So ye want to be an Office Pirate?

Get in line. These days, everyone wants to be a pirate. And why not? There are fewer things that sound more ideal than a life spent drifting lawlessly atop the oceans, taking whatever you want, whenever you want it. If you aren’t cruising toward the horizon, busting whitecaps into salty spray, you’re whooping it up in exotic ports of call with a turkey drumstick in one hand and a bottle of top-shelf tequila in the other. The life of a pirate is heady indeed.
But the pirate life is more than just debauchery and lawlessness. For decades, pirates have been portrayed as misanthropic slackers and slobbering, drunken thieves. They’ve been seen as maniacal, incompetent and cold-blooded. While accurate, that only tells half the story.

In truth, pirate tradition is more about breaking from the confines of polite society. Choosing the pirate lifestyle is an act of rebellion and a decision that tells the world, “My personal freedom is more important than your silly rules.”

In their heyday, the classic pirate ships were created by disgruntled crews. Fed up with rotten food, poor conditions and brutal, abusive captains, the sailors staged mutinies and commandeered vessels. In essence, pirates were nothing more than a pissed-off collective of career seamen who burst into a chorus of “Take This Job and Shove It” before disemboweling the upper management.

For the record, we don’t encourage disemboweling of any kind.

But for those of you who feel intellectually undernourished, morally defeated and bored off of your ever-loving ass, we highly recommend a look at the Office Pirate lifestyle.

It’s not for everyone. If you can’t see yourself becoming a flamboyant, repulsive and boorish outcast in your own workplace, stop reading now. If you can’t see yourself spending more time ON your desk than behind it, stop reading. And if you can’t work the phones, answer emails and manage spreadsheets while wearing an eye patch, you don’t have a chance.

Fair warning: becoming an Office Pirate is not like having a Myspace page. It will not win you any friends. In most cases, it will get you into big trouble… trouble that starts out small but quickly escalates thanks to wastebasket fires, pepper spray and/or severed digits. If you can handle that trouble and don’t mind growing a beard (even if you’re a lady), then we might have the secret formula for giving you a better life.

What follows is a primer on Office Pirate basics. It’s enough to get you started. It’s a shove in the right direction. But if you’re truly committed to becoming the best Office Pirate you can be, experience will be your best teacher. You can’t earn your sea legs by reading about them in a free paper and you can’t become a true buccaneer if you’re not willing to work for it. So hunker down, study hard and get ready to embrace a completely impractical and potentially career-ending way of life. Yo ho ho!

Ahoy Mateys!
The proper Office Pirate greeting for all meetings, ice cream socials, farewell parties and training seminars. Not to be confused with “Ahoy Eighties!”… which is a television show about breakdancing pirates during the Reagan era.

Pillaging and Plundering
As an Office Pirate, this is how you’ll survive day to day. Office Pirates don’t go to lunch. And Office Pirates don’t read labels on food in the break room refrigerator. If it’s edible and you’re hungry, eat it. The same thinking applies to office supplies, parking spaces, bathroom stalls and vacation time. You want it? You take it.

Dress Like an Office Pirate
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to Office Pirate wardrobe. Start with a loose-fitting shirt and some comfortable slacks. Add knee high boots and heavy belt with a silver skull buckle as big as a compact disc. Accessorize with various scarves, charms and jangly items. Top it off with a wide brim hat (hint: a chin strap will save you the hassle of holding on to your headgear while jumping, tumbling or tackling co-workers). If you have an iPod, Blackberry or pocket calculator, all cases must be made of genuine animal skin, fur or bones. A fake clip-on parrot is acceptable, but no Bluetooth ear-phones (those things are just silly). Important: any working cell phone must have a shanty as its ring tone. Acceptable tunes include: “The Dead Horse Shanty,” “Blow the Man Down” and “The Hog-Eye Man.” Under extenuating circumstances, we will also accept, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero.”

Talk Like an Office Pirate
Aside from the usual phrases, there are some basic vocabulary words you will be required to integrate into your daily speech.
Ahoy—A word used to attract attention (will also become your new favorite email subject line). Example: “Ahoy Monica! I’ve prepared ye statistics report as ye requested.”
Avast—To stop or desist. Example: “Avast ye rat! I totally called the last plain bagel and only stepped away to get some more napkins. Put er down or ye will suffer the consequences. Seriously, I’ll stab you with this pencil.”
Aye—Another word for yes. Example: “Aye. Twas I that scanned my bum and sent the hi-res PDF file to the sales managers.”
Blimey!—An exclamation denoting shock or surprise. Example: “Blimey! I barely shoved em and his head went right through the vending machine window.”
Bucko—Good friend. Example: “Ahoy Bucko! Ye got that five dollars I loaned you? Because I forgot my wallet and I could totally go for some drive-thru.”
Hornswaggle—To cheat. Example: “The new guy in marketing looks like a hornswaggler. He also smells like 1982. What is that? Drakkar Noir?”
Squiffy—Drunk, intoxicated. Example: “I am not squiffy…swear. Ish just my allergy messin makes me sleepish… and violent… and prone to stumbling on the stairs. Thass all. No biggy. Iss coo. I’m coo. Towly coo.”
Ye—Another word for ‘you.’ Example: “Ye light up my life.”

Office Pirate Arsenal
While the pirates of old would have thought nothing of brandishing a cutlass and a blunderbuss, you’ve got to be a little more careful. It’s likely that co-workers will see swords and muzzle-loading firearms as red flags. Red flags will lead to jail time and jail for someone with a puffy shirt and a fake parrot is no fun at all. Instead, stock yourself with a selection of much more subtle weapons of warfare. Every good Office Pirate armory includes: a can of compressed air, a slingshot, Chinese fingercuffs, “Champagne” Party Confetti Poppers, frozen meatballs, Tabasco sauce, wet tissue, sharpened Number 2 pencils, brass knuckles and a megaphone.

Kidnapping
Work your way up from the bottom when it comes to abduction. Start with interns. Usually they won’t put up much of a fight and are small enough to fit underneath your desk. Bind their arms and legs with Ethernet cable and packing tape. Fashion a crude ball gag with a potato and some pantyhose. It’s important that you do whatever you need to do with them by 5:30pm. It’s usually a bad idea to store kidnapped interns overnight (unless you untie their hands and leave them with plenty of filing to keep busy until morning).

The Shredder
The absence of planks will require you to find alternate methods with which to threaten double-crossers and cheats. “The Shredder” has proved exceptional in this respect. If you’re interested in extracting information, let your captive watch it turn an annual report or the employee handbook into spaghetti paper. Hold a handful in front of their face and say, “Imagine what it could do to neckties, paychecks and… earlobes.” If they don’t recoil in horror, try saying “lips” instead of “earlobes.” If it’s still not getting to them, go with “eyelids,” “pinky toes” or “tonsils.”

Raising Your Flag
You’ll need an banner that you can raise from your desk or cubicle. Besides marking your individual territory, the object of the flag is to instill fear in those around you. Therefore, it’s usually a good idea to incorporate some representation of dripping blood and/or very mean faces. The more symbolism you can assign to your Office Pirate flag, the better. Think about your job or specific department and incorporate the most fearsome elements of those into your flag. Particularly powerful for those in IT: a disk icon with a question mark set against a blood red background. For those in accounting: a red “Insufficient Funds” stamp on a black background. And for housekeeping and maintenance: a billowing roll of Charmin with the slogan, “He Who Controls the TP… Controls the World.”

The H-Arrr Department
The people who handle health care, benefits and other workplace issue for Office Pirates.

Office Pirate Drinkware
Office Pirates do not drink from Styrofoam cups or dainty ceramic mugs. The only acceptable drinking vessel is a 56-ounce, rusty metal tankard. Office Pirates do not use straws (crazy or otherwise). Office Pirates do not blow on things to cool them off. Office Pirates tilt the cup and chug until whatever’s inside runs out the corners of their mouths and down their shirts. Office Pirates belch until they taste last night’s dinner.

Grog
The official drink of the Office Pirate. You’ll need to know how to make this from scratch, so pay attention: At the end of the day, save the oldest pots of regular coffee. Pour them into your Office Pirate tankard and mix them with nine packets of hot cocoa powder. Stir with your pencil until thickened. Add two cans Red Bull energy drink, a quart of heavy whipping cream and set tankard aside in a warm, dry storage area until morning. Enjoy. (If it burns going down, you know you made it right!)

Hiding Your Booty
If all goes well during your stint as an Office Pirate, you will amass vast amounts of loot. You’ll need someplace to keep it. Conference rooms are no good. The parking garage is usually a poor idea as well. Stow what you can in basement storage room in boxes marked “Floppy Disks, Betamax Tapes and Bloodworms.” No one will go near your stuff.

Cannonballs
The pirates of old used round shot projectiles made of iron to blast holes in the hull of the enemy’s ships. As an Office Pirate, you won’t need such heavy-duty ammunition. We recommend a box of racquetballs. Use a Sharpie to emblazon each projectile with some fearsome phrase or illustration. Particularly terrifying messages include: “Taste My Hot Blue Rubber!” “Death From Above!” and “Boo!”

Cubicle Combat
Always use the element of surprise. You may run a shot across the bow if so inclined, but usually a well placed ball that knocks their latte onto the keyboard works best. Also devastating is the “Chain Shot” in which two balls are linked together with a short chain of paperclips. This technique works best when trying to wipe out delicately arranged action figures, family photos or lunch items. Each attack will improve your accuracy and effectiveness until, without even thinking about it, you’ll be able to land a ball on the keyboard and have it bounce from ‘control’ to ‘A’ to ‘delete.’

Avoiding Scurvy
Chose beverage items from the vending machine that boast “A Hint of Real Lemon” or “A Twist of Lime Flavor.”

Captain Morgan
Contrary to their marketing claims, drinking this spiced rum will not make you a pirate any more than wearing a chain wallet will make you a punk rocker.

False Appendages
Nothing adds to your Office Pirate mystique like a fake hand or wooden leg. Typically, the classic pirates preferred metal hooks to replace hands lost in combat or nautical mishaps. As an Office Pirate, you should be thinking about formidability and functionality (actual amputation is not necessary, wearing longer sleeves will work fine). Some winning suggestions for hand replacements: a battery operated pencil sharpener, “Dry-Erase Hand” (consisting of five different markers), a staple remover, your Rolodex or a delicious hard salami.