14 septembre 2015 / 15 h 09 / No Sleeping Cats

Sleeping Cat

[Photo Thomas Preymesser.]

My first job out of college was at I Can Has Cheezburger, where I was paid ten dollars an hour to format posts in WordPress. That might not seem like a lot, but this was 2009, and adjusted for inflation today, that would be $10.94.

On my first day, I learned two things. One was the company motto: to make people laugh for five minutes a day. The second was Cheezburger’s only rule: No Sleeping Cats.

My boss, Emily, explained that readers might confuse sleeping cats with dead cats, and the last thing we wanted to do was upset our audience with a potentially dead cat.

“Never any sleeping cats?” I asked.

“Never,” Emily said.

“Not even if they’re really cute?”

“Never ever.”

The Awl, Kevin Nguyen : “No Sleeping Cats”.