The problem with home working, I thought to myself, as I stared at El Jefe on the screen of my laptop, could be quite succinctly summed up as:
You can't kick people right in the fucking pish-flaps for annoying you through a computer screen.
On screen, El Jefe warbled on and I gazed at him intently as if he were that poster of the woman tennis player scratching her arse.
So, I think we are perfectly clear then, yes?
El Jefe beamed at me as if I hadn't been imagining he was a giant disembodied testicle that had been snuffling around my bins last night looking for scraps in the snow.
Tilting my head, I lazily scratched my cheek as if I were writing a letter to a lover to remind them of our time in Paris.
Perfectly clear?
I made my voice undulate up and down like a snake trying to pump water from a well.
Um, yes. I think I have made our position perfectly clear. You know. What we were talking about?
El Jefe looked nervy as if he were a Finnish man flirting with a Russian lady on Tinder.
Can you just go over that bit about me saying you are an amazing boss again?
I said in a deceptively smooth voice.
We were discussing the Company Survey. It was the only thing that managers in my place feared. A once-yearly event which gave the staff the opportunity to anonymously vent their opinions on many things... Including their direct Manager.
Oh. Pffftsh. No no no. I didn't say that?!
El Jefe rocked back in his chair jetting ink from his flubbery gills in consternation.
It's just that you kinda did. You hinted I could be in line for a bonus and as long as everything went smoothly and if we all looked good in the company survey you could almost guarantee it?
I picked up one of my many hats that lay nearby and put it on, smiling as if I had managed to hit an F# in a kazoo solo.
El Jefe reared up from his chair in another part of town and pointed at me via the medium of webcam.
What's that?
He snapped beligerently as if something with whiskers had underwateredly brushed against him in a gentleman's bath.
It's a hat, what on earth did you think it was?
An evil cackle crackled from my chest sounding like a lizard dropped in a deep fat fryer.
Why have you just put on a hat? We're indoors? I mean, seriously?
El Jefe looked rattled.
I wondered if he had had a bad experience of hats indoors in his past. Maybe he had been masturbating into a bacon hat and wolves had broken down the door and had torn it cruelly away from his little soldier just as he was about to speg?
Truly the world could be an awful place.
Listen, forget the hat. I'm on board. We are a team. I've got your back big guy. The survey will hear nothing bad from me... Hopefully by pulling together we all get what we want... Hmm?
I leered viciously at him. My hat casting a long and cruel shadow over my face.
Oh... You will? Oh that's splendid. Well, ok then. Have a good afternoon. I will let you get back to it!
El Jefe cut the call with a gleeful flourish.
I tipped back in my chair and smiled.
No luck boss man. You are getting slaughtered when I do the survey. Let see how anonymous this nonsense really is...
