by Darren Horton

Created on: January 18, 2011   Last Updated: April 16, 2011

The boss summoned us over with a yellow, nicotine-stained finger.  He’d been busy copying documents from ‘fakecertificates.com,’ filling in the blanks with personal details to enhance our portfolios. 

With a click of the mouse the printer began to spit out its lies.  The boss, eighty pounds lighter, put away his credit card and deleted the incriminating evidence from the computers memory.  He swivelled around in a new IKEA chair to retrieve the sheets of A4 paper that floated smoothly from printer to tray. 

He hadn’t bothered to remove the chairs plastic protective cover and it crinkled as he moved his weight about in it.  The chair smelt clean and new.  The rest of the chairs in the office were filthy and stank of sweaty builders and un-emptied dustbins.  The brand new IKEA chair seemed out of place in our shitty office, with its tarmac stained carpets littered with fag-ends and half-eaten bacon sarnies; like a sweet-smelling socialite mixing it up with scagheads from a sink estate.

He briefly scanned the documents for himself then held them out for us to inspect.   “Are you two gonna be alright with this?” 

What he actually meant was ‘are you two going to be able to get away with this?’

“No problem,” said Cary. 

Cary was thirty years older than me, wiry and tough, but by general consensus a knob-head and a bully.  He was considered one of the top workers but I don’t for the life of me know why.  He wasn’t actually that good at anything.  I suppose his arrogant know-it-all attitude came across as confidence and that’s what the customer likes to see.  He was a blagger, taking credit for the skill and hard work of others, usually mine.  But I didn’t mind.  He was wise in his own way and I found him amusing to work with.  And besides, working with Cary meant I only had one knob-head to put up with at work.  All the other knob-heads were afraid of him.  Apparently he was some kind of nutter.

The boss handed over our fake chainsaw licences and told us to read through the details to make sure everything was in order.  Cary paced around the room pretending to read.  He was quite convincing, nodding his head and umming-and-arring when he thought the timing was appropriate.  It was a matter of pride I think. 

I’d read it to him later on, in the privacy of

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