Click Here for Audio Post

I work for Mr. Phipps. He found me on a quiet day. I didn’t expect it. I was walking. No, not walking more like standing in this line. It was for a movie theater. Everyone was staring at me. I squirted ketchup on my hotdog.

“What’s that?” someone asked.

I said it was a hot dog.

“Not that.”

“Ketchup?”

I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. It was just ketchup. Pretty soon this guy pulled me aside, and said I had a real future. That was the first time I thought about my future.

“My future?”

“Yes,” he answered, “with Phipps Inc. where we put the love back into chip.”

He told me he runs a company where a smart guy like me could be put to good use. He said he could tell I probably didn’t do too much. Maybe I had a job as a copy boy or worked in a mailroom somewhere (actually I did work in a mailroom, I was in charge of outgoing packages over 9.2 ounces), but that was small peanuts compared to what he could offer me.

It sounded like a neat deal. He invited me to come to his office after the movie for a tour of the company. It was a pretty nice place. There were security cameras everywhere. It made me feel like I was some kind of spy, especially after the movie we saw. It was an old James Bond re-released for all those dumb fucks that like spy movies. I am not a dumb fuck, but I like spy movies, and I usually figure that most things I like are out of the ordinary, that’s why I say it’s for dumb people. It’s just a way of making me feel better, you know?

Anyway, there were secret codes that Mr. Phipps tried to teach me right away. He said, “Pay attention. I am only going to show you this once.”

I paid attention and he showed me a lot of things. How to walk through the main corridor, show my badge to the guard at the gate, what his favorite pen was, and how to dress for a day’s work. I listened and took notes in a notebook he gave me to write in.

“Remember to write all your ideas in that thing.”

“Okay,” I said.

After I worked there for a month and filled the notebook, Mr. Phipps said it was time I fished with the big boys. He moved me up to the future division on the 33rd floor of the Phipps Inc. Super Building. It was a nice place to work. There were plenty of notebooks to write ideas in, and nobody bothered you because you had these great cubicles where you could process an idea in complete solitude. I only talked to one of the four people that made up the future division. His name was Fifth Wheel. The other two weren’t as friendly as FW (what I called him for short). In fact, according to him, they wouldn’t last long. They spent too much time in the present. And if you wanted to make a difference on the job market of today’s consumer, the future was all an Intoslocheck should be thinking.

FW was right. After three days without an idea on the future, a guard came to move their stuff on the street. At least that’s what he said.

“I am here to move your stuff on the street.”

I tried not to look at the guard. I focused on the future, that’s what counted. The mean people wanted to know on what basis they were being put out. FW told them he reported their work progress to Mr. Phipps, and it didn’t meet the standards of a Phipps Inc. employee. There was a huge incident that followed. Bad words were exchanged and one of the former Intoslochecks was shot in the face.

FW took the whole thing in stride. He said the future was what counted. Think about how many lives you can help with just a slogan, or a better way to vacuum the salt from a pretzel that’s just too salty. (The invention was called The way to get that goddamn salt off my lap, or Slip-o-Matic by FW, only later was it changed to Dustbuster).

“What have you produced in the last month? Not even a slogan,” FW said to the woman that was crying

He had her there. Slogans were the bread and butter of Phipps Inc.. In fact, since I joined the company I have come up with a few: “Squuueeze it easy. Squeeze it fast,” “Oh feel good,” and “Don’t do it without _____” (to be filled in with whatever product the Product Division puts out).

The woman said FW was an asshole. She said she’d report the incident to the police, but she never did. FW shot her in the breast, and that was the end of her.

“There’s no use in having bad press,” FW said.

Soon, after the Phlegmatics cleaned up the muss, and FW informed the police it was self-defense, we went back to work. It was real nice. There were no interruptions. FW didn’t talk to me, and I didn’t talk to him. We just thought about the future.