« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
A quick note about climate control. If you have a hand in the temperature at your workplace and are not the devil, please keep things at room temperature (or slightly below, especially in the winter) for the sanity of your workforce.
If you are the devil, stop reading this blog and get me that Armageddon Suit I asked for. I thought we had a deal!
Sackcloth and Matches
I blame myself.
Under MY care, under MY guidance, Harold left his filth in the park, and it fell to me to make things right.
The greasy smoke from the pyre stings my eyes, but I force myself to watch.
Bad dog. Bad bad dog.
The top five people YOU probably are:
5. Someone who knows why the word "An" often precedes a verb.
4. Someone who has read all of squeetus.com and is looking for more Shannon news.
3. A member of the sprawling McComas family and related clans.
2. My Mom.
1. My wife.
So I ran across this article yesterday, and since I'm quite happy with my job and want to keep it, I thought I would check to make sure I'm not poisoning my career. Here are MSN's top "bad things."
1. Possessing Poor People Skills
I think being able to maneuver myself out of most social situations requires a great degree of "people" skills. You don't have to actually enjoy being around people to be able to manipulate them.
2. Not Being a Team Player
How are we defining "team," exactly? Without gasoline comfortably isolated in its tank, all the little pieces of a car won't work. Splashing the engine and fan belt with several gallons of gas just to make them all "bond" is not going to help productivity.
3. Missing Deadlines
No problem here. I particularly enjoy arbitrary dates.
4. Conducting Personal Business on Company Time
Blogs don't count, do they?
5. Isolating Yourself
See #2. Exploding cars=BAD.
6. Starting an Office Romance
I have a hard enough time tolerating a two hour meeting, much less trying to manage an illicit affair with someone less talented, intelligent, and attractive than my wife. What a hassle.
7. Fearing Risk or Failure
No one ever talks about risking boredom by only doing things you're comfortable with. That's a risk I take every day.
8. Having No Goals
I've acheived my goals. I still have them, I'm just done with them. Don't make me make more.
9. Neglecting Your Image
I am all about Image. I may be frumpy (or whatever the really masculine version of frumpy is), but I OWN it. I AM frumpy. There's nothing worse than pathetically trying to be something you're not, homies.
10. Being Indiscreet
Oh I'm discreet. Very discreet. Ask around.
So there. I'm in good shape.
So I thought that my series of Truth exposés had gone unnoticed, since I hadn't found any horse heads in my bed or extra bugging equipment in my car. But I suspect my Enemies are more clever than I thought. I have somehow been wrangled into a series of day-long and near day-long meetings full of inane but superficially useful discussion. This effectively fills my mind with the banal and uninteresting, clouding my usually sharp eye for secret plans and hidden monsters. In just a few moments, my usually sacrosanct solitary lunch period will be violated by a mandatory "Team Lunch."
The sad thing is they probably think they're being nice, moving work discussion that might otherwise have ocurred in another meeting into a more "flavorful" environment. Make an otherwise boring meeting more interesting. Bah. I'm sure all those people that even now are plotting to poison the various water systems across the world think they are just "flavoring" the water. You know, making it more interesting.
I don't know about you, but I prefer to drink my poison from a little bottle with a skull and crossbones on it, not from the water fountain. That's just wrong.
There are two feet of height in my workplace building that are unaccounted for. You wouldn't normally notice it, but as I habitually hammer my fists on the walls of spaces that enclose me to demonstrate to the Puppet Masters that I am not a willing prisoner, I realized that, in the stairwell, I could actually reach the second floor's ceiling with my blows of defiance. Not so with the ceilings of the first and third floors.
As I also habitually count every step I take to ensure that the universe isn't secretly shrinking, I've determined that the number of stairs between the first and second floor equal that of those between the second and third.
What that means is that there is a space beneath my feet (as I work on the third floor) that the architects of this building preferred remain hidden. A crawlspace? Perhaps, though what crawls there would have to be smaller than a man, or something not naturally bipedal. A storage space for the multitude of wires and cables the modern business requires? Not likely. That much space would provide wire space for the entire city, much less one business. No, something lives there, and if I could just get everyone to stop their incessant talking, typing, and paper shuffling, I might be able to hear them chittering.
Until then, I'm just going to let those little buggers know what for by stomping loudly on their ceiling every two minutes. I don't care what my cubicle neighbors think. We're working on a platform of lies. I stomp for Truth.
Improper Ventilation
Ever since I stuffed Mr. Allen in the vent, the heating system in my apartment wheezes. It keeps me up at night. I think it sounds like someone screaming whose lips have been sewn together, but I don't tell anyone that. They might think I'm crazy.
I'm thinking of instituting another recurring day-theme here like the Microstory Mondays. The plan is to have Fridays be "list" days, mostly because it's pretty easy to come up with an ad-hoc roster of "things" without any kind of narrative connection. And since I'm lazy by nature, things that are easy appeal to me. I'll try it out for a bit. See how it goes.
Top five things that strangely horrify me
5. Watching an entire football game on television, and the people who do.
4. The prospect of camping for any reason other than to escape the prison camps of an invading army.
3. Events, gatherings, and activities that are pimped out to me as being "FUN!"
2. The "Escape" key.
1. The person behind you.
This morning, for the second time since I've been at my current workplace, I encountered a man squatting in the stairwell.
On the landing between the second and third floors, this guy squats (literally), facing the corner, away from any foot traffic. It's weird. Sort of 'Blair Witch Project' weird. Creepy.
Given, he has a cell phone to his ear, so he's not just squatting, but his muttering quietly in the shadows doesn't exactly make the scene any less creepy.
The experience has led me to believe that quality lurking is all about location. If the guy had been at his cubicle, it wouldn't have been at all disturbing. Or at least not any more disturbing than anyone on a cell phone. If he had been in the bathroom, but not on the toilet, it would have been disturbing again. So pick your lurking locations carefully. While certain behavior in a dark alley may qualify you as a shuddering horror, in other places, like, say, a workplace conference room, you may just be a ridiculous fool.
Trust me. A ridiculous fool. I know from personal experience.
Last night, as I'm trying to get to sleep, I was pondering the Colombian Necktie. And no, unfortunately, it has nothing to do with fashionable South American men's attire and accessories. As I understand it, said necktie actually refers to the process by which a person's throat is slit and their tongue is then pulled down and out through the hole in the neck. So, nasty. Not something you would want to have done.
Or something you'd want to do, either. It seems pretty messy. I'm no anatomy expert, but as I probed about my mouth in the dark of night, it seemed to me that the base of my tongue is pretty sturdily affixed to the bottom of my mouth/jaw/oral cavity. If I was to cut my throat, it doesn't seem like my tongue could be pulled out through the hole. At least not without further cutting. Even if you sort of folded the tongue back and threaded it down the through the esophagus, it doesn't seem like there's enough free play in the tongue to make much of a necktie.
I don't know. It's not like I know any experts in this field, but it just doesn't seem like such a procedure would work very well.
"Oh, you slit his throat? That's okay, I guess."
"No, mother, I gave him a Colombian Necktie! I pulled his tongue through his throat! It's terrifying!"
"That's his tongue? I can barely see it. I thought it was neck gore."
"Bah! That's just typical! I can never impress you! I'm going to my room!"
Needless to say, I didn't get to sleep very soon, as this line of thinking led me to ponder whether "Pablo," the penguin in The Backyardigans, was actually named after Pablo Escobar, the proclaimed inventor of the Colombian Necktie. You never know.
