19 Conference Call Excerpts Uttered By A Brutally Honest Boss

1. “Boy, you should hear some of the shit we say and do when we have you on mute. You’d have an aneurism.”

2. “I’m really not doing that great. I’m being honest. The wife left me three weeks ago and I’ve been spending my nights staring at my hotel room’s ceiling and wondering what it would be like if we were all suddenly absorbed into a black hole. I don’t know what to do. And on top of all this shit, I’m starting to wonder if I made a mistake getting into advertising. Because—and again, I’m being honest here—I feel like maybe I’ve never actually been truly HAPPY, you know? It’s not like I’m earnestly following my dream of becoming the best American oil-painter of all goddamn time. But anyway, thank you for asking. How are you doing?”

3. “The fact that you think we could have that amount of work done by Friday would make me laugh if I weren’t in charge of, like, 40 peoples’ livelihoods…Yeah, we’ll get it done. Work long hours and stuff. But we aren’t going to be happy about it, that’s for sure. Believe it or not, some people who work here like to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families instead of drawing dicks on dry erase boards while lamenting the fact that it’s really fucking hard to come up with creative ideas when your entire team wishes it was dick-deep in a vat of gravy and green bean casserole.”

4. “You obviously can’t see me, so I feel obligated to let you know that I just made an exaggerated jerking off motion with my right hand while my left hand fondled an imaginary set of balls. That was in reaction to your assertion that we should ‘use a heavier gradient.’ Do you even know what that means? OK, what’s it mean?”

5. “Can you please repeat everything you said in the past 10 minutes? I got really distracted writing my name in bubble letters and I kind of zoned out. Thursdays, amirite?!”

6. “I just put the phone on mute and violently screamed into a paper bag for roughly three minutes. But I promise that all of your Powerpoint presentations will be completed in the brand’s designated template. Also, I’m about to use Seamless to order some food. Do you think they’d deliver something to you in Iowa if I typed in the correct address? That’d be pretty funny, right? We’d have a laugh about that.”

7. “Wait, you guys are Roman Catholic, right? You do the whole “body and blood of Christ” thing on the regular, yeah? OK, so—if God created everything, God created Celiac Disease. So, why would he also make the body of Christ a gluten-riddled death trap?”

8. “Frank isn’t really on jury duty like we told you he was. He’s actually defending himself at a sexual harassment hearing. But he’s going to Skype in during his lunch break.”

9. “My weekend was pretty decent. Pretty relaxing. I got real fuckin’ hammered, made some horrible decisions, woke up on a bench in Tompkins Square Park and realized I was four hours late for my own birthday party. But 43 is just a number anyway, right, you guys?”

10. “I’m working from home today, which means I am not wearing any pants or underwear. But I do have a hoodie on. It’s a weird look but my cat seems OK with it.”

11. “I yearn for the day when your expectations fall within our agreed upon project scope. On that day, I will use your client slush fund to drink myself straight into a triumphant slumber.”

12. “I FUCKING TOLD THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS I WANTED BROWN RICE NOT FUCKING FRI—Oh, sorry, Mr. Gates. I thought we had you on mute!”

13. “I can’t concentrate on a damn thing you’re saying, because I just discovered this discolored mole on my forearm, and I’m internally debating between going to a neurologist, slicing it off myself, or freezing it off with one of those Dr. Scholl’s wart treatment kits.”

14. “At some point, you’re going to have to let the client know that you knocked up his daughter. No, you probably shouldn’t tell him it was on your first da—Oh! Mr. Willis! We thought we had you on mute!”

15. “Sometimes when I’m working late because you were indecisive or didn’t give me what I needed to justifiably do the job, I think about fighting you in a mud pit.”

16. “One of our project managers has literally been keeping track of the number of times you have said ‘literally’ during this partners’ meeting. The tally so far, in just 30 minutes, is 18. You have literally said ‘literally’ that many times in such a short span. You’re on pace to out-“literally” Rob Lowe’s “Parks and Recreation” character re: number of times a person has said “literally” before being punched in the face.”

17. “Yeah, we have a dial-in for your superiors. No I’m not going to find it for you. It’s on the fucking meeting invite. Also, it is the number YOU JUST PUNCHED IN ONE MINUTE AGO. It’s how you got on this conference call.”

18. “I was on my way to this rave the other day when I got a call that I had to come back to work and deal with this shit. Thing was, I was already rolling, so I made everyone come to the rave. Except for the HR lady, of course. It was surprisingly productive, believe it or not. And yes. We were working on a project for you guys.”

19. “We’re excited about this opportunity insofar as we’re going to make money to do it. But that’s about the extent of it.”