Blog Love Omega Glee: You Gonna Like Uganda! (5 July 2012)

"I know this is going to suck," Lucy says, as both first and second shift workers gather for a mandatory company meeting on the Ostomy Cosmetics factory floor near their usual shift transition time at four in the afternoon. Cole Ostomy, wearing a hairnet and a business suit, climbs up on a filling ladder near a vat of Vanilla Vamp Lip Gloss and makes the announcement that the factory is closing.

The crowd begins to boo. Someone chucks a hairnet at him but it only flies three feet before landing in someone else's hairnet, so no one much notices it. "Now, now," Cole says, "That doesn't mean you're out of work though. If that were the case, we would have laid you all off before the holiday and not had to pay holiday pay. Think about that, huh? We are merely shifting operations to our new factory in Uganda."

Jake hears a conversation behind him:

"Uganda? Where the fuck is that?"

"I think it's in southern Ohio."

Cole continues above the chatter, "And you all are welcome to join us in Uganda. We'll even pay for the costs of your moving and pay you an hourly wage of a dollar, more than we'll be paying the locals there."

"Excuse me," Lucy waves her hand, "Did you just say you'll be paying us a dollar an hour, or that you'll be paying us a dollar more an hour than the locals?"

Cole smiles and says, "Good question! Lucy, right?"

Lucy nods.

"A dollar an hour."

A general uproar, a hubbub to bub all hubs, breaks out. Jake can hear Bonita swearing in Spanish loudly and doesn't even see her anywhere around him. One worker starts chucking rejected jars of skin cream at Cole, who ducks them until security hauls the worker away.

Cole shakes his hands up and down, holding them straight out in front of him, "All right, simmer down. I'll have you know the cost of living there is very affordable. Effectively it'll be a higher wage than what you make now. And we think you're going to like Uganda. No more Cleaveland winters, right!? In any case, if you don't want to go, you don't have to, and if you choose not to go, then you'll finish out the week like normal. We need some help wrapping up operations here. We've already shipped some equipment to Africa, but we're going to send some more . . ."

"I was wondering why no machine that went out for repair ever returned to the floor," Lucy says to Jake.

". . . every worker not moving to Uganda will get a week's severance pay for every year of service."

Jake raises his hand, "What if you've been here less than a year?"

"Uh, Joe, right?"

"Jake."

"Jake, yes, yes. Well, the answer to your question is workers who have been here less than a year aren't vested so they get no severance pay."

"Severance this!" a blur with a hairnet yells and runs up the filling ladder shoving Cole into the vat of Vanilla Vamp.

The crowd, despite their rancor, gasps.

Cole climbs out, with the help of security, coated in lip gloss goo, and, wiping his mouth, yells, "This is unacceptable! This vanilla is not up to our standards! In Uganda, we'd have you shot for that!"

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.