Apple Inc. issued a statement today relenting to employee demands that they be offered counseling and mental health services following an incident in which a scary author was briefly permitted to work for the company and access its corporate campus.
“Apple management would like to assure its employees that anyone traumatized by the presence of the man who wrote that frightening prose can take advantage of up to a month of paid leave and access counseling services when they feel well enough to return to work,” the statement read.
Officials at Apple weren’t aware that during the time best-selling author and tech manager Antonio Garcia Martinez was working as a mild-mannered ad targeting manager for the company, his 2016 critically acclaimed book Chaos Monkeys was silently stalking and assaulting the delicate sensibilities of a substantial portion of the Apple workforce.
Readers should be warned, the following passage is highly offensive and may cause male readers to embark on an unchecked spree of misogyny. Pay careful attention to the last sentence, which is the one that caused everybody’s panties to get in a bunch.
“She had wild, green eyes with unnatural red spots in her irises when you pulled close, reminiscent of that Afghan girl from the National Geographic cover. Her personality was flinty and rough and as leathery as her skin. She had spent years between various jobs backpacking around the rougher parts of the world. She was an imposing broad-shouldered presence, six feet tall in bare feet, and towering over me in heels. Most women in the Bay are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit.”
Employees are still wondering why they were forced to endure the hostile work environment created by the author’s cruel prose. “Were they ever going to tell us about those awful words? They were just sitting there on the page, lying in wait to victimize us,” said one employee, who wished to stress that she was not soft and weak, cosseted and naive, and that she once took a gap year and travelled to several underdeveloped countries.
In an effort to provide a safe and inclusive workplace, Apple is in the process of compiling a list of scary writers employees should consider avoiding. Reportedly topping the list is acclaimed American author Philip Roth, who the company describes as “the grand master of creepy, old dudes obsessed with sex.”
If there is something 