My boss makes me mad so I decide to trash his car on my break.
Everyone else is outside too.
I have to throw a rock through the window because it’s locked.
The alarm goes off but none of the other employees even notice. They’re mostly busy smoking. Some of them are drinking enough to get buzzed until their next break.
I open the door and pounce on the interior of the car with my knife. I slash the seats. I stab the stereo and the dash. It isn’t long before it’s pretty destroyed.
After I’m sweaty and exhausted, I decide I’m finished. I collapse into the passenger seat, fatigued.
My boss catches me. He sits in the driver’s seat, grabs a bottle of whiskey from the console and takes a slug. He lights a cigarette.
“Guess I should probably fire you,” he says.
“Yeah.” I don’t apologize because I’m not really sorry. “I brought a granola bar for my break. I probably should have eaten that instead. I don’t know why I do things like this.”
“It’s probably just because it was here,” my boss says. “I should probably stop bringing it in. Third time this week it’s been trashed. Monday it was Dale. Wednesday, Tim.” He takes another slug from the bottle and drags on his cigarette, not angry, staring off at the side of the building we’re parked in front of. “Now you. What do you say? Should I stop bringing the car?”
“Makes sense,” I say. “If it’s going to keep getting destroyed. I certainly won’t be able to stop myself … in the future.”
“I’ll need a ride to work.”
“Maybe we could all carpool,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Pick me up tomorrow?”
“I’ll probably be late.”
“Try not to be.”
“I’ll try.”
“Know what?” he says. “We should just set this thing on fire. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh yeah.”
We get out of the car together. I turn and drill a kick to the inside of the door, hard enough to bend the hinges.
“Dale!” my boss shouts. “Lighter fluid!”
Dale reaches into his large truck and comes up with a bottle of lighter fluid. He rushes over to us and hands it to the boss. The boss, cigarette clenched between his teeth, squirts the whole bottle of lighter fluid into the interior of the car. Some of the other employees wander over and cheer him on.
Our boss takes another healthy slug of his whiskey and shouts, “No one’s gonna destroy this thing again!” before tossing his lighter into the car.
We all stand around and watch excitedly for a few minutes but then it gets boring and we go back inside.
I have to take my boss home that evening. He lives in a much nicer part of town than I do.
I do not pick him up the next morning.
No one does.
We feel autonomous until he starts taking the bus. Then he starts borrowing employees’ cars for “joyrides” and we begin to feel a small level of freedom again.
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