The Tawdry Tale of Baphomet the Turkey

I have worked for over twenty years in the Call Center of a Fortune 100 company. The staff is made up of a lot of god-fearing middle-aged women, college students and a smattering of misfits able to bite their tongue on the telephone at least four hours a day. Not a great fit with my innermost heart, but it has allowed me to provide cash and benefits to my family.

Sometime during the “W” administration, I found myself in a peculiar situation. I had available cash for one of the corporate charity fund-raisers and I was of a temperament to participate. Also, the flu was about to kick my ass.

It was a Thanksgiving fundraiser where we could contribute money towards dinners for the poor. Employees pooled their funds to earn stuffed plush turkey toys. Anyone who ponied up the whole amount earned naming rights. I chipped in all of $12 and decided to name my turkey Baphomet.

I had to spell it for the co-worker that was going to put both our names on the rally board. My fatal error was to explain it then:

“Baphomet was the name of the demon that the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping. It was all an excuse to kill them and steal their gold, sort of the Weapons of Mass Destruction of their era.”

I then went home and became horribly ill.

The next morning, pretty much from under my covers, I called my supervisor to report and absence and to advise him that I had made a horrible mistake in turkey-naming. I asked him to re-name it “Mr. Giblets” or something. Even in my feverish state, I knew I had stepped on my pee-pee.

I had, upon my return a few days later, a mandatory meeting with my supervisor and his supervisor, who happened to be a lay minister. His disapproval felt as heavy and oppressive as he was.

“Don’t you realize there are a lot of god-fearing Christians that work here?” they asked. “Didn’t you think that they might be offended? Don’t you care about other people’s feelings?”

I tried to tell them that it was all a stupid failed attempt at humor, but they weren’t satisfied. They ran me through pretty much the same questions and brow beating two or three times. The managers relented only when I had signed an apology and acceptance of fault which went into my permanent record.

As a final gesture, the call center manager asked:

“Is there anything we can do for you?”

My first thought was an ice pack for the moon-sized hole the two of them had just chewed in my ass. Then a more appropriate response came to mind.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “I do have a problem. There’s a co-worker about two rows over from me. She spends most of her days talking about Jesus and what he does for her in her life.”

“I need her to stop.”

I have never been what you might call God Fearing, but some Christians scare the Hell out of me. People like them have always done their best to burn people like me. I didn’t want a constant reminder of the imminent danger.

“If people have the right to be offended by my little demon turkey,” I continued, “it is definitely in my rights to be offended about her conducting Sunday School while I’m trying to work.”

The two of them blinked at me, like bullfrogs about to be gigged.

“Don’t you think that might look a little spiteful?” my supervisor finally asked.

I thought for several moments about how to respond, but chose my most diplomatic response:

“I don’t really care. If they have the right to be offended by a mistake I made and corrected, I have the right to request this.”

The meeting ended there, in sort of a amorphous state. But the offending co-worker was pulled into her own meeting and the volume and frequency of her Sermons from the Cubicle reduced immediately.

And that is how a plush turkey named after a Lord of Hell secularized the call center.