John Mulaney
Hush
I have had other jobs besides comedy. I was an office temp for a while. I really miss that. I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week. And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig. You’re like, “Thank you. No one will ever see me again.” And they’re like, “Goodbye!” I worked at an office once on 57th Street in New York City. I was there for a couple weeks. I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle. This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle. I want to get the number right. I think Mischa had… about 900,000 photos of her daughter up in her cubicle. Almost like she was trying to solve a conspiracy about her daughter, A Beautiful Mind-style. I think about Mischa two times a week… because of a phone call she had next to me one day. It was one of my first days, and I was sitting next to her. And her phone rang, and this was her call, and I’m quoting. Her phone rang and she said, “Hello? Hush!” And then she hung up. Think about that two times a week. And I didn’t know her well enough by then to be like, “Hey, what kind of a person are you?” You know? Who could she have been talking to? “Hello? Hush!” This was a place of business. My only thought was that it was the CEO of the company being like, “Mischa, help. I’m doing a crossword puzzle. I need a four-letter word for ‘be quiet’ right now.” – “Hush!” – “You’re promoted.”