to miss when you leave all the lights on in your office at 3pm with papers scattered on your desk, and then try to creep out the other door. I'll really miss catching you do that while you think you are fooling everyone. And last but not least, I'm going to miss the way you take car vouchers from my desk and use them to take your girlfriend out to dinner downtown and then home to Long Island.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I'm really going to miss the way you ask me to do things, and then take credit for them in emails, to our bosses, and in meetings.

It's been a good run. Thanks for teaching me so much about how to conduct myself in the workplace and how to also be a decent human being. I'll never forget you.

Best,

(Name Redacted)

Dear Gail

Dear Gail,

I've wanted to write for some time now. I want to thank you for making sure I was fired by the firm formerly known as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman. Since all the name partners ended up pleading guilty to a variety of charges (the only one who didn't was Milberg, and that's because he's dead), I can see that it truly was for the best. In fact, you did me a big favor. I can't imagine trying to find a job in this economy with such an albatross on my resume -- a firm that barely escaped indictment by the government for money laundering, etc., and was only rescued because Bershad cooperated with prosecutors so that the remaining partners (who, by the way, were in on the scam) could throw the surviving founder to the lions. (Nice business you people run.)

So thanks for giving me the boot well before the economy tanked. I'm now secure in a job at a REPUTABLE firm.

Lotsa luck. You're gonna need it!

Sincerely,

Crabby Appleton

You kind of promoted me. I kind of hate you.

Dear Not-Really-My-Boss,

I had it made in the shade in my little corner of the office. The people I worked with were cool as shit. We took regular breaks to laugh at YouTube videos, cracked our own inside jokes, chilled out with Curtis Mayfield, and serenaded each other on gloomy Monday mornings. Hell, I took naps in the copious embrace of our leather chair, my feet in the lap of the young woman I playfully flirted with day in and day out. She loved movies too, and we talked for hours about Bergman, Antonioni, and Woody Allen. She liked to nap too.

Then you had to come along and ruin it for me. Almost as badly as you ruined it for the receptionist.

Life was hard enough for her before you decided to save the company a little money. Her mom just went to jail because her co-worker took the liberty of flushing their company down the toilet with a casual dose of corporate fraud. The legal fees emptied the poor girl’s bank account, and she had to drop out of college one semester before she would have graduated. After that every dollar of the meager salary you paid her went to her family. She took care of half a dozen children at home every day because their mothers were too busy working. Only twenty-two, she has to move back to Long Island, jobless, without a degree, deeply in debt.

You fired her because her benefits were due to begin in January, and you didn’t want to pay up. She was the first to go. A line on a budget. An ice cube in your spending freeze, you McCain-loving son of a bitch. And now you want me to do her job. Without being paid for it, of course.

I’m a lowly intern. I spend my days on the phone, Googling potential speakers for your conferences, eBaying the Blackberry you forgot to return, and sending your neice’s poorly-wrapped Christmas present at the post office. You pulled rank on my boss, and now you want to take me out of my niche and chain me to a reception desk. You want me to screen calls, to mechanically mumble the phrase ‘Thanks for calling blah blah blah how may I direct your call?’ To do even more bitch work than I do now. To sit next to your office and smell the wonderful mélange of your breath, so thick you could cut it with a knife, with your eau-de-molding-carpet cologne. To take calls from your nine-year-old brat, who will tell me how to do my job and knows the dirtiest secrets about everyone in the office. (I wonder where she heard them?) To quietly, mindlessly, dutifully render all of these services for nothing at all in return.

So thanks a bunch, you socially inept beanbag. Thanks for making life tough for someone who has already had to overcome more adversity than you or I could ever imagine. Thanks for using our poor economic climate as an excuse to replace cheap labor with free labor. Thanks for wrecking my last month at your tiny company with your pseudo-promotion; my parents will be so proud. But most of all, thanks for being you.

Happy Holidays,

The lowly intern

My Dearest

I interned for you for maybe five months and you never made a move.
It would have been cool had you gone there. But even though you chose
otherwise, I'm still down. I'm just really curious and I think despite
the awkwardness it will be really cool. CONTACT ME! WHY NOT!

Sincerely,
Me

Dear 'I Belong in a Tool Box,'

I am very surprised at how you are handling my recent termination.
I called you several times today and despite the fact that you are
probably having a shit day, you should have returned my calls. Listen,
I understand that you are under a lot of stress, considering the fact
that you recently fucked up your first marketing investment, but you
need to acknowledge that your stupidity didn't just hurt your
employers, it hurt your employees as well. You lost the company money
and you screwed over the staving artist you hired. You basically
sucked all around.

And the fact that you were only hired in the first
place because of a family friend only fuels my impression of you as
someone who sucks in a major way. And even though you smile a shit
ton, at the end of the day your annoyingly consistent smile doesn't
even come close to balancing out the fucked up shit you do when you
are not smiling. With that said I am sure you at least now understand why i am so
confused and frustrated with your decision to terminate me.

I mean, "mono y mono…", you screwed me over and you know it. You know
that compared to my fellow employees I was the least of your worries.
You fired me because your job was in jeopardy and you needed to
display authoritative management. If only your superiors knew that
your interpretation of management lacked any degree of intellect and
functioned purely on image. You fired me simply because you could, and
not because it was beneficial to the company. That's why every time
you lecture new employees about working for the company and not for
you, you cringe because you remember the extent to which you don't
follow what you preach. You're that person!!!!!

But, whatever. I believe in karma.

So in conclusion, I want to stress that I am Ok with your decision
for terminating me. At least I know that tomorrow I can wake up
unemployed and happy and that you will forever wake up with the face
of a melted stone tool.

Now I feel bad because it just hit me the extent to which your life
sucks and will continue to suck. I wish I hadn't been so hard on
you….but actually no I don't. You suck and you should pay.

Best
Former Employee #1

P.S. Boooooo! Queen of Filth! Queen of Garbage!

Oh Assistant Professor,

If only you could read this now, respond immediately and act affirmatively. I had you for your first class, a politically correct liberal sociology propaganda machine about crime and the law. Some people said you were hired because you are black, young, and a woman, but anyone who has seen your booty and PhD thesis knows that can’t be true. I’m sorry for the way people way people with my skin color have treated people with your skin color. In fact I’ve been a naughty white boy. Punish me?

As soon as I laid eyes on you, my Nubian Queen, I knew you had to have me. As your research assistant. I performed every assignment with extreme diligence. I fought for every point in your retarded grading system of 5/5, 10/10 etc. that treated our writing like factors in the racial quota system invalidated by the Gratz v. Bollinger supreme court case. You see, I learned something. I was paying attention to your every move…

I did not lose one point in your stupid system. You gave me an A+. Even though I could have emailed you my take home final, I chose to come in and give it to you in person, at the party you set up for our deadline. I had popped 3 valium as I finished your exam, so I was already coasting by the time I showed up for pizza. After the others left, you approached me and I knew what you would ask. Yes! Yes’m, masta! I will be your research assistant!

Whip me. I will be your love slave.

Tell me I am a bad white boy, even though the suffering inherent in my socio-historical narrative as a Jew puts yours as an African American to shame. And you and I are both OK now, right? Let’s figure out how to make it all better.

I started by compiling articles for you about failing public schools in Atlanta. I went to an elite private school. I’m sorry. At our weekly meetings, which were unnecessary, I prayed that you would close the door of your office, strip me bare, and take out all your racial angst on me.
I really don’t give a shit about failing public schools in Atlanta, so I tried to start off with subjects that could lead somewhere more interesting, like Weber on the protestant work ethic. I also tried to do coffee instead of meet in your office but you always foiled that plan like a slave rebellion.

You really were the master.

Later I composed a sourcebook on racial inequality for you, which basically found that black people are worse off than white people in education, health, life expectancy, income…basically everything. Despite the bad news, I hope I showed you that I am not like the whites who got us here, that I understand, and I will fight to change it. That’s why you wrote my law school recommendation, because you know I’m good doobie and I’ll fight the good fight. But what if I disappoint you by selling out and making a lot of money, in a way that somehow exploits you and your sisters and brothers through some complex or somesuch? Can I pick you up in my limo?

Working for you did not fulfill my male-dominated-sociocultural-raciological-sadomasochistic desire to jump you like a misunderstood inner city youth. But on the off chance you are reading this between interviews, or writing your next book, let me know, because I need some action. Affirmative action.

Love,
Your Research Assistant

Dear Enabler

Things I learned from you: (Not things you taught me. Things I learned from you. Because you were most certainly unaware of the heap of life skills I amassed while serving as your bitch. )

1) Showing up to work hung-over is acceptable, because I can guzzle water and EmergenC while hiding behind my computer, and pretend to be working really hard by furrowing my brow at the screen and typing furiously if anyone walks by. I can then take an extra long time at the copier, scanner, and printer, feigning a slow or broken machine if need be, in order to prolong the hours that I don’t have to communicate with anyone.

2) Showing up to work drunk is also acceptable, and makes mornings of g-chatting and emailing immensely more entertaining. The impending hang-over will most likely surface around lunch time, at which point a greasy, savory meal will improve my condition just enough, so that upon my late return to the office, I can follow the procedure aforementioned in lesson 1.

3) Having a beer or four at lunch makes afternoons vastly more enjoyable. If ever the boss leaves early, drinking at lunch should be required. If ever the boss stays late, I can keep myself busy for about five to ten minutes after my usual departure time, so that when I announce my exit, said boss will feel as though I am somewhat of an ally, leaving me entitled, naturally, to march triumphantly to the nearest bar, to begin, or more likely resume, my drinking.

5) If ever the boss makes me stay late, I can furiously text those coworkers who have left the office already, and make my presence well known to the rest of the staff who remains captive, so that they may know my plight and can snub said boss for keeping his/her over-qualified assistant late into the night for no good reason. When I am finally released, the only suitable place to go will be the bar, to get sufficiently wasted.

Thank you for nurturing what has become a fully developed, professional, drinking habit.

Dear Mr. Burns

Dear Mr. Burns,

The six months I spent as your assistant weren’t so bad. You provided me with a consistent spring of private entertainment, which became increasingly public as I became more confident with my personal judgment of your character, and felt more comfortable communing with co-workers and friends on this account. Turns out my initial impression of you was as entirely astute: you truly are one weird fuck.

Your semblance to Mr. Burns, of the Simpsons, is uncanny. (When I shared this fact with friends, it was all too gratifying to affirm the array of expected questions: Is he bald? Yes. Liver spots? Yes! Slimy voice, hunched back, bony, fragile frame? Yes! I kid you not when I tell you he used to say, “excellennntt” more than just every so often.)

Your semblance, also, to the retarded man that stood on the street corner outside the rehabilitation center is similarly uncanny. It was a good day in the office – or at least one that solidified the growing bond between my co-workers and I - when I realized I was not the only one who mistook you, on multiple occasions, for this mumbling man on the street. Beneath his over sized, flat rimmed baseball cap, it was easy to confuse the two of you. The similarity of your perpetually nervous and overly concerned faces that would allow you easily to pass as brothers, matched perfectly your equally petite statures- physiques that appeared ever more slight under the extra-large, faded parkas you both sported, regardless of the weather. The only certain way of telling you two apart on the street was the item flouting your parka only, and not your dear look-alike's: none other (could there be a more geeky accessory? For a grown man? Oh, well, I suppose neither of you were fully-grown…) than a mini, Paul Frank backpack, dangling monkey and all. Mr. Burns, if it wasn’t for your adorable backpack, the rest of the office and I may never have known the difference between you and muttering Moe on the corner.