Choose Your Own Adventure CLIMB THAT CORPORATE LADDER! By Veronica Toone
Good afternoon, friends. I’ve gathered you here because this marks the day that you will be a BIG BOY. Congratulation! Your life is about to take a SWEET, SWEET TURN. Hopefully, for the better. I’m really tired. Today, we embark on an adventure unlike any we have embarked on before. No more are we reaching mad far into the DEPTHS OF SPACE. And medieval times? I don’t know her. No, we’re going to what is probably the most amazing and stupendous place your FEEBLE MINDS can comprehend. It’s big. It’s bold. It’s a little sad. It’s the biggest adventure of all: Your life. I’ll be your ambiguous guide, as I am always forced to be, so TAKE A FUCKING SEAT, babes. Because today, you’re climbing— The corporate ladder.
8
That’s right, sweetlings. This week’s adventure is:
A Trip Through the Desolate No-Man’s Land That is Daily Life in a Corporate Setting. START HERE! The year is 2020. Ripe out of college, you’ve finally managed to get your own place. You wake up early these days. Bummer, bro. You look at the alarm clock on your fragile wooden dresser: 4:59 AM. You curse the MERCILESS GOD who has brought you to this point in your life. You get your little boy butt out of your little boy bed and look out the window. It’s sunny. Your HUNGOVER ASS curses that, too. If you decide to go to work today, go to PARAGRAPH 2. If you decide to get drunk and watch television, go to PARAGRAPH 3.
PARAGRAPH 2 After a brief moment of contemplating your existence in your shoddy bathroom, you throw on a couple of clothing pieces and hustle that ass down the busy street. You equip your MAP—though it’s hard to see through all the cracks your phone screen has endured—and walk to the palace of iniquity that will be referred to henceforth as your ESTEEMED PLACE OF BUSINESS. You’re still holding on to rapidly-deteriorating optimism though: for today is the day you, you sweaty sweet man,
will make the cut. You see a woman walking in from the parking lot. She reeks of something close to mulch and is holding coffee. What do you do, hmmmm? If you decide to hold the door open for her, go to PARAGRAPH 7. If you decide to walk in, not holding the door, and adjust your tie like how Leo does in Wolf of Wall Street (you know that one time), go to PARAGRAPH 4.
PARAGRAPH 3 Oh no no no, my darling. You’re a grown-up now. And in being a grown-up, you have to do grown-up things. I can’t be your guide forever. My God, really? Get off your ass and get dressed, you freeloading slacker. Although, to be honest, I think I should let you know how sorry I feel for you. Because if you read a choose your own adventure to get drunk and watch television—if you fantasize about watching television in your underwear— then you’ve got a laundry list of problems as long as Warren Buffet’s bungee’d scrote. THIS CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE IS OVER. YOU’RE INADEQUATE.
PARAGRAPH 4 You do that. You head right on in as Parking Lot Gal spills scalding cappuccino all over the front of her Nine West Two-Button stretch blazer. The glass door closes tenderly as she screams. Adjust that tie yet? Do it. Smirk to yourself. Good. You make your way to the TOP DOG OFFICE. You knock on the