Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Last night Gerald, Matt and I barricaded ourselves in the room again. We didn't want to be accessible when the mummy found out we locked the cabinet with all the snacks in it.

This time, he watched old war movies with the volume turned up all the way.

We got up this morning to find one of the cabinet doors hanging off the other by the baby lock Matt had put on. The mummy had consumer a jar of salsa and half a container of powdered cocoa mix.

He was laying in the box right where we left him. There was a salsa stain on one of his bandages.

When we got into work, we rode the elevator up with this guy who works on our floor with the blind guy who hates the animal lover. He always asks us if we just started and then introduces himself like we've never met before.

Gerald thinks he suffered some type of brain injury that keeps him from forming new memories. Today I told him my name was Clarence.

When we got home, Matt was standing in our doorway talking with two of the upstairs neighbors. It was a little girl and her grandmother, who only speaks Chinese.

The grandmother would yell at Matt, and the little girl would translate for her. It was pretty funny, as the girl kept acting out her grandmother's mannerisms as she translated.

They were complaining about the noise and said they'd call the cops tonight if it happened again.

Matt said we should write the mummy a note, but I wasn't entirely sure he could read. If he could, I assumed he could only read heiroglyphics, and I can't imagine there's a glyph for "television".

We ended up drawing a picture that showed a TV with jagged lines coming out of it to symbolize sound and a stick figure holding his hands over what would be his ears. I hope this gets the message across.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Last night the mummy kept us up watching the Game Show Network. There was a Price is Right marathon on.

I've had the theme stuck in my head all day. I would have been happier if that mummy had strangled us.

We were all too afraid to go out and tell him to turn it down. No one wanted to see that mummy watching TV with his dried up eyes.

When the morning came, we walked outside to find the mummy in the box right where we left him. It looked like he had trashed the rest of the apartment.

There was an open box of Oreos and a bunch of half eaten cookies on the table. Beside it was an empty carton of milk.

It looked like he had been drinking it right out of the container.

We went into the kitchen to find a bunch of tortilla chips and Cheerios scattered across the floor. This mummy is a total slob.

Gerald and I had to get to work, so Matt said he'd clean up. I thought it was only fair, as he was the one who wanted to keep the stupid thing.

Gerald and I spent all day at work Googling mummies. I used a bunch of different keywords to see if I could find out who our houseguest was:

"sloppy pharoah"
"messy pharoah"
"sloppy king egypt"

etc.

All Gerald found was a place you could order Yummy Mummy cereal in bulk. That stuff has been of the market for 15 years or so and Gerald was ready to order a case of it.

I figured he'd probably eat one bowl, find out it was stale, and leave the rest of the case in the corner of the kitchen until someone threw a tablecloth on it and turned it into a wet bar or something.

I told him they took that cereal off the shelf because kids who ate it were going blind. It seemed to work.

We got home and the mummy was still in his box. Matt said he hadn't seen it move all day.

Matt had equipped all the cabinets and the fridge with those baby-proof locks in the hopes that would keep the mummy from making a mess again. I don't know why he's already doing stuff to piss the thing off, but I'm also not the one who's going to have to pick up after it.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Gerald and I got stuck driving behind a station wagon on our way to work today. There were kids in the back seat and the woman was driving real slow.

It had been awhile since I had driven behind a station wagon, and I forgot how awkward it was to drive with people looking back at you. It's like going to a restaurant and being sat at a table with complete strangers.

Gerald got sick of driving behind her and started flashing his hi-beams so she'd let him pass. She started veering back and forth on the road as if she was taunting us. The kids started rocking from side to side in the back. One of them gave us the finger.

At one point, she slammed on the brakes and Gerald sped up and drove around. I saw the woman throw a Snapple bottle at us as we drove off.

When we got to the cemetary to park, I saw the station wagon pull in not too long after us. It came to a stop about 10 feet from us as we were about to hop the fence.

The woman driving had three kids in the back seat in addition to the two in the way back. The space that wasn't taken up by kids was filled with garbage.

She said, "What the fuck are you doing driving like that?" Gerald told her that wasn't any way to speak in front of her kids. She swore some more.

We hopped the fence and started walking to work. I looked up and saw Sue looking down at us.

I didn't read anything in the employee handbook about not making arrangements to park closer to the office, but I have to imagine they'd rather not have said arrangements involve a cemetary.

Sue walked by us as we walked in and didn't say anything. Either she doesn't care where we park or she's getting ready to fire us.

When Gerald and I got home, Matt was sitting in the living room with the crate on the floor in front of him. He said Mitch, the guy who took the slushy machine, had brought it back.

Mitch said he couldn't find anyone interested in a crate of fragile steak knives. I could see the crate had been pried open.

Matt said he decided to open up the crate when it came back, and said we should have a look at what's inside. He lifted off the top to reveal what looked like at first like a bunch of sliced up sheets and some large pieces of beef jerky poking out of it.

Beef jerky shaped like two hands. Beef jerky shaped like two feet. Beef jerky shaped like a head with a face.

It was a whole body of beef jerky. It was a whole body.

"That's a body," I said.

We all paused a moment. Gerald said, "That's a fucking mummy, dude!"

We all sat and stared some more. It sure looked like a mummy.

Gerald wanted to get rid of it. He said his cousin lived next to a cranberry bog, and we could dump the thing in there.

Matt said we weren't going to dump it. He knew someone who 'traded in antiquities' who'd be able to come by and have a look at it in a few days.

I wondered if this was the same person who traded in groundhog hats and slushy machines.

I told Matt I liked the cranberry bog idea better, as there was a lot less potential for getting strangled in our sleep by the undead. Matt said there was no way we could get rid of it tonight, as none of us have a car that could fit the box and we didn't have a bag we could load the mummy into.

So, the plan is to barricade ourselves overnight in my room and use tonight's success at not getting killed to forecast how the rest of the week will go.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Today Gerald got in trouble for trying to give part of his sandwich to the seeing-eye dog of this blind guy at work. I guess you're not supposed to feed them, as it keeps them 'off task' when they should be keeping their master from walking over open manholes and such.

The blind guy's job is to come around and collect the trade sheets we fill out whenever we perform a transaction on someone's account, but it seems his job also entails keeping people from bothering his dog.

He's even gone so far as to put a sign on the dog's harness that reads "Please don't feed or pet me while I'm working".

It's funny that he wrote the message as if it came from the dog, but I guess it's no more feasible that he wrote the thing himself.

Fitzy was telling me the blind guy works next to this woman named Ruth who's a real animal lover. I guess she kept buying the dogs treats and toys until the blind guy finally flipped out on her.

They had to have a meeting with HR to resolve the whole thing, and now their correspondence is limited to e-mails passed through their manager. I guess Ruth has been caught using a dog whistle on more than one occasion since.

We haven't been parking in the remote lot since Gerald rented that plot in the cemetary next door, but today someone mentioned how the "beater everyone threw their trash in" had been removed. I guess someone saw a bunch of coyotes hanging around there late one night and complained.

We got home tonight and the box was still gone. Matt said he had found someone interested in the groundhog hats, too.

It's a President's Day miracle!

Monday, February 19, 2007

We had today off from work on account of it being a market holiday. I think our company likes their customers to think we're answering calls on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and they feel shutting down the call center when the market closes maintains this illusion.

Gerald and I had a fairly uneventful day drinking beer and watching Animal Planet. After the weekend, we needed a day to decompress.

That box really scratched the hell out of our floors, but Gerald said the landlord might understand if we told him the situation. I agreed with him, only because I wanted to see him explain how the marks on our floor were caused by a haunted box we stole out of the back of someone's car.

After telling him that, I got that feeling you get after feeding peanut butter to a dog.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

On Friday I told Matt he was going to have to store the steak knives in his room if he wanted to keep them. Saturday morning I found him sleeping on the couch in the living room under a bunch of towels.

He said he woke up to find the box next to his bed "chirping". He ran out of his room and was too scared to go back in for his blanket, so he ended up grabbing towels out of the bathroom for warmth.

We both decided the best thing to do was to get rid of the box, and brought it out to the curb.

That night Gerald and I went to Reynaldo and Marcia's party. We didn't really want to go, but we figured we'd head there a bit late so a crowd would have already gathered, say hi, then take off unnoticed.

Gerald said there was a bar down the street that had $5 pitchers and free hot dogs, so we could go there after.

We got there a little after 10, and the party consisted of Marcia and five people from the prison she works at. She said Reynaldo had just left to drive her cousin home and would be back in awhile.

They were all in the middle of a game of poker, so Gerald and I grabbed a beer and sat on the sofa next to the table. One of the guys was telling a story about how he paid someone $50 to take a shot of pepper spray to the face.

No one really acknowledged our presence. It was sort of like we were watching the whole party through a two way mirror.

Gerald got up after finishing his first beer. Around 30 seconds later he called me on my cell phone and said he was waiting outside. He told me to make up some excuse to get up so I could meet him out there and we could leave.

I asked Marcia where the bathroom was. She pointed in the exact opposite direction of the front door. I went into the bathroom, washed my hands, and walked back through the living room and right out of the apartment.

When I got out, Gerald said he didn't want our exit to be all awkward. I failed to see the grace in making me look like an asshole.

We went to the bar with the free hot dogs afterwards and went home to find the door to our apartment was left open. Matt wasn't home and the place smelled of old leaves.

I was taking my shoe off in the hallway when Gerald walked into the living room and asked what the box of steak knives was doing in there. I walked in to see it standing right in the middle of the room.

I wondered how in hell it got the door open.

I stood there staring for a bit while Gerald looked at me and asked again. I told him Matt and I had put it out on the curb.

He asked how it got back in the apartment then, and I said I thought it got itself back in the apartment. He laughed and asked how the thing got the door open.

I had been a bit reluctant to let Gerald in on what had gone on around the box, mostly because I didn't believe a lot of it myself. I wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't just me until Matt got spooked by the thing, too.

I explained to Gerald what happened, and told him I thought we should leave the box back out on the curb. He wanted to crack the thing open, and went looking for tools.

He ended up trying to pry it open with a hammer and a screwdriver, but ended up breaking the screwdriver in half. He said he'd keep the box in his room if it scared me that bad.

Later that night, I woke up with Gerald in my bed. He said he woke up to a thump and turned on the light to see the box move.

As he was telling the story, we heard a thump again. Then another one.

It sounded like the thing was making its way down the hall.

The rest of the night Gerald and I sat awake listening to this box thump its way around the apartment. It stopped at some point, and both of us managed to fall asleep.

When I woke up Gerald was spooning me, and Matt was standing above us asking why we brought the box back in the apartment. He didn't seem to want to cover why we were in bed together.

We walked out of my room to find the box lying diagonally in Gerald's bedroom doorway.

Matt said he had someone coming by with a truck to drop off a few TVs. The guy had is own waste disposal company, so he'd ask if he could take the crate with him.

The guy came by and asked Matt why we were getting rid of it. Matt said no one wanted to buy a crate of fragile steak knives.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Matt's buyer didn't show up for those creepy steak knives tonight, so I ended up sleeping on the couch. There's something wrong in principal with being driven out of your room by a box you believe to be haunted, but I wasn't so interested in getting into a war of ideals with possessed cutlery.

When I checked this morning, the box was laying across my bed over my pillow. I think I made the right decision.

Gerald drove to work, and let me know on the way he had made arrangements to park a bit closer than the remote lot today. We drove towards the office, and too the right before that into the cemetery behind our building.

Apparently, Gerald had the idea awhile back that he was going to play a plot owner a small fee to park on their empty spot, and one Ernest DiGiacomo was all to happy to take him up on the offer. We got a spot right in front of the fence along our parking lot, right next to Mr. DiGiacomo's late wife.

They moved Angela to the cube next to mine. She said it was too loud where she sat and asked to be moved.

Angela is marrying this guy named Joey this summer, and she beats him mercilessly. She must have called him five times over the course of the day.

"No, Joey! Call her back and tell her we want the red ones. The RED ONES!"

"Don't wait for me in the parking lot Joey. I'll call you when I get there."

"Joey, you're not listening, Joey! Joey, are you playing Tetris? ... Well, I hear the music in the background!"

As much as I've disliked working with Angela thus far, being around her sort of makes me appreciate the times she's not around more. Poor Joey doesn't have that pleasure.

Today two people were driving through the cemetery as Gerald and I hopped the fence and got into his car. I think I could have gotten a nicer look from them if I had exposed myself.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Last night I fell asleep with the crate of steak knives sitting on the floor across from my bed. I had a dream I woke up and I could hear someone crying inside the box. Matt ended up giving me this big metal spoon his grandmother brought over "from the old country", which I used to pry the crate open.

I don't know if such a spoon exists, but it made sense in the dream.

When I got it open, a man with no skin popped out and started gnawing on my arm. He said he wanted to eat my muscles.

I'm unsure how he said it while chewing on my arm, but I remember that part distinctly. I also remember being most freaked out by the fact he didn't have any lips. The "no skin" and visible musculature didn't really phase me all that much.

I woke up kind of shaken up by the whole thing to find the steak knife crate standing upright in the corner of my room. I had to sort of sit and stare at it for awhile to make sure it wasn't part of the dream. Then I heard a rattling sound that I *thought* came from inside the crate and ran for the door.

Matt's girlfriend must have been using the bathroom while I was asleep and locked the door from the other side, trapping me in my room with the definitely moving and potentially rattling crate of fragile steak knives.

I ended up climbing out on my fire escape and banging Gerald's window with a hockey stick so he could let me out of my room. I slept on the couch for the rest of the night.

It was snowing all last night and Sue sent out an e-mail before we left work letting us know the blizzard was NO EXCUSE for not showing up for work on time. Gerald and I both got up late because I wasn't sleeping near my alarm clock, and Gerald didn't have me to wake him up on time.

We got to the remote lot a little later than usual. Whoever plowed the lot had pushed all the snow around the garbage car we stole the steak knives from so all you could see was the bent door of the trunk sticking out.

A bunch of empty coffee cups and other breakfast related rubbish was stuck in the snowbank right above where the trunk would be. I guess old habits die hard.

Gerald and I got to the office a bit late, and Tom was waiting by our desks. I told him we were late on account of the storm, and he told us it wasn't snowing in California.

I told him it wasn't 9 AM in California. He went back in his desk to verify the fact.

When I got home the crate was still standing in the corner of my room along with a bunch of other boxes that weren't there when I left. Matt said his buyer couldn't make it out due to the storm, but should be here tomorrow.

He said the other boxes were surplus Groundhog Hats that were supposed to be sent to the Groundhog's Day celebration in Punxatawney, PA and ended up getting 'misrouted'. Something tells me they were misrouted off a loading dock into the back of Matt's car.

He apologized for throwing them in there and said he didn't have anywhere else to put them. He said he'd give me 15% of whatever he took in if I let him keep them there.

I said it was OK, more because I want the 15% so I can calculate what the going rate is on 600 post-holiday groundhog hats. With my luck, tonight's the night we get raided.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

This morning I walked in on Matt's girlfriend while she was peeing. I turned back into my room pretty quickly and stubbed my toe real bad on that stupid crate.

It was bleeding, and I had to sit on my bed and wait for her to get done before I could get a band-aid on it.

Matt said he had a "buyer" for the steak knives coming tomorrow. I guess he gave up on waiting for the owner to come forward.

Today this guy at work was celebrating his birthday. Someone dropped a manila folder off at my desk with a card in it for me to sign.

I was one of the last people to get the card, so all the good birthday well wishes were taken ("Happy Birthday", "Happy B-Day" and "Happy [whatever your age is]st"). I think a whole lot of hand wringing could be saved if everyone would just agree to write their name under whatever salutation the card company saw fit to place on the inside.

Neither Gerald nor I knew the guy very well, so we decided to get creative. We figured they wouldn't be able to figure out which Gerald wrote what if it ever got back to us.

I wrote "May you have many more" and Gerald wrote, "Stay Gold!"

Later on they had cake for him, and Sue said we could each take shifts getting off the phone to grab a slice and bring it back to our desks with us. We don't normally have cake for birthdays, but Fitzy told me it was because he had a bout with cancer that went into remission a little over a month ago.

I guess I could have picked a better phrase than "May you have many more."

Monday, February 12, 2007

Today Gerald called out sick so he could get a doctor to check out his nose. It was still kind of purple and made a whistling sound when he breathed through it.

When I got to the remote lot, no one seemed to notice the rear of the garbage car had been smashed beyond repair. People had even been so courteous as to throw their trash in the newly opened trunk rather than resting it on the car where it could blow away.

At work everyone was asking me about Gerald. My desk is in front of the fax machine, so a lot of people like to talk to me after their fax goes through so they can continue not doing their job.

I normally don't mind, although there are times when I think I should have pigeon wire installed on the walls of my cube to keep people from leaning on them.

Reynaldo came by around lunch to tell me Marcia said she had a good time, and wanted us to come to a party at their place this coming weekend. He asked about Gerald, and said it looked like it was broken when we left the bar.

Then he told a story about seeing some guy riding a bike get whaled in the face with a softball.

When I got home from work, one of the bodybuilders on the first floor was checking his mail as I walked in. He asked if someone was doing work at our place, as he heard banging all afternoon.

I got upstairs and Matt was out, Gerald was spread out on the couch with some "tasty" painkillers (his words) he had gotten at the doctor, and the crate of steak knives had made its way from the closet to the middle of my room. It looked like Matt had tried to open it earlier that day.

I was kind of pissed he had left the crate like that, but I had spent the weekend squeezing past it to get out of my room and figured climbing over it to get into bed was the more desirable of two shitty arrangements.

I can't wait for him to sell that slushy machine.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

On Friday, Matt met Gerald and I at the remote lot after work. There was this bar nearby with a mechanical bull Gerald wanted to check out, and Matt didn't want to miss out on the action.

We got there a little after 7, and there was already an hour and a half wait to ride the bull. Some guy was on it that must have weighed 300 pounds. I wasn't sure how long the bull would hold out.

The bartender told us to take a number and we'd be called up when it was our turn.

We managed to get a table with a view of the bull. Matt kept ordering pitcher after pitcher, filling up our glasses before we could finish.

I guess he's not secure enough in his alcoholism to get drunk by himself.

After about a half an hour, Gerald came to the table with Reynaldo and his girlfriend, Marcia. I guess he had run into them at the bar.

Marcia was at least 10 years older than Reynaldo, and worked as a correctional officer at a county jail. Matt kept asking her to tell stories. Most of them involved the phone and/or poo.

Reynaldo was pretty quiet the whole time.

At some point Matt ordered shots of Jack Daniels for everyone. I find the sensation of drinking Jack Daniels akin to forcing a cactus down my esophagus.

I'd rather he bought me a punch in the face.

I forced mine down and everyone except for Reynaldo finished theirs in one gulp. Reynaldo sat taking measured sips of it as if it was a glass of iced tea.

Marcia was showing Matt how to perform a thumb hold no one could get out of when Gerald's number was called. The bull was in the center of this wide pen with padding on the bottom, and everyone was hooting and hollering as Gerald walked out.

He started playing up the crowd, pointing his finger up in the air and such. Based on their condition, I think Gerald could have been out there to operate a wet/dry vac and gotten the same response.

Gerald seemed to do pretty well the first minute or so, and gave the guy operating the thing a signal to crank it up. He did.

The bull jerked a little faster, and swung Gerald forward just fast enough to meet the front as it was coming up with his nose. You could see a blur of red, which turned out to be Gerald's face when the thing slowed down.

Everyone went "oooo" at the same time. Reynaldo said he should have stayed relaxed over the bull's center of gravity.

Gerald got off and someone came out to meet him with a cloth filled with ice and then walked on to spray his blood off the bull. He tried to act unphased, but you can only play it so cool after your face explodes in front of everyone.

We decided to leave after that.

Gerald had driven that day, and when we got back to the remote lot he realized he had lost his keys. He said they must have fallen out on the bull, and he didn't want to have to go back in and walk out in the middle of the crowd to get them.

Matt asked why there was a car covered in garbage in the corner of the lot, and we told him it had been there for a week or so now.

Gerald was pushing for me to go back in the bar and get his keys for him. I told him we should probably call a cab anyways, seeing as we were all drinking. I was really more concerned with not looking like an asshole stopping everyone's mechanical bulll fun while I searched through the creases in the padding for Gerald's keys, but I made a far better point with the drinking thing.

We went back and forth on this for a minute or so, and we heard a car start up. We looked over and Gerald's garbage car was backing out of its spot towards us with Matt behind the wheel.

Apparently, Matt doesn't need keys to start a car.

Gerald looked walked around and said "See? Problem solved!" before getting in. As if nothing could possibly go wrong with three inebriated people and a stolen automobile covered in trash.

Before heading home, Matt thought it would be a good idea to hit McDonalds and then ram some shopping carts in a supermarket parking lot.

When it turned out the lot was icy, he opted to do doughnuts.

Gerald and Matt cackled in the front seat as the car spun around. The cackling stopped when the rear of the car slammed into the concrete base of a lightpost.

We all flew to the driver's side of the car. Gerald's leg had somehow wedged it's way in between Matt's underneath the steering wheel, but none of us were hurt.

I looked back and saw the trunk had popped open, and then felt like I was going to get sick.

I tried to get out of the car to puke, but the driver's side door was broken and I ended up letting loose all over the floor of the car. Gerald and Matt got out to assess the damage.

When I got out Gerald and Matt were looking at the trunk. The whole frame had been bent in so the door wouldn't shut.

In the trunk was a big crate that said:

FRAGILE
STEAK KNIVES

I've never heard of a fragile steak knife.

Matt said we ought to take the car to the remote lot an park it where we found it. He said it would look like someone hit the car while it was parked and took off.

He called his girlfriend and asked her to meet us there.

When we got there, Matt started moving the box of steak knives out of the trunk. He said they'd probably get stolen if they were left there, and we could keep them at our place until the owner came forward.

He also said he knew someone who could move them if no one showed up to claim them.

The box was really long, and Gerald and I had to lay it across our lap for the whole ride. It was pretty heavy and smelled like old leaves.

When we got home, Matt asked if I could keep the box in my closet. He was keeping a slushy machine in his.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Today the old driver picked us up at the remote lot. Gerald sat shotgun and they traded stories about Tijuana.

I sat next to Reynaldo, who I haven't really talked to since training. He said his desk is kind of isolated, as Sue keeps her door shut all of the time.

He also said a guy from the mail room uses the phone in the empty cube next to his to call his AA sponsor. Reynaldo said he heard the guy telling a story about having to go to the emergency room after drinking hairspray.

As wrong as it is, I'm glad Reynaldo doesn't know enough about anything to know not to repeat that story.

Gerald keeps hinting that we're not going to have to park in the remote lot for much longer. I don't know why he won't just come out and tell me what he has going on. It's really annoying.

My bet is his plan is for us to take the bus to work.

Manager Tom was listening in on our calls today. He was sending e-mails to me as I was talking with a caller telling me what I was saying wrong. His suggestions were full of spelling errors.

He had a big problem with your/you're and their/there/they're.

"Your pausing too long. Theirs too much dead air."

I heard him yelling at Gerald for telling callers our systems were down when they weren't.

Later on he sent out an e-mail telling people to get back on the phones, and said "WERE ARE VERY BUST". Gerald and I spent the rest of the day using the word "bust" in front of him.

"I'm sorry Tom, but I'm far to bust to QC my own trade sheets."

"I'll take a shorter break today. I know how bust we are!"

I went out with Gerald and Matt after work for a few beers. They were going bowling after, but I thought I'd go home and watch TV.

I arrived home to a living room filled with fake Christmas trees. I ended up going to bed instead.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Angela sent out an e-mail this morning telling everyone there was banana bread in the kitchen.

I've never been a fan of banana bread. It's like cake that went to dessert school and dropped out before the course on having flavor.

She sent out the same e-mail about 45 minutes later. I walked by the kitchen and it looked like no one had touched it.

A half an hour after that she sent out the same e-mail again. Sue responded with an e-mail letting everyone know that e-mail was for business purposes only.

Later that day, Angela was using the fax machine in front of my cube. She asked me if I had tried any of her banana bread, but I held up my finger and started talking as if I had someone on the phone. Then my phone rang.

I tried to pretend like I was putting my imaginary caller on hold, but she just stood and stared at me for a bit.

She turned to ask Gerald, and he told her he couldn't have banana bread due to a potassium sensitivity issue.

I saw her ask a few other people over the course of the day. I imagine she baked poison into it and was out to kill us all, as she was pushing the stuff like Kool-Aid at Jonestown.

I had my break with Oscar this afternoon. He was talking about how the vending machine gave him an extra bag of Cheetos by mistake.

He said he wondered if they charged the person who stocked the vending machine for this, and how they should since they should stock the machine so two bags don't come out at the same time, and how, then again, they probably factor that into their budget as these things are bound to happen.

It was less of a conversation, and more of Oscar laying out the various potential loss prevention structures of Frito-Lay while I peppered the conversation with the occassional disinterested "Yeah."

When he was done with his Cheetos, he went over to the counter and grabbed a slice of Angela's banana bread. He ate the whole slice in two bites and then grabbed another one.

As he was eating it he told me it was "the worst banana bread in the whole world".

We'll see if he shows up for work tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Today I got to work and found someone had stolen my chair.

I ended up having to pull a chair out of one of the conference rooms and I couldn't get the settings right. The back was set at this real awkward angle driving my shoulders forward while my butt was a good foot behind it.

It felt like some medieval torture device.

When I got back to my desk, Tom asked where I was. I told him the situation, and he said people in Pennsylvania aren't looking for their chairs.

What he meant was people would be calling in whether I had a chair or not. The managers use that phrasing a lot here:

"There wasn't a blizzard in California."

"New York didn't miss the shuttle at the remote lot"

"You think Missouri's grandmother had a stroke today?"

Normally it works, but Tom's statement only conjured up an image of the entire state of Pennsylvania wandering around some cube farm in search of seating.

I told Tom I'd stand next time. He didn't seem to understand I was offering a snappy answer.

The phones were real busy today, and Sue kept yelling at people from the Watchtower. At one point she called me as I was getting back on the phone to ask why I wasn't on a call.

Our call center is evaluated on 'service level', or the number of calls we answer within a certain time frame. In our case, we're supposed to enter 92.5% of all calls in 30 seconds or less.

I'm not sure what having a 92.5% chance of not having to wait longer than 30 seconds means to me if my call is answered by someone like Fitzy, who just today told a caller there are only 3 quarters in a fiscal year.

He said it was kind of like a hockey game.

Gerald and Matt "fixed" a No Parking sign right outside our building over the weekend so it can be removed from the ground. The no parking zone takes up about a car length from the sign to the corner of our street, so Gerald's been taking the sign out to park there and putting it back in when he leaves.

He also said he has a plan to get us out of parking at the remote lot. I really feel like I've hitched my reputation to a winning team.

Monday, February 5, 2007

This morning I woke up at 2 to the sound of people in my living room banging on snare drums singing "Yellow Submarine". At 5, I woke up to the sound of an old woman searching the garbage can beneath my window for empty bottles.

I thought the whole point of cashing in bottles for a living was not having to be up at 5 AM.

I woke up later and found Gerald on the couch in his underwear. I got him up, and he asked if I could drive to work. On the way in he was shaking.

Last night I went with he and Matt to a bar down the street to watch the Superbowl. When I left, they were ordering shots of a drink called Prairie Fire that consists of tequila and tabasco.

This weekend it was kind of wet and then got cold very suddenly, fusing all of the various items of trash to Gerald's garbage car in a veneer of ice.

There was a Snickers wrapper plastered flat on the trunk with the word "HUNGERECTOMY" pointing up at me.

Gerald held it together for the first few hours, sweating booze in his cube and taking calls. Then lunch came and he ended up getting a seafood salad sub by mistake. He opened it, turned green, and disappeared into the bathroom for awhile.

I also got to see a burial in the graveyard behind our office. A bunch of people were standing out there for what seemed like 20 minutes.

It was absolutely freezing out there. I wondered how in hell they dug the hole.

Fitzy said over the summer he saw a funeral where they were burying someone in a plus-sized casket and the harness snapped on one side. They ended up having to get a backhoe to haul the thing out. He said the last few burials were pretty boring, so we were bound to get a "good one" soon.

I've never heard anyone feel they were due for a cemetary mishap.

When I got home, Matt apologized for all the noise and said he hoped he didn't wake me up. I said it hadn't, and he said he felt bad about it.

He wanted to give me a case of Right Guard as a make-good, but I told him it was nothing and he didn't have to give me anything. He told me I was a "good shit" and gave me the case of deodorant anyway.

I took it back to my room and put it in the corner. I hate the smell of Right Guard.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

I spent most of this weekend setting up my room at Gerald's place. Our other roommate, Matt, doesn't have a job, per se. Gerald says he buys and sells stuff online.

On Saturday there were a bunch of bikes in our kitchen, and some guy with a van came by later in the day to pick them up. Matt showed up with four snare drums later that afternoon.

Gerald said one time Matt came home with a bunch of tropical birds - macaws and such - and had a real hard time getting rid of them. He said they made tons of noise and stank up the apartment crapping all over the place.

Given that neither Matt or Gerald own a computer with an internet connection, I'm really wondering how Matt moves this merchandise.

On Friday, I finally got to meet Tom, my manager. I guess he was at some management seminar all week.

I thought Fitzy was joking about him not being able to be around microwaves, but then he took off at 11:45 and didn't come back until a little after one. Our cubes are right next to the break room, and Tom doesn't want to be too close when people start reheating their lunch.

Later on that day, he just sort of started spacing out in his cube, and Fitzy told me to watch as he was bound to "rev up" at any moment. Tom ended up snapping out of it pretty quickly, and you could tell Fitzy was bummed.

He said someone was probably just heating up water for tea or something.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

We had to be in at 8:30 this morning for a pre-work meeting. We were told one of the companies we deal with was closing a paper mill in Idaho or somewhere thereabouts, and we were probably going to be getting a lot of angry calls from account holders.

I must have taken 10 calls from them in the first hour. Half of them made some reference to NAFTA.

One guy got real mad at me and say he was going to come down to Chicago so he could talk to me in person. I told him I thought that was a good idea.

I'm not even in Chicago.

Gerald decided to take calls this morning, and said someone told him he was going to "put a cap in his ass" after hearing he wouldn't be able to get a check for his account for 5 to 10 business days. I'm unsure what would prompt someone to make such a statement. Gerald was the only one out of the two of them with the other's address.

Around 1:00 someone sent out an e-mail letting everyone know they were towing from the lot. Sue sent an e-mail right after telling people they were not supposed to park in the office lot to begin with, and would not be allowed to leave their desks if they did.

A few people made it out before Sue's e-mail, but a couple people had to watch helplessly as the trucks drove around and hope they didn't stop at their car. Everyone else stood up and looked out to see if anyone would start arguing with one of the drivers.

One guy made it out just as his car was being hitched up. I could see him handing the truck driver cash and the driver lowering the car down afterwards.

I heard a couple people groan to see him get off so easy.

Gerald sat in his cube the whole time playing online mini-putt. I didn't see him at the remote lot this morning, so I was sure he had parked at the office, but, then again, I didn't see him at the meeting either.

Today I counted three new coffee cups on the car Gerald started the trash pile on, along with some ketchup packets and a few empty bottles of Zima. I hope whoever owns that car gets back soon. It's starting to become a real eyesore.