Hearsay, Heresy, or Horseshit?

Since I've started this new job I've slowly learned that the characters here aren't quite as cartoon-like in their oddities as the ones I used to work with. They're your everyday variety of crazy, eccentric, grumpy, friendly, entertaining, baffling people. I don't have any concerns that one of them is secretly a serial killer nor do I think any of them are living brain donors. Even my direct co-workers, who I have little to no interaction with on the most part, are as close to normal as anyone I've worked with in a long time.

The job hasn't provided nearly the sort of material I had hoped. Despite some blooming friendships and even some rumored at-work romance on the horizon, these people just aren't interesting in the same sense as my former co-workers were. This job's humor comes more in the way of things overheard, either by guests or medical staff, but they're few and far between, and even pose some ethical and legal dilemmas in disclosing them.

Considering all of this, I believe the best move, one that I'm sure most have already assumed, is to end this instead of trying to force stories and characters that don't exist. This was never meant to be a work of fiction, and I have no intention of turning it into one. So, thank you for taking the time to read these little stories, and I hope you find some other outlet for your obviously immense boredom. I personally have started watching TV shows on DVD. I highly recommend Rome and Carnivale as good starters.

Nutshells: Now With 75% More Nut...

My apologies for the lack of updates. It has been through a combination lack of time management, trouble adjusting to my schedule, and a bit of a lack of material that I haven't written anything in the last couple weeks. There has been a lot going on outside of work, such as work on a new creative project, going out and enjoying life, and meeting tons of new people...but it's not really pertinent to this blog. So here, for your viewing, reading, or possibly text-to-speech listening pleasure is the last couple weeks in a nutshell. Hopefully more nut than shell.

The Entrepreneur Saga has run on much longer than I thought was possible. Were I management, and maybe it's a good thing I'm not, he would have been gone after he said he was leaving the first time. Since then he has recanted his resignation, pissed off just about everyone on the team by being an arrogant jackass, and seems to be starting a new truck driving business. He hasn't really done anything to me personally, but his attitude and actions towards others have really soured my opinion of him even more. The bad thing is, whenever I cross paths with him, I seem to be the only person he actually makes any effort to be friendly with; trying to have conversations and even trying to help me out on occasion. Which he doesn't do for anyone else. He's still trying to get on 3rd shift, and on one night that I worked with him he turned to me and asked "So, how much is it gonna cost to get your shift?" He was genuinely wanting a dollar figure on what he would have to pay me for me to switch with him. I had to tell him that it wouldn't happen regardless of the money because there's no way in hell I'm willingly going back to second shift.

It seems that all of the nurses on the night shift have suddenly, possibly even in collusion with one another, gotten past the "You're a stranger!" mentality you might see from a small child and have accepted me with open arms, at time literally, into their fold. One day I was getting icy glares from silent nurses, sitting in chairs with folded arms, looking at me like I was a child predator asking them about their young kids. The next day, really...the very next day, they started opening up, asking me questions about my self, joking, and letting me in on their little inside commentary and rumor mongering. Some of them are still a little more reserved than others, some of them I'm not sure if they're really out going, really lonely, or really want my man juices all up ons.

Each floor seems to have their own collective theme or personality. One floor constantly bitches, playfully with me, about the pitfalls and lies they were told about the new system. They reminisce about the "old days" of nursing; which for some of them was last year and others it was that early 60's. The next floor will be the floor that jokes around constantly, coming up with new nicknames for me daily or weekly. Yet another floor will be all business and if I try to be conversational beyond the parameters of desktop support-nurse relationship they get a bored look and suddenly have other things to do. This is not necessarily a sign that I'm an obnoxious bore...they do the same thing with their co-workers on the same floor. The social butterflys, jokesters, and hermits have all seemingly migrated and collected on common floors.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was at one time dubbed Pimp Hat - though that now changes with some regularity. Regardless, the reputation of Pimp Hat lives on regardless of what my current moniker is. As an example, let me describe a scenario from a few nights ago during a test system failure. Because we were having a planned downtime there were a lot of people that I didn't know on hand, sitting around waiting for bad things to happen. Some of these people seemed to be the same ones I didn't know from when the system first went up. One woman remembered me, despite me not even vaguely remembering having seen her in my life. She also said she had heard about me from the other nurses. What she had heard she couldn't or wouldn't say, but she did go on and on about my lovely hats. Several times during the night I would pass by and my hat would disappear. She was suddenly "trying it on." Before you say anything, no...I'm not oblivious to the ancient and mysterious art of flirting. She was most definitely flirting with me. I was nice, but tried not to do anything that would lead her on. Being nice was a mistake on my part, I now admit. Because that, on its own, lead her on. At one point we are in an elevator, because we have been thrown into a situation where we, coincidentally, have to work together on an issue. In the unusually long elevator ride she asks me about my schooling. I mention having been an Art major at one point and she says "so I guess this is the part of the conversation where I ask to see your sketches, we end up alone in your apartment, and have an uncomfortable meeting with HR the next morning." I suddenly developed an intense hatred for elevators and their trapping nature. I guess she wanted to see what kind of mojo the Hat Pimp was packing.

Finally, a note about workplace dating. It is, in most situations, a really...really bad idea. There is always one partner who has problems differentiating work life from personal life. Dating either a subordinate or a supervisor only compounds that problem as one person always feel uncomfortable, or has problems even acknowledging the heirarchy and keeping the work problems within the walls of business. That being said there are several nurses here that I would quickly, and willingly throw that personal law out the window for. To quote a friend of mine, I would drag my dick through 10 miles of broken glass just to finger fuck their shadow. Or drink their bathwater...depends on which visual gives you the most mileage.

A Fond Farewell...Well Not Really

Just when I thought that I had found a character who would provide good stories and source material he turns out to be a huge disappointment. The Entrepreneur, the guy who seems to have a new business venture every time someone talks about him...like now he's supposedly starting a truck driving company, has already succumbed to the pressures and hidden traps of the Cube Dungeon. Siting schedule conflicts as his point of contention, The Entrepreneur has already given his two-weeks notice...which I think is funny because he hasn't even been here a full two weeks yet. Why the powers that be didn't just fire his ass on the spot, I don't know...maybe they're not as vindictive as me. Unless someone gives in to his bribery and lets him take their 3rd shift it seems his entertainment value will be small and short lived. His prospects of taking someones 3rd shift is slim, since there's only me at this location, and one other at the location across town. I sure as hell am not going to willingly put myself back into the hell that I've come to think of 2nd shift as.

I seemed to have neglected to read over my own promises of my last post, namely my new nickname. It seems The Trixter has not come with me the hospital. It's understandable since the crew that gave me that nickname didn't come with me either. I'm fine with it. To explain the new nickname takes another step into that dreaded, dank cave of personal information. Once again you're going to learn a little more about your narrator. Sadly it seems with every bit of info I drop about myself, I begin to wonder more and more about my sanity. My new nickname is Pimp Hat. It started out as Top Hat, so dubbed by Mr. Rogers, but the nurses started calling me Pimp Hat and it has stuck. The reason being pretty obvious...I wear what I would consider rather striking, dashing, and handsome hats. Everyone else seems to think they're pimp accessories. My hatogrophy consists of a couple of stingy brim fedora's, several ivy's, and a couple Kangol's. To me they're tasteful, respectable hats but to everyone else they're an eccentricity that they can't let slip without abuse.

When I'm not trying to dodge stray comments about my hats, I'm usually playing it pretty low key. I make my rounds through the floors looking for troubles, work on them quietly, and go about my business. As a result people either forget I'm there, or they feel relatively comfortable and start gossiping. Being that these nurses are predominantly women, there will be gossip. The funny stuff comes when they start griping about patients. There's no way to be prepared to hear a nurse say "I'm sick and tired of seeing that man's penis." It's just not something you expect to hear. She continues to complain about how he gets up and starts stripping every time she walks in. Now it seems this is a relatively common occurrence when it comes to old folks, but this guy is in his early 40's and just seems to want to share the love. I stayed away from his room.

Finally we'll end with a little bit of an update on the Cube Jungle of yore...that's right, communiques from former co-workers. It seems that the person that was hired, at my recommendation, couldn't cut it and left. Guess I'm not as good a judge of character as I thought. Now they've hired a guy named Natron. This is not a nickname. His god-given, birth certificate name is Natron. I actually new a Natron once, many years ago. He was a 14 year old video gamer and that was his screen name. Maybe I should see about having my name legally changed to Pimp Hat.

Back to hanging on the rack in the Cube Dungeon. By the way, it's a dungeon because it's a poorly lit basement office with an air conditioner permanently stuck at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. It's still 80 degrees outside, but inside I'm wearing a jacket.

That Slowest Of Passings

I've been on the new job in by current hours with my current responsibilities for about a month now and you'd think I'd be more adjusted than I am. Which obviously means I'm not that adjusted. I still have days where I'll get off and be struggling to keep those weighted lids of my eyes open as the sun and traffic both creep to their respective destinations only to get home and find myself staring wide-eyed into the false demi-night of my blacked out bedroom. A new co-worker, The Entrepreneur, swears it's the snack bars I have as a snack at night. I think it's that fact that I'm going to sleep when the damn sun, birds, neighbors, and leaf blowing Mexicans are getting started. Even my morning wood gets confused. It half salutes, looks around, and then decides to wait...hoping something better comes along I suppose.

But you didn't come here to read about my erections, though if you did definitely leave a comment. This is The Cubers, not The Pubers or any other quaint pun I could think of at the moment. You probably want to hear more about The Entrepreneur. Or how about Scarecrow, Bashful, The Groupie, and what about my new nickname? OK, we'll get back to my phallus later.

Now that things have settled down since the launch of the big project, I've had to go fishing for things to do. All those new shiny laptops on those new shiny piece of shit medical carts they paid $5k for aren't posing much of a problem, so they aren't demanding much of my time. So I've resorted to making rounds, floor by floor, just hoping to find some injured little laptop to make me feel like a hero. The benefit is that I've gotten to know the hospital a fair bit better, and have started identifying personalities amongst the constantly changing tide of nurses and doctors. Like Scarecrow in the ER. She's rather tall, scrawny, with wiry straw-like hair, and just about the only person in the whole Emergency Room who will give me the time of day. Seems my kind ain't welcome 'round them parts. Mostly cause they're not really sure who I am and what exactly I do...but I can't help them much because I don't know much better than they.

The Groupie is in the ER too. I'm a bit undecided about her. She's either a sad, desperate whore who would cross the deserts of Egypt to slurp the goodies from the EMT's tent poles, or she's really a prude in disguise as a horrible flirt. She hardly does any work without being goaded by Scarecrow and looks like she's faucet drip shy of swallowing a gun barrel, but when those EMT's come though those rickety supermarket doors and drop off a fresh load of alcoholic waste or geriatric heart ruin she starts to glow like a virgin bride on her wedding night. She's not necessarily the only one who eats up the bloated heroics of these medical-grade taxi drivers (trust me, I'm not being bitter, these guys aren't the cream of the emergency crop). She just happens to be the only one dripping wet in her seat when they walk in.

Up on one of the higher floors, things are usually a lot more laid back than in the ER. Which makes sense because there patients aren't coming through the door dying. They're either getting better, or just dying a whole lot slower. One of my favorite little mice up there is Bashful. I know absolutely nothing about her. She rarely says a word to me. She's not the hottest girl up there, but something just melts inside when I see her and she smiles, waves, turns red, and then disappears. Oddly, I find her on several floors, so I have no idea which one is hers and who is following who. Before you start jumping to any conclusions, she does this little routine with other people too. So far, the best moment was when we were both in the elevator together, she actually spoke up (the pressures of being alone together) and asked if I just wandered around looking for trouble and I joked and said I was just looking for her. She dropped her head down and to the side, trying to hide that she was blushing, and jumped out haphazardly waving at me at the next floor the elevator stopped on. Only problem was that she got out on my floor, not the floor she was going to and there was this awkward shuffle as I got out after her, she realized where she was (and that I was indeed following her), and hopped back in the elevator. For all I know she thinks I'm a serial killer...but it's still cute.

Then there's The Entrepreneur. He's the newest of the new guys here in the Cube Dungeon (oh yeah, we're stashed away in the basement of a building not even attached to the hospital). He got the same casting call that we did, went through the same hoops, and same orientation as everyone else, but he seems to feel like he was tricked. Every single one of us, The Entrepreneur included, got the phone call where they offered us a specific position and pay grade, and were asked Yes or No. Yet his first day on his agreed upon shift he's complaining about the shift, the hours, the fact that he had to work July 4th (completely dismissing everyone's pointing out the obvious fact that people don't stop dying just cause it's a holiday). The list so far has not stopped. On the other hand, he keeps talking about how he doesn't need this job. He's only here for the insurance. He doesn't need the money, because he's got so many other business ventures going on right now that this is more of an inconvenience than anything else. To emphasize his point, it's been rumored that he's offered to pay someone to switch shifts and that he'd be willing to take a 25% pay cut if management forced someone to switch with him. Supposedly he's an "Entertainment Producer" (what the fuck that means I don't know), an independent car salesmen (which sounds like one of those engineered titles to cover something really crappy or illegal), and who knows what else his supposed venture include. I have a feeling his story is going to evolve into a spectacular mess of chipping and rusting lies and exaggerations, and don't you doubt for a moment that I won't be there to bask in that glorious collapse.

Man, 3rd shift makes me an asshole...

Meet The New Cubers - Part I

The train has been rolling rather smooth the last day, so let me take this quiet time to introduce some of my new cast of characters. Being as I only know most of these people in passing, these nicknames are subject to change.

First is my department supervisor, Kitty. I call her that because she reminds me an awful lot of the mom from That 70's Show. And in a strange sort of way, she's got that same G.I.L.F. quality to her. Hey, don't judge...

Next is my direct boss that, to continue the celebrity lookalike, I've been calling Dangle because he looks like Lt. Dangle from Reno 911! In addition to the look, he also has a tendency to explain things in a very matter of fact way that, if you actually think about it, makes absolutely no sense most of the time. He's just winging it and doesn't care.

Baywatch is my group lead. Her name is remarkably similar to that of one of the stars of Baywatch, and I've got a growing suspicion that she's about as smart as her bimbo namesake. I have yet to see any quality that explains why she's in this group or the lead of the group. Maybe she's got talents I'm not privy to.

There's an extremely old guy that works the night shift with me that I've been calling Peck. His real name is some ancient name that sounds like it belongs in a fairy tale. No one calls him by his real name, as he prefers to be called Pick, which is part of his last name. Having seen the movie Willow many times and watching Val Kilmer's Madmartigan character call Willow a peck over and over, the association was natural...and no one seems to notice either.

Next is Uber Geek. I really don't have a better name for him because nothing else really fits. I could alternate between Geek,Dork and Nerd, but it's all the same in his case. I've never met someone who is a bigger dork, nor anyone who is more proud and carefree about it. He is an incredibly smart guy...he's just an Uber NerdGeekDork. If you've ever seen the movie Grandma's Boy (which is hilarious), the owner of the company, J.P. , is a dead ringer in looks and personality for Uber Goober.

The guy that works 2nd shift, and subsequently the guy I probably know the best, I've been calling Mr. Rogers. He's a small, diminutive man, who says everything in a very calm, even tone. Unlike the childhood legend, our Mr. Rogers has a rather nasal voice that makes everything sound like he's whining slightly. So far I've had a hard time telling what he is and isn't really whining about, cause it all sounds the same.

One of the longtimers, and oldtimers, here at the hospital is Bob Hope. He's incredibly cynical, sometimes spiteful, often inappropriate, and probably my favorite person here. He's a smart guy and doesn't take shit from anyone. He also looks like Bob Hope when Bob Hope was 50 or 60.

That'll have to do for now, I actually have to go and do my job now.

The Train Keeps On Wrecking

It’s been a long, hectic week. The big project that was supposed to go live a week ago didn’t completely go live until last night. It took an entire week to do something it should have taken seconds to do, but with any big switchover it’s inevitable that things will go wrong. Like thousands of medications having to be scanned by hand because the old database is suddenly, “unforeseeably” incompatible. Someone, somewhere lied to someone else, somewhere else and really screwed everything up.

To anticipate the final go-live last night the powers that be put us all on 12-hour shifts, putting about 6 people on the night shift where I am usually the only one working. We were all bored shitless. We didn’t even find out the system had gone live until nearly an hour after it happened, and then it was just an afterthought. I took the initiative to go floor-by-floor to talk to the nurses and see if there were problems they weren’t reporting. Turns out there were tons of problems that they were reporting, but the software vendor supporting the new system was pretty much just telling them to deal with it. Fill out a complaint form and deal with it. Good policy. The bad thing is that on my tour I realized there is no separation between the third-party software support, which isn’t me, and the on-site dedicated PC support that has nothing to do with the software, which IS me. So there were lots of people that were really mad at me. I lost count of how many people passed me saying something along the lines of “I don’t EVEN want to see you people right now,” or “You can just turn around and get back in the elevator.”

I tried on several floors to explain the difference between me and the other support group and felt like I was making some headway and then some old nurse from the 7^th floor pointed me out to the Charge Nurse on the 5^th floor saying I was the reason it took them 4 hours to deliver the 9pm drug pass. I could see the fire light in her eyes, and then spread like a brush fire in a drought from one nurse to the other. That’s when I turned around and got back in the elevator I had just come out of.

To further that feeling of train wreck, we were told that we’d be on 12-hour shifts all week, not just last night. It wasn’t a big deal to me. It didn’t really affect when I woke up or what time I got off, it just meant that more of my day that I’d be surfing for porn or drinking lattés was now being spent sitting at my desk trying to get all my IM’s working on my Blackberry (which I kind of hate having). However, when I got in to work today, and had sat around for about 40 minutes someone suddenly asked me why I was there. They had been talking to me the whole time and it just dawned on them that I was there and wasn’t supposed to be. Seems I missed out on that e-mail that said “hey, you don’t have to be there for 12 hours anymore.” So I got up and left. It’s not like I’m going to sit around for a few hours for no reason, when I don’t have to. Oh, what’s that noise? I think I hear the train coming again…let’s see if we can wreck it again tonight.

Cluster, Meet Fuck

I know it has been a while, but things are very hectic right now. Last week was a combination of cramming all of us with as much information as they could possible throw at us, but not telling us anything we really needed to know to start working. The hospital has a huge electronic medical records project going live at 2am tonight, which is the reason everyone is so frantic, and the reason there were 10 new technicians brought in and it just seems like more going on than they could really handle.

I start third shift tonight, which is going to suck because I had to show up at 8am for a few hours of application training and then couldn’t get to sleep once I finally got home. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a VERY long night. The real problem is that I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I won’t be alone, at least not this week, but I get the feeling that I will have my training wheels taken out from under me starting next week. I know eventually I’ll get comfortable with their process and maybe even find my way around the hospital, but right now it seems unbelievably daunting.

The perks of the job have already become apparent though. For the first time in three years I was able to go out during the week. All I did was go bowling, but for three years that hasn’t been an option. Because of my previous 2^nd shift schedule both my mornings and my nights were ruined and in order for me to do anything I had to take the entire day off. It wasn’t very efficient to take a day off every time I wanted to have dinner or even get a cup of coffee with someone. I actual run a risk of having a social life.

I’m going to try and get some sleep before it’s time for work…

Pain and Suffering

So it's been a hectic last few days. This will be a bit of a recap of the last days of life in The Cubes of yore, the events of the weekend (a rare glimpse into my off hours), and the rising sun of life at the hospital.

My last day at work was incredibly boring. There was of course the obligatory goodbye's from coworkers. I had the longest conversation I've ever had with Serialkiller and hopefully the last. I annoyed me that he talked about how it had been a pleasure when we never really interacted. I understand being nice, but I'd have rather he just left without saying anything. Stonehenge mouth got a bit emotional when I left. He didn't cry or anything, but he said at least a half dozen times how much he really, REALLY appreciated all the help and understanding and, my favorite, compassion that I showed him while I was there. If they only knew. The day was cut in half when my boss, The JC, told me to go home 4 hours early...so I did. And that was it.

The weekend was a bizarre mix of pain, torture, and 80's music. Saturday I got free tickets to a local radio station even where they were having an 80's themed "second chance" prom. It was funny considering I never went to my first prom. It was sad that my second chance was with my sister. Sunday was like a re-enactment of the Bataan Death March. I went with my family on a kayaking trip that was supposed to be an early morning paddle lasting about three hours. Instead we got a late start, and the three hour tour turned into eight hours. On top of that, the temperatures spiked over 100, and we ran out of water about an hour before we finished. The problem was the lack of rain in the area that made the river very low meaning that we never got to go more than a 1/4 of a mile without having to get out and portage around sand bars, dry spots, and formerly submerged debris. In reality, it was more likely that we had to get out every hundred feet or so, with very few long stretches. In the end we were dehydrated, severely sunburned, and absolutely exhausted. Which made for a a great first day on the job the next day.

The next day being orientation it was a good thing there wasn't much needed of me. I had gone on that 8-hour kayaking trip on only two hours of sleep so I was still operating on a deficit come Monday, along with the shock of having to wake up at dawn, fatigue, and painful sunburn. The last two days have been an overload of safety policies, benefits packages, inundation in the mission and ministry of a Catholic run hospital, and staring at this one nurse's superb ass. I met with my fellow support coworkers that were being hired at the same time (a total of 12 coming in at once) and was forced to take a Blackberry home with me, which compromises my personal aversion to always being connected to my job. Having a work connected Blackberry was something me and Sith Lord used to make fun of Serialkiller for doing, thus turning us into minor hypocrites. The only difference is our Blackberry's are company provided and mandatory, whereas Serialkiller bought his Blackberry and broke company security policy to have it connected to the company server.

Tomorrow is our first day of actually being in our department and getting a sample of our job, so hopefully more fun will surface. The only nickname I came up with during training was Mr. Rogers, who will be in my department and is so calm, quiet, and mild mannered that he too is probably a mass murderer. We'll see.

The Final Countdown

Tomorrow is my last day and nobody will let me forget it. The odd thing is the fact that people seem to think I've forgotten. They must have, why else would they kept telling me it's my last day. The bad thing is, several of them keep getting it wrong. Some insisted that today was my last day. I'm not sure if they're stupid, can't remember, or assume that I'm just not going to show up tomorrow. We'll see if they're right.

I've been training my replacement this week, which is an odd feeling. On one hand I feel like warning him about all the stupid shit he's going to have to put up with, but on the other hand I want him to have to learn it on his own and try not to predispose him to hating certain people and feeling slighted about things he may not otherwise care about. I wish him the best of luck. The only thing I can't decide is whether or not to give him a nickname before I leave. My last gift to my former Cubers. I have one last day to decide.

I did have a somewhat touching moment today. The Executioner (or The Bear, depending on who you ask) work Sunday through Thursday, so for him this was my last day and he actually got me a small gift which I thought was really cool. It surprises me sometimes when people actually show they care, or at least show ME that they care.

Two quick notes. My former obsessions with Dino Run has now been replace by Phun. Phun is a physics simulator sandbox game where you can create all kinds of nears machines. Check on Youtube for some crazy siege weaponry and torture devices created in Phun.

The second note is that I think I'm having an email conversation with a girl who is hitting on me for a green card and/or money. It's kinda weird. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Tell Me About Your Penis

Another quick one. I went Friday to get some vaccinations for my new job at the hospital. This was the second round of shots, but Sith Lord hadn’t been for the first round yet. Talking about getting stabbed brought out a quick fact about Sith Lord…he’s afraid of needles. So of course I played up the pain and suffering of getting the shots and blood work done.

By the time I went Friday for my second round, Sith Lord had been for his first and the nurse mentioned that he had been. She paused for a moment and then asked me with a bit of hesitation about Sith Lord’s fear of needles. She then mentioned that Sith Lord had confused her because he said he had tattoos and piercings, but was afraid of shots. And then the nurse blushed a bit and said that she couldn’t ask him, but she noticed that even though he said he had several piercings, none of them were visible. She finally got bold and asked where these supposed piercings were, and of course I told her the truth…his penis. She blushed, shook her head, and said she didn’t understand kids these days.

So yes, the same man who is afraid of getting a small shot, has pieces of metal in his cock.

A Difference of Opinion

This will be pretty short as not much has happened. This is really just an observation on how two different people going through the same event have a varying reaction and attitude. I’m not saying that my reaction is right, or that The Sith Lord’s is wrong. I’m just saying that they’re different. Actually…I take that back…I think I’m right, just not normal.

Knowing that we’re leaving hasn’t affected the way I do my job. I’ve still got to get through the days before I start my next job, and I plan on using this job as a reference for future jobs. I’ve put a lot of time and effort in this job for the last few years, why ruin it at the end by getting sloppy? Sith Lord on the other hand has started getting testy, or testier, with users. There’s still a week left to go and he’s spending less and less time doing his job, and getting more and more lax when he actually does do it. He’s already started showing up late and taking longer lunches.

Here’s where I’m wrong, but probably much more normal. The people that I’ve spent all my time disliking, but holding back my feelings out of a effort to avoid conflicts with the people I work I am now finding myself being more curt and discourteous towards. The Sith Lord on the other hand, who has long had a “don’t fucking talk to me” attitude which has been very successful in keeping most people from trying to socialize, is actually being more accepting and less of a jackass to those we work with, even the ones we both hate with a furious passion.

The only thing we have in common our attitudes towards each other. We both have a feeling of survivors of a hostage crisis that was peacefully resolved. We’ve got our book deals and our spot on Oprah talking about the horrors and the things we plan on doing in the future now that we’ve gotten a second chance at life. It’s like a club in which we are its only members. I imagine it’s got to be annoying for others to have to listen to us both talk about that great green pasture on the other side that we’re convinced we’re heading to. I’d probably hate us right now if I were them.

A Bit of a Let-Down

I had grand visions of the moment I would tell my boss and co-workers that I was quitting. I saw a scene in which I burst in on some kind of Dr. Strangelove scene where a great cabal was deciding the fate of mankind and I walked briskly, importantly up to the desk and slammed a carefully worded stack of papers that explained the incontrovertible reasons that justified my leaving and made it the only possible option. This slamming of papers would interrupt the thoughts and tirades of important, shadowy men who would look around, whispering to each other at the audacity of that bold man. There would be a long pause and then my boss, who would be played by Anthony Hopkins, would speak in his righteously important and sophisticated voice and say “How could you do this?” I would simply state “It’s the only option that makes sense” and I would march off, leaving these powerful to contemplate to world altering ramifications of my departure from the world scene.

The reality was that I walked in and told The JC that I needed to talk to him and he said he already knew I was quitting and to just email him a letter of resignation and that would be all he needed. The few things that have happened since then have also been so anti-climatic and even annoying that it’s almost comedic.

Stonehenge Mouth has been unrelenting in questions. He was excited about my vacation as it was, because he gets excited about such things, but then the news of my impending departure was giving him a warm fuzziness like that of your first kiss. He was quivering with excitement…which annoyed me because he was getting more good emotions out of my triumph than I was. The last couple days have been an unrelenting storm of questions about all the amazing possibilities of my new job that I’m almost annoyed that I’m leaving.

Serialkiller and Tweedle Dee have been the extreme opposite. They want speak to me at all. Now I can’t say that I’m terribly upset that I don’t have to hear their horrible mouth words tossed in my direction, I just don’t understand it. I’ve got no idea if they had put in for the same job that me and Sith Lord got and feel slighted that we got it and they didn’t. In the case of Tweedle Dee I get this feeling from him that in his case he feels betrayed or abandoned. It’s like I had made a promise back in our childhood where I promised I’d never leave him behind and then years later I’m doing exactly that. Only that never happened.

Most of the responses to my departure have been positive, with people wishing me the best of luck and a few genuine requests to keep in touch. Some of which I even intend to actually keep in touch with like Beardface and KliffyB. The only response that seemed to make absolutely no sense was that of The Shill’s. He caught me as he was leaving yesterday and told me that he was “seriously bummed” that I was leaving and to tell me that I was always welcome back if things didn’t work out. Today The Shill leaned over into my Cube to ask “So, have we managed to convince you to reconsider.” This was very confusing because it insinuated that they had made any counter offers or even discussed the possibility of getting me to stay. Which never happened.

When Alan Alda left the company he was given the “you’re always welcome back” speech but then had it rescinded when The Shill discovered that part of Alan Alda’s 2-week notice included a week in which he was on vacation. Which in his mind made it unacceptable and he actually had a meeting with Alan Alda to tell him he was not rehirable if he ever tried to come back. It didn’t really make any sense to me, but after my non-existent negotiations with The Shill, it just seems in character for him.

I have no doubt that the fun will continue up until the last minute.

Vacation Inebriation

So this is a rare edition. I’ll go ahead an apologize if things lack a sensable structure. I’m on vacation and I’ve been drinking.

As I alluded in my last edition, things are changing for The Trixter. Initially it was assumed that I would be changing shifts, departments, and job titles to a bizarre three-day weekend shift. That may actually still be the assumption on management’s side since I have to tell them that I will be leaving. Instead of moving from one end of the Cube Jungle to another, I’m changing Jungle’s completely. It became official yesterday that I will be leaving my current employer and moving to a new arboreal geek preserve starting June 9^th.

Here’s what will be changing. Instead of working in the automotive manufacturing industry (which, by the way, is where I was working) I will now be working in a hospital. Instead of answering the phones for 8 solid hours and answering inane, irreverent, and irrelevant questions I will be working on pre-screened trouble issues on site. Instead of getting paid far too much for the job I was performing, I will be getting paid marginally above average for a much higher-end job function. Instead of helping self-important Germans I will be helping self-important doctors. Instead of working with a cast of absolutely cartoonish and almost unbelievable characters I will be working with a bunch of people that may be exactly the same as previously mentioned group, but I’m hoping it also includes hot, single nurses.

Here’s what will be staying the same. In a bizarre cliff-hanger twist, The Sith Lord will actually be coming over with me. At my recommendation he put in for one of several positions that my new employer had posted and was hired on at the same time I was. He will be working at a separate location on a different shift, so I have no idea how he will play into future episodes. Which brings me to the most important, to me at least, item…yes; there will be further chronicles of my so called geek life. I don’t know what kind of stories the future holds, but I find it hard to believe that in a place as busy and populated as a hospital doesn’t have any stories to tell.

If this were a television show, this would probably be the season finale in which most of the characters opted not to sign on for next season. Maybe the producers couldn’t meet their salary demands or they just lost faith in the quality of the show. I will continue to update you as things from season one wrap up, a post-season wrap up if you will, but expect season two of The Cubers to premiere on June 9^th with all new characters, all new nicknames, and all new stories.

And now it’s time for another Newcastle…

I Live

Just a quick note that I have not passed away, been abducted by aliens, or run away with the circus. Though I did know a girl who ran away with the circus to work in the sideshow for a summer. The last several days have been very busy with a sudden influx of job offers which meant interviews, hand shakes, and kissing babies. I will be leaving tomorrow for a working vacation that will include sun, sand, and heavy lifting. I will try to update if possible, but more than likely I will be away until the 26th.

What Does The Future Hold?

The rumors that I am being relocated to another shift are increasing. It’s funny that people keep asking me about the change, despite the fact that no one has actually approached me about the shift. Well, at least not until tonight. It seems that several people put their hat in the ring to be considered for a position while I, who did no such thing, was the only one they even considered and wanted despite not having applied for it.

Being considered the best of my group is rather flattering when taken out of context, but in all honesty when compared with the people I work with it’s like being told you’re the best victim a serial killer has ever head. Great or not you’re still gonna die.

There are of course some repercussions to moving, if indeed it does end up happening. First of is that my weekly schedule will change drastically. Instead of working the late shift during the week, I will work the red-eye shift on the weekend, consisting of three 12-hour shifts. It will also be in a different building, which when combined with the change in time means I’m going to lose that cherished personal time I get with the demented denizens of the Cube Jungle.

This may change the format, regularity, and even the very existence of this little blog. Since I won’t really be one of the Cubers any more, it may not be feasible to continue writing about my little monkey cohorts. Then again, I could end up moving into a whole new Jungle of rare and mysterious animals. After all, the new office would have such wonderful people as Norman Bates, who spent an entire night telling me about the meaning, origin, and importance off the sizing information on the side of a cars tire. Really…all night. Then there’s Mr. Anderson (as in The Matrix…Miiiisterrr Annnnderson) who was moved to working in the middle of the night during the week because no one could stand working with him.

In other news, today the topic of conversation was what everyone did for Mother’s Day. Beardface cooked out for his mom, I went kayaking and cooked out with my mom, The JC built a deck for his mom. And then there’s Sith Lord. He spent Mother’s Day waiting for his mom to get back from Disney Land with his brother and then when the power went out at his mother’s house he decided to leave her in the dark and go home to watch Survivor. Nice to know he’s got his priorities.

Next week I’ll be on vacation and I’m quite certain there won’t be any updates while I’m going. I am spending a week relaxing at the beach…and helping friends move into a new house. Ok, actually I’m going solely to help them move and may never make it to the beach…even though they live on the coast. Who knows…I’m told the college down there has the most STD’s of any college in the US so I might have a rash and a story when I come back.

A Cuber Fairy Tale

It’s been a very quiet and mostly uneventful couple of days. The few things that did happen were just run of the mill work frustrations that anyone who is a member of the daily rat race has to deal with. So instead of recounting the boredom or making something up allow me instead to play raconteur and regale you with a tale of old. Come, sit by the campfire and I’ll tell you a story.

Let me first introduce you to Rhino. Rhino is a hard working, go get ‘em, charge full steam ahead kind of guy. He’s incredibly knowledgeable in his field and has never shirked responsibility. However, for all his great qualities, he’s still bat shit crazy and you either love him or hate him for it. He happens to be one of my favorite people that I rarely get to talk to anymore.

When I say that Rhino is crazy, I say so in full confidence that I speak the truth. This is a man who won’t in a restaurant if it’s in a strip mall because he doesn’t consider it a real restaurant. He worked the phones for a short period of time on Friday nights to help out during a change if the way our employer handled shifts on the production line. The only problem with that was that his personal skills were nearly non-existent. Because his normal job is late at night and rarely required interaction with real, actual humans the lack of people skills never really became apparent. However, after one particularly call he ended with a tirade that went sort of like this. “You stupid fucking cunt, I hope you fucking die. If I ever see you in person I’m going to slit your goddamned throat and fuck your fucking neck.” He then slammed the phone and disappeared for half an hour. Bat shit crazy.

Now that we have some basics, let’s get to the story. This was back in the days when Alan Alda still worked in The Cube. In those ancient times we had a tradition of brining in dinner on Thursday’s (which were our Friday’s at that time). We would rotate who picked up the food and who decided. Most weeks Rhino opted out and left us to our routine, but one week he was feeling particularly cheery and sociable and wanted to take part. He volunteered to pick up the food if we’d pick out where and place the order. We decided on food from a local burger joint that we all had at least an acceptable opinion of. Food was good, the price was right, and it had four walls of its own to fit Rhino’s definition of a restaurant.

We had decided early in the week where the food would come from and spent the next couple days deciding what we wanted, getting the money from everyone, and getting everything to Rhino so he could pick it up. Come Wednesday we had it all sorted out and things were ready for Rhino to pick up the food on his way in to work on Thursday. The only problem was that each day closer to Food Day, Rhino got a little higher strung and combative. He was getting anxious, asking what he should do if they didn’t have what we wanted. He was frantic and emphatic that we had better call in the order so he could just run in and pick it up. Finally on Wednesday when we handed him the money he was at breaking point.

I hadn’t been a Cuber for long at this point, so I hadn’t yet witnessed one of Rhino’s breakdowns first hand, so I thought he was just being funny. Joking around, making a big deal out of something to be funny. I could not be more wrong. After handing him the money form me and Alan Alda you could actual see the sweat on his forehead and he was pacing, frantic. Suddenly, with no warning that I ever figured out, he burst out screaming “I can’t handle this shit! Fuck this, get your own damn food!” and money was flying through the air as the bills and change we had given him were thrown at us as he stormed out the door. Needless to say we got our own food that week, and Rhino never asked to be included in our weekly ritual. Naturally, we never offered either.

On a side note, since the last few days have been so boring I have fallen in love with a simple, but richly detailed, lo-fi Flash game called Dino Run by the very talented, pixely fellows at Pixel Jam Games, the creators of lo-fi fave Gamma Bros. Give the game a shot at

Ch..ch..ch..changes…

The last couple days have been packed with nutty goodness, like a big Snickers bar. Stonehenge Mouth was pulled aside at some point yesterday for a Come to Jesus Meeting with The JC. We all knew it was coming because we were told it was coming. Of course when he was asked to take a walk the whispers quickly began; was he being fired like Shitpants and someone was going to run to empty out his desk while they were meeting, maybe he was going to be moved to another shift, or were they giving him an ultimatum and one more fuckup and they’d lop off his balls? It was none of the above, just a simple stating of facts where they showed the mounting evidence that they knew he was a complete fuck knuckle. The surprising effect of the meeting was that when he came back he was absolutely quiet. I figured it would be non-stop bitching once The JC left, but he hasn’t said anything to anyone for the last two days unless absolutely necessary. He hasn’t said a single word to me, so I can only guess I was outed as the snitch, which I’m ok way.

There have also been a sudden string of job openings in The Cube in the last couple days. The funny thing is that no one really seemed to know where the openings were coming from because no one was leaving, that we knew of, and we knew the company was too cheap to add another member to the team. We were wrong on both counts. The Bronx Bitch, a woman who should have been fired years ago but the fear litigation has kept it from happening, will be leaving at the end of the month, to where no one knows or cares. They are also adding two new positions on the weekend which it seems me and Beardface are the front runners for either of them. To greet this great news was our punishment - a stack of resumes.

It seems that in order for us to be allowed to leave the Call Center and take up the weekend shift in another group we have to find our own replacements. Now being people with consciences we both agreed that we couldn’t really get away with just picking the first geek that passed a background check. Instead, we read through stacks of depressing resumes that made it seem like we might never make it out. There were some we knew whose personalities just would not mesh with the existing group (a consideration it seems was not considered during the last hiring round which brought us Tweedle Dee, Shitpants McPooperton, and Stonehenge Mouth), other s had blatantly lied on their resumes, and one had even invented a company complete with website to hide a 3 year gap in employment. I thought he was actually perfect for inclusion into the Royal Order of Cubers, but fraud seems to be frowned upon by Napoleon and The Shill.

Phone interviews start tomorrow, maybe you’ll be getting a call from me…I suggest lying extensively…

Pain and Suffering

The weekend sucked. It’s pretty simple, it just sucked. After getting off of work Friday night I knew it was mostly pointless to go to sleep because I was going to have to turn right back around and go in again at 5am. That meant that I would only get about 3 hours of sleep, if I got any, before having to get up and ready for work again. Instead I stayed up playing Grand Theft Auto - or trying to. I fell victim to some crazy glitch that has been plaguing both the systems that make playing nearly impossible (I’ve been told deleting your saved game is a solution…an unacceptable solution, but there you have it.). So my gaming session was cut short and to make up for it I decided to do some catching up with friends I hadn’t kept up with like I should. Only my harddrive crashed. So it’s 3am and I’m trying to stay awake while watching terrible 3am crap on TV, wondering how people stayed awake before the time of massive distractions. Did they go out in the woods and chase a boar? Did they build a sweat lodge and have a quick spirit quest before going back in to Ye Olde Helpe Deske?

Sadly all that effort to stay up was hardly worth it because it was the most uneventful twelve hours I can remember. I think I had more excitement during the 22 hours my sister was in labor and I slept underneath the table in the hospital waiting room. I spent the entire time playing all the crazy games on the Eyemaze website (which by the way are pretty awesome - eyemaze.com). One thing I did get out of it was a few moments with Nate Dogg, which works a shift that has absolutely no overlap with mine so I rarely see him…which is probably a good thing. One of Nate Dogg’s many oddities is he spends lots of money of gadgets that he has no idea how to use or take advantage of. $300 sun glasses that he lost after a month. $400 Helio cell phone that he’s had a month and has no idea what he’s doing (he tried to show me how easy it was to Youtube and couldn’t get it to work). He bought an 80GB Ipod video and only has 12 songs on it. The Helio was sitting on top of the Ipod and he was bragging about how the Helio doubles as an MP3 player. He even has plans to buy a pair of $4k each firewalls just to play with it. In case you’re wondering, yes…he lives at home.

After the intense boredom of working on Saturday I went home and spent the entire day trying not to fall asleep so that I didn’t mess up my sleep schedule, which made Saturday hell. I would sit there doing something and next thing I knew I was waking up from a brief, restless 30 minute nap. Finally it got late enough that I wasn’t worried about screwing up my schedule and of course I could no longer get to sleep. The only shining moment of the weekend was Sunday with the family and kayaking with my step-dad. It made me really sad to walk into work Monday and actually be glad that I was back in charted territory. And then absolutely nothing happened today…which is why you just read about my incredibly boring weekend.

Take it with a grain of salt...

Fridays are always such a mixed bag. I never know when I walk in whether or not it’s going to be a chaotic mess, or an empty wasteland. There’s a general rule that if they’re working Saturday, then for some reason Friday sucks. Today is one of those exceptions. They’re running full steam tomorrow, but barely getting half mast today. That leaves another one of those days where we all spend more time trying to waste time than actually get any work done.

With a day like this, it’s hard to understand why anyone would start to panic when someone disappears for longer than usual, but then again, that someone is Serialkiller and there’s really no understanding the way the gears grind the mind of a mass murder. Sith Lord left the office for an hour to go take a certification test, which management approves of and pays for so long as it is work related. Unlike a normal day, where The JC is in charge and things run smoothly, Serialkiller was left at the helm while The JC was out. It’s sad, but Serialkiller is the most qualified and skilled, even if he does like the taste of blood and murder. That said; he still sucks as a manager.

While Sith Lord was out, Serialkiller couldn’t seem to figure out where he’d gone, when he’d be back, and what to do. He was asking everyone if they knew where he was and was visibly worried, as if The JC had told him before leaving “Alright now, Serialkiller. I’m leaving you in charge, if you lose any of them, I’ll rib your balls off and make you choke on them.” and he was taking it very literally. But then again, this is the biggest problem with Serialkiller. He takes his job WAY too serious.

In other news, I had lunch with an old co-worker, Alan Alda, and a friend in another department, and as any lunch with coworkers goes it pretty much revolved entirely around work. The funny thing is that everyone seems to have multiple versions of the same story. Let’s take Beardface’s rehiring as an example. His take on it was that he was called while still in Virginia, management practically begging for him to come back because he was in so tight with management and such a great employee. The story from other ends of the spectrum tells it that his biggest friend in management was the biggest obstacle to him coming back. She, Momma, did not want him because, supposedly because of attitude and personal problems. Then again, I’m sure my stories would sound completely different coming out of someone else’s lie-hole, not having been filtered through my ample imagination.

I have to work tomorrow, if I can’t get my Xbox working here, you may be hearing from me again…

The Shitcan Army Wants You!

The Crusade, as it has been dubbed, to get Stonehenge Mouth bounced has become a shifting, living entity of its own, as wars tend to do. The Crusade has taken precedence over other things now, as evidence continues to mount damning him further. If you recall, the scuttlebutt around the Cubes was that Stonehenge had been given a reprieve and Stalker Bait was going to be “released”. It seems that firing and hiring terminology is interchangeable these days. Instead of letting Stalker Bait go, they hired her on full time. I envision a day sometime soon when getting shitcanned is something to get excited about. People will be running through the streets shouting with glee “I finally got shitcanned!”

Obviously that changes things to where Stonehenge is back at the forefront of the enemies of Christendom and fuel for the fire is almost being created perpetually now as he is fucking things up in ways that are so regular, predictable, and maddening that people are all but doing my job for me now. Today alone I had one user who had spoken with Stonehenge Mouth three different times for three different issues in which he told them to call the Mail Room, restart the PC, and try again tomorrow. What the Mail Room has to do with supporting software, I don’t know. Restarting the PC is what he tells people when he doesn’t have a clue or can’t be bothered the make up a lie. And if waiting until tomorrow was an option, I doubt they would have bothered calling today. The fact this is all done to a single person obviously made them angry, and now I have a new ally. I couldn’t help but laugh when she asked me in all sincerity “Doesn’t he know everyone here hates him?”

This lovely lady isn’t the only new recruit in my Shitcan Army, as every day seems to bring a new convert into the fold, having seen the light of the one true god or something equally moving I’m sure, and willing to lend their services to me. Mostly it’s the services of bitching, complaining, whining, and sending nasty emails, but every bullet counts.

The problem that you may have noticed is that things with Stonehenge Mouth have gone from fired, to nobody bothered to tell him he was fired, to not fired, to being fired at some point in the future. This is actually a vast improvement over how things have worked in the past, considering I work for an employer that has had someone they’ve wanted to fire for five years, but are afraid to because she’s a black woman. Doesn’t matter she’s incompetent at any job they create for her. There was KrazyK who had brain lesions, no belly button, a rare throat-based Staph infection, schizophrenia, and she had to use a cane to get around on occasion, but not under any consistent situation. She called in to work one day because she couldn’t get down her steps. She hadn’t fallen or injured herself; she just couldn’t do it that day. She didn’t show up for 2 weeks and told her if she didn’t show up on Monday of the 3^rd week she could find another job. She came in Tuesday and still had a job. It took an act of Congress to finally get Shitpants McPoopertan fired, even though he was obviously weak and useless from the day he started and wasn’t fired till slightly over a year later.

Oh, and yes…I missed last nights post because of Grand Theft Auto…I just wanted to kill too much.

The Truth Is Unreliable

This will have to be quick, I’m about to be one of those people and stand in line to get Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Gimp came back today after his two week vacation and it was a bit confusing as to what he really did on vacation. Depending on who asked, and who was within earshot, he gave a different answer. Most people he answered that he was in Germany for the two weeks, having been deployed briefly for his service indenture to the Army Reserves. To others; he spent the two weeks sitting at home playing Call of Duty 4 on his Xbox. It seemed that I was the only one present during his different versions of his story, because nobody called him on his inconsistencies. I on the other hand had to ask and his answer was that he was supposed to go to Germany but the deployment was canceled and he figured he might as well take advantage of two weeks of vacation, which he probably wouldn’t have been able to get in a row were it not for the Reserves, and just chill out.

I have to update my report on the firing of Stonehenge Mouth. It seems that there have been some developments that could not be foreseen, and may have undermined my cosmic powers. It seems that no one told him he was fired. I know, I know…who forgets to fire a complete pain in the ass and financial waste? The people I work for. They also decided not to tell him once they realized they had forgotten, because it seems that Stalker Bait has been pissing off the wrong people and they’re going to fire her instead. They haven’t told her either. I’m wondering if this is some sort of bizarre Human Resources version of musical chairs and they’re a bit hazy on the rules.

It’s GTA time…

Misunderstimatifiawtf

It’s amazing what a little misunderstanding can do. At the end of the day yesterday Sith Lord made a comment about how Stalker Bait’s boyfriend had left. As a result the conversation revolved around breakups and the like, such as how someone’s ex-husband ran off with his own father’s girlfriend into the bijou country of Louisiana. After Stalker Bait left I mentioned to Sith Lord how she didn’t seem terribly upset about her boyfriend leaving me and he looked at me blankly realizing I took it literally. What he had meant when he said it was that her fake boyfriend, Tweedle Dee, had left the office. I felt like a bit of a fool, but no harm done, so I went on like normal.

When I came in to the office today, the Cubers were laying in piles of massacred egos. It seemed that someone had been listening in on the conversation of the day before, but only long enough to get all the wrong information. The super spy then proceeded to disseminate the erroneous information, and it took on a life of its own. Such as that Stalker Bait’s boyfriend left for Louisiana with his own father’s girlfriend. Or how Stalker Bait was now dating Tweedle Dee. Or how her relationship was ruined by something I said.

The result of such wide ranging falsifications was rather bizarre. Such as how everyone was now talking about how they were gonna “hit that”, “do that”, “get some of that”, and of course “tap that”. The repetitious use of “that” leads one to believe that most of the depraved geeks that make up the Cubes don’t really know what “that” is, and how to do, make, or obtain it. The truly funny thing about all of this was that neither Stalker Bait nor Tweedle Dee made it in today. Could there be more to the rumors than meets the eye? No.

On a side not, the other day was Earth Day and to commemorate and do its part to safe the planet our company opted not to refill the two lakes on the premises that have been leaking and were being topped off daily since they were built 3 months ago. I too did my part; I didn’t flush the toilet at the office after dropping a deuce. Also, this post is 100% recyclable.

A Brief Note From Cube Town

It was a very busy Monday after one of the groups sent out some patches that if they weren’t installed all of the financial applications would stop working. The only problem was they updated the applications on the server side, but never bothered to send the patches to any of the client-side machines. Oh, and the group who did it was claiming it was the helpdesks fault, even though we don’t even have to ability to push out patches to either servers or clients. Way to go applications group!

Being that it was really busy, there haven’t been a lot of notable events. It seems to just about everyone is burning out all at once and they all seem to want to leave the company or change shifts, but no one wants to move around in a way that you can just swap people back and forth. The Sith Lord is reverting back to a former persona in which he complained about work the second I get in the office. I can only hear “Welcome to Sucksville” so many times before I snap and welcome him to ShutTheFuckUpsville.

Beardface, who has only been a Cuber for about two months, is complaining about never seeing people and being bored, though he cusses and tells people to die in a fire every time the phone rings. Beardface moved from Virginia Beach just before coming back to work here, he’s left and come back twice now, and is living with his parents while they get back on their feet. The crowded house (7-9 people in a 3 bedroom house) is becoming smaller with each day, so nerves are frayed as is, and then to come in and deal with assholes (both co-workers and the people on the phone) only makes it work. The fact that he works late nights and the rest of his family are daywalkers is enough to push you over the edge.

The Gimp, who may be known as The Bear in the future due to my weird dream where he was running around with a bear head on, is reaching his end solely because of his exposure to Nate Dogg. I can imagine how he feels based on my rather limited exposure to him. It’s like babysitting a stoned, retarded child. He has a permanent stoned college kid voice and is a little slow on the draw. Over the time that I’ve known him, I’ve decided that, in all seriousness, he has a learning disability. That’s the only thing that could explain the way he works and the fact that he can’t seem to retain things even after over three years. One thing he seems to have the hardest time with is realizing that calling daywalkers at 3am is bad. The fact that the trouble ticket is dated during the day, was submitted by someone on first shift, and that the sun is not anywhere to be seen doesn’t register with him. No imagine that you have to baby sit this oversized child and having to do your job and most of his and you’d probably start slipping.

I on the other hand am slowly becoming bitter and hateful. Days and days of having idiots ask me the same questions over and over, those would be my coworkers, and never learning, and having abrasive and annoying personalities has reinforced my old hatred of people in general. But I have a week kayaking and beach vacation coming up soon, so maybe I can relax and stave off going postal for just a little bit longer.

Master of the Cubiverse

It’s dangerous when someone has nearly absolute power. It’s even more so when that person realizes he has that power. Do you become a malevolent overlord, a beneficent inspiration, or a shadowy figure who stealthily dabbles his fingers in the pool so that the ripples are small, strategic, and precise? I recently discovered that I am the Dick Cheney of the call center. I’m not the figure head, but I have frightening amount of power. The recent incident with Stonehenge Mouth proved this. On Wednesday night I sent my open to my boss and on Thursday I was ordered to monitor everything Stonehenge Mouth did and write a report on anything his screwed upon. Today before I left the office I got a phone call from my boss telling me that as soon as they could hire someone else Stonehenge Mouth would be gone.

Now if this was the epic movie where the little furry footed guys are fighting the big scary eye over some sort of magic locket, or tiara, or say...ring…then this would be the part of the story where we all jumped up in triumph and sang obnoxious songs and smoked something that no one will admit it weed. Instead, I can’t help but feel guilty, somewhat dirty. From a business stand point getting rid of Stonehenge Mouth makes sense. He’s a detriment to morale, decreases productivity because of the fact that everyone else has to solve his issues, and he sullies our credibility by lying, misinforming, and not following through on his promises. On a personal and karmic level it’s just deserts. A foul, hateful man getting what’s coming to him. And yet, I can’t help but feeling bad because the whole reason he is getting fired is because I simply don’t like him. His wife and kids are going to be punished, ultimately, because of my selfish actions.

Now it’s not like him and his family are going to be destitute and living on the streets. His wife works for an aeronautical company and makes a decent living, he gets military disability, and will probably get unemployment after he leaves because they’ll make him step down instead of firing him. However, it doesn’t change the fact that it will affect all their lives. Yet again, my selfishness also rises to the surface on this part as well. The fear that the next person will be worse. Stonehenge Mouth was the replacement for a guy named Average Joe. His name was a joke. It really was Joe (the only real name I’m likely to disclose here), but he was anything but average. In fact, he was fucking crazy.

Average Joe was one in a long string of ITT Tech graduates. I don’t know how ITT operates in the rest of the country, but if the grads that have graced the Harmon Kardon chairs of the Cube then it’s basically a retail diploma store. Sadly, of all the grads we’ve seen he was the strongest, but also the craziest. Average Joe would be sitting at his desk, quietly, not having said anything to anyone in over an hour and suddenly he’d start shaking his head back and forth making loud noises. After a minute of this he’d stop as suddenly as he started and then he’d be quiet again for a long period of time. Average Joe would be on the phone helping someone, and doing a good job at it, and then he’d cuss someone out (either on the phone or his neighbor) for no reason. They tried moving him around from one shift and group to another and just when they were getting ready to fire him, he disappeared. He stopped going to school (he was going for another degree), he never went home, and turned up a few weeks later in Charlotte, NC emailing my former boss asking him to tell his parents. And this is who Stonehenge Replaced, who as crazy as he was, had nothing on Stonehenge Mouth.

These are the things that someone has to deal with when they have the power. Not the events themselves, but knowing you’re responsible for those events. If the next person is worse, I’ll have made everyone’s life even more miserable just because I wanted to cater to my whims. On the other hand, it’s just a job and these are just office politics. It’s not like I’m the dark puppeteer behind the war in Iraq, global warming, or civil war in Africa. Though, if this little experiment in shadow governance works out, maybe I will turn my attention towards Serialkiller. We shall see…

Slacking and Sacking

What a slacker I turned out to be. Missed two posts without even realizing it until last night. I’ve started working out after I get off work and I’m so tired when I get in that I didn’t even think about it. I even fell asleep during the first airing of last weeks Battlestar Galactica episode, but luckily Sci-Fi has nothing better to do than show the same thing 100 times a day. The waking and sleeping life have blurred so much that I’ve been having work dreams. Last night I had a dream that The Gimp was running around the parking garage in the dark screaming with a head from a big cartoon bear suit head on. That was it, just him and his big cartoon head, and screaming. But enough excuses.

Things are reaching critical mass with Stonehenge Mouth. I’m losing my ability to keep my mouth shut and my comments to myself and it seems I’m not alone. Since coming back from his surgery he has not only returned to his normal abysmal self, but has found the motivation and energy to exceed his previous record highs. His idiocy, negativity and unrelenting badgering have been honed and focused into some sort of doomsday device of loathing and hatred that would make a James Bond villain cackle with maniacal laughter at his ingenuity. Sadly, there’s no one to ransom to make him go away, and no secret agent to suavely take him out in a flurry of sex and flames.

Things probably started going south when I sent an email out to some of my coworkers linking to an article about a recent archaeological dig at Stonehenge with the caption “Looks like they’ve been digging around in Bob’s mouth again” where Bob is Stonehenge Mouth’s actual name. Oh yeah, and someone forwarded the email to Stonehenge Mouth. That didn’t go over too well. After that he was more confrontational with me, understandably, but he also started being hostile to others because it seemed he started to realize that most of the others around him couldn’t stand him either.

Today it became obvious that people had put up with Stonehenge Mouth for as long as they were willing when an open letter made its way around the office that was critical of not only of his personal habits, but of the business and monetary impact he was having on the company. The fact that the letter was making its rounds wasn’t the surprise, mostly because I’m the one that wrote the letter, but the fact that all but one person (other than Stonehenge Mouth of course) signed the letter in support and sent it to our manager. I’m actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow just to see if my boss says or does anything in response. I’m even curious if I’ll feel guilty if they fire him because of my bitching.

I’m going to work on the whole schedule thing. Here’s hoping I can tear myself away from the TV for a few minutes Friday for another action packed issue.

Mr. Murder Goes on Vacation

The weather is warming up, which means that people will inevitably start taking vacations. I’ll be hitting the beach next month, The Gimp is taking off two weeks to chill and go play Army (he’s in the Reserves), and this week Serialkiller is off to go fishing. It’s not really what people do that’s important; it’s the fact that they’re gone. Depending on who leaves it’s like a little vacation for those left behind. Such as when Stonehenge Mouth was out for over a month for his bypass surgery and it was near bliss. The only problem was that people misconstrued my sentiments when I said I hope he doesn’t come back and interpreted it as me wishing he would die. Minor difference, but still…

When Serialkiller goes on vacation there’s always at least a day where even though he’s physically not there, he’s still there in spirit. He sends us emails from his Blackberry asking status of certain issues, or just something stupid like “What does my out of office message say?” This could be understandable if Serialkiller was anyone of even minor importance, but instead he’s a nobody ticket monkey like the rest of us and the effort is more conceit than efficiency or dedication. What's worse is that when Serialkiller is gone, we really don’t feel the impact at all. Why? Because his only job is to answer e-mails. Instead of him answering emails it’s just divvied up amongst the rest of us which doesn’t really cause us much more work

Don’t get me wrong. I have no illusions that anyone misses me when I go on vacation however I, like most everyone else in The Cubes, get comments when I come back like “Glad you’re back” or “We missed you” even if it is all lies. When someone like Serialkiller or Stonehenge Mouth comes back it’s a sense of dread and complaints. The truth is that there are some people that you dislike working with so much you would rather be inconvenienced with more work and responsibility than have to go another day with someone that makes you break computer mice whenever they walk up to you. Or ask your boss in front of everyone else “So when is Stonehenge Mouth getting fired?” Or offer to do the work of two people all alone at night rather than spend another night dealing with the lies, complaints, and ineptitude of Shitpants McPooperton.

The sad thing is that vacation is finite. In many cases, just firing them would be so much more enjoyable. What you have to worry about is whether the replacements will be worse than the ones you’re getting rid. Just like it’s true that there’s always someone better, it’s also true that there’s always someone worse. Maybe The Executioner and I should conspire to get someone axed just to see what happens. Just a thought…

The Truth About...part ii

Friday’s issue was preempted by Rainbow Six and the new season of Battlestar Galactica.

The truth is that The Shill really is a complete and utter shill. For those who don’t know what a shill is, here’s a quick synopsis. A shill is a member of a con who acts like an uninvolved party to help sell or add credence to the con in the presence of the mark being conned. He could be a guy at a bar vouching for a story the principal in the con is telling the mark, or he could be your boss who tries to help sell the story that corporate office is trying to sell which is actually complete bullshit. Case in point, I had a bit of a payroll issue in which I was making one amount of money for a year and a half and then suddenly informed I was going to be having a 10% reduction because of a “clerical error”. After much arguing and fussing The Shill tried to convince me he was my cheerleader…then he spent 3 weeks avoiding me. He came back with an offer, in which I kept explaining that there was no offer, it was fix or quit. He tried to tell me this was the best offer I could expect, I reiterated by mantra of fix or quit, In the end I won the battle but it was a long fight, and at each stage The Shill kept trying to insist I could expect and more, I was making too much money to begin with so it wasn’t a cut in pay but putting me at what I SHOULD be making, that I should take it personally. He was trying to shill the story that corporate office fed him.

The truth is that Shitpants McPooperton never actually shit his pants that I can prove. The smells and noises and the frequent runs (as in him literally running to the bathroom) precludes that at some point he has shit himself, and probably at work. Shitpants had a routine that was unbreakable. First off, Mr. McPooperton would show up at least 20 minutes late every day, and then after almost exactly 20 minutes of being in the office would have to go. He would get up, grunt and strain and mumble “gotta go take a shit”. After that, he would go to the bathroom for whatever was left inside him every hour on the hour. He was much older than anyone else in Cubeville, but all of his stories were of a time that happened before I was likely even born. He was a drummer, which he pointed out any chance he got, and supposedly toured with a very respected regional band, opening regionally for bands such as Lynard Skynard and AC/DC. There was, however, no proof beyond his stories that they were more than a shabby bar band. As was discussed in The Gimp’s set, he was a horrible employee who was a terrible support person, a liar, lazy, and of course…full of shit.

The truth is that The JC is not Jesus Christ. He is the smartest man in the Cubes, which is why he’s now the lead for the Call Center. He’s a rather quiet, unassuming person who, despite his outward demeanor, isn’t above making heads roll and shaking up the system from the ground up. He’s not the second coming of Christ, but he’s the closest thing a helpdesk will ever come to. Thus..The JC.

The truth is Stalker Bait has not managed to earn herself any stalkers. Tweedle Dee has gone from leaning over her cubicle with amorous looks in his eyes to ignoring her completely. The Sith Lord is passively wooing her with uncomfortable innuendo and non committal passes at her which she seems to shrug off with great ease.

The truth is, these are pretty much just filler and next issue will be a real story and not just the blogger equivalent of a flashback episode. The truth is, the last week has been so busy that no one has really done anything worth mentioning. The same people whine about the same stuff, and everyone is acting exactly as they always have but no more interesting than usual. Such is life…

The Truth About... Part I

The truth is that Serialkiller isn’t really a serial killer. At least not that anyone can prove. He’s never left a bloody cleaver on his desk or a severed finger in his trash can. He has never had one of those uncomfortable moments where you walk up on him digging around in his trunk and he has to hide the body wrapped in plastic in there. He got his nickname because of this uncomfortable feeling that I get every time I talk to him. I look in his eyes and there’s this darkness and evil hiding behind those orbs. Serialkiller is a rather smart guy with an education that is wasted in The Cubes. However, he seems to have this sense of entitlement and acts like he is more important than anyone else. He’s a phone monkey like the rest of us, yet he actually struts around the Call Center like he’s a king looking in on his serfs

The truth is that Sith Lord isn’t really a Sith Lord. He doesn’t have mystical powers and doesn’t have Midi-chlorians teeming through his body. He got his nickname early in my employment because he would wear a Sith robe, and on occasion an Elven cloak, when it rained. He didn’t help the image any. I started working near Halloween and he was excited about the lightsaber that he had made from a kit and a pair of boots he had special ordered to look like the ones worn by Qui-Gon-Jinn in the prequel movies. I actually started a small war with him once when I kidnapped his Darth Tater figure he had on his desk. Despite that extreme geekdom, he actually hasn’t done any of that in at least a year. He took all his toys home (Treebeard, Darth Tater, a dozen Transformers, and more) and doesn’t even give me daily updates on his World of Warcraft character anymore. (In the effort of full disclosure, I had to Google most of the Star Wars terms because I didn’t really know them)

The truth is, The Executioner never killed anyone. He’s not Serialkiller’s accomplice. When he goes fishing he releases all his catches. He only recently got his nickname after Shitpants McPooperton got fired. It takes some quick back story for it to make since though. For every call that comes into the Call Center, we have to create a ticket. If we solve an issue over the phone, we close that ticket. If we can’t solve it, or it’s not under our scope of service we send that ticket to the next responsible group. Documenting issues and routing tickets is the majority of our job. At the end of each day all those tickets have to be checked for accuracy and adherence to protocol. For a long time this was my job, but it’s a thankless, monotonous job that doesn’t come with any extra money or perks. So I dropped it all on The Executioner. Shitpants was a horrible employee. He lied, he faked tickets, and he was rude to people. On top of all this he would be a few hours late for work at least once a week, and was on time if he was only 30 minutes late. There were months in a row where he couldn’t go a single week without calling out at least one day a week. So when he got fired there was ample reason to kick him to the curb. In Shitpants twisted mind though, he had never done anything wrong, and started e-mailing The Executioner after he was firing cussing him out and blaming him for losing his job. And that’s how The Executioner got his name.

More insider secrets and tell all interviews to come…

Mondays

It’s nothing specific to The Cube, but Monday’s are hell. I’m not sure what it is about sophisticated IT equipment, but something happens every weekend to make something fail spectacularly. Patches get rolled out and an entire office worth of computers crash. The email server, taking a well deserved siesta, wakes up late on Monday and sprains its ankle trying to catch up. It tends to claim it was “pushed down the stairs,” but we all know it’s in an abusive relationship. While it’s bad enough to have critical systems crash during the day when support groups are there and waiting for things to go bad, it’s a whole new game during the night shift.

Aside from the typical troubleshooting and ticket routing that the day shift does, the night shift is also responsible for monitoring critical systems. In other words, it’s my job to wake people up at night when things go bad. I’ve gotten cussed out, for waking people up, a surprisingly small number of times. The real problem comes when the people who are supposed to wake up when you call them don’t. Or they turn off their phones. Don’t return phone calls. The fun really starts to mount when the entire chain of command doesn’t answer their phone. Tonight was one of those nights.

To add to the teetering tower of mismanagement, tonight was also the celebration for the launch of a new, high profile product. This means that anyone who is answering their phone is sitting at a table with fine linen table clothes, real silver service, waiters with towels over the arms, and valet parking attendants out joy riding in their luxury vehicles. They’re also drunk. That part is kind of important, because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to think logically and trouble shoot a system that has crashed and costing a company a million dollars an hour while you’ve got 6 glasses of Dom Perignon under your belt. It’s not easy.

What makes all this worth being the person responsible for getting all these over paid draft dodgers in line is being held responsible when you do your job exactly as your being paid to, but no one else does. When the chain of command failed for 2 hours straight (that’s 2 million dollars lost) my desk began swarming with tipsy upper management types asking me what things aren’t going the way they envisioned them when they spent a whole 20 minutes 10 years ago deciding how the emergency contact system should work. At some point protocol goes out the door and you have to be blunt. Saying “I’m doing my goddamn job, maybe you should find a few more people who give a shit where it counts.” is not the answer.

Tomorrow should be fun…

The Man

The Cubers have a game called The Man. It’s our version of being “it” or “tag” or “man with the ball”. Unlike being it in a game of tag, there’s no pride in being The Man. It’s not something you can just pass off, and if you conspire to make someone else The Man, you have just dissed them in the most extreme way possible. People will complain about being The Man. They’ll say they’re tired of being The Man. Why can’t someone else be The Man?

So what is The Man? It’s simple. When you are The Man, you are the one that has either been sacrificed or decided to be Tweedle Dee and Stonehenge Mouth’s best friends. The Gimp had long been the reluctant king of being The Man. He had been duped into having lunch with Tweedle Dee, and because of their schedules even had to get a ride with him once when his car broke down. Somehow The Gimp had managed to avoid Stonehenge Mouth’s wrath, but the degree and frequency in which he got stuck with Tweedle Dee it didn’t really matter. But when Beardface joined the Cubers, things began to change.

Beardface is new to the Call Center, but not to the company. He’s a veteran who has worked in just about every facet of IT that the company covers or needs. Regardless, I felt the need to warn him about Tweedle Dee and Stonehenge Mouth. I figured since I was going to have to work at night with him, I should do him a solid and give him the heads up. He didn’t heed that warning, wondering how bad it could be. Two days later it nearly came to blows between Beardface and Stonehenge Mouth. He managed to find some sort of common ground with Tweedle Dee and took pity on him, but his attitude towards Stonehenge Mouth was one of severe and extreme hatred.

What really did it for Beardface was the fact that Stonehenge Mouth is Army, and he’s Marines. Now that alone isn’t enough to cause violence, but the fact that Stonehenge Mouth thinks it’s no end of fun to “joke” around about Marines being pussies or telling some of the more colorful military jokes (in which the branch of service is pretty much interchangeable, but no less insulting) with such verve and spite that I felt compelled to jump him and I had no pride to insult. The sad part is that Stonehenge Mouth thinks he’s being entertaining and he has a new friend. This has been a solid week of heckling from that scraggly alien looking redneck.

Beardface complained today about how quiet The Gimp is. He said he had tried to start conversations with him and he just didn’t say much more than agreeing or nodding. I whispered to Beardface to call him the man, and I obviously wasn’t quiet enough, because The Gimp jumped up and started going on in great length about how much it sucks to be The Man. It’s a game so nefarious that even the meek get animated. It’s nothing like Ninja Scare You. You don’t look forward to it. You don’t spend time planning your next time playing The Man, unless it’s how to avoid playing it. Maybe we need a new game.

I did the only thing I knew to do, go somewhere else. I spent most of the week hiding with the Sith Lord and Stalker Bait, who were Stonehenge Mouth’s targets early in the week when he was trying to start rumors about them. Sadly, I don’t think we’ve heard the end of their escapades. The sexual tension is mounting…

The Art of Nicking

Nicknames have been a prominent part of this tale from the beginning. It is not just an attempt at protecting the people I work with and keeping things anonymous, though that helps. Nicknames have been a way for me to tell stories about people no one knows in a way they’ll remember the character from one story to the next. It did not start intentionally; it was just easier to tell my friends about Girl That Looks Like A Boy than trying to get people to remember who she really was. However, once the nicknames became prevalent, they became expected and people began asking what their nicknames were. The problem was that I had different nicknames for people depending on who I was with. I felt awkward telling stories about The Cunt around my mom, so I had to come up with alternates, like Dirty Downunder or Damn Dirty Whore (which knowing women and their aversion to the c-word, these are much, much better). Another problem comes when someone asks their nickname and you don’t have anything nice for them.

The office does become a bit confusing at times when you mention Cubers by their nickname to someone who isn’t in on the joke. When Hot Legs, a cougar in another department who still has some moves to show off, asks who has been working on someone’s issue and you tell her The Gimp, she doesn’t know who your talking about, plus she wants to know who and what a gimp is. On the other hand, when your relationship with most customers is by phone and their knowledge of the others in the office are from your stories they don’t seem to know that when they’re talking to “Bob” they’re really talking to Nate Dogg. Especially when Nate Dogg doesn’t know, nor understand his nickname.

Not all nicknames are successful. A few people have had several nicknames that all failed before they got one that stuck, or I just gave up. A previous boss was initially nicknamed Loafers, which came from the fact that he always wore Penny Loafers to work. It ended up falling flat when it came to light that he was gay, and Loafers ended up sounding derogatory (as in “light in the loafers”, a euphemism for being gay). In the end, Loafers left the Call Center without having a nickname at all. The Gimp was one of the hardest people to nick a name. For the longest time he was so non-descript that nothing stuck. He came in, did his job, talked very little, did even less to stick out, and didn’t complain too much. Doesn’t Give A Shit Guy just wasn’t working. It wasn’t until he repeatedly jumped on the Tweedle Dee grenade and went to lunch with him and ended up walking out to the garage with him at the end of the day, despite have the same hatred for Tweedle Dee as everyone else that we realized what a sadist or living martyr he really was.

One of the side effects of writing these stories is that people who read it, the very few there are, all want a nickname like I give all the other people in my life. People don’t seem to realize or understand the amount of research, knowledge, and work goes into a single nickname. It’s proportionately similar to a car maker doing market tests before they give a new car name the go ahead. If you think Stratus was a horrible name, just imagine what the ones that got denied were. Regardless, the nicking of names has become an integral part of my life and will continue to be so. As long as there are Cubers, there will be nicknames. And as long as there are nicknames, there will be stories.