I'm feeling particularly vile today, so I thought I'd tell you a particularly vile story.. see if it would enhance the feeling a bit.

I love feeling like shit. Reminds me of all the times I've been dumped by beautiful women, cut-off on the interstate by idiots, of all the times I woke up and remembered I had to go in to that stupid job I hated so much I could just puke, which was about every day...

Jonathan says, Joe, ya gotta look on the bright side. Jonathan, with his fag name who always calls me Joe even though Joe ain't my name...

Jonathan is my roommate. He's really a pretty good guy for a gay guy. I used to be way homophobic, can ya tell? He didn't tell me he was gay till we decided to become roommates to save a few bucks. He likes to walk around the house naked, thinking it's gonna turn me on or something. Nice try, shit head, don't try to convert me, I tell him.

The reason Jonathan calls me Joe is that my initials spell Joe, James Oliver Edwin. My mother was lousy at choosing names. I'm beginning to prefer Joe. I think I'll put it on my next fucking job application. And where it says SEX? I'll write "Sorry, can't right now, I'm looking for a job." You got to play with those people in the employment offices sometimes... They have boring jobs, too. I'd hate to have a job where all I did was talk to people who don't have any job but who still wouldn't want my boring-ass job. That would suck harder than this morning does, coz it would be an everyday thing.

So now I'm unemployed again. Probably why I'm feeling so vile. Even though it's a major relief to know I don't have to go into that donut shop one more greasy morning, I think I'm gonna miss the free donuts and coffee and stuff like that.

I'd just taken all I could. I was so sick of that asshole Chester. Chester was our manager. He was 18 and loved being a boss. He actually thought of his donut manager job as a career.

Imagine that.

He liked to boss us like we were stupid little kids. I hated him from the first day. See, I was training for two days my first week. Making donuts is like a really tough skill to develop, so you have to have two days of intensive apprenticeship. My first day on the job, I couldn't even go home and tell Jonathan I had a job as a donut maker. I had to tell him I was a fucking donut maker apprentice. It sucked, but I needed the money, and the free donuts and coffee and stuff were pretty cool, I thought.

One thing Chester loved to do was yell at delivery people.

"You're 20 minutes late!" He'd yell. "Do you realize how many donuts we could have made in the last twenty minutes, you idiot?"

He always said shit like that, even though we had enough donut making inventory stuff to last a year or so, if you ask me. I was gonna start taking some of the extra dough and stuff home to make my own right about the time Chester fired me.

He just liked to be a big man.

He also liked to yell into the phone. Almost anyone who called got yelled at, except his Mom. She called at least once a day to see how things were going for her little boy. She was really proud of him, I think. Wonder what the hell was wrong with her? Must be a family disorder.

Gloria and I used to laugh at the way he'd snatch the receiver up to answer the office phone, saying things like, "Deelish-Donuts. This better be important!" and "Deelish-donuts. We're really busy, can you hold, please?" He said that even when we were all just sitting around eating free donuts and coffee and stuff. He didn't have to be nice on the office line coz it was mostly for deliveries, inter-office calls and such. He always snatched it up so hard it looked like he was expecting it to fight back.

That gave me an idea. The idea that led to my recent unemployment.

Last Friday, I stopped at Wall Drug on the way in to work and bought a tube of super-glue. Fridays are way busy, almost the busiest. Lots of people getting boxes of donuts for their office coffee clubs and such. I knew Chester would be in his finest of bossy-assed moods, and would be yelling at Gloria and me about absolutely nothing all morning. So, while he was up front kissing up to one of the customers, I crept over and put a decent helping of super glue all over the cradle of the office phone. It was one of the old fashioned black, plain types that sits on a desk. I pressed the handset back down and held it there a second.

I was already smiling.

This was gonna be great.

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I mean, the glue might not hold, but I thought it would, or Chester might just get pissed at the resistance of the receiver and know it was me, or maybe Gloria, even though she hardly ever does anything like that.

I went back to making the donuts with Gloria and waited for the phone to ring.

It seemed it never would.

I started worrying that maybe the thing wouldn't ring all day, that it might ring after I got off work and I'd miss seeing Chester try to answer it. I got tired of waiting, and told Gloria about it. I mean, I had to share the anticipation with someone. She laughed so hard she dropped a donut back in and splattered us both with hot grease. That hurt like hell, but it happens all the time, even when we're not laughing about super-glued phones. I really like Gloria. I'm gonna miss her. She was a nice old lady.

Anyway. We were whispering about it, Gloria and me, and had practically forgotten our anticipation when the phone suddenly rang. Chester was at the front counter, from which he usually comes storming to grab the phone.

This time, however, he was waiting on a beautiful young professional woman, no doubt thinking his "Manager" name badge impressed her enough to make up for his pimply face, donut-grease oily hair and the fact that he worked in a fucking donut shop in the first place, when she was probably something important like an executive assistant or secretary or Mall manager or something.

He yelled to us, "Somebody get the phone, please." He never said please, that fake little shit.

Gloria and I went on as if we didn't hear.

"Hey, Gloria, James... get the-- Nevermind." By now the nice looking woman was on her way out with her box of donuts. Donuts I'd helped make. It made me feel pretty good that this pretty woman had bought my donuts and would soon be eating one, her slender fingers picking up my work. I liked that very much.

But I didn't have much time to daydream about that, because Chester, now a little madder than usual, if you can imagine that, stormed around the corner and grabbed the phone, muttering some profanity attached to our names which I couldn't quite make out and which sure as hell doesn't matter now, anyway.

I guess I really thought he'd try to lift it and it would kind of weigh him down and maybe get dropped to the floor and break, which would have been pretty cool, coz I was tired of hearing it ring and hearing him yell into it anyway.

Chester was in fine form, though, and when he reached for the phone, he grabbed it so hard, he beat himself upside the head with the whole phone. It was so funny, I almost couldn't breathe. He spun around with an incredibly dazed look on his dumb face and the phone with it's remaining inertia, plopped right into Gloria's donut fryer. Big spash. Huge mess. Gloria ducked for cover, I jumped back a few feet, and Chester slid down the greasy wall like a raindrop trying to find its way down a dry window pane.

He was out cold, for a couple minutes. I wondered for a second if he might be dead, if the fryer would eliminate all the evidence, if Chester's Mom would grieve that her son had been forced to begin his short adult life in such a dangerous occupation.

No such luck. One of the customers out front saw Chester fall and ran around to see if he could help. Gloria called an ambulance and I waited on the remaining customers.

While I was putting the last of a dozen donuts into a box for an older guy who sure as hell didn't need any donuts, from the looks of him, I heard Chester's voice behind me. It was a whisper, the kind you can only hear thru one ear, whichever side the whisper is coming from.

It came from my right. It said, "You are so fired, you sonofabitch, that you'd better get your ass out of here right now, or you'll be dead and fired, with charges being pressed."

I turned to look at him. He had this huge red and purple looking welt swelling up on his cheek and forehead. I could see a ridge from the corner of the phone base. It looked angry and funny. He had a couple zits that were made even redder by the swelling. I loved it.

I smiled as I backed away. The old guy who didn't need any donuts walked out with his donuts, but without paying. I didn't care, I didn't work there anymore.

I pushed through the swinging counter door, untied my apron and tossed it over the counter, waving to Gloria as I pushed through the crowd of wondering, impatient Friday morning customers. An ambulance was pulling up as I walked out of the parking lot. I found that hysterically funny, and almost fell down laughing.

I'll probably never have that fun a job again.