Let me just start off by saying this: a job’s a job. Okay? Somebody’s got to do it. Somebody has to take out the trash, and put that trash in trucks, and then process it. Hell, people have to be Donald Trump’s secretary. That’s a full time job, with benefits. Someone has to tell people at parties that they’re Donald Trump’s secretary and then bear the withering looks. So please, try to keep in mind that I, like you, am just trying to support my family. I’m just trying to make a living.

I’ve just chosen to make my money by wasting your tax dollars. Honestly, I try not to think about it too much. About how the machine I’m watching, the machine that smokes a dozen packs of cigarettes all at once, is paid for by the dollars you work so hard to earn. Some mornings I come into work, take off my hat and coat, plug in the smoking machine, and watch it smoke for eight hours. The only interaction I have with this machine is to clear the butts and reload the fake, mechanical lips, a process I can now complete in less that three minutes. The work is so simple and fun, that it’s easy to forget that my career is forcing the government’s hand, making them raise taxes and take more from innocent Americans just to pay my six-figure salary.

Has the federal government completely forgotten about me? It’s a possibility. I haven’t searched too hard because I really don’t want to rustle any feathers and risk being fired. This is the best job I’ve ever had. When I think about it, I think I’ve only met my other peers whom I share my office with. I see them in the kitchenette or around the halls but we don’t usually have time to interact much. Our work is too demanding.

I only needed to find a colleague once. I was under a tough deadline to play through a few dozen video games in only three weeks. I’d been pulling all-nighters frequently, sleeping on the leather pullout couch in my office more than a few nights a week. My family was starting to worry and my wife would call me in tears, telling me that she admired my commitment to waste but that she missed me. When I got to the final game, I found that it required two players, so I had to seek out a teammate to help me finish it. The game turned out to be a lot of fun, but we stifled our delight. Such is our dedication to the task of flushing this nation’s finances down the tubes.

The work is incredibly grueling. For example, just the other day I walked into my office and before I could even finish admiring my 180-degree view of DC’s beautiful National Mall, I noticed the large box sitting on my desk. On it was a note saying, “Give these all out for free.” Inside the box was about 200 iPhones. The new ones, too. The whole box was worth $50,000, I would guess. That’s almost half my annual salary! We’re talking a lot of expensive phones here. But I didn’t have much time to think about it—I had to hit the streets. Hand out these phones to people, just give them away for free. It was a lot of work. Have you tried meeting 200 people lately? And convincing them to talk to you for a few minutes? People are more reluctant than you might think to take a free cell phone. They don’t trust you when you say it’s part of a government program to find creative ways to balloon the federal budget. More than once I broke down, just out of sheer exhaustion.

But you just have to persevere—it’s a living.