Win or lose tonight, tomorrow morning is going to suck.
I have purchased a large bottle of champagne. If President Obama wins tonight I will definitely pop it open. If Mitt Romney manages to win, I might down the whole thing! But hangovers will be the least of my worries come Wednesday morning. I'm far more worried about the reactions of my coworkers. You see I work with a group of very very right wing individuals who also happen to be Mormons. In fact everyone I work with except for my manager is a Mormon.
Working with right wingers the day after an election is bad enough. But trust me, when people are dedicated to a candidate not just because of their ideology, but as a matter of faith, things get ugly fast!
They will not take the news of an Obama victory very lightly. Nor would they take the news of a Romney victory very gracefully. I don't know what to expect, but I know it will be bad. Follow me below the fold and let me introduce you to my work environment.
For the last 40 or so days my coworkers as part of the efforts of their church have been fasting in groups. The fasting ends tonight at sundown.
I do not know if they have been fasting for a Mitt Romney victory, but I do know that before the first debate they were fasting in support of his performance. Yes this means they probably just never stopped. I also do not know if this is a religious wide effort, or just something their particular "ward" or whatever it's called has decided to do.
I do know at least two of my coworkers believe that Mitt Romney is destined to be president. Many more have spent many nights praying for this outcome. They believe a Mormon presidency will be good for their church and great for the country. They believe Barack Obama is evil and Mitt Romney can save us all.
One such fellow who we will call "Tim" better represents the so-called 47% than anyone I know. He has spent the vast majority of his adult life collecting a government paycheck in some form or another. For the first few years I worked at my current job he was on unemployment
Yes, Tim was collecting unemployment checks despite the fact that he has a job.
Technically he works as an "independent contractor" but really he is just working under the table for my boss. So he doesn't report any aspect of his income or hours. Until that last round of extensions President Obama fought for expired they kept sending him checks and approving extensions every time Obama won one of those hard fought fights. Does the President get any credit for that effort? Nope. In fact old Tim is one of those idiots who thinks all forms of Government spending are evil and immoral... while collecting undeserved, unethical unemployment checks.
If there really is a percentage of people out there who believe they are entitled to free money from the government, Tim is one of those people.
My Boss on the other hand is more like Mitt Romney.
Not only is he perfectly fine with the whole Tim situation, but my he hired Tim precisely because Tim doesn't do electronic book keeping. He likes that because he can change the books to meet his whim. He likes being able to keep a large stash of cash in a safe that is unaccounted for anywhere in the business. He is the sole proprietor so it's not really embezzlement. But you can bet your ass it's tax avoidance.
Perhaps most disgusting to me personally though is the fact that my boss likes to use his connections in his Church to cash church written checks from his Bishop in order to pay for his personal electric bill, his car insurance, his mortgage, his car payments that nobody ever has to know ever existed.
He also has a thing for keeping his kids on the payroll, making a better salary than I do despite the fact that none of them have worked there in 6 years. The kids don't actually receive any of the money, they're all grown and have other jobs. That is simply how my boss helps justify his "business expenses." Never mind the fact that his grown kids are all using social services, be it welfare, food stamps, medicare/medi-cal, etc. Government needs to be shrunk. Barack Obama is solely to blame for all the debt this nation has ever accrued.
Then there is a woman at work we'll call Jen. Like a surprisingly large number of Mormon woman, Jen never worked a day in her life until her husband left her unexpectedly. They married right out of school, started spitting out kids and for some reason she thought he was just always going to be around. That she would never have to be self reliant.
As if people don't fucking die!
So she has no drivers license. She has no job skills AT ALL. It's like working with a 45 year old teenager. So she is (rightly) taking advantage of every social program she can get on. Again Welfare, Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, etc. I do not fault her for that. Sure it was incredibly stupid to think she could be a 1950s style housewife in the 21st Century, with absolutely no backup plan or foresight as if this was a goddamn fairytale. But hey that's what these programs are for. By all means use them if you need them. She has kids to support.
But then every fucking time somebody mentions President Obama this lady goes off about how he's turning this country into a communist state. How his Government programs are bankrupting the nation and we NEED MITT ROMNEY in there to cut the size of Government drastically!
But the most annoying thing was when she told me awhile back I quote "I am so Patriotic. I spent my weekend helping the elderly members of my church fill out their absentee ballots!" That sentence came out of her face without the slightest trace of irony. This is like sharpening a murderers knife before he kills you with it.
I worry what these people will do, how they will act when Romney loses tonight. They might all collectively lose their shit. In 2010 when we lost the House you would have thought my Co-Workers were the ones elected to Congress and were also tasked with the job of personally spanking the President's ass on national television.
I cannot even begin to imagine how these people will react when Romney loses. Will I have to listen to speculation about how long the business can possibly continue to stay open with Obama in the White House? Will there be crying? Will I be forced to sit through tea party political noise all day?
I live in a VERY Red part of Southern California as I have said many times here on Kos. I live in the newly redistricted 8th District of California. The one without a single Democrat on the ballot due to the stupid top-two system we have here in California. So my employer is of course very very conservative, as are most of our customers.
Because of this I pretend to be apolitical. Totally oblivious to political news. This will be hard to keep up tomorrow as every moron I come into contact with is going to want to talk about the election results. And by talk, I mean bitch.
Tomorrow is going to suck.