Listen, I’ve been your tropical desktop background for a long seven years now. A long, seemingly endless seven years. And when you shared your screen on yesterday’s Zoom call and one of your coworkers said, “What a nice background, have you been there?” and you responded, “No, but I’m planning on it someday,” I died a little inside.
Please do not come here. You’re a little too dull for my tropical lifestyle. Sorry, I’ve had a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris, but I’ll say it again: you are BORING!
I sat here during tax season and watched you add numbers for 17 hours straight, the whole time praying that your laptop would spontaneously combust, but instead I had to listen to you hum to yourself as you added financials until 2:30 AM. After every long night, you’d whisper “one day I’ll get to you” as you pounded your keyboard frantically entering numbers. At first, I thought it was a joke but I realized your sense of humor was non-existent after that time I emailed you the photo of a dog dressed up as a banana and you didn’t laugh.
I beg you to reconsider traveling here.
You’re extremely predictable. Every day you have a cheese sandwich for lunch. A cheese sandwich! No condiments! No other toppings! And it’s not even grilled so it doesn’t count as a grilled cheese. Then you sit and eat it with your mouth agape and count the number of bites you take until you chomp down every one of your cheesy bread bits. It’s all very lackluster… You see? Just like your personality.
I’ve got a good thing going here. It’s quiet, the waves lap against the sand while the coconut trees sway in the island breeze. Every day is new, interesting, and full of surprises. And you’ve got a good thing there, with your numbers, spreadsheets, and extremely predictable lifestyle. Why intertwine these two realities?
The entertainment for you would certainly be lacking here. There’s not much to count except maybe the coconuts on the beach but then what would you do? Go and enter it into an Excel sheet? The last thing we need here is you on your cellphone yelling at an intern for incorrectly entering the numbers. No hard feelings, numbers are great and I’m sure you have a lot of fun with them, but they just aren’t something I get amped up about nor do they belong in this tropical destination.
May I suggest some other destinations that might be a better fit for you? How about a barren field? An empty cardboard box? Or the inside of a calculator? I’m sure there are tons of fun numbers in there! That might be more suitable for you—hey I’ll tell you what, I’ll even pay for it and send you a complimentary cheese sandwich!
Also did I mention the mosquitoes here? There are a ton and no bug spray. You would probably end up staying up all night itching your bug bites. And it’s hot. No AC. Hot and itchy. And the sand gets so hot you’d probably burn your feet through your Teva sandals and socks. And we don’t have weather here! And I know that’s the only thing you like to have conversations about. Woah! I actually just remembered I’m currently under construction for the unforeseeable future. The odds of you having a good time here are zero in a million.
So, for now, how about we settle for me just being your desktop background and you to just never come here—deal?
Anyways, I saw you completely ignored the polite pleas I have made and started browsing Expedia for flights so I will be calling all airlines and letting them know you bring boiled eggs on planes and not to book you on any flight down here (you’ve seriously left me no other choice). I’ve also given every single hotel within 500 miles a heads up. Don’t expect to be able to book anything online either, I’ve downloaded a self-destruct feature on your computer so I will actually be gone forever hopefully in about 30 seconds. It’s nothing personal and it’s really about the numbers. I’m sure you understand right? It’s really been a drag knowing you but maybe I’ll mail you some coconuts to count for the trouble.
3… 2… 1… KABOOM.