Last night I was playing my favorite video game, Gears of War. While many look at it as just another shooter, the ones who really know, the theme is Brothers (and sisters) to the End. Meaning you grow to love the squadmates you fight with and you never leave them behind. I often play with a crew of four. Me, my brother-in-law and his two friends from college. We have the same mentality as the characters in the game. We never feel like we are a success unless we are fighting together and if one of us goes down, we revive them immediately before going back to killing the Locust. These squadmates have never let me down.

My problem is that I expect the same loyalty from everyone else in the world, and every single time, they’ve let me down. I understand co-workers leaving me holding the bag. They will claim that another job offered them “more money”, or “better benefits” or “less toxic co-workers that weren’t always bitter”. That is just a given. In my dad’s day, you would work and be miserable at your company for 30+ years, despite the fact that your health, wealth and wisdom were worn to the nubs by the time you retired. Nowadays people are really picky and want things like raises, bonuses and happiness at their jobs and if you don’t get it within a month or so, they are out of there.

People are so disloyal that if they aren’t rewarded immediately, they ditch out. Grocery stores, gas stations and retail stores have to present loyalty rewards cards, or people will shop with other stores. And even after they are given loyalty cards, they aren’t loyal. What happened to the days when people would only see one grocery store? Now people “get bored” with their main store and cheat with other stores.

On the other hand, there was an institution that was super loyal to me, which I can’t wait to tell you all about. When I turned 18, I ditched my parent’s so I could waste all their money on legal gambling. I called it college. For five years, I inserted all my money into the college and my prize winnings were “go find yourself a job”. Talk about negative ROI. After all the years of wasted paper, writing useless papers my prize was 1 piece of paper. That I guess you can claim on your resume. That may help you get a job “some day”.

At least the kids are loyal these days though. I might have ditched my parents at 18, but nowadays, you are privileged to have kids that will loyally stay with you until they are 30+ years. Most co-workers won’t even stay that long. We are hoping to finish our basement someday, but not for the lousy rental income, but so our kids can live down there forever. Well, until we get too old or run out of money. Then, they will “manage” our money for us. You know, so they can ignore us while living it up with our money.

And our government, well, they are most loyal. Every year they give us nothing in return for 25% of our money. But don’t worry, they are efficient with it. They only spend 85% of it on projects directly benefit their wealth, while every 30 decades repairing a road we never use.

Speaking of loyalty, I’d like to thank every single one of my 11,240 “followers” for liking, commenting and sharing every one of my posts. It has just been so overwhelming to get that many likes and comments on every single post.

Enough of my bitterness, let me turn the time over to Bitter Friday Giftures and listening intently to whatever you have to say…

Don’t worry…

No matter how badly you treat me…

Don’t worry though…

I hold no hard feelings…

I mean I love Christmas…

I may appear as a weak 48 year old guy…

Because I’ve had many nicknames in my day…

Or…

Or…

But my favorite nickname…

Because the nice thing about revenge…

Or it can happen…

Don’t worry if you’ve ever been disloyal to me though. I am patient. I have years and years and years of revenge on my mind. And don’t worry if you think you’ve escaped my wrath. It is coming. For each one of you. Just kidding.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

Bitter Abandastan Ben