How many tough guys deny themselves the pleasure of fruit because it’s too fruity?
Remember tough guys used to say, “if you can’t work on your car you shouldn’t be allowed to own one,” as they held the filter of their Camel pinched between grease dunked fingers? Well, maybe that’s why these old tough guys say today, “I’m not a computer person,” as they adjust their nicotine patch closer to their heart.
With that statement they admit times have passed them by. They are left changing oil on a car so wired to silicon microchips they can’t change the octane rating of their fuel purchase without screwing up a sensor.
Now consider the plight of RK, a high school chum who was smart and artistic. Not one bit of tough guy in him. These changing times have made him most capable of fixing his own car. He’s an IT guy. He makes things work, he jiggles wires and troubleshoots systems and understands the flow of the whole schematic.
The people who sit at their keyboards crippled by the failure of continuous jabs at Control Alt Delete cry out for RK to save them. Like a grime fingered guy pulling off the road to help a disabled vehicle twenty years ago, he’s a hero, he knows how things work, but for some reason the tough guy glory doesn’t translate to IT.
Perhaps he could start smoking at work, laying a six pack on the Boss’s printer as he pulls up his pants and crawls under the desk to check the cable’s are connected. Amazing how many people call him before doing that much themselves.
Perhaps if he called the peripherals a cunt as he shook them when they didn’t work, he would begin to feel that blunted frustration of a tough guy. Would the swagger that comes from punching stubborn equipment make him love his job? It is doubtful. For some reason RK is tired of his job and unrewarded by it’s processes. Becoming a tough guy is no cure. But stepping out of the corporate structure may work.
The mattress store is empty and For Lease is written in large red letters in the window. The economy knocked the shit out of a lot of us, but the mattress discounter is not going to die because he lost his job. Why would RK die if he quit his?
I don’t know the full story of the mans life, his pressures, but I saw the dead batteries in his eyes. I ask everyone who really feels drained, is your job killing your spirit? Then Control Alt Delete. Force Quit. 90 percent of the world is poorer than you and smiling more. I want a faith statement from at least three people by five o’clock today that they’ve taken their job and shoved it. I’ll send each of you a My Robot Is Pregnant bumper sticker. Good luck.
