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Here’s your daily routine when you come in for work over here. You go to your locker. Punch in the combination (you know it by heart). Step back immediately, because the door springs open and if you’re around 5ft10in, the latch hook will strike you right between the eyes leaving a painful blister. Of the 7 billion people in the world, there must be a sizeable percentage with that bruise on the knocker by now. It’s our badge of honor.

So you’ve just opened your locker door and stuck your head in. Hazardous act. Your steel-toed shoes for the shop floor reside there, along with cotton socks that haven’t been washed since Harriet Beecher Stowe’s niece forgot ta wash hers. 

Now you flap the locker door this way and that, to let the insides of your locker deodorize. The process is slow since the whole locker room stinks and therefore diffusion from higher to lower concentrations is retarded. The best thing to do is beat it from there as fast as possible.

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Soon as you emerge from the locker room, you head for Oasis (the cafeteria) for your morning 100% Columbian Moka and muffin. And a chance to take a closer look down the counter girl, Pierrette’s, T-shirt. And that’s one thing I tell all my male friends. If you start your work day with baobabs in your mind, you’ll breeze through and have everyone eating outa yore hands, I swear.

Propulsion Department, aka ‘Jiggle City’, population 45, 88% female, 12% wimpy male. Female boss, Nurse Ratched she be called. Jaws rectangular and chest flat, like the Sasketchwan. Imagine, they have a boss who looks like a Canadian province.

Propulsion dept is also known as Gossip City – three out of four words you’ll hear there are ‘whatever’, ‘totally (pronounced ‘toatly’)’ and ‘like’ –  

“And I was like, toatly blown last weekend.” 

“Ooooh! Did he, like, finally make a pass?” Excited ripples in voice.

“Toatly. He like went even further…” Giggles.

“Whatever”. Envious, doesn’t want to show awe. 

Propulsion is a good venue for meditative regeneration of brain cells, aided of course by visual stimulus.

But I digress. 

After Pierrette, you walk briskly into your own department. Strolling in is frowned upon. Long purposeful strides if you are male. Dainty, quick, prim steps if you’re female (jiggles, if you’re equipped ta jiggle). High heels going tack tickety tock. Vague, vacant, glassy smiles. You head for your tiny cubicle.

You click on your pc and laptop and survey your tiny table, coffee in hand. Your family photo was on the left of the WO files. Now it’s on the other side. The stickies you left on the monitor appear rearranged.

You’re certain Mitch McPuck has been there sometime during last night.  

No one has ever actually seen or met Mitch McPuck. But we all know he exists. How he got his name is a mystery. The Irish surname may have come because statistics since the early 1960s show that he lets us be and doesn’t finger anything over the St Patrick’s Day weekend, every year. Other days, we’re all fair game. He steals in at night and snoops through people’s drawers.

Mitch pays special attention to female employees’ drawers, it is rumoured…….

Barbara in Critical Parts, says that the thought of Mitch McPuck going through her drawers turns her on and has greatly improved her sex life at home. She has even started calling her husband Sidney, Mitch, while having sex, she says. Sock it ta me, Mitch! Harder! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Sidney doesn’t give a fuck whom Barbara fantasizes about as long as he is the one fucking her. There, see? That’s the difference between you women and us men.

Stephanie in Experimental has started leaving panties in her top drawer. They’re gone by the next morning, she claims. Oriana at GasGen is positive Mitch McPuck can fly and that he zooms off to his Timbuktoo warehouse every morning to inspect the night’s worldwide panty haul. The story goes that Mitch is making a giant patchwork quilt out of the panty stash.  

Be that as it may, you settle down, flick on the overhead light and survey the 100 or so emails waiting to be dealt with. There’s the morning contact meeting in a half-hour. You’ve been to zillions till now. They’re nothing but a load of crap. Analyses of last night’s hockey game between the Habs and the Philadelphia Fillies, while 15 pairs of male eyes ogle the stockinged legs and low altitude décolletages around the room. Sighs, yawns, burps and stray farts are punctuation marks as the boss briefs you on all the stuff that’s happening around you. 

After twennie minutes it’s over and you disperse. That’s when the place erupts into action. All hell breaks loose. Phones going off every second. Folks hurrying around, cell phones ringing.

You look at your computer clock. Its 5 minutes to 8am. Got that meditative regeneration thingee coming up.

Venue- Jiggle City. In five minutes.