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Most, if not all, corporate retail and restaurant chains despise the people they
employ and readily go out of their way to treat them like second class
citizens, thieves and something to discard at random like the daily trash. From
pre-employment screening tests designed to gauge one’s propensity to steal, to
invasion of privacy drug testing to degrading searches of personal property
such as purses and backpacks, corporate service industry employers are seldom
shy about displaying their disdain for those they pay the least and often
require the most.

Anyone holding the title of Loss Prevention Officer is little more than a corporate
henchman whose primary job is to find ways for you to lose yours. These
wet-headed turdwads would rather justify their existence watching ten hours of
store video footage during their off hours trying to catch a minimum-wage slave
lift a fifty cent candy bar than actually work in the store during peak times
when the real thieves are likely to come calling.

Few things are as insulting as your employer insisting on rifling through your
personal possessions on your way out the door after completing your shift.
Rather than just coming out and telling you that they neither trust nor respect
you, corporate overlords require their manager lackeys to humiliate and
intimidate mostly hard-working individuals who have no more of an inkling to
steal than they would pissing in their own cereal. Instead of cultivating an
environment of respect and workplace longevity, these quim-eared douchetubs
thrive instead on turnover and impertinence.

Everything in life being optional, it really is up to us whether we choose to accept this
sort of unprovoked denigration any longer or instead respond to it
appropriately. With this in mind, I propose we begin seizing opportunities when
they present themselves and start giving the fucktards exactly what they’re
asking for. If they insist that they are employing thieves, then the time has
come to give them the workforce they expect and deserve.

That’s right. Steal from the fuckers every chance you get. Line your pockets with as
much of their profit margin as you can feasibly get away with. Hit them hard in
the one place they value above anything else – their precious bottom lines. Be
relentless and merciless in telling them through your actions that assholes –
not unlike anyone else – end up getting exactly what they deserve. If these
small-fingered beefsqueezers insist on categorizing you as a thief without
provocation or justification, then I say take the prophecy and fulfill the
motherfucker.

Is stealing immoral? For the most part, yes. However, there’s a 100% chance that
the wage you’re getting paid isn’t full value for the labor you provide relative
to the profit you generate for your employer. While you’re busy worrying about
barely making rent and concocting a diet beyond burgers and fries, I’m guessing
the CEO and/or owner of the corporation you work for is juggling the major
decision of whether to have either Filet Mignon or New York Strip with their
Lobster tonight. So taking money back from these floppy-mouthed weenershavers  isn’t so much stealing as it is redistributing the wages they stole from you in the first place. Remember, corporations factor shrinkage into their budgets annually because they assume everyone they employ is eventually going to steal from them anyway. So not taking the portion of the surplus they’ve already allotted merely allows the company to keep more of the unearned profit they planned for you to have anyway.

It could be as small as a paper clip. It could be a pack of gum here and there, or a dollar or two from the register every shift. Ink pens and coupons are easy targets. One of the easiest and most effective ways to steal from your employer is to not even take anything at all – except time. Milk the clock whenever you can. Stand around and do nothing whenever you can get away with it. Do as little as possible as often as possible. That way, the dickwarts who employ you will have to utilize more labor hours to get less done, meaning more money in the form of wages for everyone.

Of course, this is merely satire and I would never in good conscience genuinely
advocate anyone doing anything illegal which could potentially have severe
legal and social ramifications. I’m absolutely more responsible than that.

Just don’t get fucking caught. And buy something nice every now and then for
yourself or someone else. After all, you’ve worked hard for it.

A TALE OF A SMOKIN’ WORKPLACE

Like a modern day city of Oz in the middle of nowhere, Denver International Airport (DIA) sprang to life in the winter of 1995 with technological promises of automated baggage systems, solar-driven heated runways, underground trains to conveniently transport passengers between terminals and enough retail and culinary diversions to make any layover seem like a casual afternoon spent strolling through your average upscale shopping mall. At a whopping 53 square miles, it was (and still is) the largest airport in the United States with the longest public runway in use. Like Reagan’s mythical city on a hill, it arrived with promises of expediting a Jetson’s-like cartoon universe that any passerby could hitch a ride on and enjoy a little of the future today.

On a whim, I answered a four-line help wanted ad in the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News for an upstart DIA lounge advertising for experienced bartenders. I was looking to jettison myself from a hotel bartending gig that had spiraled downward ever since a corporate remodel transformed it from an upscale business traveler’s lounge into a bargain-based sports bar, effectively cutting my tips in half. To my surprise, I received a phone call two days later inviting me to apply. I showed up, answered a few test questions proving that I essentially knew the difference between a martini and a Manhattan, and was promptly hired on the spot.

The Aviator’s Club had the distinction of being not just the only bar that permitted smoking in the entire airport, but the only area at all where nicotine-addicted passengers could choke down a pre-flight fix. Apparently the airport’s designers had envisioned an Orwellian future where sucking butts was under the Big Brother thumb of controlled obsolescence, so real estate that tolerated cigarette huffing was at a premium. The owners had basically bribed local government officials for the rights to rent this prime square footage, and to help them recoup their exorbitant monthly extortion (rent) they were allowed to enforce a one beverage minimum on anyone who patronized them.

The problem with this scenario was that by the time most of the patrons got to us, they were in the initial stages of nicotine withdrawal from having just spent the last several hours cruising at an altitude of ten thousand feet while strapped in a seat two sizes too small while the screaming baby three rows down serenaded them the entire way as they wolfed down their eight dollar bags of Chex Mix. We’re talking some seriously frayed nerves here. The majority of them had just enough time to deplane, run through the terminal, duck into the bar, stuff a stick into their pieholes just long enough to satisfy their tobacco jones and run out to the next gate hoping they still had enough time to catch their connecting flights.

Unbeknownst to these poor addicted saps, however, was the extortion curveball that was about to be hurled their way. Just as the first draw of succulent smoke was caressing their tar-caked lungs, they found themselves confronted by cocktail waitresses and bartenders not just inquiring about, but demanding to know their beverage of choice. Upon being informed that I’m just here for a quick smoke wasn’t an acceptable response, they were rudely introduced to the concept of the one drink minimum pay to puff. Soft drinks were three dollars and draught beers were eight. Anyone who tried the old I’ll just take a glass of water then scam was charged for a soft drink. The bar would completely fill up in waves with several hundred travelers at a time depending on the flight arrival schedule and then empty just as quickly. This went on throughout the entire day, seven days a week, from six in the morning until ten at night, and it wasn’t long before the Aviator’s Club was the highest-grossing concessionaire in the newly minted jewel of the Rockies.

And the owners weren’t the only ones rolling in the dough. After the dust of opening had settled and we all fell into our collective grooves, it became common for me to leave after an eight hour shift with no less than 300 dollars in my pocket, or damn near 75K annually, which wasn’t bad for slinging beer and soda pop. We soon gained the reputation of being the fastest, baddest, kick-ass crew in the airport, and we started acting like it, too.

The managers – most of them former bartenders themselves – had arrived at the conclusion that the happier they kept us, the more money we’d generate for them. This usually ended up meaning catering to our growing demands for decadence. One manager in particular had a soft spot on his palate for Grand Marnier and required that everyone begin their shift with a three-fingered shot, regardless of the time of day. (Grandma for breakfast, anyone?) This soon spiraled into four-fingered slams every hour, which transported us to a place of alcoholic confidence where we were numb and impervious to anything other than being on stage as bottle-slinging showmen capable of wowing anyone with our presumed disguised inebriation.

Through the alcoholic haze, our antics escalated to the point where we began behaving like miniature big fish in a small pond rock stars. We were making decent money, going through cases of orange-laced cognac a week, and it wasn’t long before we threw sex in the mix to spice things up even more. There was the time a woman from the night cleaning crew walked in on one of the female bartenders and me while we were fucking in the liquor storage room after our shift. The door hit me in the ass when she opened it, she took one look at us and yelped and ran the other way leaving us there to finish our business. There was another time when I was getting a blowjob from a cocktail waitress in her car in the airport parking lot when a cop walked up and tapped on the window, inquiring as to what we were doing. “Officer, I’m merely consoling her over the recent loss of her grandmother,” was the only ridiculousness I could muster. He looked at our uniforms, and in a moment of we all work in the same place kindred spirit told us to wrap it up and went on his way.

Like it always does, the excess eventually took its toll. Even with its touted advanced filtration system, the air in the Aviator’s Club was one constant second-hand nicotine fog from 100% of the people lighting up whenever they passed through. Consequently, after three years of inhaling this tobacco-laced cloud eight hours a day five days a week, my lungs surrendered and began regurgitating unidentifiable chunks whenever I’d wake up in the morning. That, combined with excessive alcoholism and promiscuity brought out the survival mechanism  white flag and, just as abruptly as it had begun, my airport career crashed and burned and I was fortunately able to walk away relatively unscathed.

The Aviator’s Club survives and thrives to this day, no doubt churning through and spitting out variations of me and my cohorts those many years ago. As part of the opening crew, I’m sure our ghosts still rattle through there periodically – or at least the legend in my own mind likes to think so. In retrospect, however, we all did little more than profit off of other people’s addictions. The owners were and continue to be parasitic opportunists with little regard for anything other than navigating the legal loophole that morally elevates them to a full half-step above any professional narcotics dealer. On any given day, we had front row seats to the consequences of addiction as we were cursed out, spat at, ridiculed, got in fistfights with and were berated by mostly normal people who, in their fix-craving states, knew they were being taken advantage of but were powerless to walk away from their unwinnable predicament. They begrudgingly coughed up their cash, which they knew was little more than payola for the privilege of answering the narcotic call. In the end, we were all culpable for maintaining an environment of abuse and sometimes sadism with the sole intent of lining our pockets through the misery of others.

Just like any good capitalist would.