Punishing the B&NC Team, Part 2

So it’s raspberry berets for everyone. I had written each Being & Nothingness Cam Team member’s name as neatly as I could with a black Sharpie on the fold. I sat down with the Team for late-mid morning coffee and handed the berets out. Tom, Sia, and Phaye each took theirs, held them limply in their hands, and were quiet. They looked at me, waiting.

I told each of them that this was their work uniform and they would start wearing them now. They would pick their beret up on my desk when they came in and leave it there when they left. Tom and Sia pulled theirs on slowly, while Phaye, the annoyingly energetic 22 year-old, jumped up as she put hers on to go look in the bathroom mirror. She returned looking mournful.

I told them that while I understood that this job was not conventional, and it could feel like we were just sitting around looking at monitors and doing nothing, it was still a job and they must do what I asked. The would begin—or re-start—by writing the biographies we had discussed 5 weeks ago, and give them to me Monday: Tom was to write about Sia, Sia about Dirk, and Phaye about Tom, and I would have Phaye’s bio. I posted the bio Dirk wrote about me ages ago, and he wasn't even a B&NC Team member.

I sounded like a fossilized English teacher.

I had wanted everyone to look awful, and they did. They looked like raspberry-colored turds had landed on their heads. They looked like the Fierce & Fabulous Guardian Angel Team.