Avaris

It has come to my attention that a lot of corporate recruiters get caught up in the details. Forget about 3-5 years of experience in a related field and a bachelor’s degree in communications. As a hiring manager I think the first thing I would want to know is, can you flush a fucking toilet. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I can teach you how to brief a project, but you really should button your own pants. I can show you how to traffic a newspaper ad, and it might not even tap into your cranial resources. But you do need opposable thumbs to carry the thing around.

As for hidden talents, I have a few. They include liquid charisma, a weird double-jointed elbow, and an impressive ability to get violently ill in the middle of May. Thanks to one or more of these three, I’m standing in our artificially lit office bathroom blowing my nose on single-ply sandpaper when I think of all of this. Looking down at the porcelain urn filled to the brim with carelessly neglected human feces, my mind begins to wander. Before it leaves, it seems to say, “Sorry man, anywhere but here.”

I wonder which of the people several tiers above me in pay grade finds it necessary to spend what must be entire spring evenings harvesting the amount of grain it would take to produce that much shit. And with such astounding mechanical regularity. Every. Single. Morning. Like a malicious delivery guy propping your screen door open before dawn with a soggy cardboard box full of used heroin needles. At least no one has to sign for it.

I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. HR did part of their job. This guy may not be able to flush a toilet, but he can definitely wipe his own ass. Of this much I am certain; because there is so much toilet paper strewn about the place that it looks like the late Rameses II did a private strip tease right there in the stall. I picture his brittle skeleton crackling as he moves his hips, arms wildly sending cascades of pale white mummy wrappings to the floor. I just wanted to blow my nose. I was not counting on the lost treasure of the Valley of the Kings leaving such a hasty mess. But he appears to have been in quite the hurry.

As I gather from the evidence left behind, he is so overwhelmingly behind schedule by 9:15 that he can’t possibly bury the treasure he had just left to posterity. He leaps up at the soonest possible second, stuffing his shirt haphazardly back into his wrinkled pants and buckling his belt as he exits the 10th floor restroom, fleeing the diminishing echoes of the violently heaved stall door clanging loudly against its latch. They fade into the past like the whistle of a departing train. A train he just barely made! This man must have a busy life. He’s accomplished so much already. All I’ve done so far this morning is consider having a doughnut.

And this is when I realize I’m doomed. I’ll never get ahead. I noticed today that the email my boss sent on Monday complaining that I came in at 9:40 was actually written before 9:40. And I ran into him as he was leaving his office, headed for the bathroom. Man, he is lightning fast. I will just never be that fast. Or maybe he knows something I don’t. He must have gone through that fabled secret door in the bathroom, the one that takes you to the hidden computer terminal, and also back in time. Or forward. I’m not even sure. I just know that I have all the wrong skills. I’m doomed.