This is not the eBaum's office, but it's nice.

Many of the users of this dumpster fire of a website have expressed interest in learning the daily goings-on of the eBaum’s World office (yes, there’s an office). I have taken it upon myself to detail the personas that populate, or rather, infest this space in a way that no camera or livestream could capture.

The office itself is essentially a cross between a frat house and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse wedged between conventional office spaces for law firms, accountants, and other sex-repellant careers. It goes without mention that we are the undesired black sheep hurting the neighboring real estate’s value (and the concentration of anyone within earshot of our vociferous bullshit).

For my first time in the office, I was greeted by none other than JBRogerThat, a clean-cut, tucked-in-shirt mascot for the caucasian race well-versed in jargon and high-fives. He had the predisposition of college campus recruiter or a Mormon missionary.

“Hey man, welcome to the office,” he said with arms outstretched. “There’s the fucking ping-pong table and everything. Cool, huh?”

I was initially frightened that I was walking into some tech-office cliche of perpetual adolescence occupied by bros and dudemen, but then I remembered I was an immature, unhireable asshole and started to feel right at home, especially thanks to the interesting cast of employees whose farts I have surely inhaled due to our constant close proximity to one another. The employees are a random variety of misfits and shitbags, but you can’t help but love them, or pity them.

My desk.

Riverboat Ron, for example, is a kind-hearted asshole. That is to say, he’s like a nice bubble bath with rancid meat floating around in it or like a fetid shit wearing an adorable hat. Almost cabbage patch but mostly garbage pail. He has the neurosis of a young Woody Allen (and the sense of style to match), and his mood can often be summarized as “annoyed.” We carpool to work together, and his desk is next to mine. In other words, we see too much of one another. By recent tradition, one of us will always have a handle of whiskey in our desks at any given time (there’s a strictly policed turn-based policy of purchasing liquor to deter moochers). If Ron gets me a coffee, the phrase “room for cream” implies an intent to spike it. It’s nice to have this mutual understanding in a relationship. It’s really all too precious.

On the other side of my desk sits Melissa or whatever her name is. She’s the newest addition to the office and has an unexplained obsession with Russian culture, which in the current political climate is troubling, to say the least. There are theories floating around the office that she is alt-right or at least a sympathizer, like Walt Disney. But she’s also vegan. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Someone reported a swastika drawn on a stall in the women’s restroom, and she was really quiet about it. I pray for her.

On the other side of the office is the workspace of Toaster Strudel. He’s our main video editor and altogether strange fellow. His previous job was writing the descriptions of On-Demand pornography for a local cable provider. For example, “Filthy pregnant asian gives a double reach-around to father and son during erotic bar mitzvah,” would be along the lines of his prose. He’s a good guy but with absurdist tendencies that would make you reluctant to partner with him for a “trust fall” team-building exercise.

Pepper Peanut, who sits throned at the central desk overlooking his minions, is a strange juxtaposition of artist and businessman. One minute he’s scolding us for the pornographic material we’ve featured to the chagrin of our advertisers, and the next minute he’s breathing on the office’s window glass and licking off the fog. What a strange creature. One time there was an empty box left over from a delivery (we had gotten a new microwave because I broke the last one while cooking pot pies), and he crawled into it, sealed himself up, and didn’t come out for 2 days. When he finally reemerged, he kept discussing--at length--some retort to Bertrand Russell’s arguments against nuclear defense. His sentences were rhyming, and we were all terrified.

Ramble Khron is a malicious thinker. He knows how to start fires and sit back in amusement as the world reacts. In that regard, we have a similar troll spirit, which must be why my writing was often mistaken for his when I started the job. At home he shares an apartment with a Chinese family. When Ramble is alone in his room, the Chinese family’s son will stick his hand underneath the door for reasons unknown to Ramble.

Mr. Mod Jeans is above most of us in rank but remains a peer in spirit. His diplomatic and tactful approach to management is respected, but it’s his photography of his dinners, sent to all of the staff almost daily, that we truly cherish him for. He has a chef’s heightened sense of taste and a millennial’s impulse for documentation.

Fuck just look at that.

[Name redacted] is my boss, I think, but I don’t know for sure. We’ve never had an actual conversation, so I’ve yet to ever ask him what he does here. He’s mysterious in this way, like a 1000-piece puzzle of the color gray. The little bit of speech that actually exits the steel trap that is his mouth reverberates with such authority and decisiveness that I have to guess he has the power to fire me. I’ve never seen him eat or laugh.

Just outside of the office is a body of water that I can’t quite identify. Maybe a river. On a nice sunny day, the junkies gather at the waterside to shoot up and shit themselves. The image produces a metaphor apropos of the eBaum’s World office, which itself is a skid mark on an otherwise pleasant building of work spaces. And so we remain a wretched stain on the web and the world.