At least workplace comedies are preferable to unemployment comedies

ABC has an upcoming sitcom, "Better off Ted," starring Jay Harrington as a talented drudge at a tech corporation that creates weapons and other really bad things gleefully and amorally. Tonally, it's like another show from creator Victor Fresco that (not enough) people really liked, "Andy Richter Controls the Universe."

Says Fresco, "I relate to the environment of working for people who don't care about you." And, no doubt, so should a lot of people in today's environment.

"I feel like I've worked in this corporate world," Fresco continued. "As we say in the show, '"Profits before people" - it's on the logo, it just sounds better because it's in Latin."'"

One of the products developed by the corporation is a chair that's so uncomfortable it somehow manages to increase employee productivity. This notion comes from Fresco's own experience working on an earlier sitcom. "We came [into the writers room] one season to discover that the studio had switched out the chairs to save $100 a chair."

Not a completely loving way to treat people who spend 10 hours a day in their chairs, but not as bad as on "Better Off Ted," where executives decide to subject an employee to a cryogenic experiment. The joke concerns just how blithely bosses treat their employees.

"They so matter-of-factly decide to freeze one of their employees. It's not, 'Oh, this is terrible;' it's more, 'Oh, OK, that's where we are now.' It's that acceptance of such behavior."

Viewers will relate - or, maybe, pine for the days when they had bosses who treated them so badly.