this is what they pay me for...

You know the sort of thing where one person starts a story and then a group of people take turns adding to it, picking up the narrative ball where the last person left off? Sort of like Click... aaaaaaanywho. A coworker just forwarded a story kicked off by another of our coworkers, and added to be at least one other (if not more) in the interim, which starts off talking about a poor schmuck wasting away in cubicle land a la "Office Space," then shifts point of view to his boss, Amy, who thinks bitterly to herself that her male subordinate wouldn't have lasted nearly as long were it not for his conventional good looks because, in the world of depilatory creams, some man candy often helps to close the sale.

Needless to say, this got my mind stuck on unwanted body hair (and yes, I freely admit to having first googled "depilatory" to figure out just what sort of cosmetic product the story was dealing with)... so I ran with it:

Ironic, then, that Amy often found herself longing for the days when a tasteful amount of cleavage coupled with a mildly distracting hemline was the perfect one-two knockout punch in the world of corporate ladder climbing. Not that the good ol' boys didn't continue to show their appreciation for feminine wiles in the form of scarcely concealed lascivious glances by the water cooler and the occasional upwardly mobile promotion—for that was true as it ever was. But as gravity took its toll, cellulite began to congregate en masse at Amy's midsection, and her nipples inched ever farther from the bright and shiny quarters of youth to the fragile, wind-beaten sand dollars of middle age, the fact simply had to be faced that her own sexual currency was no longer in active circulation.

And to make matters worse, that cold, heartless bitch genetics had finally reared its Gorgonesque head: When Amy looked in the mirror this morning, fine lines, wrinkles, and her mother's menopausal moustache stared back. Time to invest in the company product, evidently...

Earning that paycheck in spades this week.

Image borrowed from Mirror.co.uk.