He asked for Asterixes — so I made his slides French

My coworker Paul paced like a man trying to summon a PowerPoint god and kept repeating, with the calm fury of someone who’d just discovered caps lock: “I want Asterixes.” Did he mean asterisks? No. He meant Asterix. So I gave him Asterix. Every slide. Every bullet point. Little Gaul, big helmet, permanent scowl staring down market share.

It was perfect malicious compliance—fun, petty, and educational. Each chart had Asterix yelling at the pie, Asterix pointing at the KPI, Asterix giving the cliffnotes. Someone in the comments nailed it: “He’s a Gaul, not a Viking.” True—he’s tiny, aggressive, and inexplicably chip-resistant. Another helpful citizen chimed in with medicine: “Asterixis is a flapping tremor,” which made me consider adding a bonus slide titled “Hepatic Encephalopathy: When Your Metrics Start Twitching.” I didn’t, because you don’t scare the client mid-Q3, but it was tempting.

Paul finally stopped pacing, blinked at his Viking-free slides and said, “I meant asterisks.” I shrugged—did I say that?—and handed him a printout. He got his Gauls; the client remembered the deck; I got an unintentional lesson in workplace linguistics: never correct punctuation with a comic book. You asked for an asterisk; marketing gave you an uprising. Comedy.