Stall pleasure reading

I don’t want to be seen carrying a magazine into the men’s restroom, especially the kind I read (Xbox or PC Gamer; get your mind out of the gutter!). Normally I’ll stick it inside my jacket but today I didn’t have a jacket. I borrowed an old trick from my teenager days and rolled it around my leg, tucked it under my socks, and let my pants drape over it. It worked back when I had to smuggle a playboy in or out of my bedroom, why wouldn’t it work now?

But then I ran into a chatty CEO on my way and was reminded of the time my dad interrupted a similar smuggling operation because he needed help; fortunately, both times turned out safe. Although nervous, my cover wasn’t blown. Each near disaster was soon followed by a bit of pleasure reading and other bathroom activities.

Choosing words carefully

Workweasel and I were in a training session of about 25 people. Our role in this session was actually that of trainers but our part of the session had not come up yet. Instead our colleague Encyclopedia Brown (EB) was up there training.

He earns this name because in our department this guy knows everything. We are mental midgets standing next to him and he knows it, but at the same time doesn't flaunt it.

EB is a great guy but often chooses words poorly as is shown in the example below.

A person in the training session asked a question and EB gave a very in-depth, verbose response. The answer wasn't received well but the person who asked diplomatically responded. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Trainee: I appreciate your answer...

EB: Did I answer it adequately?

Trainee: It was a good answer but...

EB: Ahhh, there's a but. I could smell it.

I looked at Workweasel to see if he heard what I heard.

"Did he just say he could smell a but?"

Number of people in the room who laughed = 2

I'm the cow balls guy

Workweasel mentioned the whiteboard in our office. It has been an outlet for the bare minimum of creative expression required to maintain an acceptable attitude. Aside from the 'list' which is on the board, someone started a sign-up sheet for things to bring to our department Christmas gathering.

What started as a serious sign-up list predictably digressed into a list of odd things that people were signing each other up for. Weasel's sign up include crackers, bananas, and nuts.

The next morning our new CEO was walking around and introducing himself to people and he wandered into our office. We all shook hands and exchanged names and tried our best to put our good foot forward while meeting the new boss. He looked around at our work areas and then glanced at the whiteboard.

It was the first time that I had noticed that whiteboard list had tasked me with bringing Rocky Mountain Oysters to the Christmas gathering. He looked at the list then looked at me, then back at the list again. Apparently my good foot forward meant explaining why I'm bringing cow balls to a party. At 8:05am I really wasn't up to it.

He wanted to ask but a work conversation took over. I never got a chance to explain so the subject was stillborn. Being a bottom feeder in the office he probably doesn't even remember my name, though I'm confident he'll forever remember me as the cow balls guy.

Please note: I am nuanced enough in the subject of livestock to understand that technically cows do not have balls but rather bulls do...it's just funnier to say cow balls.

Funbags and the Mysterious Vibrator

The first time I met coworker code name “Funbags” she had a sore neck. My thought was, I can see why…if I was lugging those melons around I’d probably have a sore neck too. Funbags, however, is anything but fun. She’s a prim and proper woman, every hair in place, washes her car twice a day, and speaks in proper old English. Ok, I made that last part up. However, she never smiles and reminds me of somebody that might utter the phrase, “Art thou working on the TPS reports as I commanded?”

So on the day in question, I was working with several others in a conference room. Funbags seemed to have a problem with her purse. Several times over the course of several minutes she’d break from her laptop to zip open her purse, look inside, grumble, and close it back up. I really didn’t think much of it. But the stress must have been getting to her. The last time she did the check, she blurted…

“Dangit, I keep thinking my vibrator is going off!”

I was standing behind her and wished I could have turned and looked directly into a camera, half smiled, and raised my eyebrows in a Jim Halpert expression (from ‘The Office’). You know, the look that says “Yes, that really happened and it couldn’t have been scripted better.” But there was no camera…or individual in the room who could appreciate my punctuating look except for me. So I had to not only do the look (which I did), but imagine myself doing it so it could be appreciated and not wasted away.

Meanwhile, Funbags must have suddenly realized what she had said, because she quickly added, “Phone! My phone…the vibrator on my phone!”

Nobody in the room even snickered or smiled…that I saw, which is horribly sad. I tried to invite laughter, I looked around with a grin saying and raised eyebrows (come on people, that was hilarious!). But nobody wanted to take on Funbags and risk her response...

“Wipest thou that snicker offeth thine rodent face you bumbling idiot!”

But I was standing behind her and thus, my snicker was safe for her prying eyes. I’ve run into her a few times since and would so love to ask if she ever was able to get her vibrator under control. That, however, would be my last day at work…so until I get a better job, I’ll keep my mouth thus tightly shut.

Support with a Smile

Sloth and I support a product that we have not been trained on. It someting that has been thrown together by so many so fast…there is little documentation or training even available. We are basically the sacrificial offering to the paying customers. We get calls all the time from people wanting to talk to the “experts” when the truth is, many of them know this product better than us…because they use it more often.

That said, yesterday we took a call from a major client. They team on the other end had questions that neither one of us really had a clue about. But, of course, we had to try and maintain a professional image while at the same time, appear as if we knew what we were talkign about. We sat on the phone with them for an hour, running through various procedures and asking any random questions we could think of that sounded important.

"Can you right click and choose 'utility?' Now click it and click the 'special icon.' There...what number do you see in the bottom corner....a red seven? Ah yes, Ok, thanks....(mumbled important sounding whispering)."

It’s completely absurd and totally lame. During this support session, my daughter called and I held the receiver up and cupped my mouth to talk quietly to her (so speakerphone wouldn’t pick it up). I was talking to her and Sloth was busy playing brickbreaker on his blackberry while the client rattled on giving us more important information about the problem. We had long since vanquished all our tools available to try and actually solve the problem (actually, that happened in the first couple of minutes). Now we just had to appear as if we had it together. But we were bored, it was dragging on, and Sloth was pushing for a new high score in BrickBreaker.

"Should we give that a try?"

Doh! They'd asked a question. I bailed on my daughter and looked at Sloth who apparently had just blown the game by the question distraction. I raised my eyes with an "answer them!" expression. Sloth Shrugged...then started laughing.

The complete ridiculous nature of the whole thing set him off. With his hands over his mouth, his body shaking, and eyes watering…he laughed uncontrollably (but quietly). The two of us stringing along four VIP customers speakerphone for an hour was just too much. As I opened my mouth to let more magical mirror bullshit spill from my mouth, I instead started laughing too.

We both had tears streaming down our faces as we tried to keep our laughter silent (which wasn't easy) and get control so one of us could answer them. Stringing them on was one thing, we managed to pull that off, but if they heard us laughing we were toast.

“Hello? Hello? Are you guys still there?”

This made it worse. Through my blurry vision I looked at Sloth hoping to God he was close to being able to respond. He wasn’t. His eyes were puckered shut as his bright red face bounced up and down and he continuously wiped the streaking tears off his cheeks. We couldn't respond.

“Hello????”

A good thirty seconds had passed and I knew we had to answer. Later, Sloth told me he was about to just hang up on them. But I did my best to compose and in a very strained voice said…

“One sec…ond…”

I took a deep breath and tried to qwell myself. I failed several times and fell back into my tirade of chuckles before finally getting enough breath and composure to respond again.

“We are just looking over the numbers…” I told them.

“Should we proceed?”

Sloth was no help, he was still laughing out of control but I knew even if he could respond he wouldn’t have heard enough to know any more than I did what had just been said.

“I think we are on the right track here, that last report really showed….(blah blah blah)…so we’ll take that and look it over tonight and get back to you in the morning. I think this is the right direction.”

“Ok, that sounds good, thanks so much for your help.”

By now Sloth was under mild control and I fell back into a chair and just sighed. My gut hurt. I think we may have avoided getting fired on that one, but it was a close call.

Briefs Update

I don't fully understand why all my interesting posts have come out of the bathroom lately. Either I've written about spending all my time in there or written about how the bathroom is down and I can't spend any time in there.

"Briefs" uses the bathroom like it's his very own bathroom. I've seen him wash his hair in the sink and finding him brushing his teeth or shaving is a normal occurence. Thankfully I've never seen him in the state that has given him his nickname.

This morning I walked into the bathroom and saw him standing at the urinal. What makes this remarkable is how he was standing at the urinal. Briefs had his left arm on the partition between the two urinals on the wall and his right arm hung on the top of the stall directly to his right. His entire bodily frame was arched backward like he was kicked back on his sofa at home watching a game and knocking back a cold one. As I entered he casually looked over his left shoulder at me as if to say, "Wanna get me another beer?"

I originally planned to use the urinal next to him but quickly changed my plans and retreated into the safety of the handicapped stall. It's getting to the point where I'm going to use the bathroom downstairs because "Briefs" is beginning to creep me out a bit.

Special Days at Work

Once a month our office celebrates Cake Day. On the first Wednesday of every month people bring cake or other desserts to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries of employment in the office. Everyone stands around for about 20 minutes eating every variety of desserts after politely standing in line. It's a tradition that has gone on in the company for many many years and is enjoyed by nearly everyone. By nearly I mean the new maintenance guy thinks it's stupid.

While shoving a piece of pecan pie into my mouth I overheard him talking to another person. He casually uttered a heresy while drinking some coffee and digging a fork into his torte. "I think this is dumb, we should have breakfast day instead."

Who the hell does this guy think he is? He's worked here one week and he wants to just crap all over Cake Day because he thinks it's dumb? I have to give him some credit for having the balls to speak his mind but when there are fifty people (mostly women) enjoying desserts, I doubt very seriously his lobbying for pancakes and sausage will amount to much. He will now forever be known on this blog as Cake Hater.

Beyond Cake Day another great tradition has begun in the workplace. I like to call it "Don't Park your Car at Work Day." Because of some Board of Directors meetings and some other events going on in our building there are not enough parking spaces for everyone to park. I was running late one morning last week and there were zero spaces. I drove around the lot twice and even the acceptable illegitimate spots were taken by the desperate few that no doubt arrived minutes before me. I called the receptionist and she told me to try to find another place down the street because an email was sent out to the entire staff for volunteers to open up spots for the board meeting that was scheduled to begin in about 30 minutes.

I waited for someone to come out and move their car for a board member and then I took their spot. Yeah it was a lame thing to do but I resented having to give up a spot to someone who was going to leave at 3pm while I would have to walk six blocks to my car on a rainy night.

Another special day at work is today. I will call it "Don't take a shit at work day." The water is out. The bathrooms are closed and there's no water to drink. To add pain on top of pain there is no estimated time as to when the water will be working again. It seems a pipe broke after a cold weather evening and the water has been shut off in the whole building. Just knowing I can't use the bathroom right now makes me want to use it more. I sat in a meeting and made the mistake of holding it so now I'm stuck with a full bladder and it's all I can think about. I'm considering peeing in a bottle at my desk but I haven't had time to work out the logistics. When I do I'll post the details.

Damn, I just came back from the bathroom to see if I could sneak a rogue pee in one of the stalls but someone already took a dump in a toilet that had no water. Either they didn't get the message or they were desperate enough to leave a pile of logs on the cold porcelain and then escape with whatever dignity they had left. I refused to add urine to the tightly arranged pile so I left the bathroom disappointed and angry. Today should have been Stay at Home Day.

Farmyard Olive Garden

I work with professionals. Although the skill mastered to earn this title varies, I do work with professionals…they are all pros at something. A while back I was treated to a rare display of barnyard sounds from two very skilled women. Two large women. In Olive Garden. Eating Dinner. Making Pig noises. And I don’t expect you to believe me because I doubt I would either. But it happened.

A group of eight of us were on the road and met for dinner. Most of the people I work with are older, slower, and more conservative than I’m used to after fifteen years in the Tech industry. I ended up working here because the commute was short and vacation days plentiful. I normally find it tough to engage myself in social conversation because we just don't have much in common (except Sloth of course, but he wasn't on this trip).

I was amused when two larger older ladies, Porky and Elmer (and I am not picking these names because of their ‘larger’ size…read on!), began talking about their pet pigs. Porky is a loud woman with crazy black curly hair. Her boisterous voice fills a room like an entertaining stench (the kind that smells horrible but is so intriguing you have to take another whiff). Elmer is on my team and doesn’t like me. She’s complained to my boss several times about my refusal to work after hours on projects that I deem a complete waste of time. I don’t share her passion for work…or pigs for that matter.

So Elmer and Porky went on about how their pigs are like one of the family, sometimes eat at the table (I swear, I am not making this up), and even will sleep in their beds on occasion. Then, Porky started talking about “cute” noises her pet pig makes. And then, and I shit you not, gave us an example of a low throat like grunting sound it makes when it's happy. Elmer answered with her own version of the happy grunt; which reminded me that I could have been back at the hotel fighting orcs in “World of Warcraft.” Instead, I’m sitting in what sounds like a barnyard hoping nobody else in the restaurant recognizes me. For what seems like an eternity (fifteen seconds), I sit in the middle of an Olive Garden Restaurant while my two professional large older women co-workers lean over their dinner plates making pig sounds. All the while I’m thinking, this can’t be happening.

I don’t think it would have ended, except Elmer noticed the people around us staring. She cut her grunt short and Porky oinked out moments later. I looked down at my food and did what I always do in a situation like that; ignore it. I had to shut it out of my mind for a spell because otherwise I would have either been too embarrassed to finish my dinner or burst out in uncontrollable laughter. My guess is that it would have been the latter.