Ranking NFL Mascots Based on How Likely They Are to Backstab You In the Office
Plus TikTok envy and my new fave reality show
Happy LDW, sluts!! I hope you guys are being way more exciting than me — I think I am probably going to spend 80% of the long weekend at the movies, in between watching TikToks of Kylie and Stass eating cheese fries and Alex Cooper driving her new baby blue Bronco that her hot husband gifted her after her $125M SiriusXM deal, wondering where in my life did I go so, so wrong?
In the spirit of not working, below is my latest for Betches — all about the worst personalities we encounter in the office. #TagYourself.
ALSO! IDK how many of you watch or care about The Challenge, but I am formally recapping the show’s monster 40th season on Vulture!! I feel like when Pinocchio becomes a real boy!!!
I think it’s hilarious that leadership at every corporate organization, no matter how small or irrelevant, loves to compare the tedium of our day-to-day jobs to the high-stakes pressure cooker of the NFL. They’re always like, “Okay, team, we need to huddle up and execute some block and tackle strategies so we can dominate Q4. This is ours to lose!”
Like, betch, be fucking for real, we do PR for a baby food company. But if pretending to be Bill Belichick helps you delude yourself into thinking you’re professionally fulfilled and distracts you from your impending divorce with your cuck husband Phil, who am I to judge?
If we really were a football team, and not a group of doom-scrolling 20-somethings on Lexapro, we would need a mascot. But do mascots actually make good coworkers, or are they too focused on pursuing their own glory to be team players?
Let’s take a look at some of the NFL’s most famous furry phenomena to decide who you should invite to go to Just Salad with you, and who’s most likely to slit your throat with a staple remover.
10. POE
When Poe first meets you, he’ll hit your friendly, emoji-laden Slack message with a terse, one-word response and you’ll assume he hates you. But as time soldiers on, once you earn Poe’s trust and respect, he’ll become your number one ally and your go-to person to text under the table when your boss mispronounces “epitome” in front of everyone at an all-hands.
9.T-RAC
T-RAC is what blowhard business articles call a “coffee badger.” He rolls into the office at 10:30, grabs a coffee and slaps some high-fives, then sneaks out around noon for a “lunch meeting” before heading back home to finish his work with a couple of Coronas. You and T-RAC have nothing in common except for your shared interest in pursuing the path of least resistance so you can both be done by 5, and you silently appreciate each other.
8. BILLY BUFFALO
Billy Buffalo would never backstab you intentionally. He would, however, unwittingly reveal to your work nemesis that you’re taking interviews at a rival firm, because he’s genuinely oblivious with no capacity for corporate subterfuge. In this way, he’s a liability, but he can become an asset if you feed him fake information designed to create chaos and confusion. 4D chess, people!
7. JAXSON DE VILLE
This motherfucker is definitely a douchebag creative director who thinks he can turn water into kombucha with his limitless mind. He preaches that “good ideas can come from anywhere,” but what he really means is “good ideas come from me.”
6. SIR PURR
Sir Purr means no harm, but he is one of the dumbest people you will ever have the misfortune of working with. He’s easily frazzled under pressure, and no matter how many times you teach him how to make a Google Drive link public, he’ll always still send it as “restricted access.” It’s often easier to compensate for his learned incompetence by just doing his assignments yourself, so while he isn’t directly trying to undermine you, he’s sabotaging your time and sanity.
Watching: The Anonymous (Peacock)
Listening: Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet
Reading: “Welcome to new MILF cinema” — Vulture