Coworker: Where cake?
Me: What do you mean? I bring in baked goods on Monday.
Coworker: No, you bring on Tuesday sometime, even Wednesday.
Me: I’ve never brought in a baked good on a day besides the first in a work week.
Coworker: You bring in cake on Friday last week.
Me: I wasn’t even in on Friday last week.
Coworker: You always bring in cake each day. I remember.
Me: Sam, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Sam: No.
Me: Ed, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Ed: No.
Me: John, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
John: No.
Me: Tinh, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Tinh: Hell, no.
Me: Up until I’m taken on as a full time position where baking is in my job description, I receive a cost center to which I can charge for your Wednesday cake, or you provide for me vacation days such that Wednesday is the first day of the week, you shall never see a Wednesday cake.
Coworker: Ok. I come back tomorrow.
Tag: coworkers
Gone in 55 Minutes
The apple bundt cake was heavy, partly from the glass pan, partly from the five gala apples that went into the 13″ x 9″ dish, and partly from the ton of awesome contained within the pecans. I was hailed as a hero for unlocking the taste of apple and using cinnamon and nutmeg in something besides a pumpkin pie. I’ve been entered into the running for a Nobel Peace Prize as the recipe may stop wars and I keep getting called by Time Magazine. A statue is being erected in my honor and the part of my desk that held the tray holding the cake has been cordoned off with velvet rope as hallowed ground.
I picked up my phone to casually call Mrs. “homemade is boxed cake mix plus a tin of frosting” and tension mounted as the phone rang. I hit the magic 5 rings and heard “I won’t be in today… prattle prattle prattle”. Slam went the phone receiver as I saw the last piece of cake disappear in a cloud of salivating coworker and when the dust cleared I saw the clock: only 55 minutes had elapsed from arrival in work to first coworker discovering the cake to it being totally consumed. I’m lucky my rival wasn’t in, as I wouldn’t want to appear to be gloating by summoning her to an empty dish… I need to save that for the actual competition. She may be prepared for battle, I will win as I’m preparing for war.
Server Insight
I came in today and the CAD server was down. Nothing had really changed, but everything was apparently broken and everyone had pretty well left by the time I rolled in at 2. I came upon my frazzled boss trying to troubleshoot the problem.
Me: Can I try a few things?
Him: Do you know what you’re doing?
Me: Does the host do automatic backups?
Him: Yes. Weekly.
Me: Then I know enough.
–30 minutes later–
Me: It’s up.
Him: How did you do that?
Me: I turned it off and turned it back on again.
Him: I tried that!
Me: How many times did you do it?
Him: Once.
Me: Ah… There’s the problem. I did it three times and between the 2nd and 3rd tries I turned off and on all the services manually. Remember *whisper* Windows Server 2003 can smell fear.
Insanity sometimes receives the quant definition of doing the same thing over and over an expecting different results. When it comes to near million-dollar pieces of software deployed across multiple servers with a Java frontend, it appears insanity is a requirement of operation.
Baked Goods Throwdown
Sometimes I embellish dialog to make a narrative clear. Today, I have no need.
Woman: Are you, Terry?
Me: I am.
Woman: And are these where the muffins are?
Me: Were, they’re gone.
Woman: So you do bake. So do I, I’m here to challenge you.
Me: Oh, ok.
Woman: I brought in brownies Friday, and they’re still here. (That’s a display of prowess?)
Me: And you’re challenging me to?
Woman: Bake.
Me: I do, we just talked about muffins.
Woman: I am the queen of baking, and it I will remain. I’m not going to lose my crown to an upstart.
Me: Persuant to my statement of sex in HR, I am fine with you being the queen of baking. (Also, I’ve been here longer)
Woman: *Scowl* One day, I will challenge you.
Me: Ok.
Somehow, this has been spreading around and I’ve randomly stopped in the hall-
Coworker #1: Don’t worry, Terry. She makes a fine cupcake, but she couldn’t match you in muffins.
Coworker #2: I have a faith in you. I have tasted your bacon cookies, and I became a better person.
Coworker #2: Don’t fucking worry, she fucking burns every fucking thing she’s ever fucked *awkward moment* up making.
Donut Derby
Marketing’s recent return to our office clime has resulted in some odd collisions. As a thank you to engineering, they left out donut holes for us assumably the night before as I saw no marketing folk in when I arrived at 5 AM. There was a box on each photo copier and the coffee area and each of my passes about those areas netted two more donut holes, a habit some other early risers also picked up. When the first marketing person did arrive the donut holes were largely gone and consolidated into one box that I wound up finishing the next day as no one wanted to take the last one, despite having no qualms with consuming this lone survivor’s numerous kin.
I briefly convinced myself I’d not consumed in excess until I calculated that each box would have had to have been about 1/4 mile away from each other to create sufficient calorie expenditure to equilibrate input with output. At least if I stuck to the two furthest boxes I could be fine within an order of magnitude. That’s good enough in many sciences, I hope nutrition’s one of them.
Gift Horse Crackerjacks
I made crackerjacks for my Monday Baked Good and got a largely positive response except for a few people that did the following:
Person: You know *chomp chomp chomp*, this isn’t technically a baked good.
Me: *Shouting over the sound of their munching* Why not?
Person: Well, *chomp chomp* you didn’t really bake *chomp chomp chomp* it.
Me: *Avoiding getting between person and crackerjacks for fear of losing finger* It went in the oven for over an hour.
Person: *Chomp chomp* eh… I still think it’s cheating. *Takes 1/2 lb chunk and leaves*
Good to know their purity of purpose didn’t get in the way of them eating four pounds of crackerjacks.
Scent of Change
I’d noticed a change in the tenor of work but didn’t get confirmation as to the cause until recently:
Me: Hey
Coworker: Yeah?
Me: Is it just me or are there more well-dressed angry people walking around?
Coworker: Global Marketing got moved into our building and they miss their spacier cubicles.
Me: Ah, that would also explain the increase in the number of expensive yogurts in the fridge and the uptick in the number people buying chai from the cafeteria.
Coworker: Yes. I think we should change the uniform of R&D to sweats and see if we can make them pop.
Task Designed to Assure Attention
My current work task is a glorified game of “find the hyphen”. I need to go through CAD drawing names and separate the title from the subtitle. Seemly a simple task until I found complications like “STD” used instead of “Standard” and “XS” instead of “Small” or “pediatric”. I thought I’d figured out all the oddities until my boss pointed out an error. One person had switched back and forth between XS, Small and Pediatric which I had just labeled XS. After parsing the filenames and datestamps and product types and request channels the only pattern I could find was that the term “Pediatric” was used if the request was reviewed by a female and “XS” or” Small” was used if the request was approved by a male. Hm…
Gorging to Avoid Insult
I bring in brownies on Monday, and as coincidence would have it another coworker brought in massive muffins. My too polite coworkers would see one, and take one, then see the other and not wanting to insult the provider, would take one as well. At about 11:30 this morning most of the too polite coworkers were stumbling around in insulin shock and the number of random requests for computer aid dropped precipitously. I should try to coordinate this “coincidence” more often.
Fatman Gambit
Office equipment is periodically reapportioned by our facilities people and Friday was one such day of reckoning. I came in late that day and was greeted at as a hero by office mates.
When facilities came to claim our superior chairs reclaimed from departed coworkers and pulled from executive dumpsters these minions of austerity were cowed by fears of angering the “Large One”. They left once told that the only chairs in the building that could accommodate my carriage were the really really nice ones that just happened to have a larger seat pan, an independent-spring back, adjustable arms and six casters instead of four. Furthermore, since I was a temp, I could theoretically work in anyone’s cube at any time so all the chairs had to stay instead of just mine. Further proof I work with geniuses.