Tag Archives: loyalty

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Coup De Grace Comedy

One day a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw a guy eating grass. He told the driver to stop. He got out and asked him, “Why are you eating grass?”

The man replied, “I’m so poor, I cannot afford anything to eat.”

So the layer said, “Poor guy, come back to my house.”

The guys say, “I have a wife and three kids.” The lawyer told him to bring them along.

When they were all in the car, the poor man said, “Thanks for taking us back to your house; it is so kind of you.”

The lawyer replied, “You’re going to love it there … the grass is a foot tall!”

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(Remember, folks, HR is not your friend.)

Once management wants you fired, you’ll be fired!

A king had 10 wild ferocious dogs. He used them to torture and kill any minister that misguided him. A minister once gave an opinion which was wrong and which the king didn’t like at all. So he ordered that the minister to be thrown to the dogs.

The minister said, “I have served you loyally for 10 years and you do this?”

The king was unrelenting.

Minister pleaded, “Please give me 10 days before you throw me to the dogs.”

The king agreed. In those 10 days the minister went to the keeper of the dogs and told him he wanted to serve the dogs for the next 10 days.

The guard was baffled, but he agreed. So the minister started feeding the dogs, caring for them, washing them, and providing all sorts of comfort for them. So when the 10 days were up. The king ordered that the minister be thrown to the dogs as sentenced.

When he was thrown in, everyone was amazed at what they saw. The dogs were wagging their tails playing with the condemned minister, licking his feet.

The king was baffled at what he saw. “What happened to the dogs?!!!” he growled.

The minister then said, “I served the dogs for only 10 days and they didn’t forget my service. I served you for 10 years and you forgot all, at the first mistake!”

The King realized his mistake and replaced the dogs with crocodiles!

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’24 A To Z Challenge – E

I don’t mean to poke you, or put too fine a point on it but, the épée, also rendered as epee in English, is the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in the sport of fencing.  The blade of a standard adult epee is 35 inches (.899 m, for those who wish to get stabbed in metric) – 4 inches shorter than my rapier – and that’s not a sexting joke.

All evasion and egotistic self-promotion aside, I wish to present you with a lovely word, well past its prime, and rendered technologically obsolete

EPOPEE

Epic literature, particularly poetry – from the French – ėpopėe

In the classical past, they needed a word to describe the likes of War and Peace, a 900-page Russian saga whose first 150 pages are just the cast of characters, and their blood and married relationships to each other.  It represents an epic poem titled, Casablanca, which begins, “The boy stood on the burning deck.”  Some discussion occurred among scholars, about whether it represented faith and loyalty, or was a critique of blind obedience to social norms and morės.

It epitomizes the least favorite piece of literature that I ever studied, the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a grueling gauntlet of words, stretching over 145 stanzas, 7 chapters, and 19 pages – all to showcase the loneliness, and aloneness of long-voyage sailors.

People had the time to write these sagas, and read them, and discuss them.    All that changed when the Bluescreenitis plague ravaged the world, reducing intellect and attention spans to nil, and short-span Tik-Tok videos, and Instagram posts of a plateful of pork and beans became the norm.   😮

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’21 A To Z Challenge – C

(The un-named) They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I say that some curiosity, mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism, and cynicism, can prevent you from becoming a manipulator’s cat’s-paw.

I once worked as a Purchasing Agent for a Bernie Madoff-wannabe owner of a small business – a little metal stamping shop with 25 plant employees.  He apparently had dreams of more and larger automotive contracts, a bigger plant, and 250 employees – or 2500…. Or 25,000!  😯

He had loyalty and honesty only for himself and his company, and no commercial morality.  Management staff were told not to ever allow any barricades to his business – “over, under, through or around.  Don’t come to me with problems!  Come to me with solutions.  Rules are for fools.”

I hired a young man in his early 20s, as a Production Control Clerk.  He was getting married, and he asked the company President for a mere two days off, for an abbreviated honeymoon.  The boss gave him an extended lecture about how he should not even get married.  He should reserve his time and energy for the company.

The Boss was on his second wife.  I don’t know why they bothered to marry – social propriety??!  He put in 12-hour weekdays, often 8-hour Saturdays, and sometimes came in on Sunday.  I don’t know if they ever dined together.  She was a Middle Manager, putting in lots of hours herself, and had girlfriends and hobbies.  He had…. the company – and a disturbing habit of drinking in his office at the end of workday.  He often chivvied me and other staff to remain and keep him and his booze company.  😦

Back in 1982, debit cards didn’t exist, and credit cards weren’t common.  One day he asked me if I had a credit card.  I answered, yes.  “Well, you should get yourself another one.”  Why??!  “So that, when I tell you to buy something for the company, you can keep the charges separate.”

He was already paying 30-day invoices at 120 days.  He expected me to use a personal card to purchase company supplies??!  What assurance was there that I would ever be reimbursed?  I quietly declined to get sucked in.

One day, he wisely decided to computerize the entire office system. (Yes, there was a time when computers weren’t everywhere.)  He hired a tech-nerd who could do the job.  Coincidentally, the guy just happened to have experience in the Purchasing field.

He interrogated other office staff, but, for three weeks he spent a lot of time with me, finding how I had set up my process.  Finally, the boss came to me and said, “Business is slow right now.  You’ve got your paperwork well-organized.  If I give him some assistance, Roscoe and I can handle it.  I’m scheduling your hours to zero for now.  You don’t need to come in.

I never even got fired.  He just stopped paying me.  Losing any job and its income can be quite traumatic, but I was actually (eventually) happy not to be employed at this one, when the police, or the bankruptcy bailiffs, showed up.  Rules are for fools eventually killed him, when he violated flight regulations and splashed a rented 4-seater all over a friend’s pasture.

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’20 A To Z Challenge – V

How can we miss you, if you won’t go away?

I hope, by the time I publish this, that the gunfire has died down, the fires are out, the smoke has cleared, all the Biden inauguration rioters protesters have been arrested, and Nancy Pelosi’s lectern has been returned – again.

This polar expedition into American politics is brought to you by the words

VAPID

Flavorless, tiresome, prosaic

VACUOUS

Lacking ideas or intelligence, empty, stupid, inane
– and

VAINGLORIOUS

Boastful or vain, ostentatious

I borrowed them from the Kardshians, to give to Donald (Here’s your hat – What’s your hurry) Trump, as a going away present.  Twenty years of Keeping Up With them produced less damage to the American culture than four years with him.  He didn’t even have enough class to attend his own going-away party, but snuck away to Mar-a-Lago, like the phoney Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.  He would not accept the inevitable, and step aside with grace and dignity.  How a man plays the game says a lot about his character, but how he loses says it all.

I wonder who wound him up and set him loose on the unsuspecting public.  Perhaps he is a self-made megalomaniac.  At least when George W. Bush’s lips moved, you could see Dick Cheney’s hand stuck up his ass.

Speaking of an ass…. There’s another word I’d like to pin on this donkey as hee-haw sulks off into the sunset.

VINDICTIVE

He is so full of ego – and other substances – that he really thinks that the entire American population idolizes him.  He truly believes that someone – somehow – stole the election, and the second term, from him.  He has loyalty only to himself.  Anyone of his political confederates who fails to completely and immediately agree with him, gets tossed under the bus.  In fact, he’ll drive the bus.  We couldn’t hear it, inside the White House, but he brought his trademarked phrase – You’re Fired – with him.  He ruined more political careers than compulsory lie-detector tests.

Words beginning with the letter V are not much more common than X, Y, or Z.  I’ve used so many to roast Trump with, that next year, we may have to drop in at The Stag Shop, and purchase a Vibrator.   😉

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Flash Fiction #225

Retirement

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E.Ayr

ONE-WAY STREET

He gave his life to the company, or would have, if they’d let him. He joined when he was 45, and planned to retire with a full 20-year pension, just as he turned 65. Things didn’t work out.

Once upon a time, manufacturing companies made things. Nowadays, corporations made PROFITS, at all costs. 2-1/2 years before his official retirement, his plant was declared –not unprofitable – merely superfluous.

He and 450 of his co-workers were unceremoniously dumped, like so much trash, desperately searching for employment, while the Vice-President in Charge of Expense-Cutting took a two million-dollar bonus. So much for loyalty. 😦 😯

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story

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