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GenePool
Humor
Open Letter to Human Resources
Dear Human Resources Manager:
I would like to thank you for the informative newsletter your department recently distributed, "How to identify co-workers who are about to go on a shooting rampage." I found it very enlightening.
I am, however, a little concerned about some of the warning signs you identified, insofar as it sounded like you were describing me personally. This is not very unusual. As a six foot tall white male with black hair and glasses, I am forced to hide whenever a sex offender is on the loose in the state, as apparently all sex offenders are also six foot tall white males with black hair and glasses. Sometimes they also drive the same car I do. I remember in high school a very helpful "how to tell if your child is using drugs" handout went to all parents, wherein I was described so well they may as well have included my photo, despite the fact that I was not using drugs in high school, because I couldn't find any. My point is, I am used to being suspected of things, so don't worry about that.
You recommended that employees be on the lookout for signs of irritability, slovenliness, paranoia, and sleeplessness, and to listen for complaints about financial or relationship difficulties. Thus I imagine you fielded a number of calls the other day when I arrived late for work wearing wrinkled clothing, unshaven, with red eyes and a nagging cough, driving my wife's car and complaining that she'd run off to Vegas. You may have also heard that the FBI is monitoring my activities, and that I've been looking into poison gas a lot lately.
Please allow me to explain myself.
To begin with, my wife has indeed left for Vegas. I do, however, expect her to come back. She has not run off with another man, either; she is with her mother, or so I have been led to believe. As you can imagine, this is a source of a great deal of stress for me, as I do not think my wife should ever be allowed within fifty feet of a casino. I learned this in Aruba a few years ago. We went into the casino there-- with fifty dollars apiece-- because neither of us had ever been to a casino before and thought it might be fun. Twenty minutes later I no longer had fifty dollars, and had determined that it was not fun to lose that much money in such a short span of time, and further, that I could think of no activity this side of a blow job that I would willingly spend fifty dollars on for only twenty minutes of entertainment. Conversely, my wife managed to lose eighty dollars in only thirty minutes, having won thirty dollars at some point. Despite ending up with exactly the same amount of money-- none-- that I had, she enjoyed the experience very much. I therefore suspect having my wife in Las Vegas with any of my money is a little like asking Robert Downey Jr. to hang onto my coke stash.
But this anxiety should not concern you very much, as I have no money for her to spend. I also have no coke stash, which is why Robert Downey Jr. does not return my calls.
My red eyes are because nature is trying to kill me. You may recall that last week the local temperature shot up suddenly to eighty-five degrees. This caused every plant in the commonwealth to produce pollen in such quantities you would have thought they were on shore leave. Thus, allergies, not sleep deprivation or the aforementioned nonexistent coke stash are the reason my eyes are red.
I do have wrinkled clothing. Yes, I know how to wash and dry my own clothes, and furthermore, I am usually the one responsible for doing so even when my wife is not in Vegas. However, I do not fold. Right now my back hallway is almost completely impassable, because every clean article of clothing, every towel, half the bed sheets, and two or three blankets, are all piled up beside, in front of, and on top of the dryer. This makes walking the dog to the back yard a major challenge, as I'm sure you can imagine. I've taken to diving to the top of the mound, tucking into a roll, and hoping I get my feet under me again before I hit the staircase on the other side. (The dog digs through the mound.) Every morning, the kids and I wake up-- late, because my wife is always the one getting us out of bed-- and head for the back hallway to attempt to assemble a wardrobe. This takes some time, as I am sure you understand, and it is why I have been late every day this week. Some days I do not even have time to shave. However, perusing your dress code requirements, I noted that facial hair is permitted, so please consider my unshaven face an attempt to grow a beard.
Not having my wife around gives me the opportunity to drive her car to work each day, which is very good as I have just about had it with my own vehicle. As you may already know I drive a 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted. Right now it has a non-functioning passenger side door, a disconnected dome light (because the non-functioning door was also failing to apply adequate pressure to the little button that turns the dome light off,) a non-functioning radio, and a non-functioning driver's side seat. I've been propping up the driver's seat with the ice scraper for a month now, which works fine except it only inclines the back about three quarters of the way. It also slips sometimes, suddenly dropping me entirely out of view of the roadway, and it's a toss-up right now as to whether that will kill me before being impaled by the ice scraper does. I could get the chair fixed for what would be now the fourth time, but I am determined to not pour any money into this car. So it's sitting in the garage this week, internally hemorrhaging, while I try to figure out ways to afford a new car without any actual money.
As for the FBI's concerns, I do admit that I am trying to figure out how to make poison gas to kill large numbers of people. I'm not planning to actually do it, but I do have a character in this novel I've been working on that wants to kill large numbers of people, and since he is fictional, I have to do all the work for him. Right now the results are mixed. It turns out chlorine gas is very easy to make but not terribly lethal unless you hang around it for a few minutes and take a lot of deep breaths. Sarin gas sounds just wonderful, except to make it you need this compound called methylphosphonyl difluoride, which is an utterly useless substance unless your only plan is to kill large numbers of people. I spent several days asking people about commercial uses of methylphosphonyl difluoride, and when that didn't work I asked if anyone knew how to synthesize it. Given that my search for chlorine gas immediately yielded five sites that could give me a very precise recipe, I figured this would be a cinch, but apparently the internet recently developed morals without notifying anybody. I even asked other humor writers, but they didn't know either, although one did recommend, and I quote "Geez, Gene, why don't you just shoot her?" Ultimately, I didn't get the answer I wanted and now I'm under very close surveillance.
So just to recap, I've been late for work because the only person in the house who could wake me in the morning is my wife, who is in Vegas this week, which is why I'm driving her car. She will be back on Friday, hopefully to fold clothes, and perhaps provide me with some advice on how to synthesize methylphosphonyl difluoride so that I can stop asking total strangers who are probably undercover FBI agents in a domestic terrorism sting operation. My eyes are red because of allergies, and not because me and Robert Downey Jr. polished off the coke stash that I do not have last night. I didn't shave because I didn't have time.
I am, however, paranoid, so I do hope this letter has alleviated your concerns.
Sincerely,
Gene Doucette
© 2001, Gene Doucette
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