The Day Larry the IT Guy Sabotaged the Out of Office Assistant Messages

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I’m out of the office, at a beach, drinking overpriced coronas, and pissing everyone off with my vacation photos

MacKinzie, Accounting Department

I will be out of the office the week of June 5 for a wedding.  I’ve been talking about this event for the past two years, taking up precious server space with photos of sunflower arrangements. Everyone surely knows sunflowers really are not the most beautiful wedding flower.  By the sound of things, you’d think this was the royal wedding of the century, not some union with a personal trainer that will likely end in 1.5 years. Plus he’s kind-of a jerk who drives a truck, unlike the IT guy who drives a more sensible Prius and knows how to wipe a hard drive, if you know what I mean.  I’m on Instagram pretending to wrap twine around two hundred pillar candles, but in reality, it’s all for show and I’m outsourcing that to a teenager for thirty bucks.  Please follow me and use the hashtag #upscalebarnyard so you’ll showcase your lack of all respect for marriage as a sacred union.  When I come back to work I’ll bring photos of everyone line dancing and drinking spiked lemonade in mason jars. If you need me, I’ll be home pretending to hand-fray all the burlap for my social media channels.

David, Executive Assistant to the CEO

I am not in the office because I’m out voting, which seriously takes only an hour after work and can be done early.  How many elections are actually going on right now?  Apparently several, since I’m always out “exercising my right to vote.”  Our work software uptime has less waste than my lunch hours.  I like to make a big deal out of voting, making sure to ask everyone in the office to see if they voted and putting political bumper stickers all over my Honda Civic. Despite out company having a strict policy on no political involvement on work time, I’ve been using my work email for all event notifications as well as periodically checking my facebook page called “CODE BLUE OR BUST.”  If you need me, I’ll be out of the office saying that I’m voting, although that actual event only takes five minutes. I will, however, be wearing politically-charged snarky t-shirts and insulting anyone who doesn’t agree with me.  When I’m actually at work, which I sandwich in between my block walking and political grandstanding, all I do is develop not-so-funny memes that I circulate to everyone, which of course I don’t think anyone knows about because the computers are “my private space.” Ha!  I’m such an idiot.

Stefanie, Quality Control Supervisor

If you are receiving this message, little Clintonia has arrived.  Oh, how many months the office has been hearing for this miracle of birth with its own choice of gender!  I’ve made it clear he or she can go by Clint or Tina because gender isn’t real, which caused a big fuss when Linda from Accounting gave me a pink baby blanket.  That hilarious guy from IT said “well that’s a hard boot” but I didn’t laugh because I have no sense of humor. Sure, everyone has made fun of me due to the name sounding like a small town in Russia, but I don’t care. Unlike the perfectly reasonable baby shower people threw for me at work where I received lots of gender-neutral children’s clothing, whereby the IT guy donated twenty dollars and signed a card (what a nice man!), my preference is instead hemp-based baby clothing because I’m a snob who was born in 1998 and grew up watching vapid children’s programming.  I will not respond to you if you email me with a marketing question.  I will not respond to you basically with any question because all I really care about is this human being of unknown gender that’s coming out of my body that I can’t stop talking about.

Mario, some dude in the mail room

Who boy!  It’s finally come!  Seven whole months here at the insurance company has come to an elegant end.  It’s the longest I’ve worked anywhere. My start-up needs my full attention and I decided that I wanted to move to Portland to start an organic beet farm. Instead of going into a perfectly stable field of IT, which is the life force of any industry and can ruin/help you in any important situation, post millennials think they are God’s gift to humanity.  So I quit without even giving two-weeks notice.  To be a beet farmer, for heavens sakes.  If you need someone who is stable, dependable, and knows how this company works, call the IT department.  Ask for Larry.  If they say no one works here by that name, just say “that guy who knows how to fix things.”  They’ll know who to call.

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