One of my Indian coworkers was planning a surprise party for a friend who’s graduating from college and was having trouble finding a track whose main theme was congratulations. She found a track by Juliana Theory that would have been wildly inappropriate (read: hilarious if used). This irony occurred again with The Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, and Blue October when she finally stumbled upon one that seemed to do by some group I can’t recall. I asked her if she thought the DJs would have the track to which she replied “they’re DJs, if they don’t have it, they just sing it”.
Tag: work
A cookie, of the damned
I got into work about 3.5 hours late today in a last-ditch attempt to cram in enough sleep to kill my cold and was still at work around 6:00 PM when Chris Fosmire walked in with a bucket of square buttery-looking cookies. Chris grabbed a cookie and his coffee, sitting down in his Chair of Science and began coughing so I simply tried one.
I experience bad food like most people experience car accidents (and vice versa); I see that something terrible is about to happen and I try to summon my reflexes to avert disaster but usually fail. On the other hand, when I’m about to get into a car accident (or run over kittens, another story) I take my hands and feet off the wheel and pedals, respectively and brace for impact. I could hear the screams from the bundle of nerves with the painful task of transferring disgust-ions (the fundamental particle of crappy food) to my brain and back. The cookie was supposed to a cinnamon butter cookie but was something far more sinister.
- I think the cinnamon was replaced with pepper
- I think the vegetable oil was replaced with Italian dressing
- I think the flour was replaced with shredded sandpaper
Chris and I were unsure what to do with these infernal cookies until inspiration struck. We put it in the marketing department breakroom with a innocuous sign that said “Thank You!” without saying who it came from. Worse than a baby at the doorstep.
A cookie, of the damned
I got into work about 3.5 hours late today in a last-ditch attempt to cram in enough sleep to kill my cold and was still at work around 6:00 PM when Chris Fosmire walked in with a bucket of square buttery-looking cookies. Chris grabbed a cookie and his coffee, sitting down in his Chair of Science and began coughing so I simply tried one.
I experience bad food like most people experience car accidents (and vice versa); I see that something terrible is about to happen and I try to summon my reflexes to avert disaster but usually fail. On the other hand, when I’m about to get into a car accident (or run over kittens, another story) I take my hands and feet off the wheel and pedals, respectively and brace for impact. I could hear the screams from the bundle of nerves with the painful task of transferring disgust-ions (the fundamental particle of crappy food) to my brain and back. The cookie was supposed to a cinnamon butter cookie but was something far more sinister.
- I think the cinnamon was replaced with pepper
- I think the vegetable oil was replaced with Italian dressing
- I think the flour was replaced with shredded sandpaper
Chris and I were unsure what to do with these infernal cookies until inspiration struck. We put it in the marketing department breakroom with a innocuous sign that said “Thank You!” without saying who it came from. Worse than a baby at the doorstep.
You have to use it because we gave it to you
I got an automated call today from Digital Services telling me there was a problem with my workstation install (computer troll setting up my desktop) and that I should use my system until the deficiency was fixed. I had nothing to do otherwise so I spent most of the day wandering around and avoiding eye contact with housekeeping. Around 1:00 PM after 5 hours a person from Digital Services comes by and drops off a mousepad. That was the deficiency, a mousepad. I USE A FUCKING OPTICAL MOUSE. To prove the point I started moving the mouse around on my face which kind of scared him and he left. I threw out the mousepad and set into making up time avoiding work by dicking around on the Internet.
Quid pro quo, Clarise. Quid pro quo…
The magical computer faeries finally arrived today with my new desktop and after telling the installation guy who had the deadly combination of horrible breath and a soft voice that required leaning in to hear him that I’d been at BMS before he simply left without telling me my new password. I called him as he’d left his card and he said he couldn’t tell me my password and that I’d have to call in to do a manual password reset that history informed me takes about an hour. I resigned myself losing my afternoon in a labyrinthine bureaucracy until I saw that he’d left his notebook containing the remaining set-ups and passwords for the rest of his jobs that day. I called again:
Me: Mr. X, are you missing something?
Him: What do you mean?
Me: Oh, I don’t know. A certain yellow datebook with a list of executive passwords in it?
Him: I’ll swing by and pick it up. Leave it on your desk.
Me: The book could be lost again before you get here. I certainly can’t be responsible for your stuff…
Him: What do you want.
Me: My password… now.
Him: I can’t that violates our firm’s policy I’ve told you that…
Me: Could you hold on, your notebook appears to have disappeared.
Him: Okay! I’ll tell you. I’ll be over in about an hour.
Me: Half an hour.
Him: 45 minutes.
Me: Deal.
I hung up the phone and resumed petting my Persian cat in my high-back leather chair.
So secret only everyone can get it
There’s a super-secret IT room at work that normally requires a blood sample, ID badge and post-humous Nobel prize to enter and even when the two people that can go in do, they look both ways before entering and slip through the door rather than open it. I saw a fleeting glimpse in it once and each monitor had a privacy screen and there was a log-in log-out book.
Today, there were contractors working in the room and the normal entry procedures went through, except to simplify getting back in, they jammed a garbage can in the door. A fucking garbage can. The whole day consisted of an intricate dance of curious employees trying to peek in the sepulcher of data and workers looking bewildered at why everyone’s staring at the garbage can. Who needs multi-factor authentication when you have a 1 gallon Rubbermaid cylinder?
Applied Mathematics, eh?
One of my co-workers was doing a test involving literally hundreds of paper towels. She’d throw them out and quickly fill the small garbage bins of which we have about 8 along avoiding the 55 gallon drum on wheels as well. She continued to fill these small bins until all 8 were full and she started dumping the paper towels in the personal garbage bins of the technicians. As she approached mine with a hand full of wet paper towels I asked her why she didn’t just use the big drum. She replied that she didn’t want to fill it if someone else needed it.  It’s a fifty five gallon drum with net capacity of 8 times the smaller cans she’s filling. She’s said she has a degree in applied mathematics. I think one of the two words in that degree should be removed.
Don't go banerking my heart
I haven’t gotten as much sleep as I’ve wanted. This hasn’t interfered with much but I fear my work performance may be dropping. Today when documenting failure modes of plastics under stress I wrote “banerked” instead of “break”. I hope my boss doesn’t notice, if he does I’ll tell him I must have banerked the keyboard.
It's hot ice. It'll be huge
I work 12 hour shifts at BMS, M/W/F and at 8:00AM and 5:00PM I want a cold drink, so I brought in an ice tray into work. At first it was my little secret, then slowly my ice started disappearing. This wouldn’t annoy me accept that even when emptied it was never refilled. I consider this karmic balance for my theft of candies (1-09-7) except when I found their use: in the morning a woman comes in with a piping hot cup of coffee, and at 10 AM she reheats it and then puts two ice cubes in. WHY WOULD YOU MICROWAVE IT THEN ADD ICE! This isn’t an isolated occurrence as I’ve verified that she does it near daily. I’ve recently discovered that Gastroenteritis can withstand both heat and cold, vengeance will be mine!
I
Soon to be married coworker designed a wax seal to use on the wedding invitations. The seal was made using a highly complicated construction process out of the goodness of the person who generates prototypes. Constant talk of dimensions, materials, design formats and production time had me geared up to see a seal worthy of the Q’in Dynasty Emperor and I saw the work today. I saw the completed product and met it with Segway-like disappointment, it’s the following: ” : D C : “. And when I mentioned sarcastically that it made two happy little faces I was met with a “I was hoping people would notice”. Luckily it will go great with the “D <3 C 4 eV4R” commemorative mini-lite brites.