Work Shirts

My sense of humor is rather warped. The people I have to work with here pretty much all know this by now, however I do take pleasure in pushing things further from time to time. Usually at least once a week I like to wear a politically incorrect shirt to sort of rattle the cages, so to speak. When I first started wearing offensive shirts to work I was actually a tad bit nervous someone would complain to a manager and I'd get hauled off the shop floor to a conference room for a good talking-to. Funny thing is, it's never happened. In fact much to my surprise most employees don't even notice what's written across my chest when I'm standing right in front of them. Goes to prove that most people are asleep at the wheel and just aren't paying attention.

There's a really messed up shirt company called Bounty Hunter. I like their stuff. From their demented series I purchased "I Love A Parade" and "Revenge Is Easy." Nobody, and I mean nobody at work has said a damn thing about that M4 carbine shirt. That really surprised me. I figured at least one dingbat housewife would freak out and fink on me. Once in a while a random employee in a hallway will stop, look at the sniper peeking over the edge of that building and say to me in a normal tone, "I really like parades too. They're super." At first I thought people were just fucking with me but then I realized they were being serious. Now when I get a response like that I usually tell them in a retarded voice, "I rEaLLy LIkE cL0wNs t00. HURRRRR HURR HURRRR." And then I walk away.

Across the hallway from our department there's a group called Sub-Assembly. Their job is to supply our various instrument lines with pre-built front panels, micro circuit decks, rear panels, etc. On occasion I have to walk over there to their group to return damaged assemblies or run down a problem or other. I didn't know it, but their supervisor is one of those weirdo cat ladies. You know, the kind of person that lives alone with like fifty feral cats and all the filth that goes along with them. I made this shocking discovery by wearing a shirt with a cartoon of a rotten kid about to run over a cat with a push mower. Walking over to their supervisor's desk to ask a question she read the caption on my T-shirt and proceeded to completely flip the fuck out. It was fun. She shrieked at me "WHY DON'T YOU LIKE CATS!" I told her that I just simply LOVE kitty cats to DEATH. That woman hasn't spoken a word to me since. Heh.

As they say there's two things you don't talk about at work. One is politics, the other is religion. While I'm not the most politically active person in the world, I am particularly anti-Bible thumper. My parents forced my sister and I into private Christian schools when we were young and it was a truly terrible time in my life. Deplorable people. For years we had to put up with mentally ill hypocrites that couldn't follow the most basic teachings of the religion they professed to believe in. It was a unfulfilling, oppressive experience. I did become a fairly adept Bible scholar though, and to this day I love beating beady eyed Christians over the head with scripture because the honest truth is the overwhelming majority of them don't know a damn thing about the book. Anyway, I have a Jesus shirt that pretty much sums up how I feel about Christianity these days.

Interestingly some people look at the shirt and give me a thumbs-up. Smiling, they'll say, "Gee it's great to see a young man such as yourself walking with The Lord." Hey, read the fine print there chumps!