I'm sure that some of you may remember a couple months ago when I contracted some sort of horrible illness that rendered me completely incapable of doing anything other than constantly bitching about working at Staples and typing some conjugation of the word "fuck" an average of three times per sentence.  Basically I subconsciously figured that since I was spending ten to twenty hours a week slowly turning my brain into a disgusting mix of Coke and banana-flavored Slurpee by slaving away at a soul-sucking customer service bitch-job that made me borderline homicidal, I was going to at least do my part to share the misery by giving you long-winded whiny bullshit e/n updates about how much everything sucks oh my god totally feel sorry for me because I require pity and sympathy to perform basic life functions.

Well, a little earlier this week I received a momentous earth-shattering phone call from my manager that probably would have changed my life forever and impacted me in a meaningful way if I wasn't mostly just relieved the he wasn't asking me to come in on short notice.  Luckily, he was just informing me that my fucking status as a "Seasonal Employee" was up at the store and that the three month long contract I signed was now out of date.  Ok, whatever.  This means absolutely nothing to me, especially considering that the holiday season still has a couple of weeks left in it, so what the fuck ever.  Get to the point or stop wasting both of our time because I've got exciting new stories of myth and adventure to type out for a website that nobody reads.  Well, then he tells me that for some strange reason that I will never understand the store has decided not to keep me on the payroll even though I'm a fucking model employee and the pinnacle of all things customer service-related.  My astute boss then uses his firm grasp on the English language to share one final "fuck you" with me in the sort of way that only a dickhead tactless fuckrag manager can do:

"Well, you're not on the schedule this week... so whatever your last day was, I guess that was your last day here."

Now I'm certain that many of your are now asking yourselves, "What the hell do you have to do to get laid off from Staples?" Well besides doing what I did, which was go to work every day and bust your balls for a bunch of ungrateful asshole customers who can't figure out how to operate the automatic doors, you can probably lose your job for taking part in any of the following offenses:

• Blowing Up the Store:

  I'll start this section off my mentioning that I've never actually seen anyone lose their job at Staples despite the fact that one of the bitches that works there does nothing all day except yell at customers, complain about her schedule, give people dirty looks and expectantly point at the telephone when it rings.  Shit, one of the stock guys shows up at least fifteen minutes late every day and has trouble explaining the difference between copier paper and post-it notes because he's completely stoned out of his fucking mind every second that he's awake.  He's been employed there for five years despite the fact that he spends more time twirling around in circles in the break room staring at his hands and microwaving styrofoam cups than he does stocking shelves or being even remotely useful in any way whatsoever.

  So given the amount of stupid bullshit people can get away with I can only assume anything short of utterly destroying the entire store, either on purpose or through sheer force of dumbassery, might not be enough for you to lose your job at Staples.  Now a couple of weeks ago I certainly had plans as to how I would go about doing this, but I figured it really wasn't worth losing that crucial eight dollar an hour second income and/or being faced with the possibly getting thrown in a small non air-conditioned hole by the United States Anti-Terrorist Happy Squad Fun Time Gang (the USATHSFTG).  Unfortunately the other side of this is that since I've lost my job I don't really have all that much incentive to destroy the place, especially because it would really just mean I was lightening the load for the jackasses that work there.  No, my new tactic is to just go in there every single day on my lunch break, ask the same question a million times, buy something and then try to return it without a receipt the following day while complaining to the manager about how I slipped on some loose packing peanuts falling off a ladder and may have fractured every vertebrae in my neck and plan on suing the store and declaring war on Iran.  In other words, the best revenge is just to act like a regular customer.

• Fucking with the Drug Dealers:

  It's a little known fact that 73% of Staples' income comes from drug dealers.  I can't tell you how many times I was working the register when a couple of small-time wannabe gangsta dudes would come up to me with bloodshot eyes, reeking of stale weed and paying for a lockable metal cash box, a money counter, an electric scale and a paper shredder with a thick wad of crumpled, sweaty one dollar bills.  Usually, I would just fuck with them by asking if they needed any non-thermal register tape or if they wanted to apply for an electronic government-issued rebate on their purchase, but I'm pretty sure I'd lose my job if I offered to "forget" to scan a couple of items in exchange for some dank chronic.  Honestly, I can pretty much picture the drug dealers' collective heads exploding when trying to decide between, "do I pretend that nobody with half a neuron knows what all this shit is for" and "do I try to up-sell him to crack".  Either way, Staples would probably fire me for scaring off a major source of company revenue because those types of guys are so skittish that the next time they needed an industrial-grade cocaine measuring device, a nickel-plated forty-five caliber handgun or a giant bong-sized mailing tube they'd be too paranoid to come back to the store where the cashier fucked with them.

"We be takin' our bidness elsewhere, yo."

The title of this section certainly seems like an oxymoron, but I can assure you that it is not. There are plenty out things out there that are more embarrassing and degrading than having a half-retarded high school dropout tell you that you're not good enough to continue working for a crappy office supply store where your primary responsibility is to make sure that your fly is always zipped, and in an effort to make myself feel better I will detail them with a short list.

1. Getting up to accept an Academy Award for "Best Supporting Role in a Gay Porn" but having a really angry midget in a spiked World War I German helmet run up and headbutt you in the crotch for no reason right as you reach the podium, causing you to grab your balls and shout the phrase "funky asslove" on national television in front of millions of viewers and hot actress babes.  Then seeing the replay of it on SportsCenter every hour on the hour for the next two weeks and coming to the realization that you're never going to get laid again in your entire life.

2. Having a journalistic submission rejected by The Boston Herald.

3. Having your idiot friends take a picture of you in your underwear getting hit in the nutsack with a hammer, blow it up to billboard size along with a huge message proclaiming that you unequivocally have the smallest penis in the tri-county area and then posting the completed mega-ad directly across the street from your place of employment.

4. Coming back from the concession stand at a professional sporting event carrying two hot dogs and two beers, beefing it headfirst down the stairs spraining your ankle and spilling beer all over yourself and everyone around you, including the Queen of England.  In your stumbling you reach out to catch the hot dogs before they hit the nasty stadium floor, but end up grabbing the package of some seven-foot tall motherfucker with a "Born to Kill" tattoo on his neck.  Then, while in the midst of receiving the beating of your life you realize the entire ordeal has been broadcast on the JumboTron and then you piss yourself.

5. Having one of your close friends tell you that in the movie about their life your character would be played by either Pauly Shore or RuPaul.

6. Being elected Valedictorian of your school, busting your ass walking up the stairs to accept the award in front of your entire school, crashing into the podium, knocking it into a trio of eighty year-old nuns (possibly killing them), face-planting the parquet floor, sliding the length of the stage and then while you're being helped to your feet by a bishop who would later be defrocked for molesting kids your pants fall down and the entire school realizes you're wearing boxers with kittens on them and the phrase "Don't Open 'Till Xmas" printed in giant red letters.

7. Going to the Warped Tour to see Bad Religion, realizing you're the oldest person there by about ten years, and then realizing that Bad Religion was releasing records before anyone in the audience was even born.

8. Representing the United States at a multi-national peace conference, eating some foreign food and then getting videotaped barfing on the Japanese Prime Minister.

9. Trying to practice your Chinese by asking the hot Asian babe behind the counter at the video store "what's up" in perfect Mandarin only to learn that not only was she was born in Cleveland to Japanese parents, but that you've also accidentally picked up the film, "Hot Asian Ass Fetishes 69" instead of "House of Flying Daggers".

10. Having a super-hot horny babe you've spent your entire life trying to bang walk into your parents' basement and catch you sitting in the dark passed out face-first in a pile of potato chips, Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia and empty beer bottles while the "hands-free" mode of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball is playing on your Xbox.

• Being Broke Bites Ass:

  Ninety bucks a week might not seem like a lot, but you sure notice it when it's gone.  Especially when your better half is still raking in the benefits of minimum wage slavery.  Seriously. 

• The Horrifying Job Search:

  God, searching for a new job sucks.  It's really hard to think of many things more degrading than walking up to the counter at a crappy customer service job and asking for an application while a bunch of jackasses five years younger than you size you up and give you dirty looks.  Then there's the whole filling out the application thing, which is such a total pain in the ass that I feel like I'd be pretty much accomplishing the same thing if I just starting hitting myself in the wrist with a hammer.  Seriously.  If they're not going to take the time to read anything under the "Personal References" or "Awards and Certifications" headers (and they're not), then I shouldn't waste my time cramping my hand up by writing bullshit lies in that space anyways.  I also feel like I'm such an old bastard now that I shouldn't even have to fill out the "Previous Experience" and "Pertinent Skills and Abilities" sections of those shitty form applications because it usually just ends up in some bullshit self-righteous manager saying something to the effect of, "you're a little overqualified for this position" or something.  No shit, fuckburger.  I'm fucking twenty-five years old.  Just give me the damn job so that I can put my bachelor's degree to good use by sweeping out the stock room and getting insulted by the mouth-breathing yokels you guys have for customers.  I mean, who even gives a shit if you have NO experience in that crap?  How much brainpower does it take to understand that when a customer gives you a five dollar bill you hit the "five dollar bill" button on the touch-screen register?  It's so fucking idiot-proof that you could probably train a labrador retriever to do it if you had a lot of time on your hands and seriously nothing better to do.

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