Thank you for calling Integratech... can you hold please?

[jack_babalon]

10:32am, Thursday. Hour three of the Integratech Mandatory Monthly Morale Improvement Meeting.

"...which is just one more reason why the keeping of squirrels in your desk drawer is strictly forbidden... all of which, I would like to remind you, is clearly covered on page 34 of the Employee Handbook" Dwight Kreutzberg sips from a cold cup of Heart Attack Soup and bottles back an exhausted sigh. He knows full well that the caged Squirrel fights held in the emergency exit stairwell have often been all that's stood between being lynched by a mutinous call center and another day of life.

"Wait is that just squirrels or all mammals?" Karen Hensley asks from the back of the room.

"I'll have to get back to you on that one" Dwight recognizes another hand raised.

"Yeah how come we've never seen a copy of the Employee Handbook?" Jack asks from the corner of a hostile sneer.

"We've been over this a hundred times already" Dwight rubs his eyes with exhaustion, "Knowing the rules just encourages people to break them. A good employee, if he or she are doing their job right, should have no need of the employee handbook. Only Scofflaws, Dilly-dallyers and other assorted criminal types would want to see the manual, if only so they could better guage what sort of shennigans they can and can't get away with..." but before Dwight can finish this answer he's been trained to give under threat of death by upper management he's suddenly barraged by another round of questions.

"But how were we supposed to know we weren't allowed to hold Squirrel Fights?" Sequentia Meadows bellows out.

"Mainly because it's morally reprehensible not to mention being outright illegal in every state except Iowa!" Dwight unholsters a bottle of Winking Wino 20/20 from his jacket revealing two armpit sweat stains shaped in perfect resemblance to a map of Denmark.

"...or that I wasn't allowed to read when I was on my lunch break!" John Omessi jumps in.

"You were reading porn, John. Outloud. In the womans room!" he pours a shot into his Heart Attack Soup.

"That's a direct violation of my right to express my unique cultural heritage in the work enviornment!" John hisses, gets up, tucks his copy of HENTAI-JUGS under his arms and leaves for the bathroom.

"Why can't we hold prayer meetings in the breakroom anymore, Dwight?" Mable Edwards inquires with her maternal sing-song voice.

"Because the robes, torches and unearthly chanting about "The Rising of the Deep Ones" is distracting the other members of the team, Mable... besides as an equal opportunity employer we cannot show cultural prejudice to one set of religious beliefs over another..."

"Is that why we have to work on Christmas?" Charles Fortnight asks with his hand raised up with the trepidation of a shy school child.

"One of them" Dwight throws his head back and downs a few gulps from his bottle before emptying it with a loud burp.

"Oh my....you're screams will be the elevator music to the Deep Ones unbeliever!" Mable tells Dwight sweetly patting him on the knee. This seems to silence the rest of the office.

"All right question times over" Dwight says adjusting his tie in a way that would be the envy of hangmen worldwide. "Now as you all know we've had an efficiency management team review our call center. Which would be the quote-unquote 'Buncha punk ass bitches' we had *ahem*...'up in here, last Friday'. Here are a few of the suggestions they made from initial observations of seeing the team in action." Dwight passes out a copy of the emailed memo from Corporate Home Office to each of the team, even the ones that were asleep or engaged in text message phone sex on their cell phones. Once done he stood at the front of the table, put on his reading glasses and proceeded to read outloud.

"Alright as you can on the top of the list we have "Kill them all slowly before they can breed". Well... we'll just put that one on the back burner for now. Let's see next is "Have Call Center outsourced. Initial analysis indicates a mentally handicapped small child could do a better job." Hmmm... let's skip down a few shall we, alright here we go... "Restrict all suicide attempts, prayers to an obviously indifferent god and smoke breaks to one of the employees two federally mandated 900 seconds of sanity time. This will ensure an increase in call center productivity by an estimated 33 %". Okay that should be easy... so Joan if you're gonna OD again you're gonna have to wait until 10:15 or 2:30, alright?"

"Go fuck yourself you dickless wonder" Joan spits from the haze of a codeine buzz before slumping her head back and resuming her chemically induced power nap.

"Right and lessee we also have "Quarantine them in the office building and light it on fire", "Replace employees with squirrels who clearly are the only lifeforms actually doing some work over there", "Unleash the Kill-bots", blah-blah-blah-blah... well there you have it." Dwight crumbles up his copy of the Home Office memo and tosses it in the wastebasket clearly marked SUGGESTION BOX. "So let's get back to work and have ourselves a double super terrific productive day. Huh? Huh?"

One by one Dwight's staff walks out of the small supply closet used for the Monthly Mandatory Morale Improvement Meeting, some muttering curses and others vowing impressively thought out death threats. Finally Dwight is all alone and he leans back against a mountain of boxed printing paper, feeling the last few sparks of the will to live flicker out one by one in the eternal night that has become his soul. He takes a long sip off his spiked cup of Heart Attack Soup, praying for an early death and wondering if anyone might have responded to the suicide note/resume he posted earlier that afternoon on Headhunter.com.