Many years ago, Company Y had a canine mascot: a brown mutt named Turgot, after the noted French economist and statesman. The CEO, owner of the beast in question, was a fan of Turgot, though what about the 18th century politician so impressed the Fearless Leader is unclear to me. Like Turgot, whose tenuous grasp on political power depended chiefly on the goodwill of his sole supporter: the king; the dog was universally unpopular and he was tolerated only because the single man who wanted him around happened to run the place. Much of blame for Turgot's (the dog, not the man) low stock with the working stiffs could be laid at the feet of Fearless Leader. Fearless Leader took the dog everywhere he traveled, a fact attested to by a large map FL kept in his office. On this map, FL would plant a tiny flag on any city he'd visited with his loyal companion. Europe, Asia, South America, and a few cities in Africa and the Middle East – Turgot was an extremely well traveled animal. Mercifully, Turgot was not one of those tourists who came back from his travels swollen with a sense of his own betterment - like those tourists who, on having spent a week in a foreign country, ram down our throat an exhaustive litany of all the ways in which their involvement in alien and superior cultural mores has given them unique insights into the characteristic failings of his insular, bigoted, and less-traveled compatriots. Indeed, Turgot seemed especially resistant to the moral and intellectual improvements often attributed to travel. Still, the sense among his owner's employees was that it was poor form to rub the jet set lifestyle of this dog in their faces. Though it was, in fact, true that a portion of our labors was going to support the world-hopping habits of this canine, the constant reminder of this encouraged the over-generalization that we were all somehow working solely to fund Turgot and company's next jaunt to Marrakesh or Moscow. This was a vast over-simplification, the feeling was real, was bad for morale, and was a major factor in the general dislike of the canine.

    Not that Turgot didn't shoulder part of the blame for his low public opinion numbers. Turgot's sleep patterns bordered on narcoleptic and he was infamously flatulent. The combination of the two meant that, on any day when Turgot wasn't sleeping on a tropical beach or stinking up the streets of some European capital, there was a chance he would decide to come and sleep by your workstation and irregularly befoul the air of your cube cluster with his stench. If he did decided that your cube cluster looked comfortable, you could depend on him to spend the rest of the slumbering soundly beside you, twitching occasionally to allow for the escape of his signature foulness. There wasn't much you and you neighbors could do about it. Efforts to rouse the stinking beast would draw protests from co-workers who were lucky enough to escape our fate. If you woke Turgot and he wandered off, there was a change he'd settle by them. Cleverly, however, the protests were always framed in terms of your monstrous lack of empathy for loveable furry things. They'd never admit what we all knew – that Turgot was a particularly nasty wretch and nobody in possession of their olfactory sense would ever want to spend more than a few moments with him – and instead would accuse you of simply being a lo down, mean spirited cuss. They would further suggest that meanness towards the dog reflected an unseemly animosity towards his owner: the CEO. Some people attempted to escape the paw-borne toxic event by surreptitiously dropping tiny bits of food on the of other folks' cubes, but this seemed to do nothing other than assuage the sense of powerlessness some of us felt in the face of Turgot's vast and smelly indifference.

    Several years ago, a second office was built, many divisions were moved downtown, and, happily, Turgot's visits became less frequent. Finally, Turgot passed on to the smelly cubical in the sky about a year ago.

Office Mascot 2: Fish

    Drippy the Fish's primary qualification for the position of office mascot was that he wouldn't fill the office with funky clouds of dog pootage. After Turgot's long reign of terror, this was not an insignificant consideration.

    I'm not quite sure where Drippy the Fish's unnecessarily exact name comes from. There's no non-fish Drippy from whom Drippy the Fish would need to be distinguished nor is Drippy the Fish some sort of exotic species (he's your standard issue goldfish) that an inexpert observer might mistake for some other brand of animal.

    When Drippy the Fish first came to work for us, he was set up in very small tank that included a plastic workstation with an office chair (designed, inconsiderately, for somebody with legs), a non-functional office computer, faux phone, and a plastic office plant. The resemblance to our actual veal fattening pens was, I'm certain, meant to be a source of humor. Instead, the image of Drippy the Fish pointless floating about the confines of his "cube" was extremely depressing. It did, however, make Drippy the Fish an instantly sympathetic character and he was, in contrast to his predecessor, immediately accepted as a crucial member of the office community. Word on the street was that the CEO actually resented the open and obvious approval of Drippy the Fish.

    Months after Drippy the Fish's first day, we started having trouble with his tank. While not very realistic, the joke furniture in Drippy the Fish's cube is full of nooks and crannies that are impossible to clean. As the days went on, foul looking crap built up on Drippy the Fish's desk. It threatened to overwhelm him. It was decided that the joke had become too naked an allegory for comfort and we all decided Drippy the Fish need a new tank. In a startling confirmation of the CEO's dislike for the scaly usurper, we were told that any new tank would have to be purchased with the money of Drippy the Fish's supporters – he was now a mascot without a company. If this vulgar display of managerial stinginess was meant to drive a wedge between Drippy the Fish and his co-workers, it back fired. It took all of two hours to raise enough money to trick Drippy the Fish in a nice, large tank. Drippy the Fish had gone from mascot to rallying point.

    Yesterday, somebody found a penny in Drippy the Fish's tank. Though I certainly wouldn't have known to panic, a panic did ensue. Apparently the consensus formed that the penny would be toxic to Drippy the Fish and, had it not been for the quick intervention of Ari, our receptionist, Drippy the Fish would have died. I have no idea whether pennies can kill goldfish or not, but it is a moot point now as the entire office is firmly convinced this is true. Furthermore, many of us (the writer not included) are convinced that this was no accident. Somebody tried to bump Drippy the Fish off. Suspicious whispers suggest a plot from the uptown office, a conspiracy that reaches to the very highest levels of power. Drippy the Fish, it is feared, is a marked fish.