“Here on Fluffy Jobs, we’ve got fluffies with jobs you’d never expect a fluffy to be doing! These tireless little troopers are the backbone of a lot of industries, and it’s nice to see that hard work is still valued by some folks!” Mark Rolf, a stringy looking man in his fifties, was a longtime cable show host who specialized in finding people with actual jobs and fetishizing the deplorable conditions they work in for minimal pay. After people got sick of a former opera singer who’d never done a day of actual physical labor in his adult life condescending to people about the “dignity” and “nobility” of terrible jobs, he found a new market to apply his talents to.
The cameras smash cut to New York, zipping around and flashing between landmarks before arriving on the location being visited first. Penn Station.
“Here at Penn Station, over half a million people pass through each day. Naturally, where there’s people, you’re gonna have a lot…of dirty jobs to do.” The camera zipped through the myriad corridors and arcane structures comprising the most disgusting building in the Western Hemisphere. Each shot had fluffies visible with bright flashing hats on to make clear they were professionals.
The sad shaggy earthies were all tasked with cleaning. Particularly grim were the fluffies approaching the Mens Room. Mark focused on one. “This little fella is named Brian, and he’s a hard working fluffy who doesn’t need your handouts! He’d rather work for his nummies!” He turns to the bedraggled looking fluffy and turns on his smile.
“So what’s your job like here, Brian?” The fluffy sighs. “Weww Bwian mostwy haftu cwean poopies an peepees an ebby wunce in a wiwe haftu wipe down da woads.” Mark’s face showed a rare non-rehearsed emotion: Confusion. “The…the roads?”
Brian sighed, shaking his head. “Nu, doze whewe vwoom vwoom gu. Dese woads. Wike bussin’ woads.” Mark was still lost, as his face made clear. "Ugggh, tawkin bowt woads! Dummeh hoomins bussin woads! Daddeh miwkies! Fwum nunu sticks!" Mark turned white. “Hey, we can cut that, right?” His voiceover took over as the camera cut.
“Of course we couldn’t cut it. We’re all about real jobs here, and the reality is that sometimes Brian has to clean up messes…of a different kind!” The show cut to jazzed up montages of Brian, a middle aged fluffy with no spark left in his eyes, trudging around the filthy bathrooms of Penn Station, allowing detritus, grime, and other undesirable substances to collect on his dragging belly fluff that the custodial manager requires him to have.
“Now after you’ve got all this good good stuff, where do you go?” Brian was distracted, spitting out a cockroach that kept trying to get in his mouth. “Huuuu nu wike jawb, fwuff am gwoss nao, nu smeww pwetty. Huhuhu Bwian feew aww sticky fwum fwoow…” His lower lip puffed out as he pouted and made a couple of the deep, resonant “huuuuuuu” sounds we’ve all come to know and love. The kind you use as white noise to fall asleep to.
“Hey. Fluffy. Hey! H-”
The shot jump cuts. Both are still standing together in the custodial vestibule, but Mark’s face is slightly red and Brian’s cheeks are soaked with fresh tears and his eyes are puffy from crying. “So Brian, what’s the next step?”
The rattled fluffy spoke with a wavering voice, not the jaded and checked out sighs he’d employed before. He was visibly and audibly shaken. “W…weww Fwuf-Bwian! Bwian gu hewe an-an-an haftu gu obah da wawa pwace wike dis tu get aww yucky ickies out ub fwuff.” He waddled over a drain surrounded by floor mounted nozzles, pausing to demonstrate where he would stand. “Den Bwian haf tu tuwn on wawa wif wittwe hoofsy buttun down hewe on fwoow.” Mark nodded with faux interest. “So is that the same as this?” Mark hit a button on the wall, and the nozzles all let out concentrated streams of water. Not dangerous pressure, but much higher than the gradual ramp up fluffies could do with the floor button.
Brian vomited from the shock of having his undercarriage suddenly assaulted by eight jets of cold water. The pressure stung his tummy a bit, and he yelped and made a scaredy poop. The shit caught one of the nozzles, and sprayed up onto his back, the camera, the crew, and even Mark. Mark started spitting and hocking loogies while frantically wiping liquid shit off his face. “Oh sick! God, it got in my mouth! Brian!” He whips around to address the fluffy who was still collecting himself from the traumatic Power Shower. “We came here to talk to you! To show people how hard you work and how good this job is for fluffies like you! You could be on the street!”
Brian, for his part, is still spitting out gross shit that made its way to his mouth. He’s soaked from top to bottom. He hates getting this wet. Normally he only gets his belly fluff and he can leave his back dry since it doesn’t do any of the cleaning. But now not only is he wet and cold, but his back is filthy with backwash from the torrent of water Mark had unleashed. He didn’t know he was getting yelled at. He was too busy trying not to fall asleep, same as every trip to the shower. His heart beats so fast even when things go right that he always feels like taking a nap. Plus he’s exhausted. He works all day, and sometimes when his shift is done he’s told some other fluffy died or got lost and he’s forced to work their shift too. If he falls asleep, the hoomins who boss him around will yell at him, throw stuff at him, chase him around, kick at him, one of them even swung him by his pretty tail once. Now he only has a couple inches of tail left. He misses his tail so very much.
“He’s not listening. Right! Penn Station! It’s filthy! It’s awful! It’s cleaned by stupid fluffies who seem more likely to shit on the floor than sweep it! But sometimes, that’s where the work has to get done. See you next time!”