Let's Pretend This Never Happened (17 page)

Dear Victor:
The cat and I are leaving you. You can have the dog. Also, I’ve decided not to go get Post-it notes after all, because I’m no longer speaking with you, so I’m just writing this on your hand towel. You will never hear from me again.

Dear Victor:
The dog started whining when I told him he had to stay with you, so I’m taking him too.

Dear Victor:
Yes, actually I
was
holding a bag of dog treats when I told him he had to stay with you, but I don’t think that had anything to do with his reaction. Also, we’re running out of dish towels, so this will be my last message to you.

Dear Victor:
Okay. Fine. You can have the dog. I tried to put him in the car and he peed on me.
You two deserve each other.
I am writing this on the dog because it seemed fitting. Also I couldn’t find packing peanuts for the booze, so I just drank it all. YOU WILL MISS ME SO MUCH ONCE I’M SOBER ENOUGH TO WAKE UP AND DRIVE AWAY.

Dear Victor:
Wow. That . . .
really
got out of hand. I’m sending this cat in as a peace offering. I forgive you for all the stuff you wrote on the walls about my sister, and I’m going to just ignore all the stuff you wrote about my “giant ass” (turn cat over for rest) because I love you and you need me. Who else loves you enough to send you notes written on cats? Nobody, that’s who. Also, I stapled a picture of us from our wedding day to the cat’s left leg. Don’t we look happy? We can be that way again. Just stop leaving wet towels on the floor. That’s all I ask. I’m low-maintenance that way. Also, this cat needs to go on a diet. I shouldn’t be able to write this much on a cat and still have room left over.

Epilogue:
Victor forgave me and we all lived happily ever after, except for the cat, who had to have his leg amputated, but that was less from the infection and more from his poor circulation because he was so fat. He kind of brought it on himself too. But now he’s less fat. By, like, a whole leg.

(Disclaimer: Most of this chapter was exaggerated, except for the part where Victor left a wet towel on the floor. That shit totally happened. I’m still working through it.)

The Dark and Disturbing Secrets HR Doesn’t Want You to Know

I worked in human resources for almost fifteen years at a number of different companies, including a religious-based organization where one of my duties was to teach people how to be appropriate and professional. Yes, I do see the irony in this.

Human resources is the place where people come to complain and/or shoot people when they just can’t take it anymore. Choosing to work in HR is like choosing to work in the complaint department of hell, except way more frustrating, because at least in hell you’d be able to agree that that Satan is a real dick-wagon without having to toe the company line. The HR department is the place where people stop by to say, “THIS IS TOTALLY FUCKED UP,” and the HR employees will nod thoughtfully and professionally as they think to themselves,
“Wow. That is totally fucked up. I wish that this person would leave so I could tell everyone else in the office about it.”

When I was in HR, if someone came to me about a really fucked-up problem, I’d excuse myself and bring in a coworker to take notes, and the employee would relax a bit, thinking,
“Finally, people are taking me seriously around here,”
but usually we do that only so that when you leave we can have a second opinion about how insane that whole conversation was.
“Was that shit as crazy as I thought it was?” I would ask afterward. It always was. Sadly, HR has very little power in an organization, unless the real executives are on vacation, and then watch out, because a lot of assholes are going to get fired.

There are three types of people who choose a career in HR: sadistic assholes who were probably all tattletales in school, empathetic (and soon-to-be-disillusioned) idealists who think they can make a difference in the lives of others, and those who of us who stick around because it gives you the best view of all the most entertaining train wrecks happening in the rest of the company.

People who aren’t in HR always assume that people who are in HR are the biggest prudes and assholes, since HR is ostensibly
¹
there to make sure everyone follows the rules, but people fail to realize that HR is the only department actively paid to look at porn. Sure, it’s under the guise of “reviewing all Internet history to make sure
other
people aren’t looking at porn,” but people are always looking at porn, and so we have to look at it too so that we can print it out for the investigation. This is also the reason why HR always has color printers, and why no one else is allowed to use them. Because we can’t remember to pick up all the porn we just copied. This is just one of many secrets the HR department doesn’t want you to know, and after sharing these secrets I will probably be blackballed from the Human Resources Alliance, which is much like the Magicians’ Alliance (in that I don’t belong to either, since I never get invited to join clubs, and that I’m not actually sure that either of them exist). Regardless, almost immediately after starting work in HR, I started keeping a journal about all the fantastically fucked-up stuff that people who aren’t in HR would never believe. These are a few of those stories:

Last month we decided to start keeping a file of the most horrific job applications handed in so that we’d have something to laugh at when the work got to us. We now officially have twice as many applications in the “Never-hire-these-people-unless-we-find-out-that-we’re-all-getting-fired-next-week”
file than we have in the “These-people-are-qualified-for-a-job” file. What’s the word for when something that started out being funny ends up depressing the hell out of you? Insert that word here.

Today a woman came in to reapply for a job. She wrote that she’d quit last month but now wanted her job back. On “reason for leaving” she wrote: “That job sucked. Plus, my supervisor was a douche-nugget.” She was reapplying for the exact same job. I rehired her and reassigned her to her old supervisor, because I totally agreed with her. That guy was totally a douche-nugget.

In the last two months, six separate men filled in the “sex” blank on their job application with some variation of “Depends on who’s offering.” Two answered, “Yes, please,” and one wrote, “No, thank you.” I hired the last one because he seemed polite.

This afternoon an applicant wrote that she’d been fired from her job at a gas station for sleeping on a cat. Everyone in the office read the application, but none of us could agree on what the hell she was talking about, so we brought her in for an interview. When I asked her about falling asleep on her cat she looked at me and indignantly replied, “What? I never wrote that.” Then when I showed her the application she said, “Car. My boss found out I was sleeping on a car. Duh. Why would my boss care if I slept on a cat?”

“Um . . . why would your boss care if you slept on a car?” I asked.

“Because I was the only person working that shift. But I totally would’ve heard if anyone had driven up. I’m a very light sleeper. It’s not like I didn’t have a plan.”

The lesson here is that sometimes you get brought in for an interview just to settle a bet.

Today I interviewed someone who handed me a résumé saying that he’d worked at Helping Hand-Jobs. I choked on my own spit and couldn’t stop coughing. Later I showed it to the interviewer in the next office. She told me that her brother had worked there once but had quit because all the manual labor had given him heatstroke. After I started coughing again she realized my confusion and explained that it was actually named Helping-Hand Jobs and was a handyman service. Never underestimate the power of punctuation, people.