Kwik Goblin Humor Blog

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