Resignation Speech
Considering the way my boss reacted to my behavior during staff interviews, his natural course of action WOULD be sacking me, but this being Japan, he isn't prepared to do any more than force me to quit. And I've, therefore, put together a resignation speech that I will deliver when I hand in my notice:
"Boss, I've got something to say. (Slip on ballcap from left pants pocket)
You've been a lot of things to me--you wear many hats (tip cap), but to me, you've always been a boss, a father figure, a friend, and a coach.
And there comes a time, Coach, in everyone's life for him to be taken out of the game. You've had me on the mound for five innings--I'm now working on my sixth--and I've already given up a walk, and a single, and then another walk. Lefty grounded out, but I'm left with the same situation I've been faced with since the start of the inning: bases loaded, and a long, long way to go.
Now, there's more, and I hope you'll stay with me here: I got myself in a jam in the third, gave up a solo homerun in the fourth, and got myself into another jam in the fifth, but got out of it by forcing a double-play. So, to recap, altogether, up until now, I've walked three, struck out four, and have given up eight hits.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because I've had a good run. (Spreading eight hits over six and a third innings is not bad!!) At the same time, Coach, the bases are juiced, my fastball's losing it's zip, my bag of tricks is emptying, and you've got younguns in the bullpen.
Take me out, coach. Take me out.
Thank you."
(Turn and exit)
(Fade out)
(Raucous applause)
(Possible encore?)
Staff Interviews
It's the morning of staff interviews and I'm sitting at my desk, holding and reading a copy of Of Mice and Men with my elbows rested heavily on the keyboard--this is my 23rd time reading it, and I'm really getting into it. The female co-worker sitting at the desk directly to my right (not even a foot away from mine) leans over and mumbles something about the book to which I smile and nod without taking my eyes off the page. I am totally offended--she can see this in the sudden change of color in my cheeks. I have no idea what she said but am certain it had nothing to do with the book, and it infuriates me that she felt it necessary to say something about my reading at work, and at the same time, feign an interest in Steinbeck. This was MORE than just a fly in my soup--this was an addition to a STRING of hints I've gotten over the three years I've worked here (mostly in regard to my etiquette at work). "Why not just sack my fuckin' ass," I think to myself while marking the page and closing the book. I reach down to open the top desk drawer, into which I KNOW the book will not fit, and force the book into the narrow drawer bending the cover and first few pages back. I'm sweating. Once I had it wedged tight into the drawer, I start opening and closing it, slamming it harder and louder with each time while repeating, in a drill sargeant's tone, the question, "is THIS sanctity?!" The noise reaches the other side of the office, but none of my co-workers reacts as this is nothing they haven't experienced before. As the book pops open and closed, blooming and retracting into a mess of torn and crumpled pages, and the cover almost completely torn off, the anger within me grows and is compounded by the fact that people are acting as if they don't notice (and that I almost smash my finger in the drawer). Leaving my right hand to open and close the drawer, now with slightly more ease, I turn to my right and casually put my left elbow back up onto the keyboard . I stare at my co-worker--into her eyes while my right hand thrusts the drawer open and closed with more and more violence. "IS THIS SACRED?!! IS...THIS?! IS THIS SACRED?!!! WELL?!! IS THIS?!!" I am just looking for a sign of fear in her eyes, so I can put a stop to this, but it does not come. I start to tire, but I have to keep going and foam at the mouth. And it crosses my mind that MAYBE I might even have to injure myself this time.
I wake up in the conference room with my boss looking down at me semi-concerned, and there's a giant, white gauze bandage hanging off of my thumb. It's just the two of us in the room and I'm lying face-up on the carpeting starting to come to. Somebody has arranged the desks in chairs into a boardroom setting, and all of the desks are lined up to form a long rectangle paralleling the perimeter of the room. While walking away from me to the opposite side of the room, my boss says, "get up". I sit up and notice my place on the arranged desks opposite to where my boss's things are sitting at the top of the rectangle. I stand up and roll the chair out from under the desk, and the pain in my thumb sets in. This, in combination with the headache, makes me forget to wait to be seated and I collapse into the chair. Boss, still standing, visibly takes note of this, but begins, "let the interview commence". I see spotlights twirling and a set of spinning colored lights, and over a pulsing techno beat, hear a voice yell, "AWWWWWWWW, YEEEEEEEEAH!!" into a microphone, but realize it's just a hallucination. "Yes, let's get this under way," I reply in a groggy tone. He begins with a long question, possibly a two-parter, and with both feet flat on the ground, I start swerving in my chair to the beat, left to right, right to left. Without pausing, he takes note of this too, and my thumb REALLY starts to hurt which causes me to let out a whimper that he doesn't hear. I proceed to answer the question with a rare seriousness, "I hold company time valuable, and everyday I come here, I make an effort to do what I do efficiently--I don't hold...GRUDGES, and I check anything going on in my LIFE at the door--or, when I put that tie on...yeah. That's when that shit gets CHECKED." The ensuing silence and expression on my boss's face lead me to realize that it's possible I may have answered the wrong question. He starts in with question two, but I immediately interrupt and tell him to move on to the next one. Shaking my head, "could you...just...what I mean is, can you skip that one for me--like, no arguments? Please?" I'm not sure what the question is, but know it won't be good. Question three sounds something like, "when can you start?" This confuses me because, up until he asked that question, I had believed that I was employed here. However, I recall that these are "staff interviews", and that must mean that I AM employed here, so I realize there's only one way to answer this question: randomly. "Thursday, the 3rd," I answer with a proud smile. My boss verbally repeats it while writing it down, but stops because he's realized there isn't another 3rd falling on a Thursday for the rest of the year. I ditch the smile because I know he will misinterpret it as one of ridicule, but it's NOT--I'm seriously confused and do not know what my boss WANTS. Studying my face, he says, "there aren't anymore of those the rest of the year". I fake a smile, "yeah, I know--the next one." He flips a few pages of his schedule and studies it looking puzzled, and I just BAIL OUT.
I stand up and run over to the light switches which immediately gets his attention. While staring at him over my shoulder to monitor his reaction, I start flipping the lights off and on, off and on, but it's not scary enough since there are windows in this room, so I leave the lights off and slowly walk back toward the desks, singing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" which I'm sure he doesn't recognize. I violently kick my chair back into place, and to my delight, the noise makes him jump in his chair slightly. I begin singing with more fervor and lean up against the rectangle of desks, and my desk moves! They've all got casters on them! I keep singing the hymn and shift to the right and push the train of desks past my boss and RAM them into the wall. I laugh at this, and realize this has put me right next to him, so I finish the line I'm singing in his EAR. I skip back to the end of the remaining line of desks, and before pushing them, stop shouting enough to scream, "ALL ABOARD!!" This train leaves a dent in the radiator on the wall, and I shout something, again in his ear, that resembles "all aboard". This time, he expected it, and this upsets me. Crying, I let out a Howard Dean scream, and run for the door.