.SOMETIMES RAW.

Employees:

I just thought it would be helpful to remind everyone of the rules we have in place for keeping food in our shared refrigerator. Please follow these guidelines to help ensure the fridge remains a sanitary and healthy space for everyone who works here:

– Our staff will throw out everything in the fridge each Friday by 6 p.m. If you don’t want your leftovers to end up in the trash, TAKE THEM HOME!

– Do NOT eat any food that isn’t yours, whether it’s a mostly full container of pad thai or a mysterious glowing paper bag that has been wedged in the back of the fridge since our company moved into this office on June 6, 2006. If you see someone else’s name on it, leave it alone. If you don’t see someone else’s name on it but know it isn’t yours, leave it alone. If the glowing seems to be getting more ominously radiant as your flesh inches closer and closer toward the bag, definitely leave it alone.

– If you accidentally eat someone else’s food, just own up to it. Do not pretend that you brought in the same meal or try to blame it on the glowing bag, as that generally just seems to make it angrier. Glen was the last person to try that, and we never saw him again.

– No, Glen was not fired. We honestly have no idea where he went and are pretty worried.

– If you see something in the fridge with a note on it that says FOR ANYONE, I guess you’re technically allowed to eat it, but keep in mind that this may just be the glowing bag trying to trick you into consuming something for sinister purposes. We’re pretty sure it gained the ability to write while we were all working from home and is using this skill to foster a false sense of trust among our employees.

– We know the fridge gets crowded, but try to keep your food at least a quarter-inch away from other people’s food—especially if it contains peanuts—and at least six inches away from the glowing bag. Stacy hasn’t been quite the same and is much more fluent in Aramaic since she left her salad right next to it all weekend. This is one of the reasons why we instituted the “food gets thrown out on Friday” rule, just FYI. That, and the smell was attracting flies.

– The glowing bag is exempt from that “food gets thrown out on Friday” rule, in case you didn’t already assume that. The last cleaning lady who tried to throw it away vanished soon after, and now the temperature instantly drops by twenty degrees whenever we say her name.

– Yes, we assume she and Glen are in the same place. We just don’t know where that place is.

– We really don’t like to ask about our employees’ religious beliefs, but we will say that one time a certain colleague put some sacramental wine in the fridge, and everything except the paper bag was covered in blood three minutes later. It totally spoiled the piece of pumpkin pie I had been looking forward to all day, so please don’t bring in any sacramental food items going forward. Also, please no fish.

– Make sure to always shut the fridge door completely. Leaving it open even just a crack could cause the food to spoil and allow the essence inside the glowing bag to escape its current confines and spread to all other parts of the office.

– Do not adjust the temperature settings. Also, do not touch the AC of the room where the refrigerator is in. We have confirmed with a sustainability expert and an exorcist that the fridge’s current temperature is optimized to be environmentally friendly and ward off evil spirits. Any adjustment could put both of those things at risk.

– Clean up all spills immediately, unless the spill comes from the glowing bag, in which case flee the office immediately.

– If you open the bag, you are subject to immediate termination. But you should let us know what’s in it before you leave. I’ve always assumed it was a demon, but Joe is convinced it’s just some really old egg salad.

Sincerely,
Dave from HR

It’s a universal modern-life experience to talk about something and immediately see an ad that seems like it must be a result of that conversation. Maybe you tell someone you’re planning a vacation and then start seeing advertisements for flights and hotels. Maybe you talk about how you want to take up running and find yourself bombarded by banners hawking sneakers. Perhaps you open up about how tough it is to be single and notice a series of sponsored posts about dating apps. When this happens, you might suspect your phone is “listening to your conversations.”

This belief is false and paranoid. We do not live in some tech dystopia in which our smartphones clandestinely use their mics to pick up every word we say and then feed us commercial messages based on them. The truth is simpler and not at all alarming: your phone only seems to be listening to you because it’s collecting data about every word you type, every website you visit, and, through GPS tracking, everywhere you go in the physical world.

The hysterical tinfoil-hat crowd urges you to turn off your phone whenever you’re going to discuss something private—like your political opinions, religious beliefs, or medical conditions—as if the phone is somehow going to “hear” them and tech companies will use that info against you. In reality, they already know all those things because they know what news sources you read, the contents of your emails, what WebMD pages you’ve visited, and how long you’ve spent at which church, synagogue, mosque, or ethical humanist center. So don’t even worry about it. It’s not like there are hacks every day, and there will be more and more as time progresses, and some amoral lunatic on the dark web will eventually see a transcript of every in-person conversation you’ve ever had. They’ll be too busy looking at a list of who you’ve spoken to, at what time, and for how many seconds.

Plus, you don’t need to use a phone or even a computer to have your privacy invaded. Did you know that credit-card companies can legally sell data about your purchases to third parties? It’s true! And I bet if you decide to try to evade that by shopping exclusively with paper money, you’ll probably be flagged by your bank as some kind of a weirdo who’s taking out way too much cash and must be up to something shady. Better to just surrender. Feel free to have an in-person conversation with your most privacy-conscious friend about how resistance is futile. Your iPhone or Android won’t be picking it up, and, honestly, like what you’re saying is so interesting. Be realistic. No one cares about you.

There are a lot of benefits to our advanced information technology, many of which come from the customization you get when companies know your preferences. You can’t change the world we live in, so the best thing you can do is relax and enjoy what’s good about the twenty-first century. And while it may be unsettling to confront the dirt corporations have on you, you can at least take solace in the fact that your voice-to-voice chats remain inviolable and, no matter how uncanny the ads you’re served seem, your phone is not eavesdropping on you.

Also, there’s been a software update, and your phone is now listening to your conversations.

I bet you experienced this: Everything sucks, everybody sucks, and all you want to do is dig a little hole and hide forever. You don’t want to see or speak to anyone. The world simply feels unfair and bad. So, what can you do? Scream and shout and beat something or even someone? Or are there different solutions? Let’s just create our dream land where we can hide and everything is okay. It doesn’t have to be a physical place (even though it can be) because sometimes it works simply by imagining it. I can do this and escape to my happy place nine out of ten times which is pretty cool. This is not easy but with practice it is possible. Like anything in life. Do you have a place like this? A secret little hiding place? Let’s visit NoSuckLand shall we?

In NoSuckLand, chocolate is a nutritious superfood. You can eat as much as you want, won’t gain weight and just be super healthy.

In NoSuckLand, everyone has a pet because pets give you unconditional love always.

In NoSuckLand everybody is helpful, nobody has to wait longer than one minute on the phone to get help. Nobody screams and yells.

In NoSuckLand there is no fine print in contracts and everything is easily understandable.

In NoSuckLand there are no evil, rich politicians.

In NoSuckLand, my job pays me obscene amounts of money. Unfortunately, money is virtually worthless here, so people burn it to keep cool in the long, hot days of winter.

Here, there are no homeless people.

Here, everyone can afford an apartment because rents are affordable for everyone.

Here, there are no alarm clocks. People can wake up whenever they feel rested. There is no alcohol here and no drugs so no hangovers, ever.

Another difference is that up is down, and down is up, but that’s really just semantics, and in NoSuckLand semantics are meaningless.

One great thing is that in NoSuckLand, I have wasted exactly zero hours on my phone playing Candy Crush 3D because playing on your phone is never a waste of time. In fact, it has helped me increase my fine motor skills so much that I am now the world’s most renowned spinal surgeon. That’s why I earn so much worthless money.

Here, the only thing money can buy is happiness, but most people prefer to be morose, which kind of takes the pressure off, to be honest.

When things are going well, some people still say, “You should worry. Things will probably not work out.” Toxic negative people always try to sneak into NoSuckLand. What are these people doing here?

I don’t have any children in NoSuckLand. Nevertheless, I am a complete expert on parenting and freely share my advice, which means that if you meet me, I am an absolute pleasure to talk to.

People here often look at my arm and say, “I don’t want to know what your tattoos says,” which is strange because in NoSuckLand, I don’t have tattoos, just a lot of dog scratches.

Here, everyone gets solely promoted due to their work qualifications, skills, and education. No favouritism, no connections, no hanging out with the boss after work.

Here, everybody gets treated the same. People are happy and content.

It’s a huge relief that in NoSuckLand, I don’t care one bit about how I look, because a woman’s value is not predicated on her appearance. The most valuable trait a woman can possess is consistently speaking up in meetings.

Here, healthy, nutritious food is available to everyone. Nobody needs to eat garbage.

Another thing women are valued for is the enormous amount of emotional labor they contribute to society. This labor is so valued that it is well-compensated. Of course, since money is virtually worthless, emotional labor is instead rewarded with something much more precious: packages of Oreos. You know, the cookies. Yum!

Climate change doesn’t exist in NoSuckLand. In NoSuckLand, there is only “climate same,” and it is an issue that everyone takes seriously. We take it so seriously that we did something about it and created climate change, only we changed the climate for the better.

In NoSuckLand, we now have, on average, twelve more days of perfect sweater weather per year. That, along with the amazing social safety net and the harmonious and civil political system, make NoSuckLand a pretty great place.

In fact, it would be almost perfect if only Oreos here actually tasted good.