Henrik Forester was a rather generic fellow. He worked a job in a fortune five hundred company and sat in a cubicle for eight hours a day. He wore a tie every day, even though he hated it. His belt was always on, his socks were always black, his shoes were always leather.

One day Henrik was working at his computer, entering very important data into an equally important spreadsheet. He sat there working diligently, humming some tune he heard on his commute to work that day. He typed and typed, and ever-so-often drank some of his coffee. At 10:30, the telephone rang. He answered it.

“Henrik speaking.”

“Morning, Henrik. It’s Jakob Garber in purchasing. I need some figures for the Aerodyne account.”

“Sure thing, Jakob,” said Henrik as he opened his email. “In Aerodyne we have—”, here he looked through the letter, and after a second or two, said, “those sorry excuses for human beings.”

“What was that, Henrik?” Jakob’s voice had a slight quiver to it. This had never happened before.

“T-they used Comic Sans,”murmured Henrik.

“H-Henrik?”

“The fools used Comic Sans!” at this Henrik stood up, pulling the phone, and his coffee, off the desk.

“We’re a Fortune 500 Company!” He yelled.

People turned away from their work for the first times in their lives and began to stare at Henrik. Henrik began to walk out of his cube, and he and his coffee-soaked trousers ran down the aisle.

“Comiiiiiiic Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaans!”

Someone started crying. Others tried to hide behind the flimsy cubicle walls. No one had ever run down the aisle in coffee-soaked trousers before. Someone somewhere said something about the employee handbook. Henrik reached the center of the office and tore off his tie. There was an audible gasp from the small crowd now gathered about Henrik.

“You’re not following the rules, Henrik,” said Leyton, in his coffee-free trousers, handbook in hand, reading from the section entitled Office Behavior and You.

“Comic Sans!” said Henrik.

Henrik walked over to the copy machine and stared at it with intense hatred. He braced his body against its front, and shoved it through the fifteenth story window behind it. The Xerox™ Colorqube® 9303 fell through the air and smashed into the pavement a few seconds later.

“No, no, no. That’s not okay at all.” Leyton had his book opened to Respecting Your Equipment.

“What’s all this‽”

All noise stopped as everyone turned to see Adelbert Van Veen, the department head, standing angrily before the crowd, his face red, and his comb over blowing away in the newfound breeze. His fat hands were clenched in round fists at his sides. He stepped forward, bits of glass crunching under his Italian shoes and considerable weight. Leyton ran up behind the fat man.

“Adelbert! It’s so good t—”

“Please, call me Mr. Van Veen.”

Leyton shrank away from the larger man. Adelbert walked up to Henrik, and for a moment, both men stood there where the copy machine had once been, staring each other down.

“Do you know, Henrik—”Adelbert began— “how much that piece of equipment cost?”

Henrik looked out the window at the copier now occupying most of the parking lot.

“Well, the answer is more than you could possibly fathom.” He said this simply to be mean, because Henrik, who worked in accounts, obviously could fathom the cost of the copier.

“Now, Henrik, here’s what’s going to happen next. You—” here he turned to the group at large— “all of you are going to go back to work, and we are not going to speak about this again. Clear?”

Henrik looked at the ground.

“Of course.”

“Excellent.”

Everyone stared blankly at each other.

“Well, go on!”

Henrik and the group turned away from the open window and began to make their way back to their cubes. Adelbert watched them file away into their respective locations, and after a few minutes, regular office sounds filled the air.

Adelbert looked out the window again, and stared at the remains of his beloved printer. No one understood his affection for printers and the like, but that didn’t bother Adelbert. He stood there for a good long while, tie and combover flapping about. Adelbert thought about the paperwork he was going to have to fill out. He thought about toner densities and paper weights. He thought about the pitiful performance Arsenal had put on last night, and about the money he owed the boys at the pub. Adelbert thought about a great many things as he stood there, gazing into the parking lot.

Just when Adelbert had decided that he should at least pretend to work, a piece of paper from the bulletin board struck him in the face. He reached up and clawed the nuisance down, and glanced down at it briefly, to determine whether the thing belonged on the board or in the rubbish bin.

Adelbert’s face contorted into one of disbelief, and he peered closer at the page. He hastily furnished a pair of reading glasses from his coat, and placed them upon his nose, scanning the document over and over again.

Suddenly, his gaze stopped, transfixed on something not on the page, but rather, something beyond it, beyond the earthly realm. With this, something deep in the recesses of Adelbert’s mind snapped. He crumpled the page in his fist, and spun around to face the room. He looked up, and let out with a horrendous yell:

“COMIC SANS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE TYPEFACE!”