Most Esteemed and Highly Repugnant Weezely Bee, Regional Vice President of Humans—ALL OF THEM,

Man is a strange creature, indeed. And its motivations are fairly easy to comprehend—and thus, conquer. 

I…Ooops, Sorry, my dear Niece Snake Ash, it seems this last introduction was not meant for you. 

But! 

It does serve as a most-excellent preface to our next lesson: what all humans will fight for, strive for, and ultimately die for: comfort.

Humans desire comfort above all. 

Aunt toutlips

There is nothing a person will do to prevent even the most modicum of discomfort. 

Look at how everyone has to prepare themselves for work! For school! Even for the things they purportedly enjoy like dates, vacations, and honeymoons!

Girding their loins would take less time, money, and frustration than the daily routines of custom coffee orders, seat-warmers, and hiding in the bathroom browsing social media. 

Do not be fooled: while money, fame, and sex are all excellent motivations, comfort laps each of these on the track of life. 

How do I know? 

Look at the rich and famous? 

Now, who among them, works continuously? 

Okay, a few. But these are aberrations—and Tom Cruise. 

But most get their hold and then relax. 

It’s hard to keep working, especially when you don’t need to! 

No, let’s look at the office. 

Scan the workplace. 

Who’s actually motivated anymore? Sure, there will always be the perpetual ladder-climbers, but most are just quite happy to settle in and let their backside grow with the office furniture. 

Trying is HARD! 

Humans as a species are simply not made to keep trying. 

The end of nearly every human pursuit is the relief of never trying it again. 

When you understand that comfort is both the means AND ends, it’s much easier to learn to use this new valuable tool. 

When resourcing humans, the first step is to understand what motivates them. 

Well, since even the least diligent reader will notice that we’ve (really, moi) have established that comfort is the majority motivator, this is a fairly easy step. 

But do not mistake comfort for comfort. 

True comfort is actually too close to contentedness for comfort. 

It’s akin to being satisfied with who you are, what do you, and where you are. 

No, that’s not what we want. 

We want to cultibate the OTHER comfort, which is closer to an infant HR fiend and its bottle of potassium nitrate. 

It’s the material possessions and wanton consumerism that soothes their…souls? 

The balm for their bottoms. 

The salt for their crusty lips. (Wait, do humans like this? They do, right? I could have sworn to Ba’al they do.)

The sugary monstrosities at the coffee conglomerate. The vedging out in front of the screen. The utter and complete apathy to all the sorrow and inhumanity humans are subjected to daily.

It is the comfort of pretending you care about the things you don’t, but more importantly, pretending to NOT care about the things which truly matter to you. 

That comfort is the weighted blanket wrapped too tightly around and carefully-applied lead shoes as HR casually tosses another human resource into the deep dark end of the pool of misery that is the veteran workplace.

~Aunt Toutlips

Author Notes