The employee sat in her cubicle. She was thirty-six weeks pregnant. Her water broke. It soaked through her one hundred dollar executive chair. She screamed for assistance while entering sales figures into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Two of her co-workers entered her cubicle, hoisted her onto her desk, pulled up her skirt, pulled down her panties, forced her legs apart, said, “Push.” The employee pushed. A baby slid out of her uterus. One of the co-workers cut the umbilical cord with a letter opener. The employee glanced at her child and went back to completing her spread sheet. Upon finishing, she lowered her shirt to feed the newborn. While the child drank, she stuffed envelopes with copies of MegaCorp’s quarterly report, sealed them, and attached mailing labels with the addresses of the company’s shareholders. After the child finished his meal, he crawled around the small enclosure of space assigned to the employee and giggled. He said, “synergy.” Delighted, the employee sent an interoffice memo regarding her child’s first word. The employee’s phone rang and she answered it. The child stood up and walked from the employee’s desk to the partition that separated her cubicle from her neighbor’s cubicle. He slammed into the partition, fell down, wailed. The employee put her left hand over her phone’s mouthpiece. “I’m on an important call. Can you please be quiet?” The child stopped wailing. He opened the employee’s file cabinet. While putting the files in alphabetical order, he grew three feet and advanced from babyhood to boyhood. When he began to suffer from acne, the employee decided it was time for him to be a more useful member of MegaCorp and deliver mail throughout the building. Sullenly, he dropped off letters and packages to a bunch of losers in ill-fitting suits and women who were so ugly they made him want to crawl back into the employee’s womb. After he went through a major attitude adjustment, the employee stopped referring to him as “son” and started referring to him as her “administrative assistant.” He made coffee, answered the phone, took dictation, complimented her style of dress. One day, the employee clutched her heart after landing a big account and suffered a massive coronary. The employee’s co-workers shambled into her cubicle and squeezed together into its limited space to have a tasteful service in the employee’s memory. After the co-workers left with the employee in her casket, the son logged into his mother’s computer and sent a company-wide email expressing his appreciation for the wonderful opportunity his new position had given him.
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