A Pitch In O’ Poo

September 23, 2008

Years ago, I worked in the wing of a WorldCom call center in Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, all that implies. 

We were a small development team of eleven people. On one end of our wing was a large conference room where we held almost daily meetings. One Friday, our Director scheduled a pitch-in meeting, meaning everyone should bring a dish from home and we’d all sit around eating and making small talk and discussing the release we were working on.

Oh, YAY. Nothing members of a development team love more than a pitch-in. 

Already disgruntled, our problems were solved when the Thursday afternoon before the meeting, the women’s bathroom on the other side of the conference room exploded and….uh….flooded (although, it wasn’t all that liquid)….our conference room.

It was now referred to (by me) as the shit room. It stunk, and we all left early.

Late Friday morning, I see our Director skipping into the shit room with her dish from home. She uncovered it and placed some plastic utensils and plates on the table. And soda bottles and cups. 

All exposed to the still floating shit in the air.

She sing-songed: “Come on, ya’ll! Grab your dish and let’s commence to pitchin’ in!”

Stunned: “Are you serious? It’s full of shit. Literally. Full. Of. Shit. There are brown stains on the walls. It still reeks of sewage. The carpet is wet. The walls are wet. Are you serious?”

“Oh, Karen. These things happen in the workplace. Don’t be so dramatic. Now, come on!”

And do you know what happened next? One by one, the ten little developers carried their dishes from home into the shit room and took their seats around the table.

I kept my dish to myself and called the conference room phone from my desk to act like I still gave a shit.

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Payned

September 13, 2008

This guy’s UserID to the system I’m writing about is payned. I used to call him D’Payne, but payned fits better, since I am payned by him.

He sighs about every 7.26 minutes. A long sigh, like he’s been curing cancer. 

Says things like: 

“Doesn’t help to howl at the moon. The moon doesn’t care and you just annoy your neighbors.” 

“I’m a problem. I know it. I guess that’s your problem now, though.” Then, raucous laughter. His own. 

“I have a million in the bank and I’ll bring home about 3,000 a month, so I guess that’s enough to retire any day. I don’t know what I’m waiting on.” This is when the audience is supposed to mention how necessary he is, I think. 

“I don’t know. I just work here.” (ah, the newness of this one)

She comes down to visit him too much (she works two floors up). 

Kissy noises. Mmmmmm sounds. “Don’t do that, I can’t take it today.” 

I had a dream. I brought shot glasses to work. Lined them up around my three sided cubicle. Every time he said fiancée I drank. I slept in a bathroom stall that night. 

What was my fiancée, my fiancée, my fiancée has no idea what she’s getting herself into, my fiancée said I can’t, my fiancée loves to ride….motorcycles. <insert predictable Beavis uhhuhhuhuhhuhuh laugh>

Now it’ll be my wife, my wife, my wife this, my wife that, I can’t because I have a wife, I need to call my wife, my wife, wife, wife.

Has a cartoon in his cube where the wizard who is supposed to be God is sprinkling things onto the Earth during the creation process. The jar he’s holding is labeled “JERKS” and the callout says, “Just to make things interesting…” 

He has no idea he is part of the problem. Or, maybe he does and he thinks he’s here to make life interesting for the rest of us? Could that be? 

Oh, D’Payne!

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Really Public Hygiene

September 8, 2008

I applaud your efforts to maintain good hygiene. I truly do. I like to see men taking care of themselves. I especially like to see well-groomed nose hair.

But it is a little disturbing for me, as your neighbor, to listen to your personal morning routine. The buzz of the electric razor, the splashing of after-shave, the nail clipping (how fast do your nails grow, by the way?), the aerosol (I don’t know what body part you’re spraying), something that’s I hope is an electric toothbrush, and then the gargling and spitting.

You may not know this, but most folks do these sorts of things in the privacy of their own bathrooms.

Rumor has it that you’re recently divorced and temporarily staying at a friend’s house. The gossipers seem to think that using your office space as a bathroom is acceptable under these circumstances.

“Aw, give him a break. He’s sort of homeless.”

I do not understand this giving of breaks. I think you’re a freak. Your friend has no bathroom? Even if you have to share one bathroom, I’m sure it could work.

Or, better yet, there are bathrooms here at work! Oh, my gosh, you could use one of those!! How ingenious of me to think of that!

But, I’ve been around neighboring freaks long enough to know that if you knew how bothered I was by your freakish behavior, you’d figure out a way to start showering next door. Then I’d end up getting hit by the stray sprinkles and lose my mind.

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Poor Amanda

September 2, 2008

About a year ago, I worked on a project with the most argumentative, self-impressed woman I have ever met.

We sat in the middle of a hallway between the rest of the cubicle world and the bathrooms. It was narrow enough to cause our hair to blow as people walked by to use the facilities.

There was one guy who walked by an awful lot.

“That guy must be a water drinker. He sure does go to the bathroom a lot.”

“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean he drinks water. It could be any liquid.”

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Posted by Sunny Disposition