To: DC OFFICE — ALL
From: Grider, Michael
Subject: MOSEY FOR BREAST CANCER 2010!!!

Greetings, co-workers. As many of you may have noticed from my previous emails, the posters in the break room, and/or the friendly reminders that I glued to your computer screens, I’ll be participating in the very charitable, very real, Mosey for Breast Cancer 2010. The Mosey supports breast cancer research in the DC area, is a great way to get involved in the community, and is in no way made up. I’m really looking forward to presenting my pledge sheet to the organizers, who are also real and distinct from me, so they can see how hard I worked (and how much I spent on glue) on behalf of this worthy cause.

There is, however, one small problem: you are not supporting my efforts. It’s been a week, and the only entries on my pledge sheet are a currency-free “Not a real charity!” from Mary in Accounts Receivable, a valueless “This is a scam” from Ted in the mail room, and an equally bankrupt pledge “to help Michael be less of a doushebag [sic]” from one “Ash Holman,” which I can only assume is fraudulent (and not particularly funny). Also, someone tacked up a copy of the company’s employee conduct policy on charitable solicitations (like that’s going to help cure cancer!). Given your poor performance in support of the Mosey, the realness of which cannot be questioned, I have no choice but to conclude that each of you is, in fact, pro-breast cancer.

An unfair critique, you say? I’m not so sure. After all, I couldn’t help but notice that Jeff from Sales isn’t having any trouble raising money for his drive (“Beat Multiple Sclerosis!”). Even if we were to assume that Jeff’s drive was authentic and not a front for the pro-breast cancer lobby, since when is there a limit on charity? You know what they say: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Or maybe you don’t know what they say. Maybe when they said it you were off injecting people with particularly virulent strains of breast cancer. Or maybe, just maybe, you were too busy being a bunch of selfish jerks who wouldn’t know a real charity if it jumped up and glued its very official-looking flier to your computer screen.

I suppose you’d all be chomping at the proverbial bit if I told you that some very famous celebrities also support the Mosey. Hey, maybe if you stopped worshipping celebrities for two seconds, you’d know that the Mosey does, in fact, profess to count several super-famous and super-non-fake human beings among its backers. I can’t name their very genuine names, of course, but I can promise you that your failure to donate isn’t making it any less likely that those same very important celebrities will die — not of breast cancer, but of broken hearts — upon bearing witness to your complete philanthropic neglect of the Mosey.

So let’s just call a spade a cancer-endorsing spade and admit that you love breast cancer so much that, if given the choice, you would marry it. If breast cancer were on Facebook, you would become Facebook friends with it. If breast cancer were a professional sports team, you would root for it. You would buy season tickets, a replica jersey that says “Breast Cancers” in cursive on the front, and a giant, novelty foam finger, which you would then use to heartlessly point out people with breast cancer. This is not my opinion. It’s what you would do.

If I had a wish for you, it would be that you’d get off your high horse and back down onto a normal-sized horse and stop loving breast cancer so much, horse-face.

Right now, as I write this, you are thumbing your breast cancer-free noses at my efforts, which are not in any way ignoble, and funneling your donations to Jeff’s sham MS operation, or, perhaps, a terrorist organization (these are not mutually exclusive, by the way). If you can justify your actions with your god, then so be it.

I hate you all,

Michael Grider

P.S. Because of your collective failure so far, the organizers have graciously suspended the deadline for pledges indefinitely. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.