Friday, October 2, 2015

Battle of the Micronauts

A customer complained that a young, starving child from India had hit him.

"First world problems," I muttered.

I followed the man to our beehive area. There, twisting poetically in the ventilation, were posterboards hanging on wires about MICROLOANS to poor countries sponsored by Whole Foods.

"If you don't pay me back, I'll micro break your thumbs."

The man had been on his laptop when he was clocked by one of the swaying posters. He asked me if we could move one of the posters so he could do his Sudoku in peace?

"Sorry, buddy," I told him. "The third world is here to stay."

Meanwhile our philosophy scholiast and part-time shelver Tony was disgusted. He detested the very idea of Microloans. The posters tacitly boasted about how compassionate Whole Foods was in their genocide of poverty in India, but he felt the whole thing was a capitalist monkeyballs con.

"It just perpetuates the capitalistic system by enslaving these people and making them borrowers. They are decoding their flows in a DeLeuzean axiomatic while the Hegelian Absolute phenomenonalizes its counterflow and leaves the liberal materialist to subjectivize the transected catheters on the Dogon egg of a body without organs!!"

"Right," I said.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

I smiled gently.

"Well? Do you?!"

I chuckled softly.

Just then Carol called me into the office. I ran.

"Charlatan!" Tony called after me.

In the office, greatly relieved, Carol spoke to me in English.

"Greg, Storie [Carol's daughter] was just here."

"Is everything okay?"

Carol shook her head. "I hate to ask, but did you get the petty cash reimbursement yet?"

As the three-star petty cash officer, I had taped all the receipts to sheets of paper and made copies in triplicate to send to the city. This kind of excitement was something I should have included in my novel, but I was just too damn selfish. Now we were waiting for the comptroller and ombudsmen to sign off on the audit to get our reimbursement monies.

"Sorry," I said. "Maybe this Saturday when security comes..."

"Oh. Storie needed some money. She took everything I have!" Carol held up her purse. A little library moth fluttered out of it. And then died.

"Well, maybe if I take some out of the daily drawer..."

"No! Never mind..."

Carol heaved a sigh. I was afraid she wouldn't be able to eat.

"Are you sure?"

Carol gave me a tragic, beseeching look, one that seemed strangely familiar...

"Give me a microloan. Or I'll cut you."

"Oh, wait..." I said. I dug in my pocket. "I found some old petty cash in the, ah, the auditor's security bag. Yeah. Here. Here's a twenty."

"Oh, thank you!" Carol wept. "I promise I'll pay you back as soon as I can!"

I left the office, glowing with my own greatness. Tony stood nearby, arms folded, and scowled in his usual neo-Hegelian manner. He could see the stink of capitalism on me.

"Sorry," I said, bourgeoisly.

Tony scoffed. "You are a petit a-hole."

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