Of all the stupid, inhuman, soul-destroying things we put up with in the course (or curse) of earning our daily bread, perhaps the most disgusting is the phony patriotic kick every employer in the nation has been on since last September.

You know what we mean: It goes beyond the little flags they put up in the cafeteria or the Exxon-Mobil rape-a-riffic killing spree or the New York Fire Department beefcake calendar that Bernice, the 210-pound office assistant with the moustache who lives alone with her cats has hanging in her cubicle. No, it's the little things that count, the stupid annoying things that intrude on our daily lives.

Take, for instance, the photo on the left. Notice the electronic keycard, which was issued to my coworkers and myself about a year ago. Apparently, Corporate Security (who, last I checked, were minimum-wage Pakistani refugees who could barely speak enough English to find the donut shop downstairs) is now operating with a level of sophistication that rivals the Office of Homeland Security. Goddamn it, no al-Quaeda bike messengers are gonna get through those glass doors now! I feel better already!

If the keycard is annoying, the lanyard is the icing on the cake. It coordinates perfectly in a Martha Stewart kinda way with the patriotic "We remember" enamel pin above. I mean, not that I'm ungrateful, but instead of that clever little pin, maybe, perhaps, perhaps they could have spent their money giving us, say, a RAISE to something approaching A LIVING WAGE?!

This phony patriotism is stomach-turning. By equating being a Good Employee with being a Good American, it's like they're asking us to love The Company like we love America—the only difference is, the government never revoked the citizenship of everybody in the city of Omaha's citizenship and deported them to Canada because the state of Nebraska didn't make its third-quarter earnings expectations.

Corporate patriotism is more than just hypocritical: It's like, after they stuff their syphilitic penii WAY up our rectums (without the benefit of K-Y jelly), we're asked not only to lick them clean, but tell the bastards how much we love them.

Please. If you're gonna fuck us, fuck us. But don't tell us to pledge allegiance to you.

We're not that dense.

Love your country, not your job. Write editor@corporatemofo.com