Weird Employees

The Reason You Like Your Job

As a weird employee I am here to say you’re welcome. Yes, we are weird, but we are also here to make your time doing something you may or may not want to do more bearable. You may be working with a customer, working alone at a desk, or carefully installing something that needs your full concentration lest it become a danger to all, and we will appear not just to distract you, but to delight you. We give you something to talk about, with your real friends, after the workday.

I speak only of the employees who are a good kind of weird. I am a good weird. At my worst, I’m a bad weird, but I like to think I lean naturally towards good weird. That giant, unused posterboard that was shaped into a paper airplane and launched into the lobby during a presentation to investors? Yeah, that was me. The paper airplane wasn’t the weird part, I’d made them multiple times since leaving childhood, the weird part was that I didn’t know a group of investors was visiting. Apparently it was all anyone was talking about the week prior, but somehow it escaped my innocent ears. So weird.

Employees who are the bad kind of weird are the employees who always have a lot of drama attached to them. Perhaps their car was shot up by a bored group of roving gang members and they can’t come in that day (an actual excuse) or they got lost on their lunch break because they were in an argument with their boyfriend on the phone and they weren’t paying attention to where they were driving, so they should be back in an hour or so (another actual excuse). They might have some unaddressed mental health issues which makes all of the weirdness sad, but you’re not a psychiatrist and should not play one. Those employees don’t get discussed after the workday as much because all of your mental energy has been drained. You don’t want to think about them anymore. But they do get discussed after they’ve left the job for a few months. You might speak of them with the same kind of emotional expression that you attach to a life threatening illness.

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I try to keep my characters a good weird. I have bad weird in there, but I try to keep it at a minimum. Last month, the good weird was the best weird. Come, join me in the Return of the Tabnam.

Have you made a hotel reservation recently? It’s all A.I. The alleged person you’re talking to will even tell you she’s a real person. I’m waiting for our elected officials to at least make it illegal for a non-human to insist that it’s human, but considering all of the things I’m waiting on elected officials to do I think I have a long wait. Anyway, I thought Tabby would be a perfect A.I. voice that wouldn’t insist that she’s real even though she is.

I knew a manager that had to participate in a recruitment video and she thought the whole think was ridiculous and absurd. She did a wonderful job pretending to think the opposite. That was part of what made her such a good manager.

After introducing Cynthia, I knew that we needed something more theatrical than Miss Snuggles. If good weird was to play a part in this, we needed better weird.

People who aren’t weird are so weird when they try to act weird.

This delighted me to no end. The Tabnam signal appearing out of nowhere made me happy. Man, I need this in real life. I’m not sure how you produce a light like that as a surprise. Clearly, it can be done. Even Spider-Man had a Spidey signal in the earlier comics. He would shock burglars with it. If that’s not proof of success, I don’t know what is.

Of course, the whole “I am vengeance. I am the night” is from the excellent Batman animated series. A tribute was necessary. So the second panel here is another variation of an animated Batman speech.

Several readers were confused about Tabnam spelling “Manbat” backwards, so I was pleased that many people understood that it’s “Bat” backwards followed by a backwards “Man”. It’s the “Tab” part of Tabnam that I was after.

Now I want to watch Batman after I get done posting this.

It’s true. You may not be up for anything very active when you start you workday, but nothing wears you out more than doing nothing. Why is that? Our brains require entertainment, that’s why. We can’t even sleep without playing a little movie in our heads.

Many people wonder what our dreams tell us about ourselves, and I’m here to answer that. Our dreams tell us that our unconscious mind is not very good at story construction or character development. If walking towards an ice cream truck, the ability to fly, and a deceased grandmother miraculously alive and folding laundry is our brain’s idea of an entertaining break from reality, then thank god for the real filmmakers. If my brain could just show me something like Succession as I sleep, I could really save a lot of TV time.

If superheroes were real, as portrayed in the comic books, everyone close to the masked hero would know who they were. I don’t care if he is wearing a Spider-Man costume, I’d know my brother’s voice anywhere. Clearly, these people would have to be paid off. The only thing that makes sense is that they have a cut of the licensing. Everyone knows that’s where the real money is.

The sidekick is often the one who is amazed by the knowledge and power of the main hero. The sidekick is also the one who is most likely to get hurt, giving the hero a motive to try even harder to save the day. Also, the sidekick is the one who gets kidnapped and held captive to lure the hero into a dangerous situation.

Berle was born to be a sidekick.

It’s hard to follow up Tabnam with anything, but I think Berle did a good job here. The honest interview is a kind of wish fulfillment, but we all know that everyone tries to pretend that the job doesn’t suck for as long as possible in real life.