Minimum Work Standards
My very first government job (which paid $1184 per month, with a take home of $890 per month, paid once per month) consisted of checking anuual corporate statements of officers. Basically, all I did was make sure the check ws for the right amount (the number one priority to be sure) that addresses were complete and the appropriate signatures were at the bottom. The minimum work standards were 250 statements per day, that included mailing back errors with an error document enclosed, informing the recipient as to the nature of their blunder.

My record was 750 statements in one day and most days I processed between 450 - 600. What is scary is that the lady who sat in front of me could not produce the minimum work standard...a peasly 250 per day! About once a week, the rest of us take a days' worth of work off her desk so she could catch up.

They finally asked her to retire...RETIRE?...yes retire. Someone this brutally slow had worked for the government long enough to retire.

Sorry, about the delay in posting, Monday was Columbus day and you know us Government Workers, any excuse for a holiday. We observe them all and even make a few up when we get bored.

I was always amazed that we celebrate Columbus 'discovery' of America. After all, it was already here, so its not like he yanked it out of thin air and secondly, the poor sot didn't even know it was a new country. He thought he had tripped over the ass end of India. Still, if they see fit to give me eight hours paid, I am not complaining.

Getting Dumped On

I got a call from one of our facilites asking that we (headquarters) pay to refill the halogen gas system in their computer room. Since they have their own budget and it happened to be a computer room at their facility, I asked what made them think the cost should be ours. Well, according to them, the halogen dumped in the computer room and seeing as it was our system and we run the HQ Information Technology Division, they figured it was our responsibility for installing Halon in the first place.

First let me explain how Halon works. In a computer room, sprinklers would be bad, ruining valuable and delicate computer systems. With Halon, if the fire system thinks there is a fire, an alarm goes off. If there is no fire, you have 60 seconds to hit the shut-off switch and abort the Halon dump. If you do not, Halon dumps all over the computer room, displacing the oxygen and putting out the fire. Sometimes, in the case of a power outage or power surge, the fire system can give a false signal and trigger the system.

Now for the reason why it was our fault:

the computer room used to be filled with those monstrously large reel-to-reel computer jobbies that looked like something like the CRAY. These 6 foot tall, two foot wide boxes took up quite a bit of space in the computer rooms, but over the years computers have become smaller and smaller. Our current system consists of minicomputers not much bigger than the standard tower PC. So, there was all this space in the computer room going to waste. And, low and behold, there was all kinds of files and old furniture looking for a home. Over the years, more and more boxes and equipment found its way to the computer room until it looked more like a storage room than a high tech facility.

More than once, our technicians warned the facility people that storing things in the computer room was a mistake, but hey, its their facility.

Then one day, during a brief power outage, the Halon system was triggered. The facilities people began to panic, they ran to the computer room to disable the Halon dump (this is a switch on the wall) but so much stuff had been stored, so many boxes had been shoe horned into the computer room that they couldn't FIND the switch. It was buried somewhere behind a pile of furniture.

When I stopped laughing, I politely informed the budget analyst that I failed to see how that was our fault, after all, the system performed exactly as it was designed to.

I don't think he was terribly happy with me.

Car Wars

Last night, on my way home from work, no less than three cars tried to take me out. If felt like an extra from Death Race 3000 instead of a hapless commuter trying to get home.

Of course I honked, long and loudly. Me Ex used to hate it when I honked at other drivers. I guess he thought that some homicidal maniac would jump out of the other car and gun us down on the spot, or perhaps he just thought it was rude. The way I figure it, if someone is trying to become one with my front quarter panel and in the process cause me bodily harm, he or she is being somewhat impolite as well. As for getting gunned down, it is like being struck by lightning, rare in the extreme...and you won't see me wearing insulated shoes "just in case."

If there was a polite way to say ~HEY Car Here Asshole~ I might do it, but in reality I am only given one tool for the job. What did they say about tools? If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, all I have is a horn.

I guess I could punctuate it with a little flippage, but that would be rude.

Caffeinate Me
I stayed up too late last night watching a DVD. Why oh why when I have the disc at my disposal, do I stay up past 1:00 a.m. on a work night? This is the sort of thing I might have pulled 20 years ago, but I am getting a bit old for caffeine induced productivity.

The worst part is it was one of those Thriller type movies that are supposed to surprise you, only within about 15 minutes I knew who the bad guy was going to be, I spent the next 75 minutes simply confirming my suspicions *sigh*

Now today I am swilling coffee, trying to avoid 'coffee stomach' and an irritating tendency for my forhead to meet my keyboard if I stay still for too long.

I was going to try to write something witty, but the feeling of my eyes sinking into my sockets is putting a bit of a hamper on what little wit I might have at my disposal.

My son has learned how to play exactly two songs now. One Nirvana and one Offspring song. I like both of the songs, but after 30 times in a row it does tend to wear on a person. Maybe I should ban band practice this evening, for the sake of my ears and my sanity.

You Are What You Eat

Sunday morning I did a McDonald's breakfast run. I am a fan of the breakfast burrito, but I try to make it healthy by ordering the orange juice.

A word to the wise, do not order McDonald's on any day that you intend to watch, "Supersize Me." I felt queasier and queasier the more I watched. I ended up skipping lunch and dinner as I could actually feel my arteries clogging.

For those of you curious at to what the day of a typical bureaucrat looks like:

6:00 alarm goes off, hit snooze alarm
6:09 hit snooze alarm again
6:18 hit snooze alarm again
6:27 brush teeth, wake up the teenager
6:30 wake up the teenager again, wash face, comb hair
6:35 Yell at the teenager to GET UP, start coffee, get dressed
6:45 feed cats, pour coffee, spray and walk through a little perfume
7:00 give the teenager all the money in my purse, take out the trash and look for my left shoe
7:10 pour second cup of coffee then drop teenager off at school
7:15 get high octane coffee for the drive to work
7:20 stop and go through traffic
7:55 Walk four blocks from paid parking into the office
8:01 Wave at the security guard and catch the elevator up to my floor
8:06 Turn on the computer, throw empty coffee cup out
8:10 Check e-mail
8:20 get nasty cup of coffee from the vending machine
8:25 make fixes on the weekly report and hand it to the boss for signature
8:35 Surf the Internet
9:30 Get another cup of coffee from the disgusting vending machine
9:35 Make more changes to the weekly repot and hand it back to my boss
9:50 Surf the internet
11:30 Lunch!!
12:30 Check E-mail
12:40 Check Mail
12:45 Route last week's report
12:50 Surf the Internet
2:30 Get yet another cup of coffee


Okay, Okay...you get the idea.

Going Up?

Grumpy Bunny wrote something that reminded me of the horror that is the elevator. Any time a half dozen people are squished into a slowly moving closet, you have the opportunity for offense and embarrassment.

Even with your eyes glued resolutely ahead and your body pressed against the wall, you cannot get far enough from your fellow human beings for comfort.

The people on the elevator include:

The marinators (see perfume below)
The awkward amount of stuff people
The bringing the children to work people (pushing the button for each floor
The lazy people (getting on the elevator to go up one floor)
The partiers (whose breath alone has an alcohol contest. If it were possible to get a contact high from booze, this is where it would happen.
Halitosis Harbingers
The Smokers (not all smokers, just those who smell like they smoked three packs while sitting in a box.)
The Ghosts, that is the um...'spirit' of riders past. Case in point:

One day I pressed the elevator button and when the doors opened up I almost gasped out loud. Someone had suffered a major gas attack on the elevator and the miasma wasn't going anywhere quick. Having lived with 'Jan' and the one-woman 'Navy', I could have borne the stench, but what I couldn't stand was the thought that if the elevator stopped on a populated floor, someone might think the stench had come out of ME. I would get 'the look' and be branded as an elevator polluter for the rest of my days in the building. The butt of office humor.

If someone else had been there when the elevator showed up, it might have been okay. We could have laughed and complained about the smell the whole way down, advertising that we did not endorse that particular olfactory offense. Being alone it would never work, as I would fall directly under the "he who smelt it dealt it," rule.

I waited for the elevator to close, counted to 10 and hit the call button again. No luck! That tainted elevator wasn't going anywhere. I thought about the stairs. I thought about the ridicule. I thought about the smell.

I took the stairs down a floor and hit the elevator button again. Same elevator! Damn Damn Damn! If I could have caught that stupid gas bag at that moment, I would have sentenced them to a morning of riding in their own funk.

I gave up and went back to work...who needs breaks anyway?

Speaking of Smells
Grumpy Bunny brought up the whole perfume thing. At the risk of sounding like a grump myself, I think people should be banned from wearing perfume in the office. Either that or their should be training in "Smells 101" for all new employees.

Two cubicles away, there was a woman who appeared to bathe in a perfume called "Navy". I have never bought Navy and would not know what Navy smelt like if someone else had not identified it for me, but I can tell you, whoever sells Navy will never get any business from me.

That woman might as well have been wearing a bell around her neck, because we always knew when she was coming, or going. She had her own personal entourage of smell to announce her presence.

We had another woman in accounting that also thought she needed to douse herself in the Eu De, only she had good reason. Somehow she believed that slapping on some bug juice would cover up her own natural body odors. All she succeeded in doing was smelling like a bear fart in a rose garden.

We also had a guy show up on his first day of work smelling like he hadn't bathed in a week. I got the pleasure of showing him to his new cubicle...and his new cubicle mates, I am sure they were as unhappy to see him arrive as I was happy to escape. He only lasted two weeks, unsurprising from someone who couldn't even shower for their first day of work.

The pleasure of working in an office is that you can delight all of your senses, sometimes all at once.

NEVER EAT FISH IN THE OFFICE

I thought this rule merited all caps. Unless you are chowing a McDonald Fish Patty which (I suspect) is only marginally fish, do not, I repeat, DO NOT eat fish in the office.

We all have to live together for 8-10 hours per day, dealing with personalities that we would never marry, befriend, birth or tolerate under most circumstances. Having to deal with overhearing private conversations, personal smells, individual opinions is quite enough without introducing FISH into the equation.

One employee brought fish and microwaved it. Well I guess ole Goldie there had turned because the smell of rotten fish permeated the entire office for hours. My boss finally gave the woman a $20.00 and told her to eat out and please don't bring fish any more.

One Monday I dragged into the office (if it is a Monday, you can guarantee that I am dragging). Whilst sitting at my desk, I kept getting pungent whiffs of something rotten in Denmark.

I smelled my desk, my trash, I hound dogged the area, but it kept coming in whiffs and starts. I did a quick 'pit check' but no, I wasn't one of the great unwashed. After about an hour I couldn't stand it anymore and I practically shouted, "What in the HELL is that SMELL?!"

The office had been quite quiet up until that point, but suddenly the ice was broken. It seems that EVERYONE was having their personal airspace violated but they were all concerned that it was one of their neighbors and I guess no one wanted to comment on the personal hygiene of their office mates.

It turns out that Jan (remember Jan our resident nosepicker and canary killer extraordinaire?) had eaten a tuna and onion sandwitch on Friday but hadn't finished it, so she dumped it in her waste can. When she came in on Monday, her trash smelled so funky, she switched it with the trashcan at the empty desk next to mine.

I put it out in the hall, to horrify passers by.

Don't Ever Volunteer to be the Supply Guy

I used to be in charge of supplies for the office, a thankless task at best. No one notices the work unless something they want isn't in the supply closet. You just don't get any awards for keeping the staff in pencils.

I swear that every September we had a run on pencils, paper, binders, and rulers. Every Christmas my cabinets would be pillaged for scissors and tape. I mean, how many sets of scissors does an employee need? If we issue you one when you start, you should have to show us the broken scissors before you get another pair I think.

Anyway, I got smart and started hiding key supplies on my desk so that people would have to be bold and actually ask for that new pair of scissors in person.

I had to start locking my desk because they would sneak them out while I was on break. Sneaky little thieving devils.

******

Every year there was in Information Technology Conference for vendors to showcase their wares. I am pretty sure the programmers only went to escape the office and I suspect they hid at the local Starbucks for a few hours. On the other hand, the clericals loved the conference. They would come back with bags of mouse pads, pens, pencils, slinkies, stress balls, etc. It was like a shopping trip for them.

It also kept the supply closet from being raided for a few days. I wish they would have this conference in September or December rather than April.

The Nose Knows
Sam used to complain that he thought Jan hated him. Why? Because she would come into his cubicle to ask a minor question and on the way out should would lay a deadly stink bomb in his office. In his words, he would always think, What did I do to piss her off this time?

We would laugh whenever he told us this story, but I never really put much stock in it until one day Jan walked into my cubicle, asked a question and laid a paint peeler in my personal air space.

As I was hastily escaping the now poisonous air of my cube I thought, Geez, what did I do to piss her off?

Jan also had other endearing habits, chief among them was her stomach turning tendency to pick her nose. Unlike most people, she was no surreptitious picker, nor did she use a tissue. She was a two knuckle bold explorer or the nasal cavity, often initiated right in the middle of a conversation and generally ending with a green smear under her chair.

No, I am not attempting to gross you out (okay, maybe I am) and there have been others who simply couldn't believe that anyone would pick while talking to coworkers (and any other time that suited her) but it is true.

One woman refused to sit across from Jan as a result of this unfortunate habit. She said it ruined her lunch. I ended up sharing a cubicle with Jan for nearly a year, all of which I spent talking facing away from her and with my chair carefully separated from hers.

It is also important to note that Jan never farted in our shared cubicle. She always kept her olfactory attacks well outside her own workspace.

...except that one time when she laid a canary killer that drove the whole office into the hallway, but I like to think that was unintentional.