A Fictional Survey by an Unreliable Worker at a Made-Up Company

We at__________would like to express our appreciation for your hard work and dedication. As part of our efforts to attain the GREAT PLACE TO WORK® certification, we invite you to answer the following questions:

What are your favorite aspects of the job?

• The kitchen that is bigger than my apartment. The espresso maker that costs more than my rent.
• The half-and-half elf.
• The main switchboard elf.
• Working with words for a living because I actually suck at everything else.
• The gratification I feel when I type on the company-wide instant message app, and five seconds later hear 25 people bust out laughing at my perfectly-timed joke about gay firemen.
• My modesty and humility.

What are your least favorite aspects of the job:

• The brand-new, 2012-era interior decorating scheme inhibits my output sex drive creativity.
• I am literally the only single person in the entire office. I’m not sad. You’re sad.
• Walking by my headshot every time I have to take a piss.
• The office Shih Tzu that doesn’t like to be looked at or touched. A dog that doesn’t like to be looked at or touched is a cat. Nobody told me we could bring cats to work.
• The cat’s owner, who regularly rushes out of the corner office to go on high-decibel, company-wide rants that I suspect are fully funded by Fox News.

What are the most humorous aspects of the job?

• The rich, white, straight Boss/ Fox News Anchor screaming at us that everyone in this country is treated exactly the same, i.e. everyone gets the same breaks in life regardless of color, gender, orientation, class, etc.
• The young blonde intern who just started, i.e. the boss’ daughter.
• You can be fired for being gay in 29 states. Evicted from your apartment in 31.
• Transgenders/military, gays/religious objections of healthcare workers, etc. etc.
• Since I had to leave my last job because of a co-worker who sent gay slur texts about me to other co-workers—a  woman who once said she could never vote for anyone with the same genitalia as her own, and since I went to HR, and since that kicked off a months-long ordeal that ultimately led to our union protecting her job, and since I ended up feeling weirdly guilty about the whole thing, and since I’ve been at this new job for two months, and since 24 out of 25 people laugh at my gay firemen jokes, I feel obligated, out of self-preservation, to find the above soul-crushing humorous.
• When people tell me that Western Massachusetts is super progressive.
• Wayne in graphic design’s novelty ties are actually surprisingly funny.

We thank you for your contributions, and feel confident that they will help us attain the GREAT PLACE TO WORK® certification.  Now that your 15-minute break is over, we invite you to resume your work, back in your windowless cubicle over by the copier, underneath the “Don’t count the days, make the days count” inspirational quote.