I’ve always considered myself to be a natural leader with a devotion to higher ideals. By demonstrating responsibility, reliability, and commitment to company values, I’ve achieved a comfortable position here at Atlantic Box and Container Inc.
But recently, looking out across these sprawling cubicles, I have come to feel a calling to a cause larger than my own small, windowless office. It’s time I devoted myself to the noble and patriotic arena of public self-service, a cause I have a duty to pursue: a more lucrative job with a better chair and more luxurious perks.
Mine is a calling to a corner office.
For too long this company has endured the miscarriages of justice carried out against the working man by those with higher salaries than myself. But the people, united, can never be defeated, except by one willing to engage in sycophantic, empty flattery and shallow, petty backstabbing.
I am here to tell you that I am the right person to lead myself into the bold new era ahead.
I have devised a fourfold platform which will greatly improve the lives of myself and my immediate family, and broaden the vacation spots we wish to visit across our great country, and in time, Cancun.
First, I vow to do everything I can to end corruption, limiting the blatant freeloading off the sweat and tears of the warehouse workers to those who are directly associated with myself. Second, I will bring integrity back to middle management, with a policy of honesty and openness, except around the office watercooler, and especially when others are discussing me. The third plank is my vision of a greater, more promising future in which I will have a comfortable, sleek, yet fuel-efficient company car. And lastly, I promise to always put the interests of the company ahead of all other considerations, except when I must protect my own secret agendas for security purposes.
I’m a man of the people, and I’ll depend on the rank-and-file distro workers to build a base of support. I must spread my message of hope and progress to all—through sneaky, underhanded remarks, backhanded compliments, knowing glances at carefully chosen moments, and, when necessary, out-and-out lies—and I must heed the cries of this company’s disaffected and marginalized, whose interests I will unerringly pretend to represent.
But I am also a realist, and I know that to succeed in office politics, I’ll need to reach out to the power players. So I’ll brush up on my racquetball skills and perhaps invest in a membership at the country club.
This may mean spending more time away from the office and my children, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Yes, my family will lose some privacy, but I am fortunate my loved ones are willing to make compromises and attend as many boring weekend barbecues as needed as I launch my campaign.
I’ll need to start fund-raising immediately—after-hours drinks with those phonies over in sales aren’t cheap. Buying as much time as I can on all the available rumor-mill communications channels will require a substantial investment of time and energy.
And I’ll need to initiate an early backstabbing strategy to secure a nomination for my boss’s job in time for the spring convention at the Weston Inn.
I believe in myself and the great principles of individual enterprise and free-market social competition for which my campaign stands, and I know I have a good chance of winning the promotion in November.
