The Asshole App

3 THAT'S MR. ASSHOLE TO YOU

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. -Steve Jobs

"Ray, what the hell is an Oompa Loompa?" CENTIEN Corp.'s CFO, Denis Lear, was bullshit. The pince nez sitting atop his nose trembled as he sat at his desk reading excerpts from Lori Jacob's red-flagged Human Resources' email.

"Oompa-Loompas are the workers at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. They're imported directly from Loompaland." Raymond Sinclair raised his hands, making exaggerated air quotes. "Just like our interns, they'll work their asses off for free cocoa." CENTIEN's handsome CEO scoffed, grabbing a colorful Rubik cube from his chief financial officer's cluttered desk. 

"See, this is what I'm talking about. You treat people like they're disposable pawns." Lear gave him a scathing look over his laptop. "What's going on with you, Ray? Is this another workplace affair ending in a dumpster fire?" He glowered at the brilliant, yet socially inept founder he'd worked with since the companies' inception. Although he'd worked with Sinclair over a decade, he often felt like Ray was a complete stranger. "What exactly of yours did Miss Simmons fuck up? I know you can be cruel to staffers, but it's not like you to go bat shit crazy on them."

Nonplussed, Sinclair stopped rotating the deceptively simple, three-dimensional puzzle to meet his friend's probing gaze. "Nothing's going down in flames, Denis. Let me tell you my side of the story. Miss Simmons went rogue-that's what happened." He shrugged, lifting his shoulders, palms facing up. "She tried to hijack this morning's marketing agenda, so I decided to teach her a lesson." Seeing his senior administrator's mounting fury, he held up his hand. "Relax, Denis. Everyone knew I was joking when I chewed her out, except her. You should have seen her face. She was so flustered she spilled coffee all over herself. Oompa Loompa Doopity Do-it was hilarious." Sinclair dropped the plastic puzzle, upsetting Lear's prized BangBangDa Zen sand garden.

"You're an indiscriminate ass. Do you know that?" Lear scooped sugary piles of white sand from his desk. Using a miniature bamboo rake, he clawed serpentine furrows in the meditative box.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is Talent's fault. They accepted the Oompa Loompa's application without properly vetting her. She's too pretty  —I mean ditzy to be a Marketing Assistant. Let them clean up their own mess." Sinclair leaned back in a modified chair, propping his dirty, stockinged feet, ankles crossed, on the CFO's elaborate desk. Lear scrambled to move a silver-framed picture of his wife before it was desecrated.

"She's not ditzy, she's ambitious. Evelyn Simmons scored the highest in her intern focus group on conceptualization and empathy. I want her in the new marketing position. We need team leaders with drive and intuition." Sighing, Lear removed his glasses and wearily massaged the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe you obliterated her for getting your beverage order wrong. She left the building in tears. You always alienate women you're attracted to."

"Oh, puhleeze! I don't find her attractive at all. I demoted her to the mail room for spilling coffee on me. She's lucky I didn't fire her on the spot." CENTIEN's CEO waved his hand, contemptuously. "She can work her way back up once she learns the difference between decaf and regular. Then the joke will be on me." Agitated, Sinclair pulled out his new ten-thousand-dollar smart phone, admiring the slick, platinum casing. "Remember Denis, these neophytes work for free because they're clueless. We have hundreds more Loompalas dying to apply for internships." Rocking in an agitated manner, he scanned his phone and muttered, "When has anyone empathized with me when I fucked up?"

Lear yanked the smart phone out of his hands. "CENTIEN's a multinational tech company, not a Jurassic Park ride where you run around chewing the heads off helpless staff. Stop being evil. They're human beings with feelings, not slave labor."

"That's Google's lame motto, not mine." Sinclair snatched his phone back." If I'm going to be wicked, I own my actions. Unlike Google." His smile didn't reach the corner of his eyes.

"Raymond, people already despise you more than Steve Jobs." Lear, resignedly, closed his laptop. "Even I'm beginning to hate you."

Unconcerned, the dark-haired former wonder-kid, now a middle-aged man, grinned boyishly. "That's how I get results, Denis. By pushing people to do their best. It's rope-a-dope, 101. Nobody handed me anything growing up. My parents had me earn every single dime I ever made. Do you know why I became a success? I worked my ass off. Besides, I think you're exaggerating. No one on CENTIEN's board hates me enough to push me out like they did to Jobs." He hesitated, then asked his second-in-command. "Do you really hate me?"

Lear leaned closer. "Let me be blunt. If you keep delaying CENTRIXS' new VPN algorithms, we won't have any positive results to report this quarter. Just mountains of debt from all those failed technological gambles you dragged CENTIEN into. Our financials are hemorrhaging."

"We have a lower profit margin because we don't use child slave labor and our phones don't spy on people. How is striving for excellence my fault?"

Denis rubbed his temple to circumvent an oncoming head ache. "Jamison and Casper want to meet today."

"Fuck them!"

"As far as they're concerned, we already have. The NSA surveillance satellite upgrades have been delayed. The loan the CIA made us off the books is long overdue, and CENTRIXS' integration timeline's been pushed back." Distractedly, he raked his hand through his dark, blond hair. "It's a nightmare. I can count the number of clandestine calamities on my hand."

Sinclair abruptly cut him off. "Those Department of Defense commanders can go pound sand 'til we perfect their new algos." His eyes narrowed. "Besides, I've been having second thoughts about providing user updates to those psychopaths. Once the military centralizes CENTRIXS, those asshat combatants will be invincible. Maybe the CIA shouldn't have access to that much centralized power."

"Ray," Lear lowered his voice. "COMCOM's" aren't people we can casually fuck with. They're the military industrial complex. I told you we never should've gotten into bed with them."

Sinclair, who seldom saw his CFO show fear, frowned disapprovingly. "Denis, the government's our biggest client. They need us more than we need them. Capice? Tell me, what did we just develop and install for them? Oh, I remember. The best Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System network on the planet. CENTRIXS' surveillance capability's so invasive, an ant sneezes in his burrow and holographic logistics get uploaded on the little prick's ass before he knows he's been comped. Ipso facto, the target never stands a chance." Sinclair probed his incisor with his tongue, dislodging a stubborn chia seed. "I've never met such ungrateful bastards."

His demeanor grew icy. "What those clowns don't realize is that I embedded a Pentagon kill switch in the software upgrade, code named ICARUS. They fuck with me and their VPN shielding goes down. Without that shielding that insignificant ant can blow their precious Snow White, Big Bird, and the Seven Dwarves to smithereens." He leaned forward, raising his index finger, "I almost forgot Humpty Dumpty."

"Who?" Lear asked, perplexed.

"Their fucking surveillance satellites." Sinclair shook white sand from the Rubik cube, then leaned back in his chair and sealed it with an imperceptible click. With a satisfied smirk, he scrambled the puzzle back into its original disorder.

Lear asked, "Why did you give me that stupid thing if you're the only one who plays with it?"

Ray grew serious. "I have my reasons." He handed the cube back to his CFO. "You need to keep this in a safe place, Denis. Your desk is a mess."