Meeting are rather productive, however, in that I usually bring a notepad with me wherein I pretend to be taking notes, but in actuality am creating personal to-do lists, completely fictional to-do lists, writing out lines of dialog between two spontaneously generated characters, and drawing pictures of sword-wielding alien warriors (think Tars Tarkas).  It is also a great opportunity to work on my improvisational skills, when I suddenly become aware that I might have been asked a question and need to respond in a way that 1) implies I was paying attention to the meeting, and 2) is funny enough to distract people from realizing that (1) is false.

At a recent meeting I was thumbing through the pages in my notepad, looking for a page that had enough free space for me to draw the rocket ship I had been thinking about, when I came across a page labeled “Meeting Minutes.”  Knowing that it was extremely unlike me to record minutes during a meeting, I looked through the page to see what I had written down.

14:00 — Meeting begins.

14:03 — tremendous understatement

14:15 — wanton ignorance

14:16 — shameless pandering, noises indicating understanding where none exists

14:30 — brief outbreak of silence when my supervisor asks some intelligent questions.

14:33 — as no one here has any answers, posturing resumes.

14:40 — horrible decision made, based mostly upon events depicted in the most recent “Die Hard” movie.

Looking below that, I saw that I had scribbled some notes, which included a bulleted list:

Current rage/hate level is at nearly 700.  I would gladly stab at least two people at this fucking table in the neck.  Listening to these people talk about this is like watching an idiot run into a wall repeatedly.  I would much rather eat a cinder block smeared with poisonous mushrooms than sit here.
Also would prefer:

• getting shot in the stomach with a shotgun.
• perform “Riverdance” on a stage full of broken glass.
• get a fake tan by scorching own skin with a propane torch.
• wrestle a squid.

Relieved that I had not wasted valuable meeting time taking down anything related to business, I turned to the next available blank page, and began to draw a space ship, getting attacked by a squid.

I have never figured out how this happened.  I am not especially charming first thing in the morning and, as we discovered not so long ago, I am not at all cool.  Yet the baristas at this coffee bar apparently liked me enough that one morning they decided amongst themselves that I would never have to pay for another cup of coffee from them again.  From then on, they would wave away my money every time I tried to purchase another cup-full of my favorite morning vice.  It got so that I merely had to walk in the doors in the morning, smile, and say “morning, ladies,” and then I would get weak in the knees because immediately afterwards I would find a huge cup of fresh coffee in my hands.  If I had known that getting hooked up with free coffee was that easy, I would have given this whole “talking to girls” thing a try a long time ago!

Tragedy struck a few months ago when all three girls from the morning shift gave their notices with a month of each other, and as they left one by one I watched my limitless well of caffeine goodness dry up.  Well, I suppose the amount of coffee available didn’t exactly dwindle, but my willingness to pay a few bucks for it every day had long since vanished.  I initially had high hopes that my “arrangement” could some how be made to continue with incoming staff, but this proved not to be the case (unsurprisingly, since I’m not sure how I’d “arranged” to not have to pay in the first place).  There was also the minor factor that most of the new morning shift were dudes.

It’s not as if buying coffee every day is at all a burden, but after getting it gratis for so long I resented forking over dollars for it and so slowly, twitchingly, I began to wean myself off my three-cups-a-day habit.  I even switched exclusively to green tea for a while.

Still, sometimes only a big cup of strong black coffee will do the trick, and so one morning last week I grabbed my travel mug off my desk as I prepared to leave the office for an off-site meeting and dropped by the coffee bar.  I hadn’t gotten to know the new staff quite as well, but I’d talked to the guy on shift that morning several times before, and we made small talk as he filled up my mug.  I was reaching for my wallet as he set my drink down on the counter when he surprised me by waving his hand casually and saying, “Aww, don’t worry about it.”

“Whoah,” I said, caught off guard.  “Really?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, smiling broadly.  And then he winked at me.

I am totally counting that as a point for me.

Your email is important to me! Well, let’s be honest, it’s not that important. In fact I could care less that it’s sitting there in my inbox. If your request is urgent or time-sensitive… uh, deal with it. You’re a grown up, you’ve gotten yourself this far in life, right? Surely, despite your hysterical screeching, whatever it is can wait until next week.

I have to tell you, I won’t be thinking about work much at all! In fact, I will be a thousand miles away from here, and all too happy about it. I’m going to see some old friends and some new ones, and I’m going to walk barefoot in the sand, I’m going to eat some REAL Mexican food (or at least as real as I remember it growing up), and I’m going to be looking at a lot of comic books. Also, there will be drinking.

I will attend to your email upon my return to the office. And, well, that’s another lie, isn’t it? Because chances are there’s going to be quite a few stacked up in there, and it will probably be another week before I even think about replying. Again: deal with it.

Cheers!

So today I went in for physical therapy, which I expected to be no more than a nurse applying some hot compresses to my damaged tissues, but OH NO, medical science has advanced quite a bit since the days when my high school P.E. teacher told me to “just suck it up already”, and I discovered that I was going to be hooked up to a machine so advanced that no one actually knew what it did. I deduced this from the medical assistants’ bedside conversation, which went more or less as follows:

Medical Assistant 1: …and then you put the pads on his leg like this…

Medical Assistant 2: Okay.

MA1: And once they’re stuck, then you take the wires and plug them into the electro-unit.

MA2: I see.

MA1: And this is what heals the tissue.

MA2: Huh. How does it do that? With heat?

MA1: Uh…

MA2: …

Me: …

MA1: Actually, I don’t know how this machine works. But you switch it on here.

MA2: Right here?

MA1: Yep! Just turn it on and keep increasing the power until the patient asks you to stop.

MA2: They’ll tell you when?

Me: H’rkk.

MA1: Oh! Do you want us to make it higher or lower?

Me: Down. H’rk. A notch. Please.

I’m pretty sure this device didn’t actually serve any medical function. And when they had me roll over on my side and slopped a handful of warm goo on my leg without any warning and then spent five minutes poking me with an ultrasonic wand, I don’t think that does anything either. Really, the purpose of all this treatment is to humiliate the patient into healing faster. I think it must work, because I’m already feeling well enough to not want to go back for the rest of the sessions.

I can physically feel the last few days of our arbitrary calendar year slipping away, and I wish they’d just hurry up and go, because as these last few hundred hours of aught-seven whirl around the hourglass before funneling away it seems like they squeeze together with a phenomenal pressure, and does anyone know if we have any major holidays coming up soon? because I sure can’t keep track and I could use a day off.

Even more friends are rolling into town, all flying home to roost this week, and my sister too, and when I called her today at her hotel in San Diego she kept going on and on about how cold it was there after another year in the Caribbean, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her low was our high, and I really hope she has some fleece socks tucked away some place because it will only get colder.

I just need to make it a few more days and then things will relax a bit; in the meantime I still get the weekends and some Mexican beer to help ease this old year on its way out.

Take, for example, my old work. They seemed understanding enough when I told them I was quitting, even though I was taking business away from them by doing so since the contract they had to provide work for my new employers dissolved on the last day I was there. They even were happy to let me work for them an extra week when my new job was having trouble getting all my paperwork assembled in time. But some how this efficiency and diligence didn’t carry over to making sure I got my last paycheck on time.

I had dropped by the offices of my old work about a week after I transitioned to the new job, as my old boss had called to tell me that they had some checks for me. I dropped by and picked up one check for one day’s worth of work to cover the time they forgot to pay me for Labor Day, and another that was a payout of my accumulated vacation hours. I was surprised that I didn’t get my last week’s worth of work on either of those checks, but assumed it would just be deposited to my account the next Friday on the usual scheduled payday.

Well, Friday came and went, and no money appeared in my account. Concerned, I sent an email to my old boss, asking her what the story was.

Corporate automatically sends you your last check when they process the termination paperwork [she replied]. I don’t quite understand what went wrong.

“I don’t really understand what went wrong either,” I sent back. “But that’s okay, I don’t really need to know. Please just send me a check for the week’s worth of work that I am owed, and we’ll call it good.”

Time passes. A week later I send another email asking if they’d figured out yet how to write a check for the amount I was owed.

Well, they are going back and forth at corporate, trying to figure out who is responsible for paying you. I will let you know when I hear something.

“Do they have a check-writing department?” I asked. “Really, I think that they would be best suited to meeting my needs, by writing me a check. I don’t really care who is responsible. I don’t need a CSI: Bureaucracy Land-style forensic break down of what went wrong. I really just want my money.”

By the end of the week, after a few more email exchanges (if you call me repeatedly sending emails asking about the status of my last check an ‘exchange’) I found the following email in my inbox:

The corporate office says they sent you a check in the mail late last week. So you should see it any day now. Thank you.

“Fantastic!” I sent back. “I’m assuming you processed the change-of-address I sent you over a month ago, before my last day, right?”

I didn’t get a reply to this.

The Post Office came through for me and forwarded my last check; it came in the mail last Friday. Rejoicing that I had been paid, I went out to a show that night without giving it another thought. The next morning I sat down and opened up the envelope, and — you know what’s coming, right? — it was for the wrong amount. I had been shorted by a day.

Amazed by the incompetence of this organization, and frustrated by their almost total inability to get a simple thing right like paying me for a single week’s wages, I thought at first about just forgetting about it and saying “close enough”, but then I realized that this would mean that I worked a whole day for them for free.

It’s back to emailing morons again this week. Wish me luck.

Just sayin’.

(Vedo Max via Makezine.)

Me: Everyone have a good weekend?

Boss: Yeah, it was good.

Coworker: The get together at [the Departmental Director]’s house on Friday night was cool.

Me: Oh, sweet. Did a lot of our department go to that?

Coworker: Yeah, a lot did!

Boss: You didn’t make it, though.

Me: No, I know. I ended up going go-kart racing with my friends.

All: [laughter] Awesome!

[The Director walks in to the meeting room and takes his seat.]

Coworker: Hey, [Director], I was just talking about how nice your house was.

Director: Yes. [Looks directly at me.] How come you weren’t there?

Me: Sir! I do regret not being able to be in attenda-

Boss: He was go-kart racing! Haw! Haw!

Me: [complete mortification]

Director: …

***

I do not think I am happy with my boss today.

Please just shut up. I don’t need this today.

Normally I am distantly amused by your griping about things that matter not a whit in the larger scheme of things, and your pettiness, and in your case, C., your incredibly stunted emotional maturity level, but today just take it somewhere else.

“Did you take care of this request for me?”

Did you follow the protocol like you’re supposed to?

“What? Can’t you just set it up?”

If you haven’t gotten the authorization you need then the answer is no. We went through this all last time so I know this is nothing new to you.

“I don’t want to have to call you at home tomorrow if this isn’t set up right.”

Well. It turns out I don’t want you to call me at home, either. So kindly follow the fucking steps we’re required to go through in the future instead of dumping this on me at the last minute.

Yes, K., go home. That’s fine. You would just end up making needless work for me if you stayed by asking me questions that have nothing to do with what we’re working on. No, C., I’m not going to go to lunch and gossip with you, I’m not in the mood for your childishness today. Make that sulky pouting face if you want, it might make your boyfriend knuckle under but you should have figured out by now it has no effect on me. For fuck’s sake, D., I don’t know how much more explicit I can make this email so you can understand what I’m trying to ask you.

Of all the days to have an issue with connecting to the remote site, today this is not what I needed. We need better equipment, I swear these Win-boxes were thrown together by monkeys.

Would it have killed me to have swallowed my goddamn pride and said goodbye to her last night before I left? Asshole.

“Is this all set up and ready to go now?”

It’s as set up as it’s going to get considering you didn’t want to make the arrangements you were supposed to make.

I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore, some days.

I am going to glare at this monitor until the tube explodes or it turns into a starfish.

On one particular morning I was shooting the breeze with one of the girls and she said, “Hey. Have you seen ‘House of Cosbys’?”

“I–what?”

“‘House of Cosbys.’ My boyfriend got it for me through iTunes. It’s about this guy who builds a cloning machine in his basement and clones Cosby because he wants to have his own personal Cosby. Then he makes a few more, and they have their own specialities…”

“Kind of like Multiplicity?”

“Yeah…but with Cosbys instead of Keatons.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. But I’ll have to check it out.” And I went home and dug it up on Google video.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8280066730307092994" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]

There are supposed to be five episodes total, but like so many genius ideas the series started out strong and fizzled into…well, ‘not-so-funniness.’ This one is the best, I think.