Stories from the work front...

I cannot motivate myself at work lately. I had a time there over the last few weeks where it was right straight out, and now, it is kind of the lull before the storm once again, so I’m hunkering down and waiting for the waves to come crashing down on top of me again. I can see it coming, but right now I’m kind of enjoying the so-called quiet of the workplace. My customers are all behaving for the most part, meaning no problems from them. And by writing this, I’m certain that I’ve just jinxed myself and tomorrow I’ll be dealing with broken parts around the world or something like that. I hope not, but I could see that happening to me. That’s just the kind of luck that this kid would have normally, but as I said, all is fairly quiet right now. Calm. Smooth. Quiet. It’s nice. I had a false alarm this morning with a call from one of my customers, but it ended up he was calling about a part from one of our sister companies across that ocean we like to call the Atlantic. I made a few calls, and placed him in contact with the right German guy to talk to about the issue that they were having, and I felt like George Costanza who had done his one good deed for the day, and could go home from work now, because it just wasn’t going to get any better. I have stopped writing at work for the most part, because I started thinking about that, and that’s just bad policy for me to do that. I’ve heard the horror stories of people getting the axe for doing such things, and I don’t want that to be. So I stopped writing at work, well, at least I stopped publishing at work. I’ll crank out a gem or 2 here and there, and e-mail them to my Hotmail account, and then post them when I get home, but as far as publishing from work, done with that. Another good reason to go to work in the morning is so that I can hear Tina’s stories from the previous day. I used to hate them, but they’ve grown on me now, and I can find some serious humor in her daily diatribe that is her life. If there is a woman in this world that can make something dramatic that is so not dramatic that would be Tina, and the funny thing is, she knows it, and doesn’t pretend to not know it.

It cracks me up the things that she is concerned about. Wintertime. If there is even a hint of snow in the air, she’s checking weather.com every 10 seconds to see what it’s doing near her house. You can check the old Doppler radar and all, and she does. Religiously. And if there is a snowflake to be seen outdoors, she’s out the door and down the road before that thing even hits the pavement. She is freaked out about snow, and driving in it, and or having to deal with it even a little bit. It’s funny to me. Then again most people in the South are like that. Not growing up with it all of the time, they just don’t know. Then, same sort of production if there is going to be a big rainstorm or some kind of “weather event” as the meteorologists like to call them now. Damn if she isn’t glued to the internet to see what is going on with the weather, and how soon she needs to get on the road, and headed home for her to miss it whilst driving back to Raleigh from Roxboro. The other thing that this poor woman is petrified about are terrorists. I shit you not. Every time there is an upgrade to the national terror alert, back onto the internet to see what’s happening, who’s getting bombed (almost always nobody), and is her house OK back in Raleigh. Yeah, prime terrorist target right there, Tina’s townhouse. I don’t think so girl, just relax. Terrorism, yes, it’s a serious issue, but there were a lot more people killed in the US last year by the damn flu than there were terrorists. So maybe the real terrorism comes from germ ridden kids who spend all their time around other germ ridden kids at dirty day care centers, and then their parents get infested, and bring that stuff into work with them. Those are the real problems right there. OK, maybe not as real, or even close to real terrorists (like our buddy Osama), but damn, keep the kids and your damn self home if you’re all sick and snotty. I certainly don’t want what you’ve got, trust me on that bubba. Keep that ass in bed. But alas, these folks out of some certain stupid loyalty thing come into work even when they’re deathly ill, spreading their illness in the office, and then making others sick. If you’d just stay home for a day or 2, everyone would be better off. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah, Tina’s worrying.

Tina’s worrying is so famous around the plant that the ladies that work out in our quality assurance area ask me pretty much on a daily basis what the main concern of the day is for her. I’m actually quite surprised that Tina doesn’t have an ulcer the size of my head yet. She downs the pink stuff like it was Yaegermeister, and eats Rolaids like they’re breath mints. Then there come the pressure headaches that she gets about 3 or 4 times per week. Good thing our other cubemate, Trevor has a Costco sized bottle of Tylenol style painkiller at his desk, she’d be in deep shit. This morning she rolled into work hungover after partying a little too hard at her friend Monica’s wedding. A little too much red wine, and a little too much beer to follow said red wine, she got after it. On a school night even, and then rolled into work at around 8:30 or so, after calling the boss and telling her that she was going to be late because she was hungover. As much as I sometimes dislike the boss, she’s good for something like that. If you’ve been off getting hammered the night before, she’s willing to cut you a little slack the next morning and you can show up a bit late. As long as you show up. Our other old colleague Erik, who doesn’t work there anymore, used to show up still mostly drunk like 4 or 5 days per week sometimes. Now that kid could drink some beer. His personal record, when last I saw him, was 8 weeks of a 6 pack or more a night. No matter how you slice it, that’s a shitload of beer. Dare I say, a shit-ton of beer? Oh yes, I dare, and so did he. His liver was living in a squalid section of his body that was no doubt slowly being killed, and probably still is now. I don’t think he got any better when he moved back to Boston, and started hanging out with his old buddies who did that sort of thing everyday since they turned like 14. That kid is a wreck. He’s definitely going to end up one liver short someday within the next 15-20 years I’d bet. That’s what he gets for being an Irish Catholic kid from Boston, he was probably predisposed to something like that anyway. Doesn’t make it any less sad and kind of pathetic, but there is a good chance I’ll never actually see him again in this life, so what are you going to do? Nothing I can do about it. I actually talked to him once about his drinking, and he rebuffed my “talking points”, and kind of just blew me off. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I tried to talk to him about it a second time, and the same thing happened. Denied. I let it go after that, and he shortly moved away from North Carolina back to Beantown.

He had to get out, his girlfriend of many years ended up dumping him and kicking him to the curb, after they had purchased a house together, and he didn’t take it too well. The straw that broke the old back though, was the night he was at a Durham Bulls game with some of his friends, and he saw his ex, out with a longtime friend of his, and they were smooching away. That didn’t seem to sit well with him either. It was pretty much the next day, and he was heading back to New England. Sad but true.

Let me just clarify something for some folks out there. I previously wrote about Joel and Melissa getting married. For the North Carolina folks who don’t know my brother Joel, his fiancé’s name is Melissa, I am NOT confusing Melissa with Marla who is Joel Darden’s fiancé. OK? Better now Graham? Bueller? Hello? Bueller?