Vengeance Kicking

Vengeance Kicking

           It is time for me to wreak vengeance. I thought that was something that I would never say or think. But it is something I simply have to do, given the situation. I just can’t let things be. I have to strike back, not just accept that I am a helpless victim. Life had been going so smoothly for me. The job paid well, and it wasn’t boring, as I like calculating numbers.

Then this Wednesday, the boss called me up to his lofty, top floor office, and said straight out to me (not even offering me a coffee from the machine he had just used to pour himself a brew) “We’re going to have to let you go, Paul. It’s nothing personal. We just need the increased productivity and efficiency that you simply cannot provide. You’re going to be replaced. That’s it in a nutshell Paul”. There was no apology, just a hard-hearted statement of the ‘facts’ as he conceived them.

           Being something of a team player (and hoping that I might get a few days more pay), I asked him if he would need me to train my replacement. The boss simply said, “That won’t be necessary. You won’t be needed any longer.”

           When I told my workmates what had just happened to me, I was shown some sympathy, not a lot, more pity. I got a sense that they already knew about it, and didn’t want to say too much, lest they be made eligible for similar cavalier treatment.

           There wasn’t much for me to do on those last two days, and I had little incentive to work with any amount of diligence. And I was being ignored like what had happened to me could be contagious.

           When I found out on Thursday afternoon the nature of my replacement, it made me feel worse, something I would have thought impossible on Wednesday. On Friday morning my mind started to follow a vengeance trail. I started to make plans. I had heard that my replacement would be working over the weekend. I reckoned that no one else would be there, it wouldn’t be humanly possible. I would be free to fight the way I wanted in the arena of vengeance.

           The boss had ordered the elimination of my code number to get into the building, but I was deliberately a little late on Friday, so that I could observe someone else punch in their code. It wasn’t hard. I was an employee of the company. I wouldn’t be suspected of stealing someone’s card.

           Friday night I went shopping for the tools of my vengeance. I said nothing about this to my wife. She would probably and sensibly have tried to argue me out of it. She is always much more practical about serious matters.

Saturday

           I woke up early that morning, ready for my justifiable vengeance. I hungered for it like it was chocolate with whipped cream on top. I can’t remember what I told my wife then, but it must have been a good excuse, as she seemed to have believed me. Or maybe she just felt sorry for my losing my job so fast.  When I got to the office building, I punched in the stolen code. Once inside I felt confident that I would succeed.  I knew my replacement would be there, and would not, could not suspect what I was going to do.

           It was not long before I saw my replacement. I had to look down somewhat to see it.  It was a bit of a shock, but not much of a surprise.  It looked like a large curling stone without the handle.  While my replacement was sitting or standing, whatever, by MY DESK, calculating figures faster than I ever could, I put down the bag in which were held my recently purchased tools of vengeance. I was going to take it apart.

           I loudly declared, “it’s vengeance time”, ready to do the damage.  And then I stopped   I just couldn’t take him apart as I had initially intended to. Thinking of it as ‘him’ made it difficult It seemed unnecessarily cruel. He wasn’t the one who fired me.

           I wondered about why it was being used, when such an independent computer that could move around like a Roomba was not strictly necessary to do computerized accounting. I would learn later why that weekend, when I called one of the company executives who was sympathetic to my plight. He told me that the boss wanted to have this computer to be in the same room with him when the two of them communicated on-line to others, especially when he was holding a meeting in the ‘big hall’ addressing many staff members. He apparently believed that it would be more intimidating to the other members of staff for him to have a computer that could move to a position by his side, physically demonstrating that the two of them were a force to be reckoned with.

           How then was I going to achieve my vengeance?   I needed to earn money in a way not stifled by computers. I thought of the phrase “success is the best form of revenge.” I remembered the idea I had once when my company computer, totally unnecessarily, had upgraded to becoming even more frustrating than it has previously been.  And that was saying something.  I would operate a computer smashing business, a Rage Room I believe they are called. I could get some old computers or computer driven devices cheap, buy a few baseball bats and have people pay me to take their anger out on them. I could add hockey sticks to that given the low height of what I would hereafter call RAR or Roomba Accountant Replacements.  Maybe steel-toed boots would be better, as RARs are not made of stone like curling rocks, but a high-grade plastic.  The urge to kick in anger could be a strong one. I thought of the many times that the boss and the people I called executroids had made me want to kick them.  I think that I will specialize in RARs and steel-toed boots with the former as the rage targets and the latter as the rage weapons. 

           I had seen a store recently put up for lease, and it is in the neighbourhood of the monster building where I used to work, sharing the street with a few other AI over You and I companies. The human workers there could be my customers in need of their own justifiable revenge. I even thought of a slogan: “Revenge is sweet when it is done with your feet.”