Recent studies have found that, due to employees streaming games on their phones and laptops, employers lose between $2.3 and $4 billion (with a B!) during the NCAA basketball tournament. And being the struggling, multi-national conglomerates they are, it’s only right that you pay them back for this squandered productivity. Here are some ways in which you can return the potential profit you’ve ruthlessly skinned off the back of a helpless corporation that’s only trying to make ends meet.
Work a Little More Than Usual in April
Sure, March Madness is fun. But there’s no question it takes its toll on a company’s profitability. As an insignificant cog in the spinning gears of a capitalist machine, you should remember something very important: YOU CAN BE EASILY REPLACED! Let this fact sink in, and then let it scare you into staying late every night for a month. Every Cinderella story, every upset, every miracle buzzer-beater you saw: that was just one more reason for you to be fired. So try to earn it back. Stay until seven. Heck, stay until midnight! Really grind in the hours. Go above and beyond like your life depends on it. Because in so many sad and hopeless ways, it does.
Donate Any Bracket Pool Winnings Directly to the CEO
CEOs work very, very hard and only ask for minimal pay. In fact, the average CEO only makes a mere 271 times what their typical subordinate makes. That means while you’re kicking back, watching a 12-seed try to upset a 5-seed, there are chief executives watching stock prices fall, biting their nails to the bone wondering how the hell they are going to pay this summer’s rent for their boat slip at the yacht club. So, should you be fortunate enough to win your pool, give all your winnings directly to the CEO or senior executive. These people have suffered enough at the hands of the NCAA, having to pick up your slack and all. Don’t add insult to injury by forcing them to actually have to earn their salary!
Stop Taking Lunch Breaks
Good employees understand that the middle of the day is when you’re at your most efficient. So, by working through lunch, you can add a ton of value to our shareholders who, let’s be honest, are the only thing that really matter. You enjoying a limp Jimmy John’s sub and a few much-needed minutes of small talk with your co-workers was NOT a scene in Atlas Shrugged! Instead of filling your body with nutrients, you could have been lining the pockets of the 1%, who so desperately count on you to maintain their quality of life. Our yoga retreats to Bali are more important than you being hungry. Plus, didn’t you get enough small talk in while chatting with your cubemate about the Elite Eight?
Turn Yourself Into an Actual Robot
You read this correctly. Make yourself into an android. We’re not sure exactly how you’d go about doing this, but it would super help out our bottom line if you could somehow just all of a sudden become a robot that doesn’t require any chairs, or sustenance, or human connections, or any of that naggy stuff that adds to our overhead. As a machine, you’d never have to “go home to your family” or “use the restroom” or “breath clean oxygen,” and that would really make up for all the lost revenue we could have generated while you were watching basketball for the last month. Plus, sooner or later we’re only going to be hiring robots anyway, so it would save us on R&D as well.
Again, thank you, Faceless Employee, for your understanding in these trying times. Your consideration of company monetary standing is greatly appreciated. Sure, we’ve gotten some humungous tax breaks recently, but we dutifully dolled that money out to stockholders and executives in the forms of buybacks and bonuses, so we’re still not reaching our full earning potential. We all have to make sacrifices. But it’s only fair that you, a worker so low on our totem pole, sacrifice the very most.
