A new guy was driving the shuttle from the remote lot today. He stopped way before the garbage can and totally screwed up the order of the line. I didn't care much as I was last anyway.

The woman with the big ones was first in line and ended up having to sit shotgun. The driver didn't seem to care too much about her big ones. He was having a pretty heated conversation on his cellphone.

The driver was Haitian, and the whole van stayed quiet as he yelled Creole into the phone. The guy in front of me tried to start a conversation with the person next to him, but the driver just yelled louder.

When I got to the office, everyone was already in our classroom except for Gerald. Angela was telling a story to a few of the other folks about how she works weekends at Starbucks to pick up extra cash.

She was saying how she doesn't like people adding sugar or milk to their coffee. Apparently true coffee lovers don't.

I guess Starbucks must stock cream and sugar so they know which customers to hate.

Gerald came in right at 9:00 and totally stank of booze. He told me later that he and Matt drank a bottle of gin and watched "The Wizard of Oz" last night. He said he was probably going to bag out sick before lunch.

We had a consultant named Rachel come in to teach us phone etiquette. The first thing she told us is we should always smile when we're talking, because the caller can hear the smile on the other end. I thought back to yesterday, and began to wonder how someone would react to hearing a smile from someone they just called a cum dumpster.

Reynaldo asked what they should do if the topic of the conversation was sad. She must have thought it was a joke, because she laughed and tried to move on.

Then Reynaldo told her that he was listening to calls yesterday, and a man called up and said he wanted to cash out his account because his cat needed dialysis treatment. The man got very mad when he heard he couldn't take money out of his account for pet surgery, and Reynaldo didn't think it would be appropriate to smile during such a conversation.

Rachel said it was OK not to smile if the conversation was sad, and told us to use our discretion.

We were in between exercises when I saw a couple tow trucks drive into the lot. Gerald had told me he was turning the steering wheel when he parked so it would crash into the car next to his if they tried to tow it. He said tow truck drivers are opportunists, and would skip his car for one that would give them less hassle.

Rachel told us she was going to leave the room for the next exercise and we would have to close our eyes and keep completely silent while she was gone. We were probably thirty seconds into it when I heard a smash and the sound of car alarms outside.

I took a look out the window and saw a tow truck with what looked like Gerald's car hitched up smashed into the rear of the neighboring SUV.

I whispered to Gerald to get his attention, but he fell asleep before the car alarms went off. I gave him a nudge and asked if that was his car out there.

He just got this real defeated look on his face, and sat through the rest of the exercise staring straight forward.

Before we broke for lunch, Paige came in and asked Gerald if she could speak with him. Apparently, Paige told him they don't give any sort of written warnings to employees in training, but if he couldn't conform to the company's parking policies they were going to ask him not to return to work.

I guess the other car was a senior manager with the company, so he had to go and work things out with him as well.

Gerald told me that he wasn't sure he'd still be able to drive his car after this, but he figured he'd play it safe and park in the remote lot either way.

After lunch we did some role playing and then spent the last couple of hours listening to calls. I sat with Manny again. He got a call from a women who spent a half an hour talking about how her sister was a lesbian and how she caught her peeing standing up.

I'm beginning to think they should charge admission to this place.