Back to the Cube Farm
Sorry for the hiatus, I was parent sitting (my father really hates when I sit on him, but sometimes he deserves it).

I was going to write up the second half of the Henny Penny story, but I lost interest half way through, so instead I am going to put up some musings, ramblings and other assorted b.s. that I will pass for a blog entry.

I promise to finish the story later this week though.

Today is about retirements. Every office has them. We all dread them, but are obliged to attend. Worse, sometimes we get volunteered to actually plan them.

One of my coworkers is retiring in two months. It is my dubious honor to be in charge of his retirement photo album (who dreams up this stuff?) I would have tried to bow out, slipped an extra fiver into the gift fund, but I was threatened with additional, larger and more intricate duties should I pass this one up.

The concept is simple. Take pictures of all the coworkers and place them, along with index cards that have best wishes and cute anecdotes scribbled onto them, into a cute and heartfelt photo album.

The problem is that the guy is a total non-entity. A nice enough fellow I guess, but mostly I know him as an affable do nothing, so I am in a quandry as to how to fill out that evil little index card. Gone are the days when I could scribble something trite and illegible with my signature...now it has to actually say something...enough to fill up a recipe sized index card.

I had some ideas:

HAD A GREAT TIME HANGING OUT AT THE OFFICE PARTIES WITH YOU...BY THE WAY, WHAT DO YOU DO AGAIN?

HAVE A HAPPY RETIREMENT, NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO COMMUTE FOR 30 MINUTES JUST TO SURF THE INTERNET.

Okay, so I can't write those things, but I can dream can't I?

This guy plays golf, which might be something I could glom onto, the trouble is that I have never truly appreciated a sport that consists of trying to get a tiny little ball into a tiny little hole far far way. Sounds like the definition of frustration to me. Give me a good game of Hockey over Golf any day. At least there is the chance that a good brawl will break out.

Adventures in Accounting
I used to sit next to a lady who looked amazingly like a broody hen. This image was reinforced by her laugh, which sounded a lot like clucking and her mouth, a tiny little bow, that had an almost beak-like appearance.

Some coworkers can be safely ignored. Others can be befriended, but Henny Penny fell into neither category.

As a mildly disgruntled low wage accounting widget, she amused herself by complaining about things, all things. There was no aspect of the work environment too trivial to merit attention and comment. If it wasn't the temperature, it was the lighting or the desk spacing, or the tepidness of the water in the drinking fountain.

What was really maddening was that she never 'did' anything about the conditions she professed to abhor, probably because she was having far too much fun complaining about them.

If a gum wrapper was left lying on the hallway floor she would comment on it, repeatedly. She would comment on its inappropriate location, its inherent untidiness, the possible characteristics of the person who dropped the wrapper in question and she would always close with the phrase, "Someone should do something about it."

I can only guess that she never thought of herself as 'someone' because never, not once, not in a single instance in my 2.5 years sitting next to her did she ever stoop to pick up the wrapper.

Some people will be tempted to jump in at this point and comment that I should have suggested she pick up the wrapper or perhaps I should pick up the wrapper myself. Now those voting for me to confront my coworker have obviously never sat next to a complaining, chicken clucking, Henny Penny before or you would know how deeply such a suggestion would have offended her and how she would give me the silent treatment (not so bad) or how the future complaining would be focused solely upon myself.

As for the people thinking I should pick up the wrapper myself. This might seem an obvious solution that would end the immediate problem at hand, it fails in three major respects:

1. It simply leaves Henny Penny free to start in on the next area of complaint.
2. It ends her fun. (Remember, she enjoys complaining.)
3. It would make me her personal butt monkey, slave to all her future whims and endlessly assaulted with requests.

No, I got my revenge in other ways. Devious and ultimately satisfying ways, which I will relate when I get back from my vacation.

A Walk Down Memory Lane
I wasn't always this way...a floater in the toilet bowl of the workplace. I used to be a hard worker. I gave 110 percent. In fact I worked myself up from the lowest level of service to one of the highest you can achieve without actually bossing other people around. I did this without the benefit of higher education or a decent wardrobe, which is no mean accomplishment.

I still do everything they ask of me. I still finish my assignments on time. I have an excellent attendance record and I have over a month's worth of vacation on the books.

So, what has changed? Well, fundamentally I see my job as completely futile and unnecessary where as historically I had only seen it as partially futile and unnecessary.

Civil Service has severed the tenuous connection between performance and pay. Politics in bureaucracy as eliminated any semblance of logic in the decision making process. Upper management are inevitably appointees that are better at smooching someone's backside that running an organization.

Sometimes I wonder why government works at all.

Okay, so that wasn't very funny...hmmm, how to lighten the mood. Maybe I can dredge up an anecdote:

Our facilities person got a phone call from the bathroom (from a cell phone, I know what you are thinking!) asking for a roll of toilet paper because the poor guy was in an embarrassing situation. Bum out with not even a butt gasket to come to the rescue. Now a woman could possibly dredge a few scraps of tissue smeared with lipstick from her purse to help matters out, but men have nowhere to hide emergency butt wiping supplies.

Our facilities person hurried to the supply closet and got a roll of toilet paper for the poor fellow, but he failed to specify *which* bathroom he was stuck in. We were in four buildings with two men's bathrooms in each building, meaning that the hunt was on.

Poor Lisa, toilet paper in hand, spent twenty minutes going from bathroom to bathroom, knocking on the door and trying to hand out toilet paper. She never did find the guy. Maybe someone gave him a hand over while she was searching for him. I like to think so, because the alternative is just too nasty to contemplate.

Bathroom Stories
We had a coworker that made Felix Unger look like a slob. "Squealy" was so anal retentive that I don't think he had taken a decent dump since birth. The guy would monitor the relative cleanliness of the men's bathroom and make unsolicited reports to my boss, cc'ing his own boss to make sure my boss jumped quickly enough I guess.

Sample of the E-mails this guy generated:

Squealy Monday - THE SOUTH WEST MEN'S BATHROOM IS ALMOST OUT OF SOAP.

Squealy Wednesday - THE DISPENSERS WERE REFILLED. GREAT!

My Boss Wednesday - IF YOU'RE HAPPY, I'M HAPPY

Squealy Thursday - THE BATHROOM FLOORS LOOK LIKE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN CLEANED IN A WEEK.

Squealy Friday - THE BATHROOM FLOORS ARE STILL DIRTY. IN FACT THE SAME M&M HAS BEEN ON THE FLOOR BY THE SECOND TO LAST TOILET FOR NEARLY A WEEK

My Boss Friday - GROWING UP, IN OUR BATHROOM, THAT M&M WOULDN'T HAVE LASTED A WHOLE WEEK, BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHY

We used to snicker about all these notes, probably because if you didn't laugh you would have to cry.

Finally, one day, Squealy's normally staid and humorless boss had seen enough. So when Squealy passed his manager's office sighting a quick bathroom break, his boss quipped, "What, going to check the soap?"

Bear in mind that this is the guy that would complain if the sprinkler didn't hit every inch of the lawn. After complaining repeatedly about the sad state of the windows (he had a window seat) my boss actually went out there with a squeegie and did the windows.

If he had complained of fish in the pond, my boss might have waded out in hip boots.

I guess the moral of the story is that the squeaky wheel gets the oil...and gets laughed at by his coworkers.

Work's Embarrassing Moments
Everyone has them*. No one wants to talk about them, but we do anyway. So here they are by category:

Clothing:
I came to work one day wearing two different shoes. Okay, so navy looks like black in the twilight of the early morning. Desk bound for the rest of the day.

Found some really egregious grease spots on my white shirt. Got creative with the white-out and found out that the white of white-out doesn't match the white of a work shirt and that white-out gets crunchy when dry.

Sickness:
Projectile vomited in the bathroom. Actually, I was lucky to make it to the bathroom and even the stall. Thank you cafeteria salsa.

Threw up in the planter on the way out of work with the flu. All the smokers got an eyeful that day.

Faux Pas:
Hit the "Reply All" button instead of the "Reply" button when making a caustic message. My bad.

Referred to a deceased coworker as 'snuficating' when someone told me what he committed suicide by turning on the gas. Damned runaway mouth! It was, to say the least, an awkward moment.

Called my boss, "Useless as tits on a boar," to his face. Okay, so this wasn't embarrassing at all, I just like to share it.


Next week: Other People's Most Embarrassing Moments at Work, as Witnessed by my Evil Self



*except that nauseatingly perfect girl who never gets a run in her nylons, whose hair is always perfect and who never forgets a report. If I was violent and homicidal, she would be the first to go.

Binders 'R Us
I am in charge of the binders where I work. No, not the stocking and distribution of empty binders, but the compilation and distribution of full binders...what they are full of I will leave to your imagination.

I take what is basically the same thirty pages of Departmental Infomercial, fact check the figures, spruce up the graphics and pass it off as original work. These are handed out at the very highest levels of government and they are essentially useless. Someone once joked that the last original work around here was produced in 1982 and we have been cannibalizing it ever since.

The upside is that my search for appropriate .jpegs allows me to surf the web at will.

*****

The word Monday should always be said with a slight groaning sound as a homage to the dragging eternity it represents.

*****

One of my coworkers died last week. There is no news on the cause of death. I feel like a vulture waiting to find out the details, but because he was about the same age as me, he shouldn't be dying of 'natural' causes. Stuff like this leaves me unsettled. I have unanswered questions, most beginning with the word WHY.

We have had more than our fair share of tragedy in the office, there was a murder/suicide, a drive by shooting, heart disease related death, alcoholic death, cancer death, and two more suicides (shooting and gassing). All in all it seems that the environment might border on toxic.

Rules for Looking Good On the Job
Okay, these are some rules that have worked wonders for me over the last 19 years.

1. When promoting or lateraling into a new position always try to take a job that someone else did badly. This way you can spend 6 months talking about how bad they were, how much better you are and with minimal effort you can look like a hero.

*contingent after 6 months you must stop bitching about your predecessor. You should have had enough time to fix things.

2. Never ever take on a job your supervisor has done. You will never do it as good, or the same way. They will spend way too much time overseeing your work. If at all possible, do something your boss has ZERO background in doing.

3. Always walk quickly. This makes it look like you are a busy person with places to go and things to do. Carry a folder or a report, even to break, as if you are going to spend personal time reviewing paperwork.

*Do NOT take it into the bathroom though, that is just sick.

4. Always be friendly with the Office Support Staff. Replace paper in the printers, offer to cover the phones during luncheons. These are the people that are going to catch your mistakes before your manager does. They will also cover your butt in an emergency unless you piss them off.

I am open to other additions. It is Friday, and I am on my second cup of coffee before digging back into a pile of paperwork.

The Hampster Naps
I have quite a few stories all lined up to put here, but I just don't have the energy to type them up.

At home, I am renovating my kitchen. This is no fabulous HGTV, pick your decorator, money to burn renovation. This is more like the omigawd there is no grout between the tiles and it has PINK bullnosing type of renovation.

The thing has been under construction for almost 9 weeks. That's right 9 weeks and I am still far from done. The refridgerator and microwave are in the entryway, meaning I pretty much come into the house sideways. The coffeemaker and dishwashing is in the bathroom. The kitty litter box is in the bathroom too. There is just something WRONG about washing dishes 2 feet away from cat poop.

I thought I would never say this, but I am sick of fast food, sick of restaurants, sick of pizza, sick of take out Chinese food. I want my kitchen back!

I made the mistake of opting for concrete countertops. The good news is that I got a helluva deal because the contractor is trying to learn to do concrete countertops (he does those really cool stamped and textured concrete floors). The bad news is that he is TRYING TO LEARN concrete countertops. We have refinished them three times.

If this ever gets done, it is going to be a cold day in hell before I start in on the bathroom.

Come for the Donuts, Stay for the Career
I once applied for a job with the Highway Patrol. For an insane moment I thought I might make a good cop (that and it made more money than I was pulling down). After all, I had been in the military and I had some higher eduction. Somehow I thought these might be factors in my favor.

I passed the written test with a 98 percent, but then came the oral interviews. At the interview they asked me lots of questions about what I would do in any given situation, presenting me with conflicting priorities. I can't remember the exact questions, but to give you a flavor, they were something like this:

You get two calls, one for a baby stranded in a locked car, another for a domestic disturbance. Which do you respond to first and why?

I answered their questions to the best of my humble abilities. I have no idea if my answers were correct, or even if they were meant to be, but I was stupid enough to say this:

I am not sure if any of my answers are right and I apologize for not knowing more about police procedures, but I was under the impression that, should I be selected, I would be expected to train for this job at the Police Academy. Isn't it counter-productive to have preconceived ideas about how I would respond before I become fully trained?

Now there are many responses I could have received. One might have been that they expected a background in police procedure, or that I was correct and they really weren't gauging my actual police procedure knowledge, but what they actually said caught me totally off guard:

This is not a job, this is a career.

I won't write the rest of what they said as it is pretty much an elaboration on this theme. Suffice it to say that I did not get the job, er career.

Questions Designed to Weed Out the Stupid
When I took an auditor position, they did a full background check on me, including fingerprints and a notarized personal history statement. The personal history statement included lots of boring information such as every dime I had in the bank, every friend whose address I could remember and my home address going back practically to birth.

I have attached a couple of the questions that actually made me laugh out loud:

Have you ever called in sick from work when you were in fact not sick or caring for a family member who was sick? If so give details, how many times, who was the employer and what were you doing instead.

Is this question designed to weed out the insanely stupid or what?!

Is there anything that we have not discussed which YOU believe would have a material adverse impact on your background?

Once again, who would volunteer this information and for goodness sake, WHY?