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There is nothing wrong with wildly overstating things. For example, this may have been the greatest day of my life.
Ben Franklin said: nothing is certain except death and taxes. In Australia we have the GST which is the Goods and Services Tax (GST), similar to VAT in Europe and just Tax in the US. It’s always added to everything you buy.
You will remember Sunshine. She was the original recipient of the list of answers to all questions including Answer #4 – FOI.
The job we worked on together was high in conflict, very stressful and emotionally draining. We had to use Answer #4 a lot. I mean a lot. And then we had to find ways to cope with the stress. As a contractor, I developed a special tax that I called an FWT. This is a FuckWit Tax. I built it into my quote. Sometimes I multiplied it by a Dickhead Rate, on really bad days.
But Sunshine was an employee so we had to be more creative for her. We soon settled on exactly the right thing. When people were mean to us and we needed to charge the FWT, we would go to our favourite op shop and just wander around until we felt better. Sometimes it took hours. The St Vincent De Paul shop (called Vinnies of course) in that town was particularly good.
Get to the point, you’re thinking. OK here is the point. I’m on a job 4 hours west of Sydney. Today it is 41.5 degrees Celsius (106F). I had to go and do a letterbox drop to some rural properties about some road work. This is my job. We have done at least three letterbox drops to the same houses in the 6 months I’ve worked here but on those occasions I asked someone else to do it because I wasn’t on site.
As it turned out they’ve been yeah yeahing me all this time. That means saying ‘yes’ and ‘meaning no way am I ever going to do that.’
I know this because when I drove to the properties, THERE WERE NO LETTERBOXES. So not only have they not been delivering the letters, they said nothing when I went out into the 41 degrees to deliver them. If I was at the office I would have given them one of my famous Death Stares, which actually can kill people, but lucky for them I wasn’t.
Was I cranky though? I was about to be, then the first of four things happened.
Thing 1:
I went to the Golf Club, which is one of the places I needed to drop a letter. They also don’t have a letterbox but the Club was open.
I went into the Pro Shop and it was full of hot blokes. I left all the letters there that I didn’t deliver to other people. Note to self. Take up golf.
Thing 2:
It was still 41 degrees. I decided that it was time to apply the FWT so I went straight to Vinnies for some therapeutic op shopping. Is ‘magnificent’ another over statement? I don’t think so. Take a look at these.
What could possibly be better than pink cowboy boots?
Thing 3:
Then my phone rang and it was George from the bank. He was just calling to check in and see if there was anything he could do for me?
“Can you reduce interest rates George? That would be great,” I said.
“Actually I can,” he replied and then proceeded to knock the equivalent of about $3000 off my payments.
“George, that is the second best thing that’s happened to me today. It’s nearly as good as finding pink cowboy boots at the op shop,” I said.
He was kind (or maybe wise) and didn’t argue with me.
Thing 4:
I went back to the office and waited around for more letters to get approved. This is another really annoying thing that causes me to apply an FWT and sometimes give Death Stares. I decided to write this post as an additional FWT.
I finished it. Then the power went out. I left. No point being there if a) no one can see the Death Stares and b) there is no way to apply an FWT.
Conclusion:
Apparently old Ben Franklin was onto something. It is true that you can be certain of Death (Stares) and (FW)Taxes. With me around, anyway.
