Remember that movie 9 to 5? It was an early ‘80s movie that starred Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and the great Lily Tomlin. They played administrative assistants (They were called “secretaries” back then. Can you believe it? Crazy!). They kidnap their miserable boss, keep him captive and in his absence, proceed to give the office a visual and professional makeover. They give the joint a “woman’s touch”, painting the walls warm colors and sprucing up the place with ferns and other foliage. At the same time, they increase their office’s productivity, start up work-share programs and even provide the holy grail (to this day) for working parents—an onsite child care facility.
Dolly Parked rocked. Lily Tomlin ruled. Even Jane Fonda smoked the ganja. It must have imprinted a feminist sensibility on my ten-year-old psyche because ever since then I have always harbored a desire to stick it to the Man. I delight in poking, prodding and digging my digits into the Man at any opportunity.
“The Man” are the cops who ransacked our house when I was eleven searching for evidence. Keep looking, motherfuckers. He’s also my English teacher who told me I shouldn’t take my AP English exam because if I failed it would bring the schools test scores down. Bitch. He’s my high school counselor who told me the only way I’d get into UC Berkeley would be if they still hadn’t reached their quota for minority enrollment. Asshole. The Man struts around my office, Executive-Ken-like, brandishing his race, sex and good looks as if it were an all-access back stage pass at a rock concert. I just wanna bash your face in.
Sometimes, I’ll stick it to the Man in little ways. I won’t fast-food it. Ever. Period. Have you read Fast Food Nation? The fast food chains and the industries that support them are willing to sacrifice the health of the world for, okay, trillions of dollars. They’re creating a lot of little Happy Meal junkies who’ll grow up to need insulin shots, angioplasty and gastric bypass surgeries. No, I’m not helping the Man in that effort; he’s not getting my $1.99 for my Burger Royale with Cheese.
In my mind, tomorrow, I’m sticking it to him in a big way. The Man wants me to be beholden to him for giving me a job and wants my sweat, blood and tears in exchange. Well, guess what, Man? That’s an unfair barter and I’m not playing. I’m out. I’d rather take my chances and hustle to pay the rent than feel like someone’s extorting my life away. Tomorrow, I’m firing the Man and giving him a pink slip, but most likely, he won’t even notice I’m gone. He’ll just notice a blip in the system, look up long enough to grab a replacement drone flying down the conveyor belt, then reset the machine to keep the cogs turning. But one day, the monkey wrench I will have left there so innocently wedged, deep in the machine, will have rusted. It will have caused millions of dollars of irreparable damage. So much damage, in fact, that their shareholders will lose faith in them and force them into filing the largest Chapter 13 bankruptcy in the history of the world, after which, the highest court in the land rules in favor of them righting the wrongs they have inflicted upon the country by paying out billions of dollars in reparations to every single person they’ve ever affected in any negative way. Wow…all from little ol’ me. Poke-poke.
