December 2005 Archives
December 6, 2005
Feeling Better?
I took Thursday and Friday off because my dad is on vacation this week, and we needed to install the bathroom fan. He asked me last weekend, after he and my mother had failed — for a second weekend in a row — to properly install it, “How much do you know about electricity?”
I flashed on the five-minute crash course we had on how not to blow a fuse with film lights, my vague recollection of the various formulae and wattages pooling together into a soupy lack of remembrance. I told him the truth: “Almost nothing.” I suggested that perhaps my sister, who spends the majority of her life fucking around with electrical wiring, might be helpful, but my dad helpfully pointed out that she’s a girl, and he doesn’t want to be humiliated by his incompetence. He wants both of us to be humiliated by our combined IQ of 14, because we inevitably failed and had to call my sister for help. Then we failed again; yes, the fan now officially works, but only by flipping the switch in the other bathroom.
“Who cares about your bathroom fan?” you, impatient gentle reader, are undoubtedly asking right now.
“Nobody,” I can respond safely, and fortunately for you, this entry isn’t really about that.
This entry is about calling in sick, the time-honored tradition that marks the difference between pathetic, hardworking foreigners and virile, slothlike Americans. Although I’d be missing out on money, I jumped at the opportunity to shine a flashlight into a dark, dusty attic for six hours straight, because it’s far more interesting than anything I do at my job. Also, I get to listen to my dad refine his true skill: crafting the most creative, almost poetic stream of profanities this side of Darren McGavin, which is always entertaining.
So I woke up early on both Wednesday and Thursday morning to inform one of my direct superiors that I would be sick. I purposely called early so I’d get a VoiceMail and they wouldn’t try to talk me into coming in anyway. My direct superior sent an email to Management to let them know I’d be gone…
…and when I got in on Monday morning, I had two emails from Management, each of them forwarded from my superior, each of them saying I’d be out sick, each of them forwarded for no earthly reason to the entire department. I would say I’m fine with this, because I suppose it’s nice for everyone to know, but only about four people in the office actually need to know, and the superior I notified would have let them know. Also, in the months I’ve worked here, people have been out sick before on many occasions, and I’ve only seen that type of thing happen once. Once! And it was because a girl was going to be gone for a week and a half for her wedding and honeymoon.
Even so, it’s not a big deal, except that for the past two days, every time I run into somebody know — and it’s a large, maze-like office filled with cubicles that are taller than most of the staff standing up, so I can go for weeks without seeing certain people — people keep asking me, “Are you feeling better?” Which means I have to perpetuate the myth of my actually having been sick. I suppose I should be glad any of these people actually care how I’m feeling, but that kind of makes it worse. I just mutter, “Fine,” but I really just want to let everybody in on the little secret that I just took two days off to take them off. But my experience has told me that it’s rarely a good idea to walk around an office saying, “Yeah, yesterday I took the day off so I could fuck around doing pretty much nothing.” So I just keep going around pretending I had a really bad, noncontagious stomach bug of mysterious origin.
It’s this type of thing that prevents me from taking days off to live out the American Dream of sitting in my underwear watching Judge Mathis.
Posted by Stan on December 6, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
Daily Caffeine Withdrawal Update
This is the first in what will be a daily series, until I forget and stop writing them.
I think it’s important to remember that yesterday was a Monday when I write that I decided not to switch to green tea as I mentioned earlier. Mondays are widely regarded by corporate drones and office- and cat-themed comic-strip writers as the worst day of the week. So cut me some slack.
This morning I made the switch to green tea. It goes down a little more smoothly than coffee. This is mainly fortunate because it has such an awful taste and texture that I want to drink it as quickly as I can. It also saves me just a few minutes in the morning, which I guess is nice. I spend it reflecting on my life. I’ll start coffee again tomorrow.
As far as actual withdrawal symptoms, I feel a little bit more sluggish, and I started to have a bit of a hard time concentrating in the afternoon, but none of this is any worse than when I switched to mid-morning green tea two weeks ago. Assuming this trend continues, I can look forward to a mild headache this evening, followed by an extremely difficult time getting up tomorrow. With any luck, I’ll get used to it before the end of the week.
Posted by Stan on December 6, 2005 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
December 5, 2005
Mall Walker
Since I’ve started this job, I’ve gone for a long walk every day during my lunch three-hours. The campus is fairly huge, and it’s full of manufactured hills and shit, so I’ve done a few laps around my building and its parking lot, walking in the grass for maximum uphill-downhill workouts. A week or two ago it snowed, but the ground wasn’t cold so most of it melted by the time I got out there. A few weeks ago it was fairly cold and very windy, so I barely made it around once. Otherwise, I’ve had no problems. Until today.
Today it was cold. According to the thermometer in my car, it was 1° at noon. It snowed a bit on Saturday, so nothing has melted. One of my coworkers — who also walks around during her lunch — approached me today to discuss the weather situation. I told her I probably wouldn’t be able to walk; it’s just too cold. She agreed, then said, “Well, you could always go walk around the mall.”
That…actually wasn’t such a terrible idea. I contemplated it for a little while: am I really ready to take the plunge reserved only for retirees and confused shoppers? Would this be humiliating, or not too much because there would be so many people in the mall at that time of day? Although, with all those damn shoppers, will I actually be able to walk at a quick enough pace to get any real exercise? Maybe I should go someplace that’s also large, and indoors, but not quite so crowded. There’s a Target up the street that I run to sometimes on my lunch hour, and it’s virtually deserted. And pretty huge. If I went down there and walked around like an idiot, chances are nobody would notice that I was making a continuous loop around the main perimeter.
I kept thinking about this, even as I made the drive to Target. I started thinking about the possible humiliation of an employee noticing and calling me out. “Can I help you find something? No? THEN STOP WALKING AROUND IN A CIRCLE.” Not that this would ever happen, necessarily, but in my mind the possibility of public humiliation is far more terrifying than the inevitable actual humiliation (which occurs, roughly, seven times a day).
I got out of my car, and it seemed relatively wind-free, and, despite being 1°, it didn’t feel very cold. So, I decided, fuck going inside. I’ll just walk around the creepy semi-gated community behind the store and hope that nobody in one of the giant houses thinks I’m a hobo and calls the cops.
But the walk was pretty much uneventful, and the neighborhood was deserted. Unlike my neighborhood, which is teeming all day long with the varied activities of the chronically unemployable, the people in these gargantuan homes clearly had jobs.
And yet, the walk was nice and peaceful. Nobody driving like assholes through a nonexistent corporate parking lot; nobody else walking around and giving me funny looks because they’re walkiing to another building and I’m walking in a huge circle; no fight-or-flight instincts whenever I see a security truck drive by and instinctively assume they’re coming to chase me down for being some sort of Interloper. And no questions and strange looks when I come back from lunch red-faced and sweaty.
I doubt I will ever set foot in the mall to walk, but…I may make this strange neighborhood my permanent walk location.
Posted by Stan on December 5, 2005 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
Utility Player
The Company emphasizes team-building in all of its many departments, and what’s a team without a good utility player, the guy who doesn’t (necessarily) excel at any single task or skill, but he’s competent, even proficient, in many different areas. The utility player, if properly utilized (see that pun? I’ll bet you all missed those), fills gaps in the roster and creates a well-rounded, undoubtedly successful team.
By default, because I’m the New Guy with No Seniority, I’ve become the “utility player” of the office. And let me tell you, it kind of sucks.
When I first started this job, they hired two new people. The other guy got fired after a couple of weeks because, according to a coworker, when he ran out of work, rather than seeking out more to do, he would sit in his cubicle and stare at the woman across from him. It understandably creeped the woman out on just a general level, but what got him fired — in addition to sitting around for hours doing nothing at all — was the “murderous look” the woman insisted he had in his eyes whenever he would stare at her. I wasn’t exactly best friends with the guy, but I’ve never seen him give a look that I’d call “murderous.” He had dull, vacant eyes, and he never quite seemed to have a firm grasp of what was happening around him. Perhaps that alone suggests he should have been fired, but it kind of bugs me to hear him slandered every once in awhile. And yes, it’s been several months, but she still talks about him.
This guy being fired happened to coincide with me catching up with a backlog of work that they all seemed to believe would take me two months. I finished it in two weeks. Oops. I sat around for a few days with very little to do, basically on call for the few times a day that they had something to do, and then this guy got fired, so they trained me to do what he was doing. And I caught up on the backlog of work he had in two weeks. And again, I was on call. This got me some brownie points with management, but it annoyed my more direct superiors because I was sitting around for most of the day with very little to do.
So they kept giving me more…and more…and more. Training me on more advanced functions that I could do on top of what I already had to do.
Two weeks ago, another coworker announced he had found a better job and would be moving on. He basically taught me his entire job, which is a surprising and consistent workload, on top of what I already have to do. I don’t know what to feel about this. Half of me thinks, “Hrm, perhaps I can’t get away with the hour-long breaks, three-hour lunches, and sneaking out half an hour early every day if I have so much work to do.” The other half reminds me that the only reason I’ve been such a slacker is because I have so little to do, and at least the day — boring though it still may be — slips by a little more quickly. But at the same time…I’ve gotten used to my slacker ways, and I was starting to enjoy getting paid to do 30 minutes of work a day.
At any rate, today was my first exciting day flying solo with this other guy’s work. He trained me pretty rigorously, taught me various tricks, and Friday was his last day. It wasn’t too bad. I ran out of what I typically do around 8:15 (and I had to take Thursday and Friday off — look at how it piled up while I was away!), so I started on his stuff and it kept me going for most of the morning…
Then, around eleven, a coworker approached me with the proposition of doing still more work. This stuff, she said, was more important than everything else I’ve been doing. They say this every time they want me to do something new. I guess it’s probably true, and it’s important enough that they don’t want me to learn it too quickly and fuck it all up. And I don’t really have the option to say “no,” so I agreed to it, and she said she’d talk to management and get back to me.
When I returned from lunch, she had sent me an email saying we were good to go and I should meet her at her cubicle. She had gone to lunch while I was out, so I sent her an email saying I was ready whenever she got back, and I went back to work. About an hour later, I got an email saying, “Come on over!” I came on over, and there she sat, her lunch all over her desk, as yet uneaten.
“Have a seat,” she said, her mouth full. This didn’t disgust or alarm me, particularly. I thought it was a little bit unprofessional, but I consistently violate the dress code by wearing (gasp!) jeans, and nobody cares, so whatever. I did think it was a tad rude to just kinda sit there and eat in front of me. I considered offering to come back later, not just because I’m not a big fan of watching other people eat, but because she’d probably end up getting distracted and the food would get gross. I don’t even know why she told me to “come on over,” but at that point I wanted to get the training over with, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Do you like Chinese food?” she asked a little while after she had started training me.
“Oh,” I thought, “she’s going to offer me something.” I hadn’t eaten long ago, and I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to be rude, though, so —
“I got this wonton soup,” she said. “It’s good.”
And that was it. No “would you like some?” or “I have an extra egg roll you can have” or anything like that. I probably would have said no anyway, but it’s really the offer that counts. Then again, I wouldn’t share my lunch with any of these people, so who am I to judge? She shouldn’t have brought it up, though. It’s weird, like, “Oh yeah, you like this food, you like wonton soup? It’s delicious, I’m really enjoying it, AND YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY.” She wasn’t trying to be like that, but it still struck me as strange and rude.
At one point, she said, “My soup is getting cold,” in an accusatory tone, like I had barged in on her uninvited and now I’ve ruined her day. That actually did piss me off. Was this some sort of bizarre, elaborate test of whether or not I was really a part of the team? Do they want to know if I’m to that point where I know these people well enough to say, “I’ll come back later,” even after being invited, because I know she’d rather just eat her damn food? Because, you know, they could just ask, and I’ll tell them “no.” So far I’ve spent about as much time trying to get to know these people as I have doing actual work; I only know a few people well, and I’d like to keep it that way.
I went back to my cubicle and somebody from management came to me to “touch base,” telling me — this was clearly too complex for me to figure out on my own — that I should spend a few hours on each of my many tasks, even if I don’t end up finishing everything. We use a computerized queue system that puts things in order of priority, so I finish a bunch of stuff in one queue, then move onto the next, and so on, but I may not leave the queues empty. The fact that I’m doing anything is helpful, which is nice to hear, but my obsessive-compulsive tendencies are going to force me to do a little better than that — if I do a bunch of shit but don’t finish anything, not only will it drive me nuts, I’ll be a really half-assed utility player.
So my goal, in the coming weeks, is to catch up on everything in my queues and reach a point where I am doing a job they thought would require three or four people…
…and still take hour-long breaks, three-hour lunches, and leave half an hour early.
Posted by Stan on December 5, 2005 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 4, 2005
Caffeine
Here is a rather long bulletpoint that I forgot to mention in my most recent update.
Tomorrow, Monday, December 5th, marks four full weeks since I first attempted to very, very slowly wean myself off the wonder-drug commonly known as caffeine (more commonly known as “sweet ambrosia of the gods”). The first two weeks were easy enough: rather than consuming my normal 40 ounces of coffee, I dropped down to 32 (two 16-ounce cups, which makes it easier to divide than, say, drinking one 16-ounce cup, then adding another 4 afterward). I suffered almost no withdrawal symptoms and, in fact, felt an immediate reduction in the chronic heartburn that has seemed to plague me pretty much since I reached my all-time regular peak of 64 ounces daily (during that exciting 18 credit hour semester in the spring of 2004, which was followed by getting all the free coffee I wanted in Seattle.
The second two weeks started a little rougher: I switched from 32 ounces of coffee to a 16-ounce cup of coffee in the morning, and a 16-ounce of rank, fetid green tea around mid-morning. It was not nearly as bad as the 36 hours I spent caffeine-free in Coralville, during which time I suffered from chronic, violent migraines and rarely could pull myself off the full-body vibrating massager on the extremely comfortable couch. However, I did suffer from occasional, mild headaches every few afternoons. Those stopped by the end of the first week, and this last week has been just fine.
On Monday, I take it to the next step: no coffee, just 32 ounces of putrid green tea every day for another two weeks. My theory is that nothing will convince me to quit caffeine more quickly than having to consume that much green tea on a daily basis. At the end of this two weeks, I will take it to the second-to-last step: two weeks of green tea in the morning, followed by a delicious mint tea I used to peddle while working in Seattle. Two weeks later, I go to mint tea full-time, and, theoretically, I should be completely free of caffeine.
I love coffee, I love tea (I love the java Jive and it loves me
Posted by Stan on December 4, 2005 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
The First Known Motion Picture
The first known motion picture
“Produced by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince at Roundhay House, Leeds, UK, some time before October of 1888.”
I found this very interesting. I’ve mirrored the movie because the NMPFT site was running slow.
More on Le Prince and evidence that this really is the earliest single-camera motion picture ever captured:
Roundhay Garden Scene, 1888
Photographic copy of paper prints from a film taken in the garden of the Whitley family house in Oakwood Grange Road, Roundhay, a suburb of Leeds, Yorkshire, Great Britain. Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, who appears in this picture, stated that it was shot in early October 1888 (he suggests 14October) as it shows Mrs Sarah Whitley, Le Prince’s mother-in-law, who died on 24 October that year. The other subjects are Joseph Whitley and Miss Harriet Hartley. They are plainly having fun walking round in circles, keeping within the area framed by the camera.Posted by Stan on December 4, 2005 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 3, 2005
It’s Been Awhile…
…but I’m back. Not exactly with a vengeance, but I still exist. Here’s a brief review of the past five months, for the folks keeping score at home:
- A few weeks after my last post, I got a job as a cubicle drone (my favorite kind of drone!) at a reasonably large technology firm based in Chicago. Since then, I’ve been staring at invoices, contracts, and computer screens on a daily basis, trying to make sense of fairly incomprehensible numbers. I’m no math expert, but the tedium and repetition definitely helps my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
- At this job, I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that precludes me from discussing the details if my job with any more specificity than what I wrote in the previous bulletpoint. After getting the job, I gutted this site. I thought I’d reinvent it with a semi-fictitious spin, portraying the adventures of “teenage Stan,” who has just started “high school” in a “new town,” and I’d turn my entire job life into one big hilarious metaphor. And then the site languished blankly for months because, let’s face it, I’m fucking lazy, and when I actually feel like doing something, it’s not writing half-fake blog stories. Fortunately for you, gentle reader, further investigation of the details of my NDA have revealed a loophole: I can’t talk specifically about my work, but I can ramble with all the incoherence and rage you’ve come to expect from this blog about the broader details of corporate life and my clashing with coworkers. Again, I wanted to metaphor this up so my secret identity wouldn’t be revealed, but at the same time, I hate my job, so if I get caught and fired for whining about my boss, fuck it. Hopefully I’ll have moved on before anyone discovers it.
- I spent several days basking in the sunshine and humidity of Coralville, Iowa, with my best friend in the whole world, Lucy, and her new roommate who, a few weeks after my visit (and a few weeks after signing a 12-month lease), left the state (there was a warrant for her arrest after she decided not to go to court over a DUI charge) and sent an email stating she will no longer be paying rent or utilities, so sorry, Lucy’s on her own. This, traditionally, would be comedy gold, but I actually felt kinda bad.
- In spite of my verbal cocky strut, I did not get into the band I auditioned for. No hard feelings on the surface, but I secretly said, “Well, fuck them anyway!” and have started compiling all the songs I’ve written in the past three years to record what I can only assume will be the worst album in the history of rock music. I may post some demos or outtakes if I feel they’re worth sharing.
- One of the songs I referred to in the bulletpoint above details the tragic story of a Ukrainian drunk who is recruited by an undercover CIA agent to become a pro wrestler in America. It doesn’t end well. I am telling you this to illustrate that when I say “worst album in the history of rock music,” I am not just being self-deprecating.
- My sister, Tracey, and her fiancé, Jack, finally got married. The ceremony was nice, in spite of the weirdness of Tracey trying to hook me up with her best-friend-since-sixth-grade. The classiest moment was when I drove them back to their hotel after the reception — they were blitzed, so I became the default designated driver — and I made a sarcastic comment about the Corner Bakery, to which my sister gleefully yelped, “My best-friend-since-sixth-grade loves the Corner Bakery, too!” Shudder.
- I received a rambling, suspiciously desperate email from Hollywood, USA, saying that, despite my propensity toward quitting without notice, I am still a Valued Person for some reason, so would I be interested in doing some minor consulting in the form of giving notes on scripts that are faxed to me on a weekly basis? Gosh, why not? I assume that since they came after me, they might actually care what I have to say. Plus, a little very little extra cash. I’m finally taking an extremly tiny portion of that Hollywood pie!
- I wrote the first draft of a novel, then stuck in a drawer. Now let us never speak of it again.
- I went out with a woman from work who seemed nice, then dropped the single-mother bomb on me and believed I’d be a very pleasant surrogate pseudo-father-figure-type-guy. It was awkward. I still know how to pick ‘em!
- I got very tired of this job and decided, once again, to start looking for better opportunities. So far, nothing. Oh well, at least this time I’m getting paid while I look for another job.
- As soon as I pay off my student loans (assuming I don’t spend any more money and don’t change jobs or pay rates, the second week in March!), I will take out more loans to go to grad school. These I probably won’t pay back. Serves the government right for trusting me!
- Last week, a bird got into the office. It was weird.
Well, that about brings us up to speed. I’ll probably post again in five months or so.
Posted by Stan on December 3, 2005 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 29, 2005
Mean It!
Authentic signage from eastern Kentucky (click on it for a larger image):
This photo was taken in the general vicinity of Rush, Kentucky, on the trek to find some old family gravesites. Incidentally, the dude did mean it. We were shot at a little while after we edged past that sign. Oops!
This photo does not rank as highly on my list of classy eastern Kentucky signage as the sign outside a small trailer on the side of U.S. 60 that said, “FINE KENTUCKY HAND-CRAFTS & TANNING BED.” Unfortunately, I can’t seem to locate that picture. Alas…
Posted by Stan on December 29, 2005 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 27, 2005
Mistakes
This might surprise you, but my frenzy to find a new job is directly proportional to the number of mistakes I make. Or so it seems; maybe it’s just because I’m still doing the job of three people, because the revolving door of temps can’t seem to settle on somebody competent. Or maybe it’s all a big soupy pile: they’re overworking me, so I’m hating the job, so I’m searching for new work, so (possibly as a consequence of all three of those things), my performance is slipping.
Let’s just hope I find another job before I start setting invoices on fire…with my mind!
Posted by Stan on December 27, 2005 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 21, 2005
More Goddamn Food!
Seriously, it’s out of hand. Today, a box of Entenmann’s donuts and a box of chocolates were set up by the printer. Then, around 9:30, I got this e-mail from Management:
Subject: Lunches We will be bringing in lunch Tuesday and Wednesday next week.One day will be Chipotle and I think the other will be a sandwich platter from Subway.
The Chipotle menu is in the cube across from me, please come and fill it out by the end of the day tomorrow.
Thanks and Happy Holidays to everyone.
Good…God. That brings the total of free lunches for this month up to five. That’s more than one a week.
I was also grilled, in a really strange way, about not showing up to yesterday’s free lunch. My boss comes up to me and asks, “What time do you usually get here in the morning?”
I respond, “7:30.”
“Okay…” A beat. “Why didn’t you come to the free lunch yesterday?”
Way to segue, right? I wasn’t sure if I should get into my whole objection to the thing, because often corporate people find my anti-corporate views a little strange. Then they start whispering behind my back and all of a sudden I’m accused of being a dirty Red, and the police start chasing me through the farm commune and I end up beating a cop to death (in my defense, he shot the leader of my “two-and-a-half-cents-a-box-ain’t-enough-dag-nabbit” protest group first!) and have to leave my home and family to avoid prosecution. But, you know, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everyone.
I went a little out of my way to get to that reference, so you people better appreciate it.
Posted by Stan on December 21, 2005 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 19, 2005
Free Food Bonanza!
So in addition to the free lunch I complained about earlier, last week we also had a “holiday pot-luck” on Tuesday. I saw a few vague signs advertising it, but I neither brought anything nor found where this pot-luck was supposedly taking place.
On top of that, on Friday morning somebody brought in bagels for breakfast. Today somebody brought in cake and holiday cookies. Tomorrow we have another free lunch — an al-you-can-eat buffet at a Chinese place down the street — and next Tuesday, when we close, there will be another free lunch, making a total of four this month (there was another one earlier in the month), and that excludes all the other random times people have brought in cookies, candy, and other shit like that.
And all I have to say about this is: people bring in terrible, unhealthy food for others to snack on, and Management pays for terrible, unhealthy lunches. When you aren’t eating free food, you are expected to sit on your ass for eight hours. And there are people in this country who don’t understand why there’s an obesity epidemic.
Posted by Stan on December 19, 2005 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 16, 2005
Advice from the Door Security Guard
A few months ago, I had had a rotten Friday, followed by a rotten weekend, and I came to work in the morning feeling and looking like hell. The morning door security guard is always of disturbingly sunny disposition. For awhile, I couldn’t figure out why he was so damn happy all the time, but I gradually started to realize that, in addition to having the dullest job in the universe (worse than mine, even!), a lot of the assholes who come in don’t even acknowledge his existence. So he gets excited when people like me — people who actually talk to him — get to work, which automatically puts him in a better mood.
On weekends, the morning guard videotapes weddings to make extra money. You learn this type of crazy information when you talk to the guards. Also, they tend to never check your bag at any point in time ever if they feel they can trust you. So, if you plan to steal from your place of business, be nice to all the security guards — it’ll pay off!
So on this Monday when I felt so shitty, the guard noticed, and as I attempted to make my way past him, he just started rambling:
“You know, one of the weddings I taped this weekend, the groom stood the bride up. I’ve been taping weddings for 22 years, and that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that happen. So, you know, you might have had a bad day, but it could be worse: you could be her.”
It was surprisingly insightful coming from a guy who, as far as I knew, was only interested in weather reports and the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the array of new Dunkin’ Donuts flavored coffees. But more than that — it actually did make me feel better. Not in the “ha-ha” schadenfreude way commonly associated with me, but in that wake-up call “yeah, my life really doesn’t suck that much” kind of way.
Posted by Stan on December 16, 2005 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 15, 2005
Free Lunch
Since I’ve started working here, we’ve had free lunches, on average, about once every two weeks. I never, ever partake of the free lunch. “Why?” you ask, knowing of my enjoyment of all things free, especially when said free things are food.
Because I’m paranoid to an unhealthy degree, I see free corporate lunches this way: they don’t pay you what you’re worth, so they give you a “free” lunch (that, technically, would be considered compensation if only we were paid in food, the most delicious currency of all) to keep the worker man fat and happy. It makes you forget about stuff like, for example, not getting paid what you’re worth, or the fact that you have to work until 9 o’clock every month when you close. It also, in many cases, forces people to “work through” lunch. Because when they have food delivered, you really are supposed to sit there and eat it at your cubicle while working.
The first time I experienced this phenomenon was back in the olden days, when I worked in a warehouse. Two or three times a week, when we’d finish loading a truck, we’d be greeted by a catering table loaded with subs or pizza or fried chicken or whatever the hell else they wanted to give us. That way, instead of taking our full hour, we’d stand there yammering while we ate for fifteen minutes, and then we’d go back to work. Of course, at that place we were hourly, so if we worked through lunch we got overtime, and overtime means not only is the lunch free — it’s free plus time and a half.
I would gladly abuse the free lunches there, but not here. It’s a different circumstance, and it reeks of bullshit. The whole idea makes me uncomfortable.
Posted by Stan on December 15, 2005 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 14, 2005
Training Day
They hired a temp to assume my responsibilities. Not because I’m obscenely incompetent — surprisingly, it’s quite the opposite — but because I have been promoted. Not a big promotion — no pay raise, and the meaningless title that I had before now becomes somewhat meaningful — but just a small step up. Because of that, I no longer do the shit I did before, and they don’t have enough people to go around, so…a temp, until they can hire someone full-time.
The temp started Monday, and I specifically asked on Friday if I would be expected to train her. Because, you know, the only thing I hate more than dealing with people is teaching people how to do something a trained ape could do. They told me I wouldn’t have to train her, but I’d have to take up the slack (i.e., continue doing what I’ve already been doing) until she becomes proficient, at which point they’d teach me my New Tasks and Responsibilities.
So it was somewhat surprising when my new boss (soon-to-be equal!) approached me today and said in a timid, almost frightened tone, “Would you mind walking the temp through what you do?” I gave her my well-honed “Jesus Christ I’m already looking for a new job, so don’t do this to me” Look of Death, so she added, “I would do it, but I’m already swamped with the shit I have to train you to do.” Busted. I guess.
I was surprised by this training news for two reasons: (1) my boss had told me on Monday that she’d trained the temp on everything, and (2) she had felt so confident in her training skills that she made firm plans to start training me for my new shit on Wednesday, today. So what went wrong?
Answer: unsurprisingly, the temp’s computer wasn’t properly set up with all the applications, logins, and passwords she’d need to do the work (this happens pretty much any time somebody has to perform a new job function — way to go, IT!). I have no idea why somebody who started on Monday didn’t bother to tell anybody she can do literally no work whatsoever until Wednesday, but hey, I know the temping world quite well: if you don’t actually have to do anything, and nobody asks you why you’re doing nothing, you try to get away with that shit for as long as possible. It’s a work ethic I still live by today.
I didn’t fault her, but I didn’t want to train her, either. But since I actually like my new boss (in fact, I almost like like her — I find her personality a tad annoying and she’s unattractive physically, but she has this bizarre, exotic accent that consistently arouses me, much to my chagrin), I agreed to train the new temp. What’s the harm? All I really have to do is my job, only really, really slowly and muttering sarcastic comments about how pointless it is every once in awhile.
So the new temp lumbered into my cubicle, sat behind me, and took frantic notes. But then, here’s where things got weird and irritating: she started condescending to me. She had a vague comprehension of what she needed to do — she was already trained on Monday, remember, which I suppose made her feel entitled to talk down to me. I wouldn’t have necessarily had a problem with that, since I’m really condescending at almost all times, but here’s when I’m not condescending: when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Okay, that’s not even true. When I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about and I’m certain the other person can and will call my intellectual bluff.
So that was thing: she’s says stuff like, “Um, don’t you mean line 12?” NO, I MEAN LINE SEVEN, LIKE IT SAYS ON THE GODDAMN SCREEN. I mean, what the hell is that? It was so bizarre. And she kept doing that, in this weird, confident tone, like she’s the one who’s been doing this crappy job for months. It was time for evasive maneuvering.
“Oh, um, we’re all out of contracts,” I said. “Damn,” I added apathetically.
Were we out of contracts? Yes, we were. Could I have gone and sought out more? Yes, I could have. But fuck that. I wanted this temp out of my hair.
I alerted my boss, and she sent the temp back to her cubicle to twiddle her thumbs. And yes, I am that mean.
Since I was “finished” training the temp, my boss decided it was time to educate me on my new responsibilities. Since I can’t legally discuss the details, I will give you the glossy surface: if I thought what I was doing before was tedious, let’s just say this puts the “anal” in “contract analyst.” Holy Christ, I haven’t experienced tedium like that since the last student film festival I attended.
It took her several hours — excluding a lunch break — to teach me, and then she set me loose on my own for the last hour. Or half hour, as it were.
As she trained me, I sat behind her and fantasized that a really hot woman with that accent was talking to me. I am really pathetic. At one point, we were interrupted by a guy that I feel it’s time to unleash on the blog. Never since Owen possessed the correct combination of social maladjustment and utter cluelessness to be deemed my arch-nemesis, but that was before Xavier entered my life.
Xavier is a short, scrawny, middle-aged man with a heavy Spanish accent. He’s balding so he shaved his head to peachfuzz length. He also has a constant five o’clock shadow and alternates between the same three oversized suits every day. He has tiny, beady eyes that somehow seem both vacant and full of bitterness. The majority of his front teeth have rotted to disgusting black nubs, which makes looking at him while he talks to you a bit of a chore.
And that’s just his physical appearance. His personality makes it much worse. He’s actually really nice to me at all times — but only because he thinks I don’t realize he’s pretending to be nice so I’ll do things for him. He’s still nice to me, even though I don’t do shit for him. But he’s an asshole to almost everyone else. He steals other people’s stuff from the printer; he sleeps through board meetings (I can’t necessarily blame him for this one, but it’s rude anyway); he constantly tries to palm off work on others, and when he actually does something himself, he inevitably fucks it up, so somebody else has to clean up his mess anyway. He’s lazy and incompetent, and nobody really can figure out why he still works here. Nobody likes him — including his superiors — and he can’t do his job.
So he stalked into my boss’s cubicle while she’s training me and said, “You have to audit this immediately,” and then walked out, without even giving her a chance to respond.
She looked at me very intensely and whispered (the accent sounds even better that way), “I hate him. He always comes in here and wants me to do favors for him. The least he could do is be nice, but he treats me like shit.”
“Why do you do him favors, then?” I asked, hoping to get a definitive answer regarding why the hell he works here.
“Because he never does anything right, so if I don’t do it when he demands, I’ll end up doing it later,” she replied simply.
It made sense…but not in a good way.
Later, when I was off on my own, Xavier came to my cubicle with a long list of contracts. “Stan, you know more about this type of contract than I do…” He butters me up at the outset, so I’ll be more willing to listen. “…so would you mind looking up these contracts and find out whether or not they’ve been paid, and then write down the invoices and the date of payment.” Now, this is relatively easy, but time-consuming, and here’s why his buttering up never works: you don’t need to know anything about the contracts to find out if they’ve been paid. He knows, and he knows I know he knows, how to look that shit up himself; he just doesn’t want to do it.
“I’m really busy,” I said shortly.
“Oh, okay, sorry, buddy,” Xavier replied and wandered away. He calls me “buddy” because he thinks we’re friends and he thinks he’s 20. Nothing is funnier than seeing this man say “Hey, what’s up, man?” with the accent and the teeth and the fake friendliness. It takes a lot to stifle the laughter.
That was pretty much my day. Here’s what I have to say about the predicted snow: 3-to-5”, my ass!
Posted by Stan on December 14, 2005 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
December 12, 2005
Free Gas!
My “low tank” light came on during my lunch break, as I was driving up Meacham Road. Fortunately, there’s a BP right at Golf. I kinda hate BP for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it makes my car run assier than usual, but my car doesn’t give me a whole lot of warning before flashing the “low tank” light, so desperate times…
So I’m filling up my tank, and this portly, middle-aged gentleman holding a clipboard walked up to me and exclaimed, “How would you like some free gas?!” The jovial tone in which he said this made me think if I said “yes,” he’d fart in my general direction. Instead, he went into this weird, long pitch session about how if I “took a survey,” he’d give me a free $50 gift card for 93 octane gas (which, with these prices and the premium gas, probably wouldn’t even be enough to fill my tank — but still, paying $0 is better than paying $50).
I said, “Okay,” and was about to add, “But only if it doesn’t take long,” when he started in with the questions.
“Do you live in Illinois?”
“Yes.”
“Are you over the age of 21?”
“Yes.”
“Are you licensed and insured to drive in the state of Illinois?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s it,” he said, slipping me the gift card. Then he whipped out the clipboard and insisted I sign an affadavit saying that he did, in fact, ask me those questions. I gave a fake address, took the card, and drove away. I’m…not actually sure it’s legitimate. It seems a little bit too good to be true, but I dimly remember reading a similar tactic being used in the ’70s — gas prices too high? Well, we’ll just give you some free gas, loyal customers. So I snicker at the fact that I’ll use this gas card next time I fill up my tank, and then I’ll probably never use BP again unless it’s another emergency situation.
Posted by Stan on December 12, 2005 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation
Caffeine Withdrawal Update — Late Weekend Edition
Friday: I had an awful day, but not because of caffeine.
Saturday: For some reason, the withdrawal symptoms seem to have more of an effect on the weekend. Maybe it’s because I wake up later, so it throws off the timing. I don’t really know.
Sunday: Pretty much the same as Saturday. Sluggish, headachey, and unable to concentrate. I also read somewhere that caffeine helps short-term memory; apparently lack of caffeine worsens short-term memory. No, it’s not like Memento or anything; I can still remember things, but it takes a lot longer and requires more concentration. And, you know, since my concentration skills suck, Sunday: Pretty much the same as Saturday. Pretty much the same as Saturday.
Monday: Not too bad. In the morning, I spilled a bunch of piping hot, foul-tasting green tea on my crotch. Not my best moment.
Posted by Stan on December 12, 2005 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
December 8, 2005
Snowstorm
It’s not officially winter in Chicago until we have a snowstorm near or during rush hour. Driving home was an incredible joy, especially the part where I stupidly attempted a U-turn and almost ended up in the ditch next to Bennigan’s. Assuming I wasn’t dead or severely injured, I would have eaten before I called a tow truck.
I’ll explain why I made this stupid U-turn, and here’s a helpful graphic to help my incompetent explanation. Higgins Road is that northwest-southeast street running across most of the image. Route 53 runs north-south and connects I-90 to the 290 extension (which loops around and reconnects with 90 downtown). Notice Higgins has three full lanes. And each expressway entrance has two turn lanes. I’m not sure when this satellite photo was taken, but since, that intersection the Bennigan’s has had lanes painted across the intersection, because everybody knows it’s a total clusterfuck. Imagine, if you will, a group of assholes who simply can’t wait through all that traffic that accumulates in the right or left lanes in Higgins before the turn lanes form. They get into the middle lane, then try to cut up and over. Ninety percent of the time, it works, because the people in the right and left lanes are equally stupid; they just drive more slowly.
And then there’s me, knowing these tricks, knowing the center lane is the only game in town, because I don’t want to get on the fucking expressway; I want to stay on Higgins.
Then a snowstorm hits. And the people who cut up and over actually think this strategy will work during a snowstorm, when traffic isn’t really moving on the expressway at all. What, do they think every car in the right lane stalled? Do they think maybe some sort of magic teleportation device will make it magically reappear on the expressway, ahead of all the stopped cars? These people are the reason the expressway gets backed up to begin with. (Admittedly, I drive like a total asshole, but at least I’m a conscientious asshole…most of the time.)
So yeah, rather than two lanes of traffic moving at a crawl, plus the pretty-much-stopped expressway entrances, and one center lane kinda-sorta moving…no traffic was moving at all past the Bennigan’s. Because the assholes were trying to cut ahead anyway, so there were five or six cars just sitting there, doing nothing, with turn signals on, waiting for the other lanes to move enough so they could squeeze in. What a bunch of fuck-ups.
So I turned around and went a different way, and my boiling rage gave way to the mild amusement I always have when driving in a storm — snow or rain — when the assholes who drive the giant, four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicles drive like the biggest pussies on earth.
It typically takes me 20 minutes to get home; today it took more than twice that. Good times.
Update: Travel times!
Posted by Stan on December 8, 2005 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
Daily Caffeine Withdrawal Update (3)
I had a splitting headache around 9 o’clock. It went away around lunchtime.
I’ve been cranky and irritable all day. I know the bulk of this is the caffeine withdrawal, but I can still attribute a big chunk of it to the fucking assholes who don’t know how to do their fucking jobs and therefore prevent me from getting my job done or, if not that, make it take five times as long to do. And my superior didn’t help. “We like to get as much processed on Thursdays as we can. Stay late if you have to.” FUCK OFF.
Posted by Stan on December 8, 2005 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
December 7, 2005
Daily Caffeine Withdrawal Update (2)
I felt extremely tired this morning, and it was kind of hard to concentrate. My eyes kind of sting, and I know part of that is the fluorescent lights and the computer monitor, but part of that is the faux-weariness effect of caffeine withdrawal. I got a very mild headache around 1:15 this afternoon. I still have it, but it’s so minor that I can’t even really notice it unless I think about it.
All in all, not too bad.
Posted by Stan on December 7, 2005 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
The Three
You might recall I was recently asked, and by that I mean forced against my will, to do the job of myself, a guy who got fired, and a guy who quit. On top of that, they added another layer of responsibility to the job I’ve been doing all along, which essentially means that what I’m doing takes twice as long as it used to. I described my fear of not being able to handle the workload but also secretly wanted to prove myself that I could, in fact, do the job of three (three and a half?) people without any additional pressure.
Yes, gone are the three-hour lunches, excessive breaks and mysterious disappearances from my desk. But I was only doing that because I had nothing to do. I still take a full hour for lunch, plus two-half hour breaks (essentially doubling the amount of breaktime I’m allotted), and I’m still leaving half an hour early because fuck this job, and yet…now that I caught up on the other guy’s work and got into the groove of all the new crap I have to do —
I performed the daily workload of three (three and a half!) people, with ample breaks, by myself. For a fleeting moment I was proud of that. I proved to myself I could do it, and now I feel better. Now I’ll go back to being lazy, and let us never speak of this again.
Posted by Stan on December 7, 2005 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
