http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-mummies?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
Why Mummies?
By Ian Frazier
Illustration by Ben Newman
Nowadays, when I tell prospective employers to consider mummies, the other undead temp option, I am met with blank stares. How is it that in just a few short years we've forgotten about our old reliable standbys, the mummies? Simple: We live in the golden age of zombies.
I often remind personnel directors at competitive companies that mummies work eighty per cent cheaper than zombies. Mummies are also slightly more articulate, and they are easier to deal with if they become enraged. If a mummy starts to chase you, merely pull on a loose end of one of his bandages and spin him like a top, unwinding him until he collapses in a pile of bones. Unlike zombies, ninety-seven per cent of mummies are not unionized, and some have even been known to threaten union organizers with bloody butcher knives.
Antigrowth forces sometimes fault us for leasing out mummies to serve as the operators of giant construction cranes. But all our mummies are legally bonded and receive up to two days of refresher training every third year, as is required by law. Mummies are allowed to work more than eight hours in a single shift. And here's another dollar saver: they are not eligible for overtime pay, because of laws involving forfeiture of certain privileges resulting from having escaped (in many cases) from state-funded universities or museums.
Public-safety advocates have cited isolated incidents in which a mummy became upset while operating a giant construction crane. Remember, these operators are the mummified remains of the same people who built the pyramids. We think they know a little bit about building things!
It is true that once or twice a giant construction crane has got away from the mummy who was operating it. I'm sure we've all seen the videos, and the reports from the hospitals and the morgues, and the sensationalized pictures of the crushed orphanage (the one that was crushed in both incidents, last year and the previous year). Apparently, a Great Dane has been implicated in the event, along with a group of meddling teen-agers who were investigating mysterious noises in a haunted mansion and somehow opened the sarcophagus in which the mummy in question, Amenhotep, was resting after a long shift working the giant construction crane. Experts cited lack of sleep as a cause of the accident, and neither the mummy nor our firm was convicted of the main charges, though he was sentenced to perform thirty hours of community service. (While performing his community service, Amenhotep did briefly chase a local TV reporter with a bloody butcher knife.)
Now, regarding the other incident: First, you must remember how hard it is to operate the controls of a giant construction crane when one's embalmed hands are swathed in ancient linen wrappings impregnated with tar-based mummifying substances. The mummy's fine motor skills are impaired, and this leads to frustration on the part of the mummy, who, after all, was only human. A mummy in this situation is liable to "act out," making muffled groaning noises and moving about erratically. The crane then begins to swing wildly, smashing into neighboring skyscrapers. This upsets the mummy further, and he groans more loudly. So far, however, no real damage has been done.
In the incident I'm referring to, the more serious problems began when the mummy took a bloody butcher knife and began to attack the controls of the giant construction crane. The bloody butcher knife is often a mummy's default response, and sometimes we must work around it, inconvenient (and occasionally dangerous) as it may be. All our mummies know the rule "Use words, not bloody butcher knives," because we drum it into them as part of the training. But in panic situations it's not always foolproof. Every thought leaves the mummies' brains, which probably aren't in their skulls anyway, having been removed and mummified separately and put in amphorae.
All this may seem to outweigh the arguments for why you should hire one of the mummies represented by our firm. But remember: mummies rarely feed on human flesh, while zombies stuff themselves with it. So why is there all this buzz about zombies? (And we don't mean the swarms of bluebottle flies attracted by their putrefaction.) More is going on here than meets the eye falling out of its socket and dangling by the optic nerve. Look no farther than K Street, in Washington, D.C., and the multimillion-dollar lobbying firms that are clustered there. Better yet, ask Ms. Jane Austen, who featured zombies in all her exquisitely wrought nineteenth-century comedies of manners. Research has revealed that supporters of mummies begged her time and again to give a mummy even a tiny role in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," but she refused. Now it is known that Ms. Jane Austen was in the pocket of the zombie lobby up to her eyebrows.
Savvy businesspeople understand that dirt-cheap mummies mean bigger paydays for our neighbors and for our communities. Even if you are a job creator who has been bitten and turned into a zombie yourself, that's O.K., as long as you remain on the other side of the electrified steel barricade. We will be happy to provide the mummy or mummies who are right for you. ♦
-- Sent from my Linux system.
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