Terribly Terrible Bosses AKA I Am The Only Poet In The Bingo Factory

It's been a while my dear readers, since I've posted a poem on this very blog, but today, seems to merit itself. I've been thinking lately about the awful jobs I've held over the course of my lifetime & of course, I usually end up writing about it in one form or another!

We all at some point have had experiences of terribly terrible bosses who we fantasize about wanting to hurt or destroy them, just as they've mangled our egos to a point, where some of us need to get reconstructive plastic surgery or seek therapy.

Having said this, I'd like to present to you one of the longest poems I have ever written, four pages long to be precise. It seems a bit long as in diatribe, but it is worth the read. I've only read it once in public and even that was an event in itself, as it was at least 15 minutes long! Enjoy!


I Am The Only Poet In The Bingo Factory

Give me a “B” (B)
Give me an “I” (I)
Give me an “N” (N)
Give me a “G” (G)
Give me an “O” (O)

What’s that spell? B I N G O!

What’s that spell? B I N G O!

What’s that spell? B I N G O!

What’s that spell? B I N G O!

What’s that spell? B I N G O!

Before I begin work each day, I start with this daily prayer,

“Our Feinberg,

Who art in heaven,

Bingo be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on paper
As it is in hardcards.

Give us this day
Our daily pulltabs

Forgive us our trespasses
As we rip off those who
Went before us.

Lead us not
Into plagiarism
But deliver us from four-play

A meager free space.”

I am the only poet in the bingo factory
Waiting inside
Thin walls of glass and cement
Just to punch the clock of conformity
That pays me fistfuls of money

Putting away my lunch in non-union refrigerator that for one reason or another, a former boss wrote a memo on its usage based on silly conversation I had with another co-worker who became coarse and hard-boned because she said it was “Her property.”

Going to the bathroom during timed eyebreaks and pondering poetry in the last stall, amid the shadow of the old Mexican laborer cleaning toilets and mopping the faded chipped floor, because he says “It’s so easy.” helping the overslept security guard decipher numbers on the screen, while listening to the giant bingo factory fan blowing out hot stale air.

Walking back through the old limping factory with a mug of green tea-back to co-workers who listen to talk radio of cheery voices and dumber-down mentality, me listening to Allen Ginsberg with much antiquity, wearing Italian glasses-paid for by my mother who didn’t want me to be fashionable on her buck.

Back inside my dry-toast office, boxfan blowing around hot stale air, me marking my daily report on makeshift draft table serving as desk, proofreading god-awful games-poke-hokey names with sexual overtones like: Hustler, Kiss, Something Fishy?, Your Pad Or Mine?, Four Play, Horny, Stud Puppies, Nice Pear and Choke The Chicken.

My desk with toolish remnants of my trade…grease pencils, magnifying glasses and paper clips, a file cabinet full of game folders. Magnets cover the front and people coming and going and giving me documents to look at to make sure they’re alright. Most of the time I catch the mistakes and then there are the times that I don’t and I get written up or suspended, for what I don’t know…Or the witnesses who never existed or the point-counterpoint texture lectures, twisted around the tongues and teeth of the bosses who refuse to acknowledge or believe that their buddies’ behavior is wrong! The hahaha-hohoho-heeheehee-teehee jokes I never understand and let’s not forget the ever-popular kissing ass, failing to recognize the fear of consequence that lays waiting in the dark, ready to pounce.

How my job has changed, but not really if I think about it….

When I was supposed to provide solutions to repeated problems whose creators refused to believe it or blame each other or point fingers or yell or scream or ream each other at long-winded meetings on Friday afternoons.

I work for tyrants who fire you if buy a 10 cent tea or pop without warning; who separate good friends; who hand out grocery store certificates on Thanksgiving; who give out company logo shirts as unique gifts; who issue holiday bonuses with the taxes taken out; who own Rolls Royces and BMWs; who have no windows inside their factory-for fear some bright worker might use their brain if they saw the outside world; whose smarter workers work in their offices and diss their bosses through gossips, poems like these and conversations; who make work feel more like prison; whose workers clomp forward like Frankenstein’s monster with lunchpail and newspaper in hand when the factory lunchbell rings and clomp back when it rings again to the great battered machines and worn out tables and desks that were bought second-hand; whose cafeteria that looks so blasé; hot in summer and cold in winter; dull colors splashed on the walls with framed posters of our products that put money in their pockets-not the workers.

$44 million annual profit invested in their homes, their cars and their thriftiness.

When it comes to the workers, the worker’s union-as lame as any union can be, not enough money to live on…no such thing as the living wage for a factory job. Slave to be killed, “Oh cool!” all my friends exclaim. The single most craziest thrill to ever want to work at a bingo factory.

All that for a little reward of green.

I am continents apart, I think-drifting off to that time in ’98, in L.A., that’s the night I met Tonight Show host Jay Leno and was asked about computers and my job. When I told him I was a proofreader in a bingo factory, I had never seen such great laughter and great joy emitted from man whose jokes smokestacked an entire nation and here he was laughing with me. “So, if you see a w, you have to make sure it’s a w?” he says with jowled laughter. I said yes…..trailing off endless possibilities. But they didn’t show it on TV...15 seconds of fame shot into obscurity...

Going back and forth to the bosses, some who would get much pleasure of raking me over the coals because they wanted to show me how much more dumber they were than me and they proved it…fought tooth and nail to tell me how right they were on paper. At least more paperwork for them, more frustration for me. I pointed out fact from friction, although fiction was not far from their truths.

And now I have someone listening to me, an ally in my corner, seemingly at long last.

Too little. Too late.

B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O

The factory bell bellows
It’s two o’clock
All the workers cheer and yell
And it’s time
To go home