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Journal Writing

September 19th, 2024

The Boss of Me: Mixing Business, Penguins, and Too Much Eggnog

They say you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure. No, business should always be mixed with displeasure. I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s genuinely happy at their job. If you know someone, please introduce us—I’d love for them to hire me because I’m definitely not thrilled with mine. Although, let’s be honest: the only way I’d ever be happy at my job is if I worked for myself.

Sadly, even if I were my own boss, I’d probably still get fired. “Yeah, we’re going to have to let you go. We asked for a sales report, not a dissertation on The Role of Penguins in Antarctic Traffic Control. And, no, we haven’t forgotten about the office Christmas party incident.” On the bright side, if I were unemployed, I wouldn’t have to deal with rush hour—especially if penguins were out there managing it.

Speaking of that Christmas party, nobody ever said how much figgy pudding was too much figgy pudding. Turns out, washing it down with a gallon of eggnog was also a bad call. I just hope that eggnog wasn’t made from penguin eggs. Live and learn.

Another perk of being out of work: no more suits. Penguins pull off tuxedos way better than I ever could. Besides, it’d be pretty ridiculous to wear a suit just for my cat. It gets even weirder when you realize… I don’t even have a cat. I lost him during the big corporate merger. They shipped him off to our Antarctic office, and thanks to the penguins, he’s probably on a plane somewhere near the North Pole by now, which is not even the right hemisphere. That’s what happens when you trust a flightless bird to control air traffic.

So yeah, maybe they’re right—you really shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, even if you work for yourself. But after all that figgy pudding, I don’t think I’d mix it with eggnog, either.

Ryan Olejnik is an author, computer scientist, music journalist, musician, record producer and photographer. He is currently writing a novella, an anthology of short stories and a volume of poetry. He is a music journalist for Tapevine Magazine and a record producer for Farm Out Music. He has a sci-fidelic rock project known as Starjelly and releases instrumental electronic music as Torchard.

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