Paint Machine

 

Miles mixed paint.

You know,

he ran one of those machines

that put little squirts of colour

in a can of white paint,

and then after he shook it up

it’d come out out being this colour

that had nothing to do

with any of the colours that it was before.

 

Not that it’s magic or anything.

I mean, they have this little book

that tells you just exactly how many squirts to squirt

when the customer finally makes up her mind.

 

Miles also waited on customers.

He didn’t run a cash register or anything like that;

he just marked the price on the top of the can

and then somebody up front rang it up.

 

Not like it really would’ve mattered anyway

if they would’ve let him run the cash register.

Miles would’ve hated his job just the same.

 

You see,

Miles hated his job

because it was something that any idiot could do.

There was no intellectual challenge.

And the more Miles thought about it,

the more he became convinced

that a machine could do his job

just as well.

 

So that’s just what Miles did.

He made himself a robot.

 

Oh, don’t get me wrong;

it was a really lame robot.

He started with an old, self-propelled lawnmower

and worked up from there.

The body was a worn-out shop vac,

and the only arm it had was the hose.

The head was this pathetic bowling ball

that he bought at a garage sale,

and on top of that bowling ball he had duct-taped an old video camera

and then painted this really stupid looking face.

He tried the best he could to make it look human

by sticking clothes on it.

 

You know, like his blue work smock

with his name badge stuck on it.

But it still looked like a pile of junk

that got caught in a clothesline.

 

But it worked.

It really worked.

 

He’d wind it up or whatever,

and it would go into work

and put in eight hours a day,

overtime if it had to.

 

And the people down at the store bought it.

Or they just didn’t care.

None of the customers seemed to mind, either.

Why should they?

I mean, as long as their paint came out the right colour?

And once every other week

they’d send a pay check home with the robot.

 

Nothing went haywire with the robot.

It didn’t go berserk and kill all the customers

or get a conscious and want Miles to share the money,

or anything like that.

 

The paint store never wised up

and made robots of their own

so that they could stop paying Miles to stay home

while his robot did all the work.

 

Miles never got depressed

because he’d replaced himself with a machine.

 

In fact, pretty much of nothing happened at all.

Miles just stayed at home and watched TV all day,

which seems kind of boring,

but who am I to judge?