7.18.02 - Contraptual Obligations

Apparently, my last update gave away more than I intended.  I got e-mail from several people who recognized what company I am working for from some of the details I provided.  They all previously worked or currently work for the same company, and they all sympathized with my plight at this job, if sympathy includes unrestrained laughter at my expense.  Hi, folks!  It's nice to know I'm not alone.

Anyway, it's already starting to get to me.  The entire floor I work on seems muted.  Everything is extra quiet.  Admins don't talk to each other.  Executives don't talk to (or look at) admins.  Even the phones, when they ring, seem as if they're trying not to disturb anyone.  The effect is lethargic, and the fact that all I'll be doing there is filing -- and I mean, filing, loads and loads (and loads) of filing -- makes me wonder how I will stand the monotony.  It's like a morgue in that office, a morgue with really shitty carpeting.

I never really thought I'd complain about an office being too quiet.  I like quiet things.  I hate chit-chat and small talk and obnoxious twits in suits talking about golf and braying laughter.  Quiet, with me, on the whole, is good.  But I had this urge today to just grab people and shake them and scream in their faces, just to make sure I still existed.

Luckily, I found at least one diversion today:

The Contraption.

The Contraption will entertain me.  It will amuse me.  It will be my salvation.

Today, I was given a break from my filing duties to work on a new "project," which consisted of making 300 copies of a large presentation.  Whoopee.  The copy room is small, cramped, and closed off from the rest of the office, possibly so the noise of the copier can't reach anyone's ears, because we all know how terrible that would be.

So, I'm standing in there, glumly watching my 300 copies slowly schlunk off the copier, and there's a sound behind me.  A clunk.  I turn around, and there... is The Contraption.

The Contraption delivers mail between the floors of the building.  It is basically an automated dumbwaiter-type device, built into the core of the building, that carries big buckets vertically from floor to floor.  Standing there looking at it, you see two large rectangular openings in the wall, side-by-side, and in the gloom beyond, you can see machinery at work.  Gears and cogs and belts, slowly churning, just half-glimpsed in the darkness.  It's kind medieval somehow.  I was entranced.

There are two buttons and a knob on the wall.  If you have mail to send to another floor, you stick it into a mail bucket, slide the bucket along the steel rollers into the one of the rectangular openings, and then you dial the knob to the correct floor number (and there isn't a digital read-out, it's like a really old TV knob, just plastic, back-lit numbers), and push the "send button".  Approximately 45 minutes later, The Contraption takes the bucket away.  Cool!

The other button is to call an empty bucket to your floor.  Just push it, and seventy-four hours later, a bucket comes up on The Contraption, slides out of the wall, down some more steel rollers, and slams against the metal delivery tray.

I love this!  I've never seen anything like this before.  I want to live in that room now and use The Contraption all day.  Of course, I have no mail to send to anyone.  Still, I had some ideas on how to have fun with The Contraption.

First, I thought I should call for empty mail buckets.  All of them.  I could collect them, so when other people called for them, they wouldn't get any!  Ha ha! (Remember, I'm very bored).  Of course, then I'd have a huge stack of mail buckets, which kinda makes me look guilty when someone comes to investigate.

Then I thought it might be fun to send empty mail buckets into The Contraption.  All of them.  To the same floor.  I don't think there'd be any way for the recipient to tell where all the empty buckets were coming from, unless The Contraption has some sort of memory, which, hm, I kinda think it might.  I think The Contraption has been around for a long, long time.  Possibly even longer than the building has.  It is ageless, timeless.  It is not of this world.

Of course, those two plans weren't what I was really thinking of, deep down.  As soon as I saw The Contraption, and realized what it was, I knew there was only one thing I just had to do.  I had to ride it.  There's simply no way around this, I MUST ride The Contraption.  I was born to.  I was put on this earth to mail myself to another floor of this building.

The mail buckets are pretty big, and I am pretty small, and I think I could just about fit into one of them.  I'd start slowly, just mailing myself one or two floors at a time, but gradually make longer and longer trips.  Soon, I'd be a pro!  I could dial myself down to the lobby every day at lunchtime!  At the very least, the labored grinding of The Contraption's gears might give me something to listen to for a change.

Plus, I'd be a legend!  Like in the movies, when some stranger comes to town, and the town has this wild horse they've captured, but no one can ride him because he's too wild, but the stranger goes into the pen, and calms the horse down, and then rides him, winning the respect of the townsfolk!  That'd be me!  Legends would be told of the Temp Who Mailed Himself To The Finance Department!  Of course, then there's usually a flood or something like that in those movies, or someone wants to build a railroad through the town and makes people sell their property, and stuff like that.  Which probably wouldn't happen in an office.  But you get the point.

Sadly, I discovered there is a weight limit for T.C., and despite my scrawny frame, I think I'm slightly too heavy to ride it.  Maybe if I took off all my clothes I'd be light enough, but then if something went wrong, the newspaper would read:

NAKED MAN FOUND CRUSHED IN MAIL DELIVERY SYSTEM GEARS
Doctors rush to determine temp's exact time of death for payroll accounting purposes.

And I just know my co-workers would paint a bad picture of me.  "We're glad he's dead," they'd whisper to the press.  "He was a an incredibly loud person.  He said something to me once.  My ears are still ringing."

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

7.17.02 - Notes From A New Assignment

I actually have a temp job this week!  Holy crap!  Here's a log of the day's activities.

8:15am - Oops, I'm early.  Don't have to start until 8:30.  Sorry, uh... you'll just have to wait with me on the street corner, I guess.

So.  Uh.  How are you?

Chilly one this morning, huh?  Yep.  Pretty, uh, chilly.  Yeah.

8:30am - I enter the building, leaving you and your horrible conversational skills behind.  I meet, oh, let's call her Linda, just to be different.  Linda is extremely nice, though very timid and laughs nervously after every thing she says, which means, sadly, that I will soon want to kill her.  Her laughing nervously after everything she says means I have to laugh, too, so she's not made more nervous by me not laughing.  And I don't like laughing unless something is actually funny.  I grow tired of this sort of thing.  Quickly.

8:36am - I am shown around the floor I'll be working on, and introduced to a few people.  Uh-oh.  My Tempy Sense starts tingling immediately.  That can only mean one thing:  Danger!  (Although, there was that one time it meant:  Syrup!  That was weird, man.)  I see major problems ahead.  There is a high degree of coolness radiating from all the admins.  And I don't mean coolness as in the Fonz, I mean coolness as in Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.  The folks here are just chilly, and when they smile, their mouths smile but nothing else on their faces do.  Their eyes stay dead and lifeless, their noses look completely grouchy.   And moments later, I know why!

The floor is divided in half.  One half is called the "bay side", as you can see the San Francisco Bay from the windows on that side of the building.  The other half is called the "lake side" because you can see a lake.  I've learned that anytime a floor of a building is divided, and the sections named, the people in one section will eventually start to hate the people in the other section.  It's just natural to start referring to people in their other section by their section name, for instance:  "Oh, Sally?  She's a lake-sider."  And once you've got a label for someone, the hate just blossoms.  (That is not an attempt at some sort of societal message, I promise, although if I did attempt some sort of societal message, it would probably look exactly like that.)

8:40am - Looks like I am to be filing at this job.  A lot.  A whole lot.  Ech.

10:35am - Ugh.  Filing is ouchy.  Still, there are some lighter moments.

One of the files is named OMG Financial Management Subgroup.  OMG! D00dz yuor Financial Management Subgroup totally r0xors PLZTHX LOL!

Another file is named Points of Service Workgroup, and it's generally referred to as "POS Workgroup".  POS, to me, has always stood for Piece of Shit.  I just can't see it any other way.  And every time I have to stick something in that file, I just picture a quick conversation between two guys on their way to their respective workgroups.

Guy #1:  Hey, how's your workgroup?

Guy #2:  Eh.  It's a piece of shit.

Guy #1:  Ha ha ha!  Man, Guy #2, you crack me up.

Guy #3:  Hi.

Guy #1:  Oh.  Sorry, Guy #3, we can't include you in our conversation.

Guy #3:  Oh.  Um.  O-okay... 

Guy #1:  Don't take personally.  It's just what it says up there.  "...a quick conversation between two guys..." y'know?

Guy #3:  Oh, th-that's fine.  *sniffle* I'll just... go.  I'll go find some other website to have a conversation on... don't... don't worry about me.

Guy #2:  Aw, see?  Here we go with this shit again.

Guy #1:  Hey, it's not his fault.  Don't take it out on him! (scuffles with Guy #2)

Guy #4:  OMG!

Whoops!  That one kinda got away from me.  But this is what happens when I file all day.  Mind wanders.

12:30pm -  Lunch.  Absolutely nothing interesting happens worth writing about.

1:50pm - Linda uses the word "project" to describe the task I am about to undertake:  sorting office supplies.  It seems the office supply company sent over too much stuff... and SOME has to go BACK.

I feel that if I had a suspenseful musical sting to accompany that (like DUNH-DUNNNH), it would sound more exciting.

Also, it would help if Linda would spice up the conversation a bit.  Like this:

Linda:  (frantically) Chris!

Me:  (growls) Not now, Linda... not... now.

Linda:  But Chris... they sent over (pause)  TOO MANY SUPPLIES!

Me:  Damn them.  (shakes head, eyes glistening)  Damn. Them.

Linda:  Can you sort out what we need to send back?  If you have time?

Me:  (dramatically)  Time... time.  Something... (voice cracking) something we don't have...

Guy #4:  OMG!

3:45pm - It's so quiet in this office.  No one talks to anyone, really.  The executives have shown up after a long meeting, and they talk to each other, but none of them even so much as look at the admins.  It's really eerie.  This entire office is a seething cauldron of angst, mistrust, and hatred that is about to boil over.  At least, I hope it boils over, because otherwise, this is going to be an incredibly boring job.

3:50pm - My boss leaves for a meeting across town, and I promptly go outside to smoke for an hour and ten minutes.

5:00pm - Time to go home!  Not a bad first day, I guess.  I've definitely had worse.

Linda:  (suggestively) And you've never had better, right, Tiger?

Me:  Isn't that sexual harassment?

Linda:  Nope.  It's 5:01.  You're off the clock.

Me:  Damn.  Damn.

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

7.16.02 - Caboose

Once again, huge thanks to Josh for letting me work for him this week.  He's a good boss and an even better slow-dancer.

Also, Josh, in case I did screw up your bookkeeping system, take solace in the fact that when I make an error, it's usually a flagrant one, and therefore easy to spot.  I don't forget to carry the 3, I forget to carry the 300,000.  Good luck!

Anyway, yeah.  I turned 30 last week.  Went up to Sacramento for a few days for my birthday, although I almost didn't make it.  Thank God for my powers of being a complete creep!

Here's what happened.  In order to get to the Amtrak station, I take a bus.  It drops me off about 10 blocks from Amtrak, which I walk.  This entire process usually takes about a half-hour, and I usually give myself an hour, just to be safe.

This time, I gave myself even more time than usual, because I wanted to stop by the bookstore, make a few phone calls, possibly have a drink, sell some mops and brushes door-to-door, that sort of thing.

So, I went to the bus stop.  Nice and early.  And waited.  And waited.  And then I waited, after which I waited.  Finally, I decided to wait, after which I waited and then did some waiting.  It was a wait until I could finally do some serious waiting, but that wasn't until after I had waited to wait.

So.  The bus clearly wasn't coming.  I decided to wait, and then I decided to take a different bus, one that would take me to the BART, which is a commuter train I could take to a location about 12 blocks or so further from Amtrak than the bus would have dropped me at.  That meant more walking, ultimately, but it seemed like the best idea at the time.  So, I waited.  And then I started walking toward the other bus stop.

As I was walking to the other stop, I passed a woman on the sidewalk heading in the opposite direction, who was, well, quite attractive.  The fact that she was wearing an extremely tight, sheer top certainly didn't hurt.  I instantly became a big fan of her bra, specifically, a big fan of her choice to leave her bra at home that day.  She was wearing an incredibly short, clingy skirt, which showed off her hips and legs, hips and legs that she could easily charge admission to view.  I am also fairly certain, though not quite sure, that she had a head.  I didn't look, but she must have had a head.  And I bet it was attractive.

Anyway, we walked past each other, and I did the ultimate creep jerk scumbag thing to do, which was to turn around so I could check out her butt.  I don't do this, normally.  Don't get me wrong, I check out chicks' butts all the time, so long as it's convenient and not overly obvious or neck-straining.  But I did, this time, I had to, and as creepy as I felt, I'm glad I did it, because not only did she have a killer butt, but as I turned I saw my bus, the one I had been waiting for, turning the corner.  I ran back to the stop in time to jump on.  Thanks, braless butt lady!

Flash-forward to the stop I need to get off the bus at.  Actually, flash-forward to just past that stop, to where I realized I had just not gotten off at the stop I needed to get off the bus at.  Daydreaming, I guess, although honestly, I wasn't daydreaming about that woman's butt.  I think I was daydreaming about learning how to play the piano.  The point being, I had missed my stop, adding another five or six blocks onto my walk.  Despite the wait and the missed stop, I thought I could still make my train if I hustled.

So, I hop off at the next stop, and start walking in the direction of the Amtrak station.  I then decided it might be fun to get lost, because pretending it was a decision makes me feel less stupid about it.  I'm not sure quite what happened, but suddenly, I didn't know where I was, I didn't know where the Amtrak station was, and I didn't have a Marder 1A3A Armored Infantry Vehicle, three things that don't go well together in the quaint village of Oakland, California.

So, I'm wandering around Oakland at high speed, whimpering because I'm going to miss my train, because it's hot out, and because I'm a small, weak, whimpering male carrying a large, heavy bag with my belongings in it, and suddenly, believe me or don't, THERE SHE WAS.  AGAIN.  The sexy, braless, short-skirted, probably head-having woman!  Again!  It was her, again, and she was walking by me, again, albeit on the other side of the street!  It was kind of an odd coincidence, and that coincidence was probably why, and only why, again, I turned to check out her butt, in the process glimpsing, out of the corner of my eye, the top of the pedestrian bridge that is next to the Amtrak station.  Which was in the opposite direction I was walking.

So, next time you see a guy turning all the way around to check out someone's butt (tomorrow, probably), just remember.  He may be a creep, but it just may have saved his life.

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

Last Week on Not My Desk!