The story is here, I'm annotating on paper, so no doc link.
Bartleby is narrated by a lawyer "with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best." To that end, he wants to hire a third scribe to help with his business, since this is in the days when you had to literally copy contracts, etc. by hand. He hires Bartleby, and finds him good at copying, but Bartleby refuses to do anything "extra" (like helping proof the other scribes' copies). Anytime he's asked, he responds, "I would prefer not to" (thus starting Melville on the road to memery.) Over time, the lawyer and other scribes get more and more upset, eventually finding that Bartleby is staying there on the weekends as well. The lawyer tries to fire him (even paying him extra) but he just keeps showing up to work (but doing less and less). It gets so bad (and everyone else starts saying "prefer" since this is really just a long/weird old timey 4chan green-text) that he ends the lease and moves out. Bartleby does not. The new tenant asks him to come get rid of Bartleby, since he's just hanging around near the office all day every day. He can't convince him, so Bartleby is arrested, and starves to death in jail. The final lines of the story are "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!"
So, basically, a guy terrorizes his workplace via memes, ignores getting fired, commits suicide due to depression, and the narrator of the story (as far as I can tell) ends it by (as far as I can imagine it) yelling like William Shatner.
Seriously, if they had the internet in the 1850, this would be posted with Pepes or Wojacks or something.
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