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‘Your average Joe’; that’s what they called him.
He liked his black tea and his white coffee.
He had been going to work in a plain black suit, white shirt and a skinny black tie since the dawn of age.
In fact Joe had ten plain suits, twenty white shirts and eight skinny black ties; all of them the same.
He always walked to work, going through the same alleyway so that he could get a fresh-out-of-the-oven Giant Belgian White Chocolate Cookie from Tesco’s and a Regular Skinny Late to go from the local Costa.
He always arrived on time; neither too early, nor too late; at exactly 8:49, in fact.
He turned on his PC, looked through his various email addresses and, at exactly 09:00, started working on his menial tasks.
Those included all sorts of admin work that Joe was incredibly proficient at.
His decades of experience in the said sector had honed his skills to an almost inhuman level, one that God himself would envy if he hadn’t outsourced his admin work to humanity ages ago.
Joe saw to each and every task with incredible alacrity and pedantic precision.
He worked alone; his only aid was his stapler and its offspring, the staples.
To him, his little box was his castle; on the inside of dividers that were separating him from his colleagues, he had put up various pictures of his proudest achievements, including:
- Several ‘Employee of the Year’
- A Copy of His Birth Certificate
- Several Letters from His Mother congratulating him on the ‘Employee of the Year’ awards
- Several Pictures of him and his mother around the world; both wearing plain black suits, white shirts and skinny black ties, weather and location irrelevant.
In fact, if you didn’t know Joe, you’d say that he was a big fan of the Men in Black.
But if you did say that, he’d label you ‘racist’, contact Human Resources and get you fired within a matter of seconds because he wouldn’t stand such vigilante remarks on his ground.
His ground, of course, was everywhere because everyone had a stapler and was using staples.
He was the king and they were his pawns; the way he saw it, he provided them with food and water on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, one day, as he was triumphed over yet another completed set of paperwork, his queen walked in.
Slender, dark- haired, wearing a black business skirt, knee- length, a white shirt and a silk black scarf.
As she was going past him, she shot a glance at his wall of fame, smiled and said:
‘I bet you can do better than that.’
A couple of days had passed when the queen decided to walk past the king’s castle for another brisk stroll.
What she saw made her chuckle, turn her back and walk away as swiftly as her 2-inch heels allowed her to.
The inside of the castle were now swarmed with even more ‘Employee of the Year’ awards coupled with a copy of Joe’s mother’s birth certificate and an array of pictures depicting their adventures around the world.
Joe looked quite smug and content with himself.
‘Yes, I can.’, he said and got back to work.
And that’s how Joe got it all wrong.
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