100th Post

Congratulations! You have reached your 100th post on Chicken and Pies. This is a very exciting and momentous occasion! You have a number of options which could make your 100th post extra special and exciting for everyone who reads this blog.

1. Post a link to another piece of writing you have completed on a new and special website that shows your readers that you have a real and exciting life aside from the words which are on your blog.

2. Post a link to a new and exciting song which will motivate and excite everyone who reads this blog.

3. Write a list of your own favourite blog posts on your blog which maybe some newer readers haven't had the time to go back and read but that you think are quite nice relative to the rest of the posts on your blog.

4. Post the first chapter of the novel that you are writing that is inspired by the blog that you have written for over a year.

Chapter 1

Shirt, tie, shoes and jacket. A clean face. I am called into my supervisor's office. It is my monthly assessment and the room is getting hot. Or rather the room is hot, and I am getting hot. I am made of carbon which is made in the life cycle of a star. The carbon in me is getting hot in this pokey room with a plant in the corner. The door closes behind my supervisor and he takes a seat which faces me. His face is at the same height as mine but somehow I feel like he is higher up than me. There is a shiny rectangular box on the table in front of my boss. He starts to talk to me about my performance over the last month. My performance has not been good over the last month. Not good at all. My performance last month has been bad.
"Your performance this last month has been bad. Do you have your targets and actuals?"
I bring out my targets and actuals from the last month. My boss looks at the page.
"I'm going to mark each section of these targets that you have under-performed in with this red ink."
My boss brings out a pot of red paint and pours it over the sheet of paper. I do not look directly at my bosses face in case he tries to bite me. I look at his left eye for a second and then look back down at the wholly red piece of paper.
"How does this make you feel?"
"Sort of, sick?"
"How do you think it makes me feel?"
"Does it make you feel good?" I hope this is the right answer.
"It makes me feel superior to you. How much money do you earn now?"
"£5.60 per hour."
"I earn £5.60 per second. You are totally shit at your job. You are a weakling. Do you think that's fair?" I think this is a trick question.
"Maybe." I answer, cleverly. I can't really tell how well the assessment is going. Nothing particularly bad has happened so far. The clock on the wall shows that one minute has passed since the start of the assessment. Assessments normally last five hours.
"Do you like lovely chocolate cake?" This is a terrifying question.
"I suppose so."
My boss take out a piece of sponge cake from the black box on the table in front of him. The cake looks very delicious.
"This cake is made with butter, sugar and flour. I made it last night - I love to bake, I find it relaxing. I love smashing up butter in a pot and pouring loads of sugar and flour all over it. I like doing it when I'm naked. Sometimes I get a hard on and fuck the cake mix. I fucked this cake mix last night. Do you want to eat my sex cake?"
I really don't want to eat it. My boss is a foul looking man, fat and heavily eyebrowed. I imagine that his cock probably has diseases.
"You are the cake," He says to me. "Say I am the cake or I will fire you."
I hesitate.
"Say I am the cake right now or I will fire you."
"I am the cake."
"Now keep saying it while I do my business."
I keep saying "I am the cake." My boss stands on the table and faces away from me and the cake. He is just facing away from me. He pulls down his trousers and underwear. He crouches down. I hear a noise from his mouth. "I am the cake." He shits on me. The cake is covered in shit.
"Now eat yourself." He says.
This assessment is not going badly, all things considered. I look at the crumbly spongy cake all covered in the shit of my boss. I really feel as though I am probably going to eat the cake. Can he make me eat this cake? I think about my boss. When I first met him I really thought that we were going to get on. I suppose that when we aren't in the assessment room we do get on; He is complementary about my work and he has a great wit to him. For a man of relatively young age he has achieved a great deal, I try and learn as much as I can from him about the tube business.
I first decided to get into tubes when I was much younger, five years ago it was. I remember it clearly - I was looking at a tube and thought to myself 'tubes are incredibly beautiful'. They have a perfect round integrity as well as myriad practical applications. We would be pretty stuck without tubes. Even though I had a genuine appreciation for the form and function of my chosen obsession I didn't realise that there was a multi pound industry built around the manufacture and distribution of tubes of varying colour and smell.
Every tube has it's own smell. That's not really true I suppose. In fact it's rubbish, tubes smell of whatever they have inside them. Tubes full of effluent stink of shit and tubes full of sperm reek of spunk. Shit and spunk.
"Why aren't you eating your cake? Why do you hate yourself? Ian, are you listening to me?"
"Yes, I just. I really don't want. I've. Well, I've never eaten shit before."
"I understand. Up until now you are not doing very well I am afraid. Sidney was much better than you. He started a month after you here didn't he? How does it make you feel to know that he has over taken you?"
"It makes me feel like I have less talent than him." It's hard to keep talking without gagging; The smell is overpowering in the hot, small room.
"At least you have some amount of self awareness. What we need in this company is people who put their own happiness and satisfaction on the back burner and concentrate all of their focus on stuffing loads of money into the pot. The big pot that gets shared between the people at the top. "
"I think I can do that."
My boss with a swiping motion smacks the shit covered cake off the table and into the wall where it sticks for a second before smearing down slowly.
"You are a waster Ian. A waster." My boss is bellowing at me, his face is red. "You waste everyone's time, you waste my breath, you are a waste of the office stationery budget." I try my hardest not to react to this but I can feel that my top lip is just shaking slightly.
"I think that there is only one thing that I can do to try and make you understand what we expect from you at this office Ian. We have, over the years pioneered a therapy at this company which we only mete out to the very worst workers."
I am starting to feel rather raw. It's difficult not to think about my boss peeling all of the skin off my head. I think about him ripping all of my hair out and then wrenching muscles and tendons away from my face. I picture myself as a bloody skull, which my boss is licking with his tongue, which is black. The end of the tongue stiffens and he rams it through my skull, making a hole in my head.
"How would you like to be a father?" He is carefully asking me questions.
"I don't want to be a father."
"This is your son now Ian." My boss reaches under the table and pulls out a standard grey tube. Ten inches long, two inches across. "You are going to have to look after this for the next two weeks." A terrible thought breaks into my mind. "What do you want to call it?"
"I don't mind. Can't I just call it Tube."
"No, you have to give it a real name, like Mildred."
"OK, I'll call it Mildred" My boss seems to relax a little bit, his face sort of slackens. He holds the tube up to my face and points to one of the ends of it.
"This is Mildred's mouth. This," he points to the other end, " is Mildred's arse. You have to feed her three times a day through her mouth. Don't put food in her arse, she doesn't like it. This symbolises your dependency to the company. Whenever you meet anyone you have to get Mildred out and say, 'This is my beautiful baby, Mildred. This is to make you empathise with the embarrassment the company feels whenever you do anything that is below standards, which in your case is everything." I need to interrupt my Boss to ask him a question.
"Do I have to"
"Shut up."
"Sorry."
"The therapy is going to last for two weeks, unless I say otherwise. Remember, dependency and humiliation are the main emotions that you feel. And that is how you should feel working for us, it gets you into the right mindset. Eventually you'll start to feel seriously inadequate as a father, which is how you should feel as a worker." I can't stop thinking about the terrible thought I had earlier. Poor Mildred. "Now put Mildred away. The written part of the assessment starts next."

5. Say thankyou to everyone who reads your blog and assure them that knowing that people read what you write makes you feel like a wonderful success.