Finally. The hospital’s network was back up and running after its latest crash. After the servers were rebooted and the interfaces brought back online, the staff at the Information Systems department were ready to go home after a long Saturday night at work.
“What time is it anyway?” Charles the manager asked as he rose to his feet.
Robert, the network administrator, glanced at his watch. “It’s 10:30.”
“Wow,” Kevin, the department director, chuckled, “I didn’t think we’d be here this long.”
Charles was fuming. He had been called into work just as he was getting ready to go out to dinner and a movie with his wife for a rare evening out to try saving their marriage. He had spent way more time at work than he did at home because of all the problems with the network and those problems could have been remedied by simply upgrading the hardware, but Kevin kept allocating the funds to maintaining the antiquated network that everyone knew was on its last legs. And now here Charles was, at work again and watching his marriage dissolve. He was furious at Kevin and really wanted to hit him but doing so would result in an arrest and the end of his marriage. Surely there must be a better and more subtle way to inflict this pain…
Charles exhaled slowly to calm himself down and said, “I’m glad everything’s back up and running. Come on, I’ll buy you guys a drink.”
“None for me,” Robert yawned, “I think I’ll just go home.”
“Kevin? You up for a drink?’ Charles asked.
Kevin was surprised at Charles’s mild demeanor. “Sure,” he replied.
So Charles and Kevin went to Peninsula Paul’s, Charles’s favorite drinking establishment. They sat at the counter and had a few drinks to calm their frazzled nerves.
Then Charles said, “Let’s have some fun and get rid of this stress at the same time. Follow me.”
Kevin followed Charles to the back of the bar where they passed the billiards table and some video games before arriving at the punching bag game in the corner. After Charles put the money in to start the game, he said, “You go first.”
Kevin walked up to the punching bag and kept laughing as he changed positions and stances as he prepared himself to throw the punch.
“Just throw your punch already!” Charles bellowed impatiently.
Kevin threw a surprisingly weak punch, which registered a very low score on the game’s display.
Charles was shaking his head. “Here, let me show you how it’s done. Just stand right there and watch.”
Kevin stood with his head just inches away from the punching bag and watched Charles put in some more money before getting himself into position.
Then Charles threw his most powerful punch, striking the punching bag from the left side and causing it to swung to the right which hit Kevin’s head so hard that Kevin dropped to the floor in an unconscious heap. The other patrons briefly glanced at Kevin before returning to their drinks.
“Best two bucks I ever spent,” Charles said to himself as he paid the tab, “Revenge is sweet.”
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