The Setting: We are on a tax-deductible, educational investigation to determine just what makes the writers tick over at the Kansas Funny Factory, a world-renowned source of comedic books and columns, headed by the successful entrepreneur Mr. Manfred R. Martinez, III.
It is advertised as a lean operation, where only the most quality talent are recruited to blend their creative juices and anyone who is not making a serious contribution to the writing is fired, and often consequentially blacklisted in the writing industry. You walk in and the atmosphere automatically strikes you as odd: the security guard is clearly junked out, and the receptionist has not been seen since February (no one asks questions about this). All of the offices are empty, except one which is used as a coffee room, and one which is used as the writing office. The main attraction for us will be the writing office.
At the far end corner of the writing office, you will see the cloud of smoke continuously blowing from that direction, with the writers rarely getting up except to go to the bathroom. Occasionally writers are engaged in such intense creative brainstorming that they keep a jar in the office so that they can continue working without interruptions for the release of bodily fluids. Said one staffer who was clearly wearing a wig, “it is pretty common to go two days without sleeping here, pass out in an exhausted daze in a hallway and then wake up and start drinking scotch straight from the bottle.” What's the project today? “We have to come up with novel yet hilarious ways to mock the political and cultural conventional wisdom surrounding illegal immigration, and the status of asylum seekers. It's all very dry, and we do our best to take our assignments as seriously as possible.” And the pay? “Worse than every other job I've had, easily, especially given the full time hours. They won't let me out of here until I've provided 5,000 words of comedic gold each day. Can you even imagine that kind of pressure?”
In conducting our investigation, we promised full transparency with the authority figure of the office, an intimidating Mr. Manfred Martinez, who immediately asked for the name of the staffer who had made the disparaging comments regarding his wage and working environment. Regrettably, having signed a document which we really did not read carefully enough, we had to turn over the young Arnold N. Watt over to Mr. Martinez, who then proceeded to cornhole Mr. Watt with a broomstick while explaining calmly that though his service to the company had been highly appreciated, he would not be receiving his last fortnightly paycheck. We later observed that Mr. Watt's name had been removed from the credits of any of the publications, including work which he later confirmed to be his writing. (“Yeah, the thing on how to best eradicate herpes in South Dakota – I'll be damned if anyone has ever written as biting a diatribe on that topic as I did” was one such piece, among others.) Mr. Watt never sought to press charges of sexual assault or workplace mistreatment against Mr. Martinez, who is clearly a very powerful man. In fact, we cut short our investigation of his little factory – not just out of disgust for the redundancy of the hellishly sweet bacon pecan pie being served for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner – but more so out of fear that he would catch us in one of his monstrous bear traps and then begin removing our fingernails one by one while explaining his meek desire that our report look upon him with only the most generous spirit of fairness.
We shiver at the very thought.
