As frequent readers know, we pay close attention to what Google searches bring people to this site, and often blog about the funny and/or frightening results. (My favorite for March: “moral lesson about that [sic] we learned in jeepers creepers 2″).

At first, penguins ruled the search engine logs — people looking for penguins came here like angsty kids to a Hot Topic. Then it was people searching for evidence that Mike Huckabee is a freemason who predominated. But, as Patrick pointed out in the last episode of “The Winding Road to Popehat,” it’s people looking for the famous pirate resignation letter. That’s funny, because Patrick’s post triggering the searches made an oblique reference to the pirate letter in the title, but didn’t set it forth.

This cannot stand.

Here is the pirate resignation letter as I first saw it, courtesy of Mike (a.k.a. Smoove_B), who is a co-blogger here even though he has never, technically, blogged here. Anyway:

Dear XXXX:

After an appropriate period of deliberation, I have come to the decision to tender my resignation from XXXX, effective April 1, 2005.

Please know that I still maintain a high level of respect for you as a manager and supervisor, and I thank you sincerely for the support and assistance you have offered me in each of those roles. I have been proud to work for XXXX over the past three years; it has been a journey that has provided me an unparalleled foundation to move forward to new and exciting opportunities.

As such, I have decided to become a professional pirate. It has always been a dream of mine to live the life of a swashbuckling corsair, beholden to none and master of all I survey. Once my crew of unabashed rogues is assembled, we shall take to the capacious expanse of the high seas to pursue fortune, fame, and hair-raising adventure.

Our path may not be filled with the porcine comforts and technological marvels that XXXX provides, but we shall nonetheless move forward to carve a name for ourselves in the annals of bold insurgency and death-defying derring-do. Once I have a keen blade at my hip and the Jolly Roger is flapping high above me, I believe I will find my true calling.

Please note that I am currently accepting applications for First Officer, if you are at all interested in applying. I will provide a full medical and dental plan, which will offer immediate coverage of all maladies other than scurvy and the occasional bout of rickets.

Sincerely,

At the time, I found this hilarious.

Then I opened my own law firm, and actually had to employ people. Once I was an employee. Now I am an employer.

I am The Man.

So it’s only fair to develop a response to the Pirate Resignation Letter that employers like me can use for swabbie-wannabees like Mike.

Here’s my effort:

Dear Employee,

Despite all good sense and/or logic, I was both surprised and disappointed to read your letter of this morning informing me that you are quitting to become a pirate.

My surprise was irrational because I should have recognized in you all the signs of imminent, if not active, piracy for several years now: the questionable hygiene, the wardrobe apparently borrowed from sexually ambiguous derelicts, the vocabulary, the frankly threatening fixation on sharp objects, the level of interpersonal aggressiveness one normally associates with untrained hounds, and the general attitude expected from persons who shout threats and vomit into oceans as both vocation and avocation.

I cannot deny your qualifications for your new job. You have certainly plundered your share of booty here. By “booty” I mean office supplies, sick days, our customer’s last vestiges of goodwill, and (I suspect) undergarments from my gym bag. Moreover, a quick search on Wikipedia revealed that piracy was closely associated with brain damage resulting from massive alcohol consumption.

It’s possible that you are overqualified.

I can say with complete confidence that you will be better at being a pirate — and particularly at the portions involving leering, belching, and sitting on your ass while someone else sails the ship — than you ever were at whatever it was you were nominally doing here.

I could be angry, but I’m not. That’s because I’ve always had a secret ambition too.

I want to be a privateer.

Therefore I have arranged for Wayne in the IT department to make me a very attractive letter of marque using photoshop, in which our company empowers me to take to the seas and employ any means necessary to defeat our enemies. Though typically such letters only empowered privateers to attack ships flying the flags of enemy nations, after reviewing your last six performance reviews I have determined that a broad interpretation is warranted.

Therefore I have arranged three large men from security to take you down to the harbor where, as you know, the company’s executive yacht Relentless Profit is docked. I would have you keel-hauled, but the yacht is naturally maintained too well for you to sustain an appropriate level of pain from the barnacles. Instead I will have you attached to a sturdy chain and dragged from the stern when I sail to Monterey this weekend for an antique car show.

Cordially yours,

Etc.

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