On Monday, my book Please Fire Me: Posts from the Revolting Workplace began our "Two Weeks' Notice" campaign. Each day we issue an operation for workers with bad jobs to execute. These daily operations will last until our book signing on May 6th AKA #PleaseFireMeFriday -- the day when you malemployed workers of America revolt by leaving after lunch to party. But, before it's time to party, you would probably like to know the history of the first bad job. You're in luck. Thankfully, I just uncovered this from an ancient dusty box discovered after my most recent Goonies-like adventure. (I will have to blog about that later.)
The First Bad Job: Gardener
In the beginning, no one worked. Then, an entrepreneur named God came along. The Lord was the first boss. He was frustrating.
Originally, The Lord thought, "I am not a people person," and decided to work alone. For five days, He was self-employed. And on the sixth day, He realized that working for Himself was much harder than it looked. Let's face it: It looks pretty easy. However, self-employment is a paradox, and The Lord did not like paradoxes because they made Him feel dumb. No one likes to feel dumb, especially if They are self-described as "all-knowing." Upon the realization that self-employment is nothing but an unfunny farce, He decided to add some employees to His company. After all, it would maximize productivity, and his taxes were a mess. He didn't have a name for his company, so He coughed, listened to the sound and named it in His cough's name: Earth.
First, He made a male worker, Adam, out of dust. Things were really dusty back in those days due to Earth's construction. It was a real health hazard. And because Heaven proudly boasts that they are an equal opportunity employer, He was forced to make a female worker. He called her Eve because it kind of rhymes with leaf, and because He looked down from Heaven and saw a leaf. God's creativity was running low. The Man just finished a 90-hour work week, so let's cut Him some slack.
God proclaimed to the newbies, "Let us get to work in the garden. And by us I mean you." With no other employment options other than "gardener," Adam and Eve accepted the job offer. They would have called their parents with the exciting news, but they didn't have any.
On the seventh day, The Lord took a nap in His office. While closing the door, He said to Adam and Eve, "Transition periods are exhausting." They didn't know what He meant because this was their first job. They were also jealous that His office was in the clouds and with an amazing view, while theirs was a cube made of dirt, sticks, and grass with a view of a big boulder.
Because the garden was already perfect, there wasn't much to do to fulfill their job description. Most days, Adam and Eve just pushed around sticks and tried to look busy.
On one exceedingly boring day, Adam tried to make his job mentally stimulating. He came up with this game where he tried to guess when it was going to rain. If he was right, he let himself keep a rock. He decorated his tiny dirt cube with them. Eve told herself she was lucky to have a job at all, but inside she kind of wished she'd never been pulled out of a rib. She also wondered about the physics of that. Also, she was really annoyed by her only co-worker, who kept trying to make her play this really lame game about rain. Eventually, Eve did end up playing, because her job was pointless and she was too creatively dry to think of anything better. However, she did not decorate her cube with the rocks she won. Eve put petals everywhere. This annoyed her only co-worker Adam because the wind would blow them into his cube, which was right next to hers.
Bored with menial labor, as all God's creations are, Eve took a break from moving the same hoe back and forth and staring at the sun to see what time it was, and decided to take lunch a little early. Eve was the office slacker, and Adam would have gossiped about it behind her back, but there was no one else there. Once he tried to tell a rabbit about the time she showed up five minutes late two days in a row, but the rabbit was busy doing his job--making more rabbits.
Being a female, Eve naturally wanted to eat at the most exclusive tree in the garden for lunch. However, The Lord had specifically forbidden His staff from ever eating from that very same tree. He put up big signs with words in all capital letters on prominent trees just to remind them. Adam and Eve got the picture, but didn't appreciate constantly being treated like idiots just because they didn't create the rain forests.
Believing himself to be a "big tease," The Lord put that exclusive tree in the middle of the garden. Unfortunately, after only six days, The Lord has also grown bored with his job but couldn't find another one. (Everyone said He was overqualified.) The only thing He found worth waking up for was messing with his employees. To this day, His love of pranks are the number one reason He hasn't given up on His first and only business.
Like most employees, Eve did not get her boss' humor. She was just annoyed. So, she ate from the tree, invited Adam to join and were promptly fired from their gardening gig.
It's the Greatest Firing Story ever told.