The Report

I had a report due at noon today and my boss came looking for it around 3:30 pm. He casually stopped into my cubicle asking, "Hey, did you ever submit that report?"

A mixed-bag of emotions followed that passive-aggressive, rhetorical question. At first, I thought about laughing in his face. But what good would come out of that? Then I considered giving him a "Stone Cold Stunner." But I didn't have YouTube queued up to Stone Cold Steve Austin's theme song. My next thought was to fake a seizure and/or heart-attack. But I don't want that kind of karma on my hands.

After I settled down, collected my thoughts, and maintained a cool head, I responded. "Nope." Simple and truthful. I didn't see the point in lying, by saying, "Yeah! I put it on your desk a few minutes before noon! You should double-check your desk!" That would buy me about 5 minutes, because he would be right back in my cubicle asking me to re-print the report.

"Well, why not?" My boss was befuddled by my honest response.


"Because you told me it was due tomorrow..." He never told me this, but my boss is a scatter-brain and I know when to use this to my advantage. This is why I am such a terrible employee. I have so much free-time to get this report done, but I'd rather fuck with my boss for no reason what-so-ever.

I know for a fact that the report that was due would have taken me less than 2 hours to complete. All I would have to do is take a break from Facebook stalking one afternoon and I'd have the report finished. Instead, I'd rather waste away an afternoon reading status updates, from someone I haven't spoken to in six years, about their opinion on the weather.

"Oh, my mistake." He was a bit embarrassed by his "mistake" so he tried to back-pedal a bit. "How is it coming along, buddy?" You know the slack on the rope just got a bit looser when he throws out terms of endearment like "buddy."

"Killing it!" I confidently told him, while throwing my hand in the air for a high-five. He met my palm in the air and we exchanged a pretty solid high-five. He was out of my cubicle moments later.

Lucky for me, he never asked me to show him the Microsoft Excel report. I honestly think I've not opened that application in six months. If you held a gun to my head and gave me one minute to find Microsoft Excel on my computer, the only thing that would be on my computer screen after sixty seconds would be whatever the bullet decided to do with my brains.