The Abacus from Hell

I’ve had some weird jobs in my day.

I spent a summer during college working for a friend of the family who was a handy man. This means I changed a lot of door knobs, tightened a lot of leaky faucets, and built part of a deck. On a particularly blistering day in August, I took a break from playing with a sledge hammer to grab a bottle of water from the cooler. As my boss yelled “Not that bottle” in slow motion, I realized I had just chugged a good amount of gin and tonic. Then they took away my sledge hammer.

Another summer, I worked at a local grocery store chopping vegetables for the salad bar. On the plus side, I had an unlimited supply of croutons and the powerful bargaining tool of fresh strawberries which I traded for chicken fingers. There is a fascinating internal economy that exists between super market departments (though the seafood department kind of gets screwed on that one). On the downside, it means I once saw a coworker spill a vat of hardboiled eggs under the industrial sink where they collected all manner of debris. We were instructed to give them a quick rinse and put them on the salad bar anyway. So, ya know, avoid the eggs.

After college, I briefly fled the country to work as an illegal immigrant in England as a B-list celebrity nanny (for a director of B-movies, to be exact). Apparently, that job path is lucrative enough to afford a fancy-pants townhouse in an upscale area of London. I was essentially paid to take their 2-year-old to a variety of tourist traps as well as his regularly scheduled play dates, swimming lessons, and educational activities. But it wasn’t all Legos and cheese wiz. There were also dirty diapers, temper tantrums in public, and running up and down 5 flights of stairs for alternate wardrobe choices when his mother didn’t approve of his outfit.

But London is a story for another time, because none of the bad parts of these jobs could live up to the evil, evil accounting firm that employs Beau. The Accounting Firm That Must Not Be Named is responsible for the following crimes against humanity:

1) Making Beau get home from work at 10:45 last night (and probably tonight as well) when he has a fever.

2) Forcing Beau to work under managers who have been renamed “Pirate Whore” and “Teabag” as a result of their charming personalities and who do not care that Beau has a fever and could easily be working from home instead of going out in the cold.

…and the coup de grâce…

3) Relocating Beau for a 6-week assignment in Florida. Yes, this means I may get to visit for free and yes, if that occurs I will be going directly to Sea World to feed the Hungry Hungry Stingrays but NO this does not mean Dangerous K approves. Dangerous K is a vengeful, angry blogger who wants to keep her Beau in the house where she can keep an eye on him and fuss over his lack of primary care physician and make him go fill up her cup of iced tea.

As such, I declare war on the Accounting Firm That Must Not Be Named. My wrath will not be appeased until justice is delivered in a terrifying and satisfactory way which may involve offering to get one of his managers a drink at the next holiday party and then putting a booger on the glass.