Text messaging.
It’s a generational thing.
German police launched a M.F.F.A.H. (Massive Fast Food Associate Hunt) for her. The next morning, der girl shows up at home, not a kidnapper’s fingerprint on her. After brief questioning (in German) the young woman broke down and confessed she made up her own abduction because, she said, she owed a co-worker $33 and she didn’t have the $33.
So what happened was she still owed the co-worker $33 plus, an additional $13,200 to the village of Straubing to pay for the M.F.F.A.H.
How’d you like to be married to a person like that? You call to ask if she wants to go to lunch. She yawns and says she can’t because she’s been captured by dwarfs.
To my moral credit, I’ve never feigned my own kidnapping to avoid going to work.
I have, however, used the D.D.P.P.
That stands for the Dreaded Dead Person Ploy.
To use the Double-D/Double-P, you must suck dry all anima from your voice when calling work, school or your wedding before making up the death of someone particularly close to you.
D.D.P.P. is to be used only under the following circumstances:
1) When your bed feels so particularly safe, scrumptious and you really need to sleep in. Until 7 p.m.
2) If you’re clinically depressed.
3) You have a really big dog (or person) who sleeps with you and they won’t get off.
4) If you’re under 25 and working for the fast food industry.
The D.D.P.P. is not to be used if you are in C.F.T.M.
That stands for: Career Fast Tract Mode.
Nothing kills a sprint to useless middle management faster than spitting out corpses faster than Google can find 5 million matches for the word, “Johnson.”
If I may preface this with a weak attempt at a justification, I am a better person now at 61 than when I was in my early 20s. Back in the 1970s, I was a headhunter.
That would be the thankless commission-based dead-end job of trying to find jobs for people who suffer from Double-D/Double-P Syndrome.
Not the South Seas island craze of walking around nude save for a golf club cozy wrapped around your particulars and seeking unsuspecting enemies to behead.
For the 20 minutes I was employed as a job recruiter, I absolutely hated it.
Hay-
Ted-
Et.
Period.
To even get the job in the first place, I told the agency I was recently married. I even brought in an 8-by-10 glossy of an underwear model as my wife and had it framed on my desk. Management figured that with a wife like that, I’d work 190 hours a week just to keep her in diamonds and bikinis.
The second day on the job (10 minutes the first day, 10 minutes the second day) I had just taken all the abuse a person could stand.
You see, back then, in offices, they had these things called telephones and, as a person, they expected you to answer these telephones when they rang. They also suggested that I pick up the phone and reach out to essentially peddle flesh. It became painfully obvious that this wasn’t a good match.
When I was younger, I was — what’s the word I’m looking for here?
Hmmm.
Lower my voice in scratchy vibrato and shine a flashlight under my chin:
E v i l.
That’s the word I’m looking for. As a recruiter, I’d spend my time matching a perfectly good unemployed certified public accountant with his dream job. In one case, that would be as a lion tamer.
I’d do a follow-up call and ask how the interview went.
“The circus didn’t hire me,” said the crushed CPA.
“That’s because you’re not a lion tamer,” I explained.
“Then why did you send me to the circus?” the CPA asked.
“Because you had ‘Lion Tamer’ on your resume.”
“No I didn’t.”
“My mistake.”
What would have made my job more interesting would have been to have more lion tamers seeking work.
Wouldn’t that be grand?
I’d send the lion tamer to a big accounting house. The human resources suit asks: “So what sort of experience do you have?” and the lion tamer pulls out a bullwhip and yells at them in Hungarian to get up on the desk.
I had a wife like that once.
Briefly.
(For those of you girls reading this right now and who are snickering while casting disparaging glances at my current sweetheart, a saint of a woman, put your damn noses back where they belong and get back to work.)
Bottom line, I didn’t like sitting at a desk, essentially selling human flesh.
So, my third day, or, nearly 30 minutes into the job, I called in sick with an I.D.W.
An Imaginary Dead Wife.
It’s such a private issue. One wonders why they have to ask.
“She was killed in ’Nam,” I said, dully. “It’s a senseless war. A damn senseless war.”
Again, in a case like this, you’d think the people at the employment agency would have had the sensitivity not to pry. But they wanted details.
On the other end of the phone, I sighed and nibbled at a cookie. In a monotone, I described how Jean was the girl-next-door, my best friend since childhood. She would have gotten out of the service in just four more weeks. I just wanted to find work for people the world over and maybe make enough money to buy our dream house.
Again, what was with those people? Here I am, allegedly grieving, and they want specifics.
You have to be careful using a Dead Spouse excuse. There’s the temptation to go on, describing siege cannons and medieval catapults. My own weakness is to try and find an excuse to sneak the term, “Apes,” into a conversation, be it regular or calling in sick to work.
Those lousy damn dirty apes at the Saigon Zoo. If only…”
Instead, I blurted out, “Snipes.”
“Did you say, ‘snipes?’”
“What?” I asked, swallowing air. “No. She wasn’t killed by an urban myth. I have a spouse overseas, fighting communism, and you think she was killed by an imaginary creature?”
(NOTE TO SELF: Remember to burn all copies of this column when 8-year-old daughter comes of reading age or gets her first full-time job, whichever comes first.)
The Dreaded Dead Person Ploy is easier to pull off if you commute. If you work in a small town, chances are, everyone knows you aren’t married to a leggy underwear model in Special Forces fighting in Southeast Asia.
The Dead Person doesn’t even have to be your spouse. It can be a relative.
But, word of caution here.
If you work for, say, your uncle, it’s harder to convince your boss that his wife died after a long struggle with hypospleenemia.
Hypospleenemia is when your spleen gets cold and your body stops forming white creamsicles.
Another problem.
If your boss is your uncle, you run the risk of him trying to bum a ride with you to the imaginary funeral. Worse, on the put-put to the mortuary, he’s sitting next to you in an ill-fitting suit and midway through a conversation about what a great gal she was, he might smack himself in the forehead and say: “Hey. Wait a second. You’re not married…”
I’m not sure what the grace period is for taking a leave of absence from a job on which you’ve worked 20 minutes. I took off a week, then called in to say I just couldn’t work at the employment agency anymore.
Too many painful memories.
When I came back to get my things, which consisted of their pencil and my picture frame with some beautiful stranger enshrined, management had two dozen roses waiting on my desk.
It was a good lesson, bittersweet, completely damning and, curiously because of that, a blessing.
Yes. I pulled off the ploy. I was free from the 7-to-6 life.
I walked out to the parking lot, carrying a bouquet and card signed by 30 people, many of whom hugged me while trying not to sob.
I realized early enough in life I didn’t have the heart for that kind of larceny. Or at least to pull it off more than 11 times.
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net