Photo by Analyn Cuarto
Memorial to be held next Monday
By Klara Woldenga, Humour Editor
Jack Frederick was just like any other Vancouverite. He had a two-hour commute both ways to his minimum wage job and was always afraid of being reno-victed. He hated rain even though he chose to live in a literal rainforest. However, last week Frederick was the victim of a condition that had been seen as harmless up until the very moment it killed him: A case of the Mondays.
“I didn’t see it coming,” said Emily Alden, Frederick’s boss at the local grass store Green with Grass not Envy Do You Get It. “Sure, Jack seemed extremely depressed on Mondays, but everyone feels that way on Mondays—that’s just how it goes, you know?”
Ryan Halder, Frederick’s colleague, worked with him on the floor counting blades of grass for seven hours a day, with the eighth hour of work reserved for seriously reevaluating their lives.
“He always joked about having a case of the Mondays,” said Halder. “But when he started making those jokes on Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, then Thursdays, and even Fridays, I knew something was wrong.”
Halder took the initiative by asking Frederick about his mental health.
“I said ‘Hey loser, what is wrong with your face?” Halder told the Other Press. “Then I said, ‘You look like someone sat on your dumb lunch, stupid,’ But he didn’t even respond to my questions. I was really worried.”
Halder then took his concerns to HR, but his write-up was rejected, being told by the head of the department that “His report had too many profanities and lewd drawings in it to be taken seriously.”
Unsure what to do, and seeing Frederick becoming more and more depressed as the weeks went by, Halder became desperate.
“I kicked the door down to the CEO of the company and threatened her with a Series X8-C Grass Cutting Knife,” Halder told the Other Press in an exclusive post-arrest interview. “I told her ‘YOU BETTER ASK JACK FREDRICK ABOUT HIS MENTAL HEALTH RIGHT NOW OR I WILL CUT YOU WITH THIS SERIES X8-C GRASS CUTTING KNIFE!’ and then I was dragged off by his goons—security in the grass industry is tight!”
Laura Walden, the company’s CEO, was unharmed but very concerned for Frederick’s mental health.
“I didn’t know who this Jack person was,” Walden said. “But I was determined to figure it out. I was also very impressed with our new Series X8-C Grass Cutting Knife! I hadn’t seen one that close before!”
Free from her attacker, Walden ran downstairs to the grass cutting floor to talk to Frederick.
“Even though I had never taken a single HR class, or any sensitivity training, I knew exactly what to do,” said Walden. “I walked right up to him during his shift and yelled ‘Jack Frederick stop being depressed right now! You’re being a baby, and everyone thinks you’re being a baby!’ I find tough love works with employees.”
According to multiple witnesses, Frederick did not respond to Walden’s words, choosing instead to leave and take his fifteen-minute lunch break. The next day he was discovered unconscious in his home by the local mail carrier (a man known for breaking and entering into the homes he delivered to). Frederick was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead upon arrival.
Doctor Lesley Duban was the one who on duty at the Vancouver General Hospital that day.
“It was pretty crazy, we’ve never seen a case of Mondays this bad,” Duban told the Other Press. “When we opened him up we found tiny tear-off calendars that just had Mondays printed on them.”
The grass company was shocked by the news, but Walden isn’t sure that anything could have been done.
“We have a 99 per cent quitting rate,” said Walden. “We were hoping to reach 100 per cent by the end of this quarter, but Frederick’s death really messed up that goal.”
Walden then asked if we could send a message to him beyond the grave. When told him that we were a newspaper and not a medium, she insisted we tell Frederick that “He should stop being dead and come back to work. No one appreciates a quitter.”
