Humancorp Incorporated
by Andrew Stanek
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--Andrew Stanek
Prologue
Money is everywhere in modern society. Every waking moment of our lives, plus a pretty good chunk of the sleeping ones, are influenced by money. If you need proof of the centrality and primacy of cash in our affairs, you need look no further than this book itself. Just to buy this book, you have to pay me, or may have already paid me, $0.99 (or 99 subunits of your finest local currency, like euros or pounds or Swiss francs or whatever). Think about it! One press of a button will enter you into a monetary relationship with me, an author quite possibly on the opposite end of the Earth, or at least it would if I were real. (I’m not, by the way; I’m completely imaginary. You’ve just had too much stress and are hallucinating all this, but if I were real, you could very easily buy this book from me in exchange for money.)
Yes, opportunities to make or spend money completely pervade our existences. It’s gotten to the point that the amount of money you have is one of the most important numbers in your life. Your bank account balance and the amount of currency in your wallet have supplanted the other critical numbers that used to dominate our days and lives, like your age, or the number of people you’ve killed, or the number of spouses you have. These things are now totally irrelevant, because economic considerations have overwhelmed them all. If you have enough money, no one is the least bit concerned with how old or murderous or polygamous you are because you can pay people to not care! This is all for very good reason, of course. Money is important because everything in the entire world is for sale. From basic food stuffs to rocket rides into outer space, you can buy literally everything. Lifestyle, comfort, entertainment, food, shelter, satirical e-books, and the powerful weaponry you will need to defend them from the rabble who jealously covet them can all be yours for the right price - and each and every one of these things, especially the weaponry, will be sold to you by a merchant who himself or herself is selling them for the sole purpose of making money. This tradesman probably himself purchased it from a craftsman, who only sold it to him for cash, and the craftsman made it out of raw materials from a producer who wanted moolah in exchange, and the producer mined or grew those raw materials with tools from a factory that were swapped for dough, and on and on down the line. The consequence is that everyone in the entire world is constantly in contact with money.
Economics is of such colossal importance that it’s even trumped social, language, and national barriers. Even if you go to some country in an obscure corner of Central Asia or the Pacific or Africa where you’ve never been before and you are totally unfamiliar with local customs and ways, you can still buy things! You can walk right up to a street vendor, and without knowing anything about the country, very successfully buy goods or services from such a vendor by waving denominations of hard currency at him until he snatches them from you. Amazingly, you can do this even if he doesn’t speak a word of English (or whatever languages you speak, although I hope you speak English. You’re going to have a pretty difficult time reading the remainder of this book if you don’t because I’m, like, 40% sure that I mostly wrote it in English from here on out.)
In fact, the money thing is now so out of hand that people structure their entire lives around it. Owing to some people’s inexplicably strong preference to not starve to death in extreme poverty, a handful of radicals have gone to the reckless extreme of finding gainful employment. With these jobs firmly in hand, these Jacobin revolutionaries bizarrely and catastrophically spend their days doing things that their ancestors of a few thousand years ago never dreamed of, like sitting in offices and typing at computers and not warring with each other for resources and fun. Such people now live by the clock. They get up in the morning, day in, day out, and go to the office, or the station, or the store, and type and wear suits and attend meetings for hours, and in exchange they are given incremental increases to their bank accounts in monthly installments. Putting it another way, they are paid for unhappy drudgery. And this, society would have us believe, is how the world is supposed to work. You do a job and you get paid, and that’s how you make money and sustain yourself, and millions of people thus have jobs they don’t like.
But despite their relentless toil, there’s something not quite right about all this, because the people who have signed up for this suspicious and possibly fraudulent work-money scheme aren’t actually the ones who have all the money. Instead, we live in a world where the world’s eight richest men (and they are all men) have as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest. Some may insist that this is simply a failure of these poor people to buckle down and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and granted, in many cases it might well be - but in a lot of these 3.5 billion or more cases, their bootstraps just aren’t that strong, or they don’t have bootstraps, because they never owned boots to begin with.
So there must be more to it. There must be something that separates humankind into a handful of incredibly wealthy and successful elites while the rest are seemingly condemned to difficult lives of daily toil from which they cannot escape. Some factor must separate the haves from the have-nots; something must account for this massive difference in wealth. It’s certainly not hard work. Anyone who’s ever been to a Bangladeshi sweatshop can testify that you’re not likely to have ever put in more sheer elbow grease than some of the world’s poorest people. Nor is it education or violence or location or the lead that you definitely have in the paint in your walls or any of the other large number of social factors that crazed activists like me have put forward as possible explanations. But there must be something!
And that brings us to the subject of corporations - one corporation in particular. This corporation is responsible for all the world’s wealth and poverty, and all the tedious, absurd, meaningless, frustrating, and profitable jobs in the entire world.
By the way, I feel I ought to mention that if you’ve chuckled or at least experienced amusement by now, this book is probably for you. If not, sorry, but my sense of humor probably doesn’t line up with yours. Of course, because of this whole money thing we’ve been talking about, I still want you to buy the book, but don’t worry, I’ll let you off easy. Go ahead and buy it, but you don’t have to read it.
Anyway, this is a story about a corporation. This corporation is the biggest, evilest, most profitable corporation that you’ve never heard of: Humancorp Incorporated. Cunningly, this is why I entitled the book “Humancorp Incorporated.” Imagine if I entitled it something like “Standard Igloos” by mistake and the book turned out to be about Humancorp Incorporated. Very embarrassing. I’m glad I was clever enough to dodge that bullet, because Humancorp is crucial to the narrative. Humancorp makes everything, but one particular part of that everything is so shockingly, spectacularly, splendiferously important that without it life, money, and office jobs as we know them simply would not exist, and I mean that quite literally.
This is also a story about a man. His name is Sean Gregory Woods. There’s nothing really special about him. He’s no better than you, and certainly a lot worse than me. Sean doesn’t work for Humancorp. In fact, he’s never even heard of Humancorp Incorporated. Instead, he works in a small, boring office, doing a small, boring office job that he’s not very good at. The only thing that makes him noteworthy is that, due to various flaws of his, he’s the absolute worst employee in the entire world. His day is going pretty much the way you’d expect.
I say that because he’s about to get fired.
Chapter 1
“So what’s this summary termin
ation meeting about?” Sean said with a big smile as he walked into his boss’ office. His boss looked up from behind his desk and frowned. Sean smiled haplessly back.
Sean Gregory Woods was an unremarkable man, a quality that often helped him evade law enforcement as he escaped the scenes of his various crimes. He was of middling height and middling weight, and had dull brown hair, often in disarray, and uninspired eyes of about the same shade of brown. Right now, Sean was wearing a grubby patchwork gray jacket over a much nicer pressed white shirt with a stiff collar, without a tie. Either Sean or the grubby jacket - it was difficult to tell which - emitted a faintly unpleasant odor, which tended to permeate and seep into a room over time once he’d entered it. A little golden pin, of which Sean was very proud, was affixed to his collar. Although he’d had relationships before, Sean currently lived alone, because none of the previous women he’d loved or pets he’d kept could stand him, and had left him. This made Sean feel a little lonely. Nevertheless, he was often smiling, since he’d discovered people found his presence much more bearable if he did, and despite his various flaws he did often genuinely mean well.
The other man in the room, Sean’s boss, did not mean well. Sean’s boss’ name was Clarence Pittward. Clarence Pittward was an extremely large man who could just barely squeeze into his extra-wide chair and his dark suit jacket. He was squat and his arms were beefy, and he could often be seen sitting behind his desk with his thick, clubbed fingers clasped together, looking contemplative. He wore a crimson tie with dark spots on it. The red tones of the tie were just slightly too loud, but no one could do anything about it, because Clarence Pittward was in charge around here, and he was damn well going to wear whatever tie he wanted.
Unfortunately, Clarence did not like his job. His job mainly consisted of sending and receiving emails and sitting in meetings. He was very good at all these things, and thanks to his immense skill in the area of attending meetings, he had become very fat. While he had a passion for donuts, the greatest love of Clarence’s life was cookies. He wasn’t married, but his dream woman was a cookie, or failing that, a woman who would feed him cookies. Clarence had never met a woman who lived up to this strict and exacting high standard of excellence. Also, Clarence owned a goldfish, for which he had great affection. During the day, he kept the goldfish in a tank in his office, then took it home every night, so it could be with him all the time. No one was quite sure why he did this, since the goldfish didn’t provide him with many cookies, but then you can’t expect too much of a goldfish.
Clarence was also a consummate professional and a company man who had worked in his present job for many years. For right now, Clarence was Sean’s manager, although he wasn’t going to be for very long, because as has been mentioned, Sean was about to get fired.
Sean gave Clarence a big, friendly smile as he sank down into a chair on the opposite side of Clarence’s desk, just to the side of the goldfish tank. Clarence clasped his clubbed hands and did not smile back.
“We are here to discuss your summary termination for cause from this company,” Clarence said, coughing slightly as he spoke. “That means we’re going to fire you.”
“That’s fine as long as you keep paying me,” Sean said, grinning.
“We won’t,” Clarence said.
That was a bit of a let down for Sean, whose smile dropped somewhat. He felt he needed a little pick-me-up and reached into his jacket pocket for his steel hip flask, which he fished out and took a swig from.
Clarence took a dim view of this, frowning at him from across the desk.
“Company policy requires me to review with you the reasons for your termination before we actually, physically throw you out of the building,” said Clarence. “If you have anything to say in your own defense before we do, now is the time to say it. Now, the cause of your termination...”
Reaching down under his desk, Clarence produced a huge file the size of several large encyclopedias and plopped it down onto his desk with a bass thump that caused the floor to rock a little.
“Where to begin?” Clarence murmured. “We might as well take it chronologically. Going back to the very beginning, we discovered several inaccuracies in your original job application to the company.”
He drew out of the file a form that appeared to have been filled out in crayon, which he slapped with his knuckles. The name, “Sean Gregory Woods,” was scrawled almost illegibly across the top.
“What sorts of inaccuracies?” Sean asked curiously between swigs from his flask.
“Well, for example, you applied as an affirmative action hire on the grounds that you’re part Pawnee Native American, part extinct dodo bird.”
“I think I can bring diversity to the workplace by offering dodos’ perspectives on things,” Sean said, smiling. “Like laying our eggs away from monkeys. That’s why I keep putting eggs in your desk! Wait, there aren’t any monkeys in your desk, are there?”
“No,” said Clarence.
“Oh, good,” Sean said, and relaxed a little.
Clarence continued running his finger down the job application.
“You also requested preferential treatment in our employment process because you claimed to be a veteran of sixteen foreign wars, including the War in Afghanistan, but we called the military and they said they had no record of you.”
“Well, I fought for Al Qaeda,” Sean explained.
“Actually, we called them too...” Clarence said. “They say they’ve never heard of you.”
“Are you saying you believe Al Qaeda more than you believe me?” Sean demanded. “What are you, a terrorist?”
Clarence ignored this and continued on down the line.
“All of the phone numbers you listed for your references were later found to redirect to your home voice mailbox.”
“Simple misunderstanding,” said Sean. “All my previous employers live at my house.”
“You live alone,” said an unimpressed Clarence, clasping his clubbed hands again.
“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m lying,” Sean said, tapping his fingers forcefully against the desk to make the point. “I could be crazy.”
“You claimed to have a BA in English from Yale, but similarly, you do not appear in their records, and in this blank you stated that you have 18 years’ experience in this industry, but you’re only 24 years old.”
“The best start young,” Sean said enthusiastically.
“Also on your original job application, I note you misspelled your own name-”
“That’s an easy mistake to make,” said Sean. “You can’t fire me just for that!”
“And in the blank below where we asked you to sign to attest that all of the information you gave was accurate and correct, you just wrote ‘ha ha suckers.’”
“It’s my Indian name,” Sean said. “In the language of, uh, what Indian tribe did I say I was from again?”
“Pawnee.”
“Right, in that,” Sean said.
Clarence coughed. He has a bad cough from the pneumonia he got eating too many cookies provided by his goldfish. They were a bit soggy.
“Any of these infractions of corporate rules pertaining to our applications would be grounds for termination, but we also have documented a number of other incidents during your actual employment here,” Clarence continued with remarkable dignity for a man who ate out of a goldfish tank. “Let’s again go chronologically. You’ve consistently refused to dress professionally.”
Sean looked down at his own front, noting his neatly pressed collar and slacks.
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Sean demanded.
“You’re not wearing a tie, your shirt’s untucked, and your hair’s not combed, and I haven’t even mentioned your jacket yet.”
“I like this jacket,” Sean said defensively, running his hands along the patchwork seams of the shabby garment.
“It smells, and it looks like a homeless man gave it to you,” said Clarence.
“I
wouldn’t say ‘gave,’” said Sean.
“Moving on,” Clarence said. “You’ve never once been to work on time.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Sean jumped in quickly. “You see, the problem is that my car doesn’t exist. Also, I don’t know what time zone we’re in.”
“You were caught sleeping at work on multiple occasions.”
“Never,” Sean said aghast. “Whoever says he saw me sleeping at work is a lying bastard!”
“I was the one that caught you,” Clarence reminded him.
“And you’re a lying bastard,” Sean doubled down.
“We had several complaints about you creating a hostile workplace environment,” continued Clarence. “I understand you threatened to crush two of your co-workers, Derrick and Wayne, into mush with a press and force them through a tiny tube.”
“I did it in a friendly way,” Sean said, remembering to ignite his winning smile as he did.
“Pumped raw sewage through their offices,” continued Clarence, flipping through the pages of the file.
“In my defense, I thought I was a plumber,” said Sean.
“Damaging company property-”
“How was I supposed to know we own the building?” continued Sean. “I thought we rented.”
“Attempted to hire an Indian child to do your job for you.”
“I did not violate the letter of the slave labor laws,” Sean said, again poking his finger into the table.
“Taking time off work, using company internet and phones for personal reasons, particularly to call your mother,” Clarence droned in a monotone, flipping through the massive file. “Used company resources to attempt to rob the federal gold bullion depository at Fort Knox, I see.”
“It was way harder than I thought,” admitted Sean. Now, he was getting grumpy with all this negativity about his work performance. It was hard to maintain his friendly smile through it all.
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