It’s true. I’m a paid political shill.
It all started about 6 months ago. I was finishing my shift as a barista at the local hipster espresso shop when a long time acquaintance of mine stopped in to get a latte and work on his laptop for a while. I was closing up shop when he asked me to get a drink after work. Turns out he’s been working for a “politics tech company” and they needed people now. He said he could vouch for me and get me in for an interview right away. I don’t care much about politics, but I was pretty sick of pumping artisan espresso.
Now I have my own desk at a non-descript second floor in a beige office building. Every day the boss gets the talking points first thing in the morning from the head office and prints out a copy for everyone. Sometimes they are signed with an “-H”. I don’t know if that’s a joke or what. I’m not going to say what we make, but I will say that if a diary I write manages to get on top of the wreck list (ha ha), I’m buying my cubicle mates drinks after dinner. Front page of r/politics? STEAK!
The atmosphere in the office is pretty heady sometimes. Everyone’s pretty nice, even if some people are a little too excited about it. I sit next to a guy named Paul Krugman, who is REALLY good at this job. Sometimes celebrities even drop in unexpectedly. Just a few weeks ago, George Clooney stopped by. He shook my hand and told me how important our work was, and how lots of other famous people thought so too. I showed him how I had just dropped a nasty comment as the very first comment in a pro-Sanders diary, and he loved it!
What’s really funny, is that the Sanders people work right next door. We all hang out after work, and bullsh*t over drinks at the bar downstairs. It seems like a natural continuation of the workday considering sometimes the entire comment threads are just us! It can be hilarious when we start dropping inside jokes that no one else would even get. Sometimes I’m laughing so hard, I blow soda out my nose all over my laptop. Once I really got the hang of things the Sanders team offered me a promotion to switch over. Right now I think I’ll stay with team Hills, because they don’t pay the top performers as well next door. I don’t really need the extra responsibility right now anyway.
Sometimes I feel bad about what I do, but then I think of those poor saps on the Trump team. They work on the other side of the city, but we never hang out with them. Those guys are perpetually depressed. It’s just a temp job anyway. I think when the election’s over, I’ll go back to school. I always wanted a masters degree in English Lit.