When I feel indecisive at work I turn to my pet monkey. There is no decision too big or too small for my decision monkey. Decision monkey has enough energy for even the most complex problems, and lacks any self-esteem issues over simple tasks that might insult the intelligence of an ordinary human.

Decision monkey takes a lot of pressure off, allowing me to eat lunch in peace. I read everything on the menu even though I’ve read that menu a thousand times, just so I can enjoy making this important decision about what to eat. Deciding what to eat is no task for a monkey; it’s a job for me, and enjoying a leisurely hamburger at lunchtime is one of the things that keeps me sane. 

I named my monkey Sandy to prevent people from judging the monkey’s decisions through a gender lens. Some people say this policy is evidence of progressive thinking while others call it a dodge, saying I have a responsibility to recognise Sandy for who he* is. To this I say that Sandy’s presence in the office is already a dodge, cutting me out of the hardest decisions on my plate.

One decision I cannot let Sandy make relates to hiring. I cannot have a monkey make decisions like that, ever, because in the end Sandy will always choose the bananas. Things are bananas enough around here, and the last thing we need are a whole bunch of new ones running around. I blame much of this crazed atmosphere on the fact that Sandy is in charge of so many decisions no reasonable person would allow a monkey to make, even a trained monkey like Sandy. It’s better than the old days, though, when Dorchan in HR handed off his dilemmas to a decision squirrel, which ended up hiring a bunch of nuts.

Sandy comes in handiest of all when I find myself in no-win situations, like when my boss comes up with a really bad idea that he calls a Big Idea and asks me to implement. If I point out the folly to my boss, I’ll be yelled at, humiliated, and probably spat upon. But if I try to implement an idea that I know will fail, we’ll have even louder yelling, more humiliation, and heavier spitting in a very big and very public way. What to do?

I turn to Sandy, who never lets me down. Sandy sits in the corner, furrows his brow, and scratches his forehead. He does that all day, interrupting the posture only to take action on other important, timely decisions that require his expertise. And when my boss remembers eventually to ask for an update on his Big Idea, I can say that Sandy’s feasibility study appears to suggest an alternative course of action, which we will implement when a final decision is made, probably some time after lunch.

*In his personal time Sandy is a male monkey and is free to pursue or ignore whatever private interests stem from that fact.

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