In late March of 2020, Ener-Go Enterprises shut down the majority of its onsite operations, laid off 30% of its workforce, and asked the remaining, non-essential employees to start working from home full-time. Then, Ener-Go cut the salaries of every single staff member by 15%. Ener-Go operates in the energy sector, helping broker deals between municipalities and electricity providers, and Todd Tillerson, their CEO, said at the time he was making those decisions based in large part on the global pandemic.

“We have to be lean and mean, and run this firm with a conservative economic approach. I hope and trust you all understand,” Tillerson said in an email to the company in November of 2020.

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Over the course of time, though, Ener-Go’s profits did not suffer as Tillerson had thought they might. In fact, quite the opposite — Ener-Go’s coffers swelled enormously. So much so, in fact, that as the cost of other goods and services was going up thanks to inflationary pressure brought on by a mixture of the pandemic relief efforts and a global supply chain issue, Tillerson qualified for his contractual bonus, and last year he received a 400% stipend at the end of the year.

At the same time, internal documents show that most of the rest of Ener-Go’s staff is still not receiving their full, pre-pandemic wages. All last week, sources say Ener-Go was flooded with calls from news agencies and outraged members of the community, demanding to know how Tillerson can justify getting a 400% bonus at a time like this. At an early morning press conference today, Mr. Tillerson attempted damage control.

“I understand, of course, the sense of confusion one might feel when hearing about my bonus, and while I would like to say that I’m fairly certain I did actually work at least 400% harder than everyone else this year,” Tillerson explained, “I had our accounting team crunch the numbers, and the best explanation we can come up with is that I got a big bonus because of inflation.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic period, Ener-Go has steadily increased its prices, charging more and more for the exact same products and services. Their justification has been that the increases were needed to offset inflation. However, more internal documents show that Ener-Go’s baseline costs have not changed dramatically in the last three years.

“There’s just no way I’d be getting his much money if we weren’t charging 600% more than we did six weeks ago for the same product that doesn’t actually cost us any more to produce,” Tillerson said with a chuckle. “Capitalism, am I right folks?”

Tillerson stuffed a rolled up hundred dollar bill up his rectum, had an aide pour gunpowder down it, and then he lit the hundred dollar bill. The force of the gun powder exploding shot Tillerson high into the air, out of view, leaving a trail of black smoke behind him.

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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because Twitter is a cesspool.