Michael Grant Smith- Brewer's Choice

Disemployment Guidelines

(1) Of all the capuchin monkeys who ever worked here, you are our favorite capuchin monkey.

Your boss has a problem with you. They despise your talent and goals. Your boss is jealous of the family photos you display (your boss’s relatives are quite unattractive in comparison). You and your boss don’t share the same objectives. Your boss actually resents the effort you expend when you study safety guidelines, or perform scheduled maintenance, or proofread for typos, or climb utility poles lumberjack-style, or unclog the breakroom kitchenette’s sink drain. 

(2) For your protection, our company’s Future-Never™ artificial semi-intelligence software is neither forward nor backward compatible.

You understand the difference between ignorance and ignore. If you had a dollar for every time you whatever. The words dull and meaningless and degrading don’t describe your life; however, they exemplify your job, boss, and most of your co-workers. The minute you were hired your heart stopped beating and since then you’ve done just fine without it.

(3) Why are you afraid of happiness?

Go ahead, call off the rest of the day—or maybe forever. With full pay! Grab plenty of office supplies on your way out. You deserve clean, fresh copier paper and those extra-large paper clips. A master carton of ink cartridges, even though they don’t fit your printer at home? Might come in handy! 

(4) Please study this picture. Where does it take you? A reminder: the sun is going up, not down.

If your boss is so stunted ethically, so diminished mentally, so acid-washed morally as to suggest “your actions are inappropriate” and to “please return the petty cash,” look your so-called superior in their good eye (not the glass one) and tell them in a quiet yet firm voice: “Something I read somewhere written by someone unknown said it would be okay if I leave. And I’m taking your car.”

(5) Don't attempt to contact Human Resources. We know you want something. We'll be in touch. No, we won’t.

You pluck your card from its slot on the wall. Your fingers trace perforations and foxed edges. With a snarl you tear the card in half between your teeth. You clench your fist and punch the time clock. The glass face shatters. Like diamonds or pulverized dreams, the shards sprinkle onto the floor, and there’s lots of blood. Haven’t you already given this job enough of that?

(6) In gaps and around corners dwell regrets; with the least resistance their feathered roots divorce the soil.

You can’t reclaim the years you’ve wasted, they’re gone, but you ease into your boss’s new, comfortable sports coupé. Its agility and power would satisfy any felon’s prerequisites for a cross-country crime spree followed by a high-speed chase. Nothing has ever pressed you into seat cushions before. You’ll soon discover gravity pulls in directions other than down. Your actuality, framed by the rear view mirror, recedes until thumbnail-sized and for the first time surprises you.

Michael Grant Smith wears sleeveless T-shirts, weather permitting. His writing appears or appeared in elimae, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, The Airgonaut, trampset, Blood+Honey, and elsewhere. Michael resides in Ohio. He has traveled to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Cincinnati. Michael hopes to trick a small press into publishing his debut short-story collection and his first novel. For more Michael, please visit www.michaelgrantsmith.com, @michaelgrantsmith.bsky.social, and @MGSatMGScom.