Kwik Goblin Humor Blog

 In my position as boss of a small company, whoa, stop right there. I had 130 employees at my peak. Not exactly General Motors but I never thought of my company as a small business. I really thought of it as a giant pain in the butt whose sole purpose was to support my employees and their families on modest wages and make me rich. To me, small businesses are those where you make a down payment on that lawnmower and rake combo and whoosh! you’re in business. The difference, I guess, between my business and the lawn guy is that if he went bad, all he had to do was go out and find himself a job and maybe hock that mower and rake thing for some quick cash. If I went bad, the nightmare scenario of bankruptcy proceedings and nervously counting cash while fat guys in bad suits and sunglasses stood around me cracking their knuckles, would begin even before the power company turned off the juice. Simply stated the qualifying difference between a small business and a big business is how much you owe. Answer this question, Mr. Businessman - If you shut down your operation today, could you pay off all your debts and walk away clean with money left over, or not? If you stopped tomorrow, would somebody be left holding the bag? There’re only two answers and there’re only two choices if one of them is yes. Let’s examine the possibilities.

Possibility #1 - Yes. In this case, if you can walk away clean, you are probably an extremely small business where you most likely did everything by yourself, maybe had a few employees and on a good week you were able to pay most of your overhead and actually eat a bit of food. You’d probably make more money working for somebody else but at least you are your own boss, you get to set your own vacations and even diddle the secretary or the girl who brings sandwiches around at lunch once in a while. Life is hard and you’ll never get rich this way, but if you don’t want to get out of bed some mornings, you don’t have to.

Possibility #2 - Yes. In this case you owned a larger business and you probably stole money faster than it was coming in. Furthermore, you are my hero. In the category of victimless crimes, stealing from yourself is my number one favorite. You never have to worry about the guy with the secret drug problem falling apart at the last minute and blowing the entire scheme, there’s nobody looking over your shoulder, as long as the taxes are paid the government will never know (or care) and there are constitutional amendments to protect you from testifying against yourself. God bless America! No matter what your background and education, no matter what type of business you own, stealing from yourself is the fastest, easiest, most foolproof way to make money ever devised by modern man. It ranks right up there with the computer, the cell phone and Viagra as great inventions of the 20th Century. And it wasn’t until greedy idiots like the Enron guys and the MCI jerks applied this time honored formula to PUBLIC COMPANIES (Damn them! Damn them to hell!) that the public caught wind of what was going on and got pissed off. My God they’ve stolen all the money and used it to buy big houses and cars and hookers! Right. Like that was new.

Possibility #3 - No. You are an honest businessman, running a very large company and you are maybe the last one alive today. You pay all your bills, draw a large but easily sustainable salary with perks, drive a nice but modest car, pay all your taxes, give your employees benefits they wouldn’t get anywhere else and everybody works hard and respects you. They probably call you “The Old Man” in reverential tones when you’re not around. BORING!

The point is this: The bigger the business you own, the more debt that you have, the more money you can make. If your business grosses 100K per year there’s no way in hell you can make 200K no matter who you stiff and how much you steal. Period! How much money you can make is simply a factor of how much money you owe. The more you owe the more you can make - or steal. Debt is good. All together now, 1, 2, 3 - Debt Is Good! And God Bless America!

It was the mid 1970’s, and I was young, about 23 or so and had been working for a national magazine distribution company in Los Angeles, California for almost five years when I realized I was totally bored. I had moved up fast - from the warehouse to management in two years and I was in charge of almost all of the internal functions involved with magazine distribution on a national scale. Nothing creative - just move the product in bulk from the print shop to the shipping center, run the invoices off the computer (the computer by the way was so big that it had its own room in those days), oversee the breakdown and shipping of the titles, get the invoices filed and the customer copies out in the mail. I was just starting to form relationships with the accounts, major periodical distributors all over the world when I got bored. Like I said I was young and in looking back I realize now that boredom was a luxury of youth that disappears as we get older. Somebody somewhere, at a party or a bar, started talking about record distribution and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t identical to what I was already doing except that it was RECORDS! (FYI- records were those big, vinyl things that came before CD’s) Rock Stars! Groupies! Parties! I was on fire!

I started with personal letters to NAME PEOPLE at the top of the industry. I wrote to them as if they were friends of mine who could help me make the shift from magazine distribution to record distribution. I had the skills, the talent, the experience and the look (long hair, Quiana shirts etc.) and the desire, so why wouldn’t they welcome me with open arms? That move flopped so loudly the noise still registers on the Richter scale in Southern California every time I think about it. Employment lesson #1 - The people at the top of an industry, who don’t know you, aren’t dating your sister, or related to your uncle, don’t care if you live or die and won’t help you get a job.

I moved to phone calls and was I ever surprised when I actually got a positive response. Two actually. One guy talked to me for about fifteen minutes and we scheduled an appointment for the next day. Another other guy talked to me for about fifteen seconds, handed me off to personnel and we scheduled an appointment to meet a few days later. I was off! I was flying! I had two “interviews” - one with the head of distribution for a small but well respected record label and one with the head of personnel for a major company. One out of two! 50% odds I was going into the record business! Even money (I played the ponies in those days) that I was leaving my boring, well paying job in magazine distribution for the glitz and glamour of the record biz. Yeah!

Interview #1 with the actual head of distribution. I was polished and ready to roll. I arrived early and was led to an office, in this totally cool office complex and told to wait. The secretary of the guy I was waiting to talk to looked like she just stepped out of Dream Girl Monthly. Long blonde hair, short skirt, throaty voice. She offered me coffee, water, anything I wanted to drink. I declined - what I wanted was to marry her right there on the spot. I was home. After a few minutes she signaled me to go into his office. I opened the door and the place looked like heaven on earth to me. You actually had to step down to enter. Rock posters adorned the walls next to gold records and pictures of this guy with the stars. This is what I wanted, simply replace his pictures with mine and bang, I’m there. I sat down. What a nice guy. He was totally professional. And charming. He was knowledgeable about his business and mine as it turns out. I told him my skills, talents, expertise and education and the job I was doing now. And as it turned out, I was correct in my analysis of record distribution - it was identical to what I was doing. I was already trained in doing the job I wanted to do. I was getting in! After fifteen minutes of the most pleasurable conversation I’d ever had in my life, he turned to me and said, “You know, the job you want is my job.” My heart sank. I knew he was right. He gave me some advice about starting at smaller companies, at the bottom and working my way up, but I knew it was over. In another minute we were shaking hands and I was leaving, never to see him again. I was crushed. Employment lesson #2 - never interview for a job with the guy you want to replace. The better you look the faster you’ll get thrown out of his office.

Interview #2 with the head of personnel for a major record company. As I feared, the big company was not cool but so businesslike that I was thrown off my “game” as soon as I walked in. No long haired, laid back guys but suits everywhere. Receptionists who looked like my mother’s friends, and who worked like machines in a building so clean you could sleep on the floor. I was handed a printed sheet with instructions on how to get from the lobby, up the elevator and into the personnel department with warnings about visiting other floors or poking your head into offices where it didn’t belong. It felt more like the pentagon than a record company. I arrived at personnel and checked in, was handed a clipboard and sheet to fill out and I waited. Thirty minutes later I was ushered into her office where I met the scariest women I had ever met up until then. Dressed like a lawyer, she spoke in clipped tones, asking a set of rehearsed questions and writing down notes as I spoke. She asked all the usual stuff about background, education and then the big one - “What were my goals at the company if I was hired?” I took a deep breath and thought to myself that this was the one and only chance I would have to impress this woman, to loosen her up a bit with some charm and self confidence. I said, “I fully expect to begin wherever there might be an opening in distribution, and work my way up to the top of this company so fast that I would appear like a blur to other people.” I smiled, satisfied that I had hit just the right note. She rolled her eyes and before I knew what hit me I was out on the street. I never heard from her again. Employment lesson #3 - Big companies have a working structure, a hierarchy, and while some upward motivation is viewed as a good thing, too much ambition is definitely discouraged and viewed both as a threat and some form of not so temporary insanity.

Well, I never made it into the record business but I actually ended up owning that magazine company a few years later. Here’s what you might want to glean from my attempts to get into the record business. Unless you’re related to someone, you have to start at the bottom and blend in and work your way up. And you have to do that slowly. Fast movers without connections are gotten rid of somehow, by somebody higher up the food chain who you’re threatening to replace as you move vertically throughout the organization. I knew I was good and I proved it when I bought that business and turned it into a real moneymaker. But if you know you’re good, and you want to work for somebody else, keep most of your mouth shut. Give them your stuff a little at a time. Keep your goals in line with the corporate structure you’re in. I want to work hard for the good of the company and show my superiors what I can do is a better attitude than I want to rise to the top like a blur, even when you really, really do. Suppress your youthful ambitions and dreams - don’t kill them, just don’t wear them on your sleeve. Get in to the industry where you want to be and then slowly impress them with the quality of your work. It works out better for everyone that way in the long run. Especially you.

Expensive cars are definitely more difficult to park. Finding a parking space is tougher because the owner will actually need to locate two adjacent spots. This allows him to park diagonally in the belief that he’s avoiding dents from the opening doors of cars beside him. Also, he needs to be at the highest elevation in the lot so the inevitable runaway shopping carts will be rolling away from his car, rather than towards it.

Before he leaves his car he may very well lock a brightly colored bar across the steering wheel, which makes steering the car virtually impossible. Chances are some people will notice the device later on, and speculate that this is the reason that the driver needed two spaces to park. Obviously this anti-theft bar doesn’t help if the car thief has a tow truck.

The driver then locks the car and activates his car alarm, causing that annoying noise familiar to every owner of both a long tailed dog and a rocking chair. Everyone else within earshot either has no interest in the car or now wonders just how expensive the stereo is, since the owner spent hundreds of dollars on an alarm system to protect it. Some people may now be considering breaking into the car because of the alarm.

It’s also possible that people would notice the car simply because of the volume that its stereo puts out. Many drivers feel that they should be able to proceed at a red light if the way is clear, and the car beside them has a bass cannon.

Some drivers have the type of auto stereo that pulls out with a handle, so it’s not vulnerable to being stolen from the car if the driver’s carrying it. Unfortunately this means it is vulnerable to purse-snatchers. And if the owner forgets to take it out of the car, it’s even easier to steal than normal units because there are no wires that have to be cut.

Another feature that owners of expensive cars seem to favor is tinted glass. Supposedly, if the glass was dark enough, thieves couldn’t see if there was anything in the car worth stealing. The driver needs to see out though. How would a police officer pull over a driver who couldn’t see the cruiser? He’d probably have to reach him by cell phone… Or maybe his car fax. A few years ago, many drivers of pricey cars had phones installed in them, and carried cell phones too. The cells came in handy in case someone tried to call them when they were walking in their driveway between their car and house.

So as the expensive car owner strides confidently towards the mall entrance; phone in pocket, he is actually enjoying a false sense of security. After all the precautions against other drivers, runaway shopping carts, car stereo thieves and criminals who would steal the car itself, there’s one hazard he hasn’t thought of, and it’s out of his control… His expensive paint job is at the mercy of birds.

There are many proven methods circulating around that offer plans and advice on how to make a lot of money. There’s the buying real estate for no money down, then fixing it up (which is interesting since I can’t even plug in the toaster without causing a tri-state blackout) and selling it for a huge profit.

There are the investment strategies that allow you, through the wonder of modern technology, to sit at home on your computer and watch your life savings slowly pour into some unknown commodities trader’s pocket. And then there’s those mysterious little oriental guys, surrounded by tall blondes in bikinis, sitting on Ferrari’s and Bentley’s in front of their mansions, telling you that even nerds like you could have all this too. Somehow.

Mostly, they’re a lot of crap. The number one, most favorite way to make lots and lots of money according to my own personal survey that I never took and wouldn’t waste time compiling, is to inherit it. Imagine that! Inheriting money means at least two things - it means that somebody older than you went to all the trouble of working really, really hard, saving his money and putting your name on chunks of it. Secondly, it means you probably grew up rich and never had to work a day in your life for anything. Does it get any better than that? No!

The second most popular way to make lots and lots of money is to win it. I’m not talking about scratching off $5.00 at the local 7-11. I’m talking about the guys who win those Powerball Lotteries for 135 million. Or the guy who spent last night in a dumpster behind Ceaser’s Palace in Vegas before he put his last dollar into Big Bertha and hit 4.5 mill. Don’t you just hate them? I’m especially fond of the guy who crawled across the Mexican/American border on Thursday with $4.00 in his pocket and by Monday he’s hired Lorenzo Lamas to interpret for him at the news conference celebrating his miraculous winning of 25 million in the California Lottery.

In reality, it’s the third way of making lots and lots of money that inspires the most conversations, especially around the third quarter of the super bowl when the beer’s starting to slur your speech just a bit. You won’t find it in any book, there’s no college course for it and as of yet there have been no infomercials trying to sell you the formula for 3 small payments of only $39.99 plus shipping and handling. Stated quite simply this time honored, almost foolproof method is called Marrying the Boss’ Daughter.

You’ve heard of that before, have you? Sure you have. But did you try it? Did you get off your lazy butt, go find yourself a boss’ daughter to marry and sail off into the corporate sunset, bypassing all the traditional, get an education, start at the bottom and work real hard types who sneered as they bowed to your magnificence?  No you didn’t. And that’s a good thing because without the rules of how to do this and do it well you’d have probably screwed it up. I know I did.

So here’s the rules:

1) You’ve got to be good at what you do and you’ve got to work really hard. Being the boss’ son-in-law and being good at the highly overpaid job you’ve landed at the top is an unbeatable combination. Let’s hear some gray haired, pipe smoking professor at Harvard Business School argue with that one!

2) Learn early on the difference between son-in-law and son. The son is the blood descendant of the boss. You’re there by some fluke of pheromones and you must never forget that. The son is an obnoxious, rich kid, undoubtedly an idiot, who will feed you to the lions if you stand in his way. And when push comes to shove, it will be you who will be politely asked to sacrifice his blood for the good of the family business.

3) Never, ever cheat on your wife. Enough said about that one.

That’s it really. Not quite enough stuff for a book, or an infomercial, but I’m still working on it. If they would offer a course in Marrying the Boss’ Daughter at business schools enrollment would increase tenfold overnight. Hmmmmmm……

The trip to the coast beckoned promisingly.  The thought of cool, sunny days in an apartment with a sea view was very inviting.  Little did I know!

Soon after we arrived, we decided to eat at the fish café at Tweed Heads just over the border from Queensland.  They serve delicious fish and seafood at reasonable prices.  The seating overlooks the wide river and people also like to watch the feeding of the pelicans.  I’d always loved to watch this before!  The proud, white birds with their long necks stand about three feet tall and are beautiful to look at.

They also look very friendly, but watch out!  I made the mistake of thinking what likeable birds they were and got too close to one of them.  It got a nasty look in its eyes and began to ruffle its feathers.  I should have immediately run back but there was little time.  The huge bird flew towards me and bit me on the nose with its incredibly long beak!  Luckily it didn’t break the skin and I was perfectly all right, but I will never get too close to birds again, especially those with long beaks!

My friend insisted that I ask about a tetanus injection and I was glad to find out that it wasn’t necessary.  It was quite embarrassing to have to tell the doctor why I thought I might need it, however!  The handsome, young man didn’t laugh, but my friend said that he looked very amused after my visit.

It took a little while to recover from the shock of a big, white bird biting me, and I found it hard to believe.  Why do these things always happen to me, I thought?  But life had not finished with me.  My restful weekend at the coast was not to be.

Soon afterwards my friend and I bought some delicious-looking Chicken Kiev’s at the supermarket and looked forward to eating them.  We had difficulty finding a suitable oven tray, however.  After looking everywhere my friend found a tray that looked useful.  He placed the meat on the tray and put them in the oven.  What could be easier?
We were not destined to eat the Chicken Kiev’s, however!

A while after he put them in, my friend thought that they smelled strange and opened the oven door to check on them.  Nasty smoke began filling the room and he quickly turned the oven off and opened the balcony door wide.  He got the tray out only to find that much of it had melted onto the real oven tray which we had had trouble finding!  The tray was plastic and the fumes were probably poisonous!

Needless to say, we couldn’t eat the Chicken Kiev’s.  By this time it was a bit late to go back to the supermarket and neither of us felt like it, so we ate the cold ham and tomatoes in the fridge.  It was a cold winter evening and a hot meal with vegetables would have been much pleasanter!

After all these problems I was almost looking forward to leaving the lovely apartment at the coast and going home!

It’s a sort of win/lose situation with employees. This is America, right? And in America, capitalist pigs are supposed to get rich off the labor of the unwashed masses. At least that’s what I was taught when I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and I don’t see much evidence of that being untrue when I look around. There are capitalist pigs of all shapes and sizes getting rich by exploiting the labor market around them. More today than there were yesterday and not as many as tomorrow. And the only hue and cry I ever hear is the never ending chant of, “WE WANT MORE JOBS!” from those very same exploited workers. In fact the only thing that’s changed is that the chant now comes in many different languages and from as far away as India and China. Apparently, the entire world wants to make us rich by letting us exploit them. So I say, “OK! Let’s give them what they want! Let’s hire them at wages just high enough to avoid starvation while we grow fat and rich selling the products they make while their minds and bodies rot in our factories.” I mean really, what’s a guy to do?

So now you have to hire some people to work for you at your, uh, widget company. (Widgets, by the way, are the product that is hypothetically manufactured in every class in economics, in every school in the world. If somebody really invented something called a widget, every business schoolteacher on the planet would have a stroke.) You could turn to an employment agency which makes your job easier by sending you only those applicants who are actually qualified to do the job you have available. But where’s the fun in that? Every boss wants to have a shot at being that Simon guy on American Idol, laughing at the dorks who parade through your office door trying to fake their way into a job. They’ll never admit it, in fact they’ll actively deny it, but it’s true. At night they (we) all get together and laugh mightily over expensive wines and tiny servings of overpriced food about just that.

Plan B, and every successful boss has to have one, is that you’ll put an ad in the local newspaper classifieds section and then sit back and wait for the phone to ring. If there are people who have stopped chanting about wanting jobs in your area long enough to read the paper, they’ll be calling. You’ll schedule them about thirty minutes apart, all day long and still, somehow, they’ll all arrive at the same time. Three hours later your place of business will be empty (and dirty), you’ll have a headache and need a drink. Later that night you’ll go over the applications, try to remember what they looked like and fall asleep laughing. You’ll wake up the next morning, frozen with fear that one of the people you interviewed will actually be working for you. But which one?

Here’s some rules:

1) The good looking guy who told you the funniest jokes you’ve ever heard and made you feel like the two of you were “buds”, is out. He’s lazy, he’ll steal from you and somehow he’ll convince you it was all your fault.

2) The babe with the big, uh, well she’s out too.

3) The old lady with 40 years of experience doing exactly what you needed is out. Why? Well, if she did the same job for 40 years and she’s willing to do it again for you, how good could she really be? I mean really, would you interview for a job you’d been doing for 40 years only to have to start over somewhere else? I think not.

4) The young guy, just out of college is out. You know he’ll leave as soon as he gets his hands on your manufacturing secrets and customer list, or as soon as his zits clear up.

5) That boring, badly dressed, complete and total nerd who smelled up your office - he’s the one for you! Why? Because he’s got nowhere else to go. He’ll do that job and whatever other jobs you create for him for the rest of his life and the only thing he’ll ever ask for is a crust of bread at Christmas time for Tiny Tim. He’ll devote his body and soul to making your business grow if only because it’s a place for him to go in the morning when he wakes up alone in his crappy little apartment. 

So that’s what you need - an entire work force made up of smelly nerds who have absolutely no life outside of your place of business. They won’t steal from you, they won’t leave to go into their own business and they’ll work themselves to death for you. The only thing to watch out for, and this is important so pay attention, is if you see them commingling with each other. If they start to bond, having nerdy little relationships with each other, hanging out, and (God forbid!) mating, euuuuuu, you’ll have to get rid of them and start fresh. This is the boss’ burden. However, it is absolutely the main reason why we make the big bucks!

1. Tell them you are glad that they called, and ask them if they can hook you up with any job leads.

2. When they ask for you, ask them, “Who may I tell her is calling?” in a polite voice. They will say their name. Then ask, “And who are you with?” They will usually respond with “Who are you?” At this point, you can engage in an entertaining game of 20 questions, such as “Where do you live?,” “When do you have dinner?” and “What is your favorite color?

3. For a long time, a guy named Amir kept calling me. He was actually not so offensive. I figured maybe he was filling an outsourced job and really didn’t give a damn. He called everyday. I told him, “Amir sweetie, you have got to stop calling me! My husband is getting really angry!” Sometimes I’d whisper, “Gotta go love, my husband is getting home.” Left him fairly speechless, which is rare with these guys.

4. Sing them children’s songs. My goodness, their job must be dismal, with all the hang-ups and guilt from bullying people about money so that they can help their conglomerate interest-gobbling employers. The ABC song is good, because at the end, you can say “Next time won’t you sing with me…” One guy liked this one so much he called back for more!

5. If they are mean, show empathy. Tell them that you are sorry that they have to do such crummy work for such low pay.

6. Tell a good joke. Or laugh yourself. Like, “Ha ha ha. I’m really going to tell you my address! That’s a good one! You are so funny! What, I’m crazy? Can you help?”

7. Answer the phone and say, “You’re looking for _______? Man, you’d better let me know when you find that (insert insulting name of your choice here), because she owes me money. Skipped out on the rent and everything!” Go on and on about how badly you have been mistreated. This one was very effective, and stopped calls for about three weeks.

8. Heavy breathing.

9. Ask them if they’ll charge off some of the debt in exchange for some phone sex.

10. Just hang up the phone.

Yes, I’m making it official.  Queuing is a modern art form.  You can see it at the Tate Gallery, the Louvre, and at countless other venues worldwide.  You don’t need to go inside - it’s the ever-changing formation of people milling about outside which constitutes this breath-taking masterpiece.

When trying to identify the genuine article from the fake, you need to be alert for the misleading spectacle of ‘people waiting’.  Waiting is not queuing.  Waiting is where you have something to do while you’re waiting.  Queuing is just, well… queuing.  I have studied this form of expressionless-ism, and you know you have found the real thing when you are confronted with a group of people looking at each other’s backs and (this is the important identifying feature) doing nothing else besides.

For the true queue connoisseur, transport offers the most interesting views of changing suburbia.  Take bus queues, for instance.  You will soon notice there is one basic rule with these - worth taking note of if you intend to become part of the masterpiece itself.  It is this - make sure you are carrying an item large enough to get stuck when you try to board the bus.  This helps to prolong the excitement of queuing, whilst simultaneously providing ample entertainment for those people who have unfortunately stopped queuing and are already on board.

The newcomer to the world of modern queuing might make the mistake of thinking the bus queue is unrivalled in its stagnant beauty.  Such a thought is to ignore the existence of a queue which is far better in its composition than all other queues put together.  Why?  Because it is all other queues put together.  Fortunately it is available for the general public to view - it can be seen during every rush hour on every train platform the length and breadth of the country.

Its daring brilliance comes from its strange appearance.  It actually leads you to believe you’re not in a queue at all.  There’s no one standing in front of you with a huge stepladder, and no one standing behind you discussing the weather.  This is because everyone is standing side by side, and every single person is thinking the same thing - ‘I hope I’m standing in front of the doors when the train stops’.

If you are lucky and your wish is granted, you’ll be chewing your pencil and trying to think of a five letter word meaning ’swift’ in no time.  But if the luck is on someone else’s side, you’ll be able to experience the delights of the horizontal queue.

When the train arrives, we finally realise we are part of the grand-daddy of all queues.  The doors open, and we are faced with not just one bottleneck, but a whole row of them.  How reassuring it is to see large train companies displaying such an intricate knowledge of the finer things in life.

It is now thought the expression of the Mona Lisa was due to her having taken part in a queue shortly before sitting for her portrait.  I’m not surprised at this revelation.  It explains the look of ecstasy on her face.

by Allison Whitehead