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 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 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 as he could.

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 for 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 sell,
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 the 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 conscience 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?