Community service

"Ouch!"

Every one of the Booblers screamed an identical "ouch" during the first twenty minutes in Elsa Burble's back yard. Cutting through vines, pulling weeds, lifting out rusty old wheels from the decomposed '68 Ford F-150 pickup truck, tearing down the 20-foot tall weeds, the engineers-on-a-charity-mission gritted their teeth as they pricked their fingers with sneaky thorns and rushed toward their 2:00 p.m. deadline to clear out the brush and flatten out the back yard. Booble encouraged its engineers to spend a day in community service and this year they'd chosen Elsa Burble, the girlish-sweet 70-year old lady, brain cells killed by too much acid in the '60s.

Booble might have more money than God, so it could afford to give its employees a day off work to do community service, especially when Elsa lived two houses away from the garage where Booble's founders had built its first search-and-destroy engine. No matter what the perks, though, whether free food, massages, laundry service, afternoon tea, or annual astrology checks, Booblers worked harder than any other employees on the planet. By 1:30 that afternoon, everything had been cleared and loaded into the dumpster placed in front of Elsa Burble's rotting driveway. With an extra thirty minutes to spare, the Booblers did what Booblers did best. They measured their success using statistics and produced a management report.

The 30.45 minute analysis showed they'd cleared 0.17 acres of land; 2,875 pounds of compostible greens; 960 pounds of recyclable metals, aluminums, and other alloys; 487 pounds of non-recyclable plastics; and 7.85 barrels of miscellaneous rusted auto equipment. The 34 Booblers who participated in the event pricked themselves with a total of 342 thorns on 26 bushes, for an average prick rate of 10.05 pricks per Boobler and 13.15 pricks per bush. The average Boobler expended 3,821 kilo-calories of effort during the 5.5 hour enterprise and consumed 570 kilo-calories of food during the lunch provided, resulting in a net expenditure of 3,251 kilo-calories for a weight reduction of 0.15 pounds. The analysis team strongly encouraged Booblers to consume 16 ounces of water for each 1,000 kilo-calories in order to prevent dehydration, and as such, recommended that the company provide each employee with 50.2 ounces of water on return to the Boobleplex. The analysis team also asked the company to take care of all the pricks.