Steve Jobs Debates Scrooge

A short-short story in time for the holidays

God ordered St. Peter’s to toughen the standards for who should get into heaven.

St. Peter: Okay, up now: Steve Jobs and the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge. Only one of you can go to heaven. Make your case.

Jobs: I created everything from the iPod to the iPad, the Apple 2e to the AppleWatch.

Scrooge: No one needs doodads. St. Peter, after your three ghosts scared the, ahem, hell out of me, I gave to the poor. I gave until it hurt.

Jobs: My investing the profits into research and development did a lot more good than giving people turkeys.

Scrooge: So they can search the Internet on their watch?! Big fucking deal — I kept people from starving.

Jobs: That’s just liberal feel-good virtue signaling. The ripple effect of feeding the poor is lilliputian compared to the benefits to the world I hath wrought. Besides, a lot of the poor-money goes for candy and cancer sticks if not cannabis and Colt-45s — the malt liquor and the guns.

Scrooge: That’s unfair. Most of the money goes for food, shelter, and medications so they don’t need to cut their pills in half.

Jobs: Dude, do not, do not, ignore ripple effect, ripple effect. Because of my products, billions of people can communicate, search the Net, improve their lives, and yes, get entertained — even watch you in A Christmas Carol.

Scrooge: It’s good you died young you bourgeois conservative!

St. Peter: Gentlemen, gentlemen. I have made my decision. Both of you are off to… purgatory.

Jobs: Purgatory?! That’s an average of 1,000 to 2,000 years!

Scrooge: Burning!

St. Peter: Sorry about that, guys. Adios and Merry Christmas.

I read this aloud on YouTube.

Dr. Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach and author of 30 books, including Light: short-short stories on life’s brighter side. You can reach Marty at mnemko@comcast.net