Escape from Coolville. Sherman Sutherland

about how we can’t wear jeans and Douche Two was like, “What about black pants that are made of denim material?”

      Everybody in the room let out a big, loud shut-the-hell-up sigh, which made Douche Two more determined than ever to win the stupid-question contest. “Black denim pants aren’t technically jeans. ‘Jeans’ is from the French term, bleu de Genes, which translates to ‘the blue of Genoa.’”

      Somebody said, “Who cares?”

      “Black is a completely different color than blue,” he said, like we’re all idiots who didn’t already know that.

      Then somebody was like, “Dude, it says right on the screen, ‘Denim or “jeans” of any kind or any color is considered inappropriate attire.’”

      Tim said, “Maybe it’s time we took a break. Anybody have any questions before we go?”

      “Yeah,” Douche One said. “What do you mean by ‘worn out or torn attire’? Because I have to buy all my clothes at Goodwill, and they already come worn out and torn up.”

      First of all, that’s a bunch of crap. I buy pretty much everything except for socks and boxers at Goodwill and none of it’s torn up. I mean, yeah, it’s hard to find your size, and a lot of it was out of style twenty years ago, but it’s not like all their clothes have big ginormous holes in them.

      I’d love to bust him on it, but I don’t want everybody to know that I shop at Goodwill.

      But, even if I was going to bust him on it, I never would’ve gotten the chance because Douche One made Tim describe in excruciating detail exactly how the Tuition Reimbursement Plan works.

      So we figured that would be the end of it, but then Tim asked if there were any more questions before the break.

      Everybody knew that was a mistake.

      Douche Two said, “Why does everyone at a funeral say, ‘He’s in a better place’? If they really believed that, they shouldn’t be sad, right? When somebody is in Hawaii on vacation, you don’t hear their friends saying, ‘Boo-hoo, he’s in a better place.’”

      And the winner of the stupid question contest is . . . Douche Two!

      * * *

      Back from break for round two.

      While Tim took everybody on a tour of the break room—“this is a vending machine; you put this stuff called money in this slot and a whole bunch of unhealthy, barely edible crap comes out”—so I figured that was a good time for me to sneak outside and grab a smoke.

      Just as I was about to light up, though, Derek came up behind me like, “What’re you doing here?”

      Now that he knows I’m in training, too, he’s got this whole big conspiracy theory thing about us failing our QAs.

      He said, “Dude, think about it: we both started at the same time; we were in the same training class a year ago. You think that’s a coincidence?”

      “You think the moon landing was a conspiracy.”

      He gave up after that and we spent the rest of the break making fun of the new trainees.

      There’s the lady who’s so glad for the opportunity to finally have a job; she’s been looking everywhere, and the lady who’s so excited for the chance to finally hone her psychic abilities—“she’ll be disappointed when she actually starts working here,” Derek said. “All these people must be escaped mental patients or something. And what kind of guy answers ‘revenge’ when somebody asks why you’re working here? A total douchebag, that’s who.”

      That was pretty much my whole entire break. Now it’s time for more PowerPoints, aka naptime.

      * * *

      Douche Two and Douche One

      won’t shut up, won’t shut down.

      So many stupid questions,

      says Trainer Tim’s frown.

      We all wish they’d shut up,

      we do, we do, we do.

      Oh, please shut the hell up

      Douchebag One and Douche Two.

      * * *

      Overheard in the Break room:

      Douche Two (aka Viking Boy): “There’s no way a samurai could beat a Viking.”

      Some other trainee: “I’m just telling you I saw it on Hulu.”

      Douche Two: “I’m telling you it’s bullshit. The katana could never get through the Viking’s chain mail and the Viking’s battle axe would chop the samurai in two.”

      Other trainee: “Whatever.”

      Douche Two: “It wasn’t at all realistic. They had the Viking fighting on his knees. Why would he fight on his knees?”

      Other trainee: “Because Vikings liked to suck cock.”

      Douche Two: “You’re a racist.”

      Other trainee: “How is that racist?”

      Douche Two: “I have Viking in my blood.

      June 8

      I came in to work today, bright and early at nine a.m. for the second day in a row, and I plopped into my uncomfortable ATS armless office chair, preparing my pens for another major doodlefest—Doodlepalooza? Doodlaroo?—when in walked the girl of my dreams.

      She smiled and said “Hi” as she sat down right beside me. I think I smiled back—I hope I smiled back—and I accidentally did one of those things where you move your mouth like you’re saying “Hi,” but no actual sound comes out. If I would’ve left it at that, it probably would’ve been okay. She probably would’ve thought I’m some kind of badass who’s too cool to pronounce words. But something in my brain was determined to say something.

      I was trying super quick to figure if it’d be better to say, “I’m happy to see you,” or to ask, “How are you?” But before I did, it occurred to me that both of those would make it sound like I remembered her, and I didn’t want that, in case she didn’t remember me, so at the last second, I decided to say, “How do you do?” which would’ve been perfect in that situation.

      What actually came out of my mouth, though, was, “How do I do you?”

      It’s times like this that I wish I didn’t smoke so much weed.

      The worst part was, I just sat there with probably the stupidest smile on my face while she looked at me wondering if I really said what she thought I just said.

      Yes, hot girl with the super-long hair. Yes I did.

      She pretended she didn’t notice, though, so that was nice of her. It makes her kind of more sexy, too, if you ask me.

      I still don’t know if she remembers me. I met her at Lucky’s a couple weeks ago. Mike and I were playing darts against these two douchebags who thought they were God’s gift to darts and I’d just hit the twenty and then the bull with my first two darts and we started celebrating because those guys were dicks. Then they were like, “You still need to hit double-bull. That’s how you play Around the Clock: bull, double-bull.”

      So I threw my next dart and, bam, right in the center. Just as I started in on my happy dance, she was right there, probably walking back from the restroom, and as she tried to squeeze through, I grabbed her hands and we started sort of dancing. I don’t know what it’s called, but we did that thing where she comes close on one side and then on the other side and then she did that little twirl thing in front of me and then she smiled and went back to wherever it was she was sitting. She never said anything and I never