Friends with Zenefits – Widget

This piece appears in Work It: Quarterly Report, issue 1 and is based on a scene in Work It’s episode on office romance.

In 2016, Zenefits had a scandal on its hands. A sexy scandal. Employees kept having sex in the stairwells. Sexy sex. In fact, after finding used condoms in the stairwell, management had to send a memo to stop it. Work It obtained the memo. The sex memo.
Work It: Quarterly Report, Issue 01

“Dear Zenefitizens, you probably know what this is about. Upper management recently discovered used condoms in the stairwell. This email is to inform all employees that they are not to have sex in the company stairwell. Just, condoms everywhere, piles and piles of used condoms filling the stairwell. The hardened ones were arranged in cairns, piled up as if in tribute to some kind of – I dunno? – condom deity. Damned if it wasn’t one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen, this apparently condom-based form of ritual. Awful; just awful.

“And though I wish the catalogue of our employees’ sex detritus ended there, alas, we’re just getting started:

“We also found a number of erotic creams, jellies, balms, salves and otherwise sensuous unguents. Three hundred packets of birth control, ranging in flavour from lemon-drop to rocky road. There was even a pack of Flintstone’s chewable birth control, the ones with Pebbles Flintstone on the box with a red ‘X’ over top.

“We found a sixty-four French ticklers; seventeen Italian scratchers; and a pair of Spanish belchers. (Fully belched.) No fewer than 80 – it pains me to write this even euphemistically – ‘male enhancement rings.’

“All of which, by the way, had exactly one hair stuck to them.

“I mean, literally, one hair each. Like, was someone sitting there, carefully affixing them, one at a time as some kind of arcane enchantment? And what sort of enchantment is done via pubic hair anyway? Ball buff?! Dick nerf?!

“On second thought, you know what: I don’t want to know.

Zenefits’ stairwell has been proven to fill one’s head with thoughts of deep holes. Yuck.

“There was a Walter Cronkite Real Doll; a poster of Alien vs. Predator, and by ‘vs.’ I mean ‘having sex with’; a Nintendo Switch modded so that Kirby is anatomically correct; and a signed Wendel Clark jersey, for some reason.

“To reiterate: employees are expressly forbidden from having sex in the stairwell. And in case you try to get cute on us, no sex in the supply closet, boardroom, fridge, or ball-pit either.

“Do not have sex on the fire pole; do not have sex on the bike rack; do not ask your co-workers if they want to meet Solid Snake and then have sex in a big cardboard box. And if your supervisor spots you, do not run and hide in a locker! Your supervisor is easily confused and will resume his normal patrol, making a mockery of this whole policy. Do not have sex in the bathroom, the quiet room or the meeting room, got it? There will be no wiggle room, I mean it. Do not have sex in the Wiggle Room!

Zenefits’ engineers enhanced this stairwell, adding ‘e-balls’ for optimized dick and balls.

A Second Email from Zenefits management

But the employees didn’t listen. Too busy having sex, you see. So Zenefits management was forced to send out a second, even sterner email in a last-ditch attempt to get their employees to lay off all the sex:

“Hey, Zenefitizens. Us again. U up?

“We’re begging you. Please, oh please follow these new policies. And yes, I’m aware begging is a turn-on for a number of you and I’m only making things worse here, but I don’t know what else to do!

“Male employees will no longer throw their jackets over puddles that a female colleague was about to step in. And female employees are absolutely not to kiss them on the cheek and say ‘My hero!’ This has got to end! It makes the men go ‘a-ooga’ as smoke comes out their ears. Not only is this distracting, it’s a clear violation of the fire-code.

“Under no circumstances are female employees to say ‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.’ In fact, all romantic film dialogue is now prohibited. Men are only allowed to say ‘I wish I knew how to quit you’ if they are addressing their job itself, i.e. quitting. In which case, please put it in writing for our records, including your last day.

“If any employee dies, they are expressly forbidden from cozying up behind a former colleague and sensually guiding their hands as they work while Unchained Melody plays. This is the exact reason we began offering pottery classes.

“It is no longer allowed for two employees to sit together in the lunchroom eating Kind bars, and it turns out they’re eating opposite ends of the same Kind bar, and they accidentally kiss when they get to the middle of the Kind bar, and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!,’ and then they’re like, ‘You know, that was actually kind of nice…’, and then they just start kissing for real. Any employees found doing so will have their Kind bar privileges revoked – this applies to all flavours: melon, taco, and peanut.

“At the end of the day, we’re not mad; we’re just disappointed. All we wanted was to create an awesome work environment here at Zenefits, but unfortunately, you guys took it too far and we’ve got to be the bad guy. Not cool, gang. Not cool.

“Going forward, we on Zenefits management blah blah blah blah blah, end of article.”