Dear Republican Congresspeople,
With the economy in such dire straits, we can’t afford to be giving the average salary suckers and employer-sponsored-benefits whores the money needed to restore the financial might of this great nation. These people aren’t creating jobs. They’re merely working jobs, with expectations of pay raises, comp time, dental coverage, FMLA, fair labor practices, overtime and all other manner of perversions designed to stifle productivity and profit.
As many of you know, Yoyodyne is one of the nation’s largest government contractors. We employ hundreds of thousands of people. We created those jobs, and I built this revenue-spewing juggernaut from the ground up. If the economy were Monica Lewinsky and Yoyodyne the Commander-in-Chief, then it would be fair to say that the stains splattered indiscriminately over every inch of her dress would all be in the shape of dollar signs. Big ones.
Do I benefit from the Bush tax cuts? I think the more appropriate -- nay, accurate -- question is Does Yoyodyne benefit from the Bush tax cuts? You bet it does. You know who else benefits? All of those workers around the globe who are gainfully employed by our organization, who have those jobs because we had the extra money to develop new positions for them. You’re welcome.
I heard Sheila in Reception grousing all day about how she was going to be losing money from her checks now. Boo hoo, you spoiled brat. That was never your money to begin with, honey. It was a largess. A break. One you didn’t deserve. But that’s all you moan about, isn’t it , Sheila? Two tens and a half-hour for lunch aren’t enough breaks for you. Your bi-monthly time off to visit your psychologist for “depression” and “hostile workplace anxiety” aren’t breaks enough either, apparently. All Congress did, Sheila, was remove a perk given to you by Adolf Obama, which you didn’t earn.
Talk around the breakroom, if you could call it that -- the talk, I mean, not the breakroom, which is palatial -- indicates some erroneous sense of wrongdoing and inequality. I’m sure a few of those whiners were the same folks who called out sick last week but mysteriously healed after they were booted out of their camps by LAPD when they squashed the silly Occupy LA love-in. Thanks for coming back to work so that you could destroy morale. HR has a surprise check for you in the office. I call it severance.
What’s their beef? My bonus, presumably. Did I receive a bonus? Yep. And I toiled away for every cent of that $8.5 million. But here’s the rub. That bonus, like my stock options and much of my non-salary compensation, does not come out of Payroll. So, did the Obama payroll tax cuts benefit me? How could they have? I never saw a dime. It’s a policy that directly discriminates against the revenue generators, the earners, the job creators and the wealthy. You would think a black man born someplace in Africa would understand the evils of discrimination.
And then we have Bobby, who complains over his Starbucks coffee and Subway sandwich -- pretty luxurious living for a data entry clerk who thinks $35,000 is a subsistence wage (hell, I pay more than that a month in spousal maintenance and child support). He’s upset about the IRS taking nearly 40 percent of his income in taxes while I dole out less than 15. I might remind him of the quantifiable fallacy of his argument. When the IRS comes calling every April with the Easter Bunny, Bobby’s losing about $400 all said and done, due in large part to his standard deductions. I don’t want to tell you what I give the IRS, because nobody wants to read a graphic description of anal rape, do they? But it’s in the seven digits. So who’s contributing more to the system? Not you, Bobby. I spent $400 this morning on a car wash and a Maker’s latte.
I’m also grateful that this little experiment -- an excursion into Stalinist Russia -- is at its end, because it made the human capital (sorry, I’m supposed to call them “talent” now, thanks to some outstanding HR issue) a little uppity, frankly. That extra change sure fostered some outrageous senses of entitlement among the laboring class of the company...the entire building from the eighth floor down, to be honest. Seeing as how I rarely associate with that rabble anyway, you would suppose I could handle the attitude. But no, it affected me in worse ways.
Suddenly, my line managers and junior executives found themselves buried under avalanches of vacation requests. Unheard of, really. But all those employees had extra cash saved up. They could afford to travel. So, lots of time-off forms processed. I lost productivity, I had to pay those people not to work. Our operating capital ended up going to a bunch of empty seats, and I watched our fortune trickle away like the stream of urine from Alan Greenspan’s ravaged urethra. And did all this extra pocket money help the economy, as Obama said that it would, dancing a little jig with his cheesy bottle of snake oil? No. They didn’t spend that money. They didn’t become good consumers. They hoarded their savings, and stuffed most of it away in college funds and IRAs. Or, they increased their 401K contributions. I have to match those retirement funds, which again wrested more dinero from my already impoverished hands.
Thank you, Congress, for finally growing a pair and voting for something that will actually save America. Now that this mess has finally been tidied, let’s get back to work!
In respect and gratitude,
Clayton “Bloody” Chiclitz
Chief Executive Officer
Yoyodyne, Inc.
(c) 2011. See disclaimers.