Last Day Blues

It's my last day at work until January 3rd and this combined with the fact my boss is in Chicago, is making me really, really disinclined to actually do anything. And I have stuff to do. Don't think for a moment that a boss-free, last day before the holidays means slacking off, oh no!

Well maybe a little seeing as how I'm ignoring the work and writing this tripe.

I am awaiting some people in Mexico to email me some information so I can ship some large, oversized item there for The Boss. Considering we're talking about a huge, fuck-off sized, posh resort, they weren't much for speaking English when I called them earlier. And most of me thinks "Well why should they? They're in Mexico. We lazy-assed English speakers could make the effort to speak Spanish after all!" but really, an international resort and they don't speak English? My Spanish is nothing to write home about so I was sort of terrified I'd embarrass myself by saying something really lewd instead of what I was trying to say. Let's remember here, almost my entire Spanish vocabulary was taught to me by the mailroom guys at my last job, so really you see my concern.

Side note: They taught me the correct response to anything I don't know the answer to is, "Me gustan culitos grandes!" (I like big asses) and by "asses" I am under no misconception they meant "donkeys" or "burros". "Me gustan burros grandes" however, might be even ruder... If this fails I'm to say "Yo quiero bailar un meringue repiado!" which loosely translated means "I like to get down and dance a good meringue!" which, although no help whatsoever, not to mention a blatant lie, might distract them enough to get away with it.

I also have to compile a comprehensive list of management in NY and London for holiday cards, because there is nothing like leaving these things till the last minute. And even though this year our company have an online flash version of our holiday card whose whole aim is to save paper, The Boss must have paper cards in envelopes. Naturally. Because it is the proper way.

Needless to say, I have no enthusiasm for any of this and I forgot my iPod so I have no music. Gasp! What am I to do without music? Really, they shouldn't even expect me to work in these inhuman conditions.

Anyway, here's wishing you all a happy holiday whatever it is you celebrate (even if you just celebrate cake and presents and booze like me!)

The British Are Coming

Being British, people here in the United States often ask me things like:

"Why do you all drink tea?"

and:

"You don't like tea? Then how can you be British?"

and:

"I love Irish accents!" (I'm Scottish)

or:

"Oh you're Canadian! No? Australian? English!"

and even:

"You're from the UK? Do you know [insert random person's name here]?"

Because I know everyone in the United Kingdom folks. Every single person. Even your uncle Albert who likes wearing ladies' corsets and your brother's best friend's dad who's in Strangeways for armed robbery.

And of course once it's been established that I am Scottish:

"Do you eat haggis?" Answer: I would rather eat my own toes. And quit the 'Braveheart' jokes. Or I'll force my sword up your runway.

In my new capacity at work I deal a lot with the UK - London in particular - a town where I spent much of my debauched and misspent (although possibly well spent!) youth, playing with my band, buying cheap garb at the markets and conversing with hobos on Oxford Street (The west end just has a better class of hobo I always find).

I've also spent significant hours of my life I'm never getting back being suitably smashed on pints of Snakebite and riding around the country in the back of a pick-up truck watching indie bands and quaffing cheap liquor (and later vomiting the same cheap liquor all over my lap) all in the name of entertainment. Because it's the British way.

Now, after a few years in the U.S., dealing with the Brits (and by "Brits" I really mean 'English people' as opposed to Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish people) is a strange business. For a start they sound funny. And they have much too strong an attachment to liquor. There's a chain of importance in England that goes:

• Lager (lager's like a soft drink in the UK and if you ask for a shandy (lager mixed with lemonade, i.e. 7UP or Sprite) you must be flamingly, Liberace gay or a child)


• liquor


• Pets


• Family


• Liquor


• Friends


• Liquor


• Nintendo


• Car


• Liquor


• Other

Working with them, on the other hand, has been all good. They're all friendly (probably due to the huge liquor intake), informal, have a sense of humor, are laid back and spell things properly. *In this blog I spell things in the American way because I keep being terrorized by the little red line of death that appears when I use British spellings, also known as "correct spellings".

This is good because in the real world, that is, the world in my head, I hate Brits. I hear them all the time in the street here in New York City and I snarl. Damn tourists, go home. Coming here with your strong pound buying our stuff and talking funny. I hate British accents. They make me cringe. They sound so common. And familiar. Especially since I have one.

I'm a little excited because I'm going to the UK this week for the holidays for the first time in three years and I'll probably just hand the security guys at the airport all my money on arrival to save time, what with the dollar limping painfully and breathing its last and the pound's mighty reign.

Thankfully, when I get there, there will be people to feed me and keep me from dying of hypothermia. You know, if my plane doesn't crash.

The Boss Is Confused. The Guv'ner Is An Idiot. We'll Call It a Tie.

Today's travel clusterfuck went thus: We had a snow warning in New York and some flights got canceled so the travel department, being forward thinking about such things, got The Boss a back-up flight just in case his flight back from Colorado was delayed hugely or heaven forbid, he get stranded in Colorado and eaten by bears. I sort of preferred the bears option personally, but the Travel Department are good, outstanding citizens who like their executives alive. And without teeth marks. Or puncture wounds. Or like...stumps for limbs. I think I'm getting excited! My cold black heart's a-flutterin'.

The problem with this plan? They didn't bother telling ME they'd arranged a second flight as a back up and, as it turned out, a third also in case number two befell some unforeseen and totally bogus tragedy.

Hee. I said number two. Hee.

Anyway, around 5 in the pee em, just as I'm unplugging my iPod in readiness for a swift exit, I get a phone call from Delta. Telling me that The Boss's flight has been delayed an hour and will now depart at 8:10 p.m. I email The Boss this info as he is mysteriously incommunicado with some golf clubs.

Then I think, "Hold on one goshdarn minute there mister!" because I wasn't born yesterday. "The Boss is on American."

I check itineraries. And sure enough, he is on American. Not Delta. So I think, "Hmm... something is not hunky dory in the land of travel plans." Because I think we just established I wasn't born yesterday.

Then I get a phone call from The Boss saying "So my flight's at 8:10 now? But...aren't I on American?" insert sound of crickets.

I call our travel department and get my buddy Jay. Jay's big and black and has a voice like smooth, sweet treacle. Every time I see or talk to him I'm reminded of Chef from South Park singing songs about "laying you down by the fie-ah and making sweet love to ya woo-man". He checks the data base and says, "Woo-man, your boss is still on that American flight at 7 p.m. It isn't delayed or canceled. But...wait...."

Oh God. What?

It's then that Jay tells me that Jane our travel lady booked a Delta flight as back up and a Continental one as well for variety (we are not planeist!) just in case a blizzard suddenly came along and lay down on New York City and flights get all screwed up and diverted to like...Newfoundland. Which wouldn't work. Since it snows all the time there. Hmmm. Didn't think that through at all...

I don't get it though. If one airline cancels their flights why would another one not? Is there some big business "My airline's harder than your airline" type competition going on? Is there some juiced up, beefy-jawed pilot at Delta going, "Bring it ON baby! Gimme that blizzard. Ice it up too. In fact, set that sucker on fire! El Flamo baby, that's my name. And no, that doesn't make me sound gay at all! Where are my steroids? Inject that sweet liquid right into my ass cheek like Roger Clemens at a frat party! No challenge is too great for DeltaMan (TM)! You American Airlines guys are pussies!" He'd be all macho and stick his chin in the air kinda like the dude from "American Dad" and he'd totally chew razor blades and eat puppies on his sandwiches.

Barbecued crispy puppies.

Anyway, since we still have the original 7 p.m. booking I call The Boss, who miraculously has his cell on for a change and who is about to use his extra hour to enjoy a dram of something expensive and nippy at the hotel bar to inform him that "Oh my God, get ye to the airport, immediatement s'il vous plait!"

Naturally, when I explain the "Well see, I have this flight then we have these back up flights..." he hears, "blah blah rhubarb, nnnnnth ummmmbbbbbb drool" and I have to explain it five other times the last one being like this: "Flight at 7. Get to airport. Plane will depart. Get ass on plane." all while running round my office with my arms extended like an airplane.

Finally, he ran off to ready his departure and I escaped before he could call me back to explain all over again.

Gosh, I can't wait for tomorrow, can you? I can't see anything POSSIBLY going wrong.

Pointless, Yet Still It Exists

The Guv'ner is operating on two hours sleep so I feel it's fair to give that warning before I type whatever is about to come out of my brain. Which could be anything. Because it has a mind of its own. Literally! Hi!

I went to bed with my head full of stuff I had to do today here at work and naturally, all of that chattered around inside my skull and prevented me from getting sleepy.

Just as I was feeling slightly like I might be drifting off, a loud voice, which sounded uncannily like Brian from "Family Guy" laden with reverb, would exclaim, "Don't forget to call the hotel in London for a copy of the car invoice now, will you?"

And I'm all "Shut the hell up, Voices In My Head, or I'll come in there with my axe and kill you."

And they're like "Dude...you know you'll forget and screw up everything and the six grand in expenses The Boss is due will be held up for weeks and he is gonna be pee-issed!"

And I'm like, "Aaargh, go away Brian from Family Guy. Get out of my head this instant! Leave Britney Alone!"

Oh the humanity. Or huge manatee.

Anyway yes. Two hours sleep and not even good sleep. Bad sleep. Bad sleep filled with stupid dreams and unsavory, sleazy characters. I'm talking James Spader oiled up and dipped in mud, sleazy. And riotous cats having some sort of hoedown in the other room, judging by the noise and bickering.

Still, even I have to admit it was an improvement on the previous night where I was awakened to the sound of a cat projectile vomiting into a box containing printer toner I had laid out on the bedroom floor ready to be listed on Ebay. Since we doubted there was much of a market for "Ralphed on printer cartridges" we threw it out, although, thinking back, if there's a market for those well worn ladies gym socks, surely there's some sicko (no pun intended) loopy enough to want my barf cartridge?

This morning I have accomplished several tasks while The Boss is out of town and every one of them I have had to redo several times because my brain has the attention span of plankton. Bear in mind however, this is only a small step down from its usual state of "slightly warm oatmeal".

OMG!!!1

Guv'ner,

Please make me an in depth list of everyone on the SKO team who works on BTY and reports to the GHWE group. I need emails and phone numbers so we can get a note out later in the week. They must only work on APSC and AOSC and be department heads.

- Boss With a Death Wish


Baby Jeebus, give me strength. I can be in a foul enough mood on a cold Monday morning without emails like the one above making me feel like a vegetable. I don't know what a single one of those acronyms means. I have no idea what an "SKO team" is, let alone sub-divisions of it, and I have no freaking CLUE how to get their phone numbers or emails since I don't know who they are. I don't even know if he's referring to internal people or client people or....aliens from the planet "Abundant Abbreviation Hell" or if those are just some random letters he got in Scrabble. I think I will write an email back with some acronyms of my own.

Dear Boss With A Death Wish:

ESAD asshat. WTF are you talking about? Take your SKO team and shove it up your ASS. (OMGLOLZ!)

- Guv'ner.

I'm a touch grouchy today...

Some Questions Are Just Unanswerable...

There are a few key words and phrases which, as an assistant to someone infinitely more important than our lowlife selves, we hear fairly regularly. In my humble experience, most of them start with “Why?” or “Where?” or “Did you…?” and involve things that we know nothing about, usually because some cauliflower-headed boss has neglected to tell us either out of some sort of blissful ignorance or because they truly believe we have developed the ability to read minds. (And let’s hope that never happens or I’ll get fired and possibly arrested!)

I frequently hear, “I need flights for this Asia trip to all four destinations!” which stops all the cogs in my brain turning simultaneously in confusion for a few seconds while I try to remember what the hell he is talking about because, honestly, I have no recollection whatsoever of any trip to Asia in the near future or indeed any other time. Then he gets infuriated and I get infuriated and in the end he forwards me a chain of emails on the subject and I figure out this trip has been in discussion for weeks but he never bothered to include me on any of the correspondence or by…I don’t know…telling me in person, therefore I am oblivious to the max because this is the first I’ve heard of any trip and even though that’s hardly my fault, I look like some sort of glazed-eyed airhead who can only say things like, “Huh?”

Another one I hear is, “Where is my Dictaphone?” which, while providing an impressive mental array of possible fruity answers, the actual retort is always,“on your desk by your computer where it always is!” and then he will deny its existence and commence turning the entire office upside down and getting redder by the second and huffing and puffing until I go in there and find it…on the desk next to his computer – who’d have thought it? Which always leaves me thinking, “So how come it’s you running the world and not me?”

International Jet Set Woman (Not)

I am quite the global chick these days. I'm like...International Jet Set Woman, only without the jet setting part. I merely deal in phone and email terms with the rest of the world while sitting in a cold, although pleasantly lit, New York office while occasionally venturing out to Embassies (or liquor stores).

For instance, yesterday I had to arrange a bunch of stuff with someone in Brazil, convey the information I gleaned from them to people in London (Hi London!) and then work out a bunch of visa stuff with our Moscow office. Can I just say now that I am humbled and grateful beyond belief that we native English speakers are as supremely arrogant as we are in forcing the world to speak our language, because while I could mumble through in French or really stilted Spanish (providing they like salty phrases and things like "the postman is called Juan. Here is Juan!"), my Portuguese is a bit on the rusty side in that I know exactly two words in Portuguese - one is "thank you" and the other wouldn't be of much use in polite company, but is of paramount importance when driving on Portuguese highways. I can read Russian (although I have no idea what I am reading) and I know a few useful but again, not really eloquent, phrases I learned on a drunken evening in St. Petersburg - I said that like there is any other kind.

Now two of my bosses are heading off to Russia in early 2008 for some meetings. And probably copious amounts of vodka strong enough to sterilize a truck-stop toilet, although I didn't actually see that on the itinerary.

Naturally, to prepare for this trip they need things like visas and in order to procure these visas, as well as requiring a letter of invitation from someone in our Russian office, Russia would like us to provide them with some DNA, the entire Sopranos box set on DVD, someone's first born son and maybe some planes that don't crash. Because really? Tupolevs? Not even if I was high on crack.

And that's just for a single entry visa. For a multi entry visa you better have a damn good reason why you'd want to enter the country more than one time, comrade and then be prepared to be interrogated at the Russian Embassy by Mr. Big (first name "Boris") in a sparse, gray room lit only by a bare light bulb. If they don't like you you'll still get the visa, but the condition is you'll have to fly on Aeroflot - the only airline that requires you be hammered before boarding (this also applies to the pilots incidentally) and have a screw driver on your person at all times in case the wings should come loose during the flight.

Honestly, the questions on the form are pretty funny. It's all "Where will you be going, staying, who will you be seeing, why are you seeing them, will you steal our big, fur hats and what will you be watching on our 1970s black and white state of the art television sets?"

As a side note, I worked for a month in Latvia in 1994 when I was still young and relatively innocent and my hotel room featured a TV from about 1967 that got one channel, was black and white and grainy, you had to arrange an antenna on the window sill to pick up that one channel and the TV didn't have a stand. It had LEGS. And buttons. That you turned to switch it on. Insane. I had a room next door to a Latvian prostitute who had her TV on 24/7, so on reflection maybe it just wasn't the best hotel. She once smiled at me in the corridor, said something incomprehensible and gave me a rhinestone hair clip. I never quite got what that was about...but I digress.

International Jet Set Woman needs lunch. And maybe a keg under the desk and a very long straw.

Why Phones Are Evil (part 50)

Today my boss called me to ask me how to place a call to Brazil using an American cell phone from the United Kingdom. Because apparently I am a walking instruction manual of international phone doings.

The question was would he dial Brazil as if he were calling from a UK number or would he dial as though he were calling from the USA, since his cell phone has an American number? He was getting impatient and antsy that I didn't know this off the top of my head.

"But you're British!" he said, as if that meant something. "You call overseas from the UK all the time."

"But I call from a land line!" I said, thinking of the twelve billion dollars a minute I'd be paying to use my cell phone for such a purpose. "And I call the United States not Brazil. I dial 001 then the number."

"I tried that!" he said impatiently. "It doesn't work."

"Well, that is because Brazil is not the United States." I reminded him. "001 is the USA. Brazil's code is 55. You would dial 00-55 then the number."

Some mumbling and other rumblings on the other end. I think he thought I was quite likely making this up as I went along. Silly boss. If I was making anything up I'd have him call 1-800-BIG-TITS or something equally satisfying.

"Will that work?" he asked suspiciously.

"It will work from a land line." I reminded him, "but from your cell, I don't know. You would have to try it. We are in the 'trial and error' phase."

I called our Telecom department who said, "Well it's simple. He has an American phone with an American number, he should call as if he was in the United States. He should dial 011-55 then the number just like he would do from the office."

I conveyed this to my boss who I could feel getting redder with impatience by the second, even from 3,000 miles away. He disappeared to try this method.

In the meantime I called a friend who deals with international calling stuff on a regular basis and he said, "I think you would still call as if you were calling from a UK land line number, even on a U.S. cell. He should dial 00-55 then the number." which is the opposite of what our Telcom people said.

Grrr...

Boss calls back five minutes later his voice a whole pitch higher. "I can't get through!" he is fuming. "I get these beeps..."

"You're quite sure those 'beeps' aren't just the phone ringing?" I ask as kindly as possible in case he blows a gasket as my suggestion he might have the brain of a pea. "Because some of those foreign phones sound different."

"The number doesn't work." he said. "The number. It does. Not. Work."

I tell him to try the second option, of dialing 00-55 before the number.

"We really need to learn how to do these things!" he says furiously, and by "we" I am in no doubt he means me.

Two minutes later he called again. "I still can't get through." he said. "I can't get this damn thing to work."

I'm pretty sure he's doing something stupidly wrong because he and machinery of any sort are diametrically opposed. Asking him to do anything technical is like handing a laptop full of encrypted Government files to a dyslexic ape.

"Why don't I call the gentleman," I suggest "and patch him through to you?"

So I call the man in Brazil and get through immediately. I conference him into my boss in London and all is well. Typically, to call my boss all I have to dial is the same number I'd dial if he were on the next block here in NYC.

And people wonder why I hate telephones with a rabid passion. Hello?

Oh, and if anyone has any idea how one dials Brazil from the UK on a US cell phone, be sure to let me know. Thanks.

Cluck Off

As I was just telling my peeps over at Live Journal, there is someone here in my corridor, who is clucking like a chicken.

I assume it's a person because well...it doesn't sound like an actual chicken. But it begs several questions:

1. Who is clucking like a chicken?


2. Why?


3. Is alcohol now being served for lunch and where do I get some?


4. Am I losing my mind? (I know this option is wrong because I lost that in 1975 along with my dignity - hello again, mom-made, geometric pant suits!)

The last time I worked on this floor I sat a few feet away from a girl who liked to moo like a cow. I mean it only happened once but let's face it, that's all it takes to be forever known as The Girl Who Moos. She was a funny bean that mooing girl. Her entire vocabulary (when not mooing) consisted of swear words and coming up with interesting potty-mouthed terms of endearment for me. Things like "Fuckface" and "Sugartits" (which she was using before The Mel claimed it for his Jew-hating self).

This clucking thing however, is a mystery. I believe I have narrowed the culprits down to the mysterious corner office, whose occupant(s) I have never seen. Strange noises come from that office and I believe this may be where the CIA are conducting secret experiments to birth a special breed of international-super-robotic-spy-chickens.

There is really no other explanation.

When Assistants Are Speechless

Today my boss said to me:

"You need to be a bit more aggressive when it comes to my travel plans."

That's definitely a first. Someone telling the Guv'ner she needs to be more aggressive! This cheered me up enormously. I had instant visions of booking future flights by going down to the travel department with a sawn-off shotgun and making them do degrading things to each other with nipple clamps and bleach.

Except I like our travel department people. They bend over backwards for us to get us out of last minute jams. They're my friends. So this fantasy does not seem as pleasing as say, the idea of...hog-tying the boss of my former ad team to a curtain rod and roasting her over a bonfire. Why can't I get more aggressive with her?

"More aggressive?" I asked, a little unsure of his meaning.

"Well my flight tonight..." he said, flustered. "I'm in business class. And I hate business class. My first class upgrade hasn't come through." Travel try to get him free upgrades when available and more likely than not they come through by the time he reaches the airport, unless it's a particularly busy week such as the end of a holiday weekend (hello!).

I should just interject at this point that I pray the day will come where I am in the position to stomp my feet and whine that I have to fly business class. That will be the same day I'm carted off in a strait jacket to the mental hospital screaming, "Marry me Ben Stiller, you hunk of hot flesh!" In other words, NEVER.

I thought briefly about how the boss would look with an apple wedged in his mouth and a fork in his ass.

"You need to be more aggressive when booking my travel if it's for overnight flights." he clarified. "Because I can't sleep in business class. I need first."

This is all well and good, however our company policy is, only the CEOs of the branches can fly first class ever, unless business class is categorically not available and you agree by signing your name in blood on parchment, that you will allow your wife to be sodomized by a donkey at the holiday party. The CFO will not authorize first class travel and the travel head will not allow me to book it without this authorization. It's out of my hands.

"I'm not allowed to book first class." I told him. "It's policy. Jane (Travel lady) won't book it without an authorization form stating the cost difference."

He got exasperated. "Jim (CFO) and I have an 'agreement'." he said, "so basically when I'm flying at night overseas I get to fly first class."

Now, not to be pedantic here, but if I had such an "agreement" with my boss that was distinctly to my benefit, such as the authority to fly first class when necessary and have the company rules not apply to me, I might want to let the person who arranges my travel (i.e., ME) and the person who books it (i.e., Jane) know this secret so we can procure the correct class of service. Because, although I've been working hard on it and corresponding with Harry Potter, I am not yet able to read minds.

So he was a little peeved at me for, a) not knowing what his great bulbous brain was thinking, and b) for not being able to upgrade tonight's flight ten minutes before he left for the airport and with no one around to authorize spending the extra three grand.

I was so annoyed when he left, I penned an email to the CFO asking if such an agreement existed and if I was permitted to book first class travel in future overnight flights. I can't wait for his response which I guarantee will be something along the lines of, "Why the fuck doesn't he fly Virgin like everyone else, because in business class their seats flatten all the way back allowing a person to sleep!"

And my boss will shit.

Because Virgin? Really? Planes full of video games and youths with long hair and loud music and drunk British people? Plus he's an American Airlines platinum member so you know...you get "favors". I'm not sure if by "favors" it means, free champagne, complimentary upgrades or a high class hooker flight attendant. I don't care either.

He called me from the airport all smiles. "I got the upgrade!" he yelled! "Well fuck-a-doodle-doo!" I replied, although it was silently in my head.

He's a decent boss in so many ways,for example, today he said to me, "You know, you're really great with the clients, they're always complimenting you!", which is nice, but then he always has this "What, you mean you CAN'T read my mind?" thing going on and it gets really old, really fast.

Monday Spells Bitter

It really soothes my day to post something about that old pigfucker, Mr. Panty Waist. It's like exorcising all those old demons and letting the hate run free.

This is typical of the sort of conversations I'd have daily, with the old warthog. He was really a miserably, irritating man who would do his utmost to weasel out of anything he didn't feel like doing. He'd sigh about a million times, whine, sulk and make excuses as to why he couldn't do a certain thing (oddly one of them was never "I am an incompetent baboon.")

If he was mysteriously absent from the office (OK not mysteriously exactly, he was always absent from the office) he'd finally call in and this would happen:

Mr. PW: So anyway, I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to be doing today.
Me: Ok.
Mr. PW: So if anyone asks what I’m doing, you don’t know.
ME: ...well...I don’t know!
Mr. PW: Exactly. Be vague. Don’t volunteer any information.
ME: I don’t have any information. I have no idea what you're doing.
Mr. PW: That’s what I mean. Be vague, do you know I mean? I don’t want them knowing my whereabouts this afternoon.
ME: Again, I don't know your whereabouts. Where are you?
Mr. PW: I’m out of pocket. (Car and road sounds in background and kids fighting)
ME: Ok. What if I need to reach you?
Mr. PW: Email me. Email my blueberry.
(He had a Blackberry. Got confused. A lot.)
ME: OK...you do know Cruella is in the office today and may call about the client.
Mr. PW: Well, just remember you don’t know where I am.
ME: I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, YOU ANNOYING FUCKNUT! (I may have silently said that last part in my head)
Mr. PW: Exactly.

The man was a ball of paranoia. He was fearful at all times of anyone knowing his business. He'd skulk around awkwardly trying to avoid his coworkers, especially those who might want to "talk to" him. Which really, was only ever his fellow partners who had to talk to him for the sake of the business. No one voluntarily wanted any interaction with him for fear of landing in jail for being forced into beating his brains with a swivel chair, after several seconds of his whining.

Cruella de Ville was not to be messed with. She reduced giant, ego-swollen men to their knees in tears, she was so mean. Mr. Panty Waist detested and feared her with every inch of his over-sized, disillusioned being. He'd openly groan if you mentioned her name then whine like a tired three year old about how he didn't have time to meet with her - it's hard to schedule the Chair(wo)man of the company into your calendar between, "scratching my balls" and "staring at my feet" I guess.

Sometimes, even though I haven't seen his bloated visage in three years, I still hear his voice whining in my head and it takes all my strength not to pick up a wrench and bash my skull till he's gone.

Reminiscing and Hating

Since most of my posts revolve around my time spent in purgatory at the Company of Soul-sucking Hades, where I slaved for years for Cruella de Ville, Papa Smurf and lastly Mr. Panty Waist, today it's only fitting, for a change, that I talk about my escape from this life-sucking house of evil, three years ago this very week.

And I didn't even get a Ticker Tape parade.

I lost my job on a Tuesday. It was unexpected, yet...not, since I'd had practically nothing to do for about six months. Plus I worked for Mr. Panty Waist and I hated him and my hatred wasn't exactly a huge trade secret, unlike the reason I hadn't yet murdered him and fed his dismembered body to the pigeons.

The morning following my departure, I was giddy and high on life and the fact I no longer had to watch The Cobra yank boogers out of his nose daily, or field Mr. Panty Waist's excuses for just about everything.

I had hated that job with a rabid passion, and yes, I knew I needed to get out of there, before my brain rotted away to dust, but I hadn't actually expected to be going quite so soon. Still, with nothing going on, two of my three bosses were leaving while the other was a Significantly Giant Twat, which I do realize is an insult to respectable twats everywhere and I apologize.

So, I was "laid off". Really it was just a fancy way of saying "fired". The only difference is it came with a severance payment and I qualified for unemployment. I didn't feel any more bitter than usual - except at Panty Waist because hello - I'd been laid off, I hadn't bumped my head or anything.

Incidentally he was the one who told me I was no longer going to be working there. The whole time he was talking I leaned back on the back legs of my chair and grinned at him which I think put him off his stride a bit because he was fidgeting like Britney Spears in the Snack Cake aisle at Wal-Mart.

I went home and immediately signed him up for some very adult porn sites and felt a whole lot better. I did this because I am very mature and also because I knew they'd send him links he was stupid enough to click on then he could have a glorious meltdown when seventeen windows would open all at once showing ladies' (and men's!) naughty bits at varying angles having various things done to them with foreign objects and hopefully this would give him a heart attack.

A couple of days later, the old coot was out of town so I went back in to the office to collect my stuff and sign my redundancy statement that cleared my "generous" severance payment. Mr. Panty Waist had stressed over and over how "generous" it was. Because they liked me you see. Generous, generous, generous. It was ok. Standard. It didn't exactly make me Bill Gates but it wasn't bad.

Then I went to say goodbye to the handful of people there who I called friends and we bitched about company morale and management. When I left for good, I felt elated. Not sad. Not regretful. Well...that's not entirely true. I did have one regret - that I didn't swallow a box of Wheaties before going up there, so I could take an industrial sized dump on Panty Waist's chair, but hey, you can't expect me to remember everything!

So I collected my few bits and pieces and my plants. I’ve never been renowned for having a “green thumb” – in fact I’m infamous for draining the life out of anything that photosynthesizes within about an hour in my company – but my three office plants were rather dear to me and not just because, against all the odds they'd somehow survived multiple years of me.

One, a straggly viney type thing, I had fished out of the garbage about two years earlier, where someone had dumped it mercilessly in a fit of spring cleaning. I nursed it back to health and talked to it and it grew and grew until it took over the entire 6th floor of our building and required its own zip code. It routinely used to knock pencils off my desk and swallow chihuahuas! I have that plant to this day and it still won't die. I keep it away from the cats.

The second plant was a gift from the Soul-Sucking Company from Hades for some occasion about three years before. At the time I left, it had already “died” around 22 times but it always came back. It was sort of like the psycho masked guy from “Halloween”. Just when you think it's drawn its last breath, you come in next morning and it’s there in a frilly apron, making the coffee.

The third plant I liked to call “Pablo” for reasons that escape me now but that quite possibly involved alcohol in copious quantities. Pablo was exotic, large, spiky and forbidding and looked like he possibly speared then gobbled up small children for a mid-morning snack. He sported two big, red, desert type flowers and the attitude of a Hell’s Angel with a hangover. He was known in the office as "Killer". I used to hide behind Pablo and make lewd gestures when Panty Waist was annoying the bejeezus out of me, which was every two minutes.

Anyway, I loaded my plants into my “granny cart” – the sort we New Yorkers like to use for grocery shopping because we don't have new-fangled things like cars – and wheeled him home, three miles down Fifth Avenue, through throngs of stupefied tourists who were trying to figure out if I was a bag lady, a crazy person or a florist.

At least one of those things was correct.

When There IS No Point...

I made the colossal mistake of picking up my phone this morning without checking the caller ID and found myself engulfed by the entity that is the Most Boring Woman Who Ever Lived.

“Oh for shit’s sake!” I thought, vowing to get revenge on myself for this oversight, later.

“Hiii…” she said, in that slow, high pitched, really irritating manner she perfects. “I was just looking through some old expense reports…”

At this point, my mind took a scenic detour into fantasy land and I decided to go out this weekend and buy the necessary supplies to electrify my desk, so that when she calls me again and I fall into the inevitable coma which ensues, I will be jolted to attention (with the added bonus of seeing what my hair looks like vertical) and able to maybe pay attention to more than two seconds of what she is saying. It’s not that I want to listen to her crap, you understand, but it seems rude to actually snore when someone is talking.

“These expense reports are from [ex team, spawn of Beelzebub] and they have a job code that I don’t recognize. In fact, our billing system doesn’t recognize it either. They said ‘this job does not exist’ and I said ‘but it’s on these expense reports that The Guv’ner did and I used the same codes.’ And they said, ‘oh, those must be last quarter’s codes, so they won’t work now!’ and I said ‘ooooooooooooooooh.’ …because the codes changed. And I didn’t realize.”

I waited a few seconds before speaking because I was waiting for a punch line. Or a point. Or anything really that explained why she would bother calling to tell me this. But she said nothing.

I said, “Oh. OK then.”

“I just thought it was quite funny.” TMBWTEL replied. “Because you know, you used the old codes but when you used them they weren’t old, whereas…” It was at this point I removed the receiver from my ear, held it three feet from my head and looked at it like it was a glowing, neon turd.

Which, coincidentally, was also the exact moment my boss walked in with a thick wad of paper and said, “Can you just make me four….what are you doing?”

“Ihavetogonowbye.” I said to TMBWTEL and hung up.

“I love Xeroxing” I told my boss. "I would be happy to Xerox."

Average

This is a typical story about Mr. Panty Waist. It's like an average. Almost a composite of so many other near identical incidents that occurred over my time there, that helped mold me into the sweet, cheerful, bastion of sanity you see before you today.

It was a day like any other, and I was sulking because Mr. Panty Waist had called that morning whining angrily (for a change) about another one of my obvious inadequacies. I'd taken a vacation day the previous day because my friend was going to be in town from the UK. Naturally, a day where Mr. Panty Waist has to fend for himself, is a very dangerous day indeed.

I imagine it's a little like organizing your six year old when you have to be away from the homestead for a period of time. You have to leave intricate yet simple to comprehend lists of things that need to be done or that you are supposed to be doing. For your six year old you might pack up a lunch and leave homework instructions. "You must read two pages of your book and you may not, at any time, eat crayons."

For Mr. Panty Waist you might write an essay called "Stating The Fucking Obvious" because sincerely that's what the man needed. "First you put one foot on the floor, now the other, then you stand up. Next proceed to...."

So on my first day back he called, naturally from home, since it was still morning and we didn't live in fantasy land, people.

“[Sigh] Yesterday something happened when you were out….[sigh] and I’m not very happy about it…what I’m saying is….in other words…apparently I was supposed to have a meeting with Cruella deVille, but I had to cancel it because….what I’m saying is I didn’t know I was having any meeting so I didn't come in. It wasn’t on my calendar, do you know what I’m saying? I didn’t know about the meeting because it wasn't on my calendar….”

He went on that way for about four months till I wanted to lodge something white hot and sharp up his rectorial© region.

Firstly, I had not only told him about that meeting, it was that colossal horse's ass who told me, not two days earlier, to set it up and for that particular day. When I yelled “Is three o’clock tomorrow ok?” he replied with, “Yes that’s fine.”

This was par for the course for the guy. He'd say something and promptly forget it ten minutes later.

Secondly, he doesn't for all intensive purposes have a calendar because he refuses to learn how to operate his computer therefore didn't know how to access the Outlook calendar where everything is scheduled nice and clearly, despite being shown about oh...seven trillion times.

I don't know, is it just me? Am I a goddamn genius of humanity? Is it that hard to click on a button that says "calendar"? Do we have opposable thumbs or am I thinking of some other parallel universe?

So he called me on this particular morning and he claimed it was the first he’d heard of any meeting with Satan. Whine, whine, whine, why didn't I inform him of this meeting, why did I drop the ball on such an important meeting? In the end I gave up correcting him because you learn from experience it's not worth the hassle. It's better to just bite on your tongue and think about his fat head roasting over a bonfire with an apple wedged in his cake hole.

I merely grunted one word answers at him till he hung up. He hated that. It drove him nuts. And I was all about driving him nuts. In fact I devoted two whole years to driving him nuts and I consider it my greatest failure to date simply because well...he was clearly nuts before I got anywhere near him.

Naturally, on such occasions I would hear about "my mammoth error" several thousand times throughout the week until I started consulting the Interwebz to find out if there was any information on an efficient way to disembowel a spoiled, disgruntled New Englander and dispose of the evidence in an sufficiently secretive manner.

I drew a lot of cartoons that year of Mr. Panty Waist. It was like cheap therapy. One day I swear, I'm going to post them.

Talking of cartoons: THIS site allows you to draw your obnoxious boss and post your feelings. Check it out if you want a good giggle. I have two on there (#84 and #85 if you care - the first is of Quasi from THIS entry and the second is me listening to Mr. Panty Waist on the phone.)

Where The Time Goes

I used to enter Mr. Panty Waist's time in our company's electronic timesheet partly due to his complete technical incompetence and partly because he couldn't be bothered to do something as mundane as account for his doings, or lack thereof, all day, by himself.

His timesheet was a constant source of annoyance to me mainly because he'd insist on leaving it for several weeks unattended despite nagging, then have a hissyfit when the Cobra, a constant thorn is his side on just about every matter, started getting shirty about the fact they couldn't accurately bill the client until they had this information. This in turn would make me snort with indignant mirth because "accurate billing" were not two words usually found in the same sentence at The Company of No Hope. Anyway, Mr. Panty Waist would get in a tizzy, sulk, stomp around and demand I "take care of it".

Since there were no job codes in the system for "Slept till noon", "whined for two hours then commenced sulking", or "read Wall Street Journal for 30 minutes while pinching a loaf", we always had to take a little artistic license with his time and where we billed it to.

He therefore would have me bill his time in what I can only describe as "corporate code". You see, when I say I've never really had a truly creative job, that's not entirely true. Mr. Panty Waist's timesheet was a work of fiction worthy of a Pulitzer.

His work day, according to his timesheet, would look thus:

2 hours - Description: Confidential Project
Translation, "I don't have even the remotest inkling where the time went on this day or what I did with it. I’m sure it was important and involved sighing incessantly and farting. I know I slept till 11 a.m. I also know I arrived in a cab and it took a long time."

30 minutes - Description: Strategic Materials
Translation, "I read Time Magazine while straining on the pot then crop-dusted the corridor on my hasty way back to my office, leaving people for the rest of the afternoon commenting on 'that stench of rotten broccoli'".

3 hours - Description: On-site support
Translation, "Went to the client's and whined, ate a $100 lunch with a shot of scotch at “Pietro’s” with said client where I whined some more, mostly about people who hate me, which is just about everyone. Naturally, I will bill the client for this meal."

30 minutes - Description: Video Work
Translation, "Talked to SBAS for about five minutes and may have mentioned the word “video” in passing, in between whining about other employees and the other partners and how they all have it in for me."

30 minutes - Description: Conference Calls
Translation, "Actually one call. And it was less a conference call and more of a 'call to a friend of mine at the client to discuss how Democrats are Satan and I'm totally beat because I work too hard.' Also I arranged to meet for drinks later in the week for some more “on-site support".

1 hour - Description: Edits to Materials
Translation, "Watched some news. Scratched head fruitfully producing impressive cloud of dandruff. Changed one word in a document, argued with The Passive Aggressive Blonde Chick over the color of the blue font and had The Guv'ner attach the Word document to an email because I am a giant camel's scrotum who wouldn't know how to find his own ass with both hands and a cattle prod."

30 minutes - Description: Creative work
Translation, "Thinking bitter thoughts about fellow partners, in particular "Mr. Vagina Chin" and how he gets all the praise and yet does absolutely nothing all day unlike me, who gives it his all."

My good friend, the Evil Queen, who worked in finance, sat diagonally opposite my desk. You could always tell when she was reviewing Mr. Panty Waist's timesheets because I'd hear her snort fruitfully and an IM would pop up on my screen that said, "So by 'Media Practice' you mean, he watched baseball all afternoon don't you?"

From the current issue of Forbes magazine:

If you're a member of corporate America, chances are you've got access to a state-of-the-art gym, a gourmet cafeteria and an array of wellness services, including health risk assessments, telephone and Web-based consultations, and weight-loss programs.

Um...no, no and hell no, Mr. McFancypants.

Don't get me wrong, we have some "stuff" going on. For instance, we have yoga. You have to pay for it but it's there, on the premises should you need to meditate out your stress. We also have things like Weight Watchers and healthy living seminars and then we have a little mini university where we can do various software classes, etc. for free. I even did a defensive driving course a couple of years back which saves 10% on your car insurance for three whole years! So what if I live in Manhattan and don't have a car? At least I know that tailgating will get you a lot more up close and personal with some dude's pick-up than nature ever intended! And the various suspicious practices people like to get up to while driving that really, they shouldn't. Yes, I mean you.

But really what I'm saying is, my company aren't so much state-of-the-art cool as, trying really hard to go from very staid and vanilla to something more youthful and creative. I mean we have an on-site pub once a week how's that for a start? Besides face it, nothing brings out the "youthful" in a group of executives quite like free liquor.

But despite a noticeable shift toward promoting healthy workplaces, your job can still make you sick. From uncomfortable workspaces to poor air quality to depression-inducing stress, there are plenty of opportunities to come home feeling worse than when you left in the morning.

Damn straight, Einstein. Sonny, I wrote the book on the coming home feeling worse than when you left. And I usually feel pretty bad when I leave, due to the fact I've just been forced to get out of a warm comfortable bed to do expense reports. Going home feeling worse than when you arrived comes from working with giant, IQ deficient assholes all day, and while my current employer has mercifully freed me from those for the most part, my last job provided enough of them to see out the next millennium.

[Berman] says that everything from mold spores to office furniture that off-gases formaldehyde to changes in humidity can affect a worker's upper respiratory system.

Whoa! Hold up one goddamn minute here. Did you say formaldehyde? The stuff they embalm dead people with? OK I know it's used for a lot of other stuff but really. My desk/dead people - two things I don't want to see in the one sentence ever again, ok? I don't suppose I can go home because I'm "allergic to my gaseous desk"? I didn't think so.

In fact, work-related stress has a powerful impact on employees. A study in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health demonstrated a significant relationship between work stress and depression.

That's...no. Really? Stress at work is linked to depression? Tell me you are shitting me? It usually makes me want to buy the world a Coke. I cannot believe someone even wrote that paragraph.

Just Reminiscing...

One rainy Tuesday, the dastardly Mr. Panty Waist appeared in the office, bleary-eyed and a little tow-headed (though not at all in an adorable way), around 9:45 a.m. This monumental event in itself rendered the entire office silent for a good 30 seconds because, didn’t he know? It was still morning! Did his clock stop? And we had only been there 45 minutes ourselves! And…well, it was nowhere near time to go home, was he having a breakdown of the nervous variety? Was he confused (this was sort of like asking “Hey, was Liberace gay?”)? And had he slept in a hedge? (Mr. Panty Waist, not Liberace – he was way too fabulous and sparkly for that.)

We sent the intern to the closest window to stick her head out but she reported no flying pig sightings or any ominous black hole in the sky attempting to suck the Earth in. (I seem to remember she did spot some idiot streaking down Rockefeller Plaza, however, his little white ass bobbing up and down in a sea of gray suits, but that’s par for the course in NYC).

We naturally, then put the news channels on just to be sure we shouldn’t be donning gas masks and making for the fire escape or calling our loved ones to say goodbye, since can you believe it? Mr. Panty Waist is in the building before noon!

We did check with each other also. “You do see him don’t you? I don’t have a fever do I? I did do a lot of acid in my teens!”

As previously discussed, Mr. Panty Waist only did mornings on the most extreme occasions and those happened only a couple of times a year at best. Usually it meant he’d forgotten some important project, remembered the night before that GAAAH, it was due the next morning, peed his pants, run around in circles frightening the kids, had a tantrum including much sighing, foot stamping and pouting, called each of his team at home who all had caller ID and quietly ignored him, then spent an unhappy hour learning how his alarm clock worked.

This particular Tuesday he gazed at us all in much the same way I imagine Neil Armstrong looked around him in wonder before plopping down onto the Moon’s surface.

“What is this strange parallel universe?” he seemed to be thinking. "What are all these people doing here in the middle of the night?!"

Then he took off his coat and commenced whining and we all remembered why we liked the fact he never usually came in till mid-afternoon.

“I need coffee. Why is there no coffee in the machine? Where’s my pen? I need my pen. I have a meeting with Cruella. *SIGH* I don’t want to go. Find out if it’s absolutely necessary. I have work to do. I can’t meet with her when I have important…papers to do things with!” Whine, whine, whine. I'm playing my tiny violin you big, bedraggled fuckstick.

He’d then stop in his tracks. Something isn’t right you see. He hasn’t quite figured out what it is yet but he knows…

At last he sees it. There is no sign whatsoever of his Skankariffic Blonde Ass-kissing Sidekick (SBAS) or SBAS Jr., her younger clone, both of whom typically show up late morning and pretend they’ve been there the whole time, and to do this project, he needs to delegate and delegate fast and they are his only targets.

He blinked a few times trying to figure it out. Where are they? Are they in the bathroom? Are they at the client’s?

At this very moment the phone rang and I answered it. It was the SBAS herself with her morning inquisition to find out if Mr. PW was miraculously in yet, expecting the obvious answer.

“Yes, he’s here.” I said. I hated the SBAS, I may have hinted at it before.

You could hear her mind have a panic attack, “SHIT! Shit, shit, shit!”

“He has a project.” I added. “An emergency project.”

“Well…tell him I’ll be in about…noon.” She said and I could hear her frustration. “I have an urgent errand to run that I can’t change.”

“Oh yes, your hairdresser called to confirm your 10:30 appointment” I told her.

“I…well don’t tell him that, just say I’ll be there as soon as I can.” said the SBAS, totally busted.

“Was that her?” Mr. Panty Waist said, loping out of his office looking anxious. (Hell imagine how he feels looking in a mirror!)

“That was her.” I said. “She said she’ll be in straight away to help with the project. Well...right after her haircut.”

I could hear the Evil Queen a few cubes away, splutter coffee on her desk.

He looked most displeased.

“Where is [SBAS Jr.]?” he then wanted to know. SBAS Jr. was infamous for excuses. Big ones, small ones, elaborate ones, obvious ones, highly inventive ones – she had an excuse for every day of the week. Here are some genuine ones she submitted:

“There was a fire on our street and the fire department said we had to stick around in case they needed access.”

“My dog ran off while I was walking him. I have to find him, I might not be in for a while.”

“I woke up and my tongue was green so I got an emergency doctor’s appointment, I think I’ll have to work from home today!”

“I sprained my ankle falling downstairs.”

“My husband is having palpitations.”

“There’s a truck overturned on the Turnpike so I’m going to be in traffic for a few hours.”

They went on and on. And Mr. Panty Waist continued to fall for them.

“No idea.” I told him. “She doesn't usually get in till later.”

He wasn’t quite sure what to do with this information so he slammed his door and sulked for the rest of the morning. There’s nothing a tardy procrastinator hates more than other tardy procrastinators. When they eventually both arrived looking a little pale and worried, he had a closed door meeting with them in his office where I hope he spanked them with a ruler and then had them do the same to him. And that the ruler had nails in it. Salty nails.

This entry has no point, except to reiterate my hatred for those people. Sorry to lead you all on and everything...

The Plastic Lady

Time for more hauntings from the Ghosts of Jobs Past...

Many moons ago, while still working in Hades at the Company of No Hope, my good buddy Timo found out that Cruella de Ville was in the market for a new car, which would be thinly disguised, financially at least, as a company car. A company car in as much as she officially, technically “worked” for the company (at least she showed up occasionally and carried lots of bags to make her look busy) although she intended to use it exclusively for personal use and the Cobra could write it off as some business expense in his usual devious manner.

She had done this same thing the previous year for a new top of the range Ford SUV that she just had to have. This particular year’s coveted gold at the end of the rainbow had been a brand, spanking new Cadillac Escalade, which loosely translated meant that one of her fabulous “ladies who lunch” friends must have procured one from daddy or hubby and Cruella was starting to feel inferior. Of course she wanted hers to be bigger, better, newer and have features she wouldn’t ever dream of using but would be able to boast relentlessly about at the country club.

Maybe it would just look good sitting outside her Park Avenue apartment? Timo and I would pray continuously that the handbrake would fail one day, preferably while she was crossing in front of the car, toting her Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags full of dead animal pelts.

Timo, while researching the car, had found a great descripton relating to the Escalade, which was quite perfect.

“…a dichotomy of luxurious plushness and cheap materials.”

Now, it was actually referring to the car but man, it described Cruella, to a tee.

I mean if the woman had actual top line classy snobbery, she would have wanted something more flashy or that carried more weight in corporate circles like a Lexus. But no.

We giggled at the Escalade description for about half an hour, mainly because we were pretty easily pleased at the Company of No Hope since we were so deprived of anything resembling actual entertainment, but also because we were (and remain) very mean people.

You had to know Cruella to appreciate how apt that description was. Especially since her face, at this point, was 90% plastic, minimum. The part that moved anyway. Botox can be a bitch. Pretty soon the Botox wouldn’t matter because no one is going to notice your wrinkles when your eyes are practically vertically parallel to your (plastic) nose.

I couldn’t vouch for her boobs or ass but the nose job she had during the spell I worked for her was pretty severe. And apparently top secret. She didn’t even tell us assistants, except her one main assistant who was under strict orders not to spill the beans but who was coerced by the rest of us into at least giving us hints.

Cruella just told us she had a bad cold and wouldn't be coming in for a week or two.

Of course we all knew about the schnoz readjustment because we might have been overworked, delirious slaves but we were not stupid. Besides, you kind of got the gist after the seventeenth call from a plastic surgeon inquiring about her “progress” and a call from Cruella sounding like she was talking from inside the Lincoln Tunnel, asking us to buy a ton of “medical gauze that would be good for a nose wound.”

Even I knew that was a little extreme for a cold.

Meet The Cobra

I've mentioned a gentleman at my former, hell hole place of employment (and I use the phrase "gentleman"completely falsely) known as The Cobra for reasons you can probably deduce from the name alone. In fact, it's probably a great injustice to snakes to suggest he could be one of them. Besides, snakes apparently have hearts. And some people like snakes!

The Cobra however, was a mean faced, little, red-headed man of Irish descent and possibly the most objectionable human being who ever walked the Earth. He was also the company's Chief Financial Officer and right hand man to The Devil - Cruella de Ville. Naturally, there wasn't a single person in the company who didn't snarl like a rabid dog, at the mere mention of his name. Unless that mention was a suggestion about impaling him on a spike at the top of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, in which case there would be offers to take up a collection and donate the necessary crane to get him up there.

He wasn't outwardly, obviously objectionable - at least not on first meeting. In fact, when I started working there, I had to call him to ask a question, never having met him and he was outgoing and personable. When a coworker asked me about him I said, "Well he seems nice!" and she made that loud, startled sound a chicken makes when you try to chase it round a yard, then ran away to guffaw in the supply closet.

I guess that should have been a sign. Because the Cobra, as it turned out, was many things and I can tell you from experience, personable was not one of them.

Firstly he was creepy and not-so-subtly inappropriate. He would talk to you but his eyes would be looking you up and down. Maybe he just thought the vocal chords were around the nipple area, I don't know, he wasn't very bright. If you watched him, say, in the corridor chatting to some female coworker, as she walked away you could see him blatantly stare at her ass the whole distance of the corridor until she disappeared out of sight, without bothering to hiding the fact. He leered.

He was known for a number of things - none of them honorable. Firstly, there was the whole Cruella's butt-boy thing. She'd snap her fingers and he'd go running like a little puppy. Every day when she left the building to begin a busy afternoon of hair salons and manicures, he would carry her several hundred tote bags full of miscellaneous crap, down to the car for her while she berated him like a house boy, much to everyone's amusement and satisfaction. There was something fabulously joyous about seeing him standing outside the ladies' room holding seven bags and looking miserable while she was in there powdering her huge plastic nose for ten minutes.

Then there was his deviousness. He was condescending and a bully. He'd snoop in people's desks, he'd open their mail, he'd listen in on their phone calls. He once fired an employee (for no good reason I may add) by leaving her a voice mail at home telling her not to bother coming in next day. Yes really.

He also had abominable personal habits that would make mere humans like myself retch with the nasty. For example, he'd mine giant boogers out of his nose while standing talking to you, examine them, then flick them off onto the floor.

Then there was the underwear thing. I don't know what type of undies he wore (my money was on tiny Speedo type briefs and believe me, I barfed just typing that) but they always seemed to be wedged half way up his ass crack. Maybe it was a man-thong I don't know. Whatever they were he spent half his time digging his fingers up there to pull them out of no mans land. Urgh. I understand his point though, you can't have anything obstructing the orifice you talk out of, after all.

One time he openly hit on a coworker of mine - a tall, lithe, blonde, very pretty 21 year old who was a personal assistant to Cruella de Ville. He smirked, approached her, leaned over her desk and smirked, "Hey, there's a motorbike show on at Rockefeller Center, you should come over with me, I'd like those losers to see me walk in there with a hot chick!" Exact words people. Did I mention she was young and beautiful and he was 55, sleazy and very married with multiple kids?

This girl though wasn't any old meek, straight from college, 21 year old. She had balls of steel. And she wasn't taking any of that old bullcrap from a crusty old nose-picker like him. She stood up, towering over him and loudly proclaimed, in front of the whole area, "Don't you ever talk to me that way again. You are being inappropriate and if you ever talk to me again, I will tell Cruella you are sexually harassing me." Then she cooly sat down and carried on what she was doing.

It was one of those moments the world just seems to fall into place. Where angels start to sing and light fills all the dark corners. He tried to joke it off then slunk off, tail between his legs to sulk in his office. But he never did bother her again. It was a delicious moment.

A few years later he fired a Vice President one day after she told her boss and the Cobra she was pregnant. Again, he picked the wrong lady to mess with as she immediately lawyered up and presented the company with a little threat of a lawsuit.

The Cobra went into panic overdrive. He stood his ground, they got their lawyers involved it went on and on. Eventually, the woman being pregnant didn't want anymore stress and settled with the company for an undisclosed sum. However, the kicker was, once she received the money - and it was a generous sum - she compiled a very long, very detailed email to the Cobra naming all the deceitful tricks he'd pulled with her and others over her years with the company, naming plenty names and dastardly deeds and even backing them up with evidence she'd kept (emails and such that he insisted never existed) The email was long and had a clear timeline and documentation to back everything she claimed up. She sent the email to The Cobra but cc'd the entire rest of the company. I mean EVERYONE. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful it's all anyone talked about for weeks. And of course when the Cobra noticed that everyone had received the email it sent him into crisis mode all over again.

I still have that email somewhere. When I need cheering up, I reread it and rejoice that someone managed to get revenge on that evil, evil place.

And the Award Goes To...

The jaded old Guv'ner is feeling all shiny and new, thanks to the bodaciously, sex goddessly splendid Miss Catherinette Singleton who knows a thing or two about fabulosity when she sees it. Apparently, I have reached the rank of "fabulous" and coming from the Queen that's quite an honor, let me tell you. Looky at mah awawd. Ain't it peachy?



I would like to pay it forward, as it were, to the following lovelies (excluding those already bestowed with the honor naturally - one can have too much fabulous in one's life after all): Miss KAT ROCKET, Ms. Lady Who Doesn't Lunch, Monsieur The Idea of Progress, Ms. Leonesse, Ms. Adventures in Self Loathing..um..Esq., Ms. Gizmorox and Herr Radloff. Basically everyone I know is fabulous, so there.

Naturally, Pistols is already in possession of the fabulous award and Bert and T. are way beyond the fabulous stage and too busy polishing their balls to bother with such nonsense. Sheesh!

Bread and Bitter

I never intended to work in an office. Not for real anyway. It was temporary you see. It was a "scheme". It was "I will make my millions really fast and then use it to travel and afterwards I'll get a real job!" It was complete and total denial.

You see, sitting in an office acquiring paper cuts was never on my agenda. Let's face facts, it's never on anyone's agenda, ever, it just happens because the world is a great, big fucker with a warped sense of humor.

When I was six the teacher would make us write lists of possible occupations we'd like to try once we reached adulthood. Naturally, I'd be full of enthusiasm. "Why, I will fly planes of course! TO JUPITER! I will be one of Charlie's Angels. I will invent a time machine that will allow me to come back to the '70s and kill whoever told my mother that dressing a little child in a geometrically patterned pant suit was a terrific idea. I will eat candy for every meal, like Willy Wonka. I will be a long distance truck driver." (Seriously, I was a weird kid, it's lucky I'm not a serial killer. Not yet anyway. I don't think...don't you need like...three confirmed kills to be "serial" or something? Hello, is that the FBI at my door?)

You see, when you're a little kid there's no bullshitting involved. You never hear a six year old say, "You know, I think I'd like to answer other people's phones all day, photocopy endless pages of useless crap and find inventive ways to express my buried rage by pulling paperclips apart and stabbing them into voodoo dolls of my boss." Not once do you rub your hands together with glee thinking of all the travel plans you will make for other people only to alter and remake them twelve times before canceling them altogether the day of the trip.

This is because when you're little you have a plan and that plan is...there IS no plan. You can be whatever you want. You have stuff to do. Your expectations are high but they're simple. You will be an astronaut. An astronaut who will zoom all over the universe at the speed of light, chasing aliens, saving the world and slaying monsters with a large laser gun and when you're not zapping monsters you will eat Tremendous. Amounts. Of. Pudding. And of course you see no obstacles to this plan because you are six.

By the time you're twelve, however, you're already getting jaded. You're like, "Astronauts indeed! That's the dumbest thing I ever heard, I am going to be a rock star. And all the boys/girls in the world will fall in love with me and my poster will hang on every kid's bedroom wall in every nation in the whole wide world." Producing colorful spreadsheets and detailed bar graphs featuring fourth quarter sales of tampons never once crossed your mind. And there is nothing in the plan that says, "sometimes your entire day will be ruined because you will run out of staples."

When you're fifteen you've put away childish things. You are going to be a marine biologist, although you have no idea what that is. You're going to be a doctor. Maybe you want to make people better and maybe you're just a fifteen year old boy-doctor who just wants to see a naked lady's sweater puppies.

The thing is I don't remember anyone exclaiming excitedly, "I know! I want to spend the only youth I'll ever have extracting chewed up paper from a Xerox machine and I will look forward every morning to filling the coffee machine because no one else ever does it and if I could leave school...like right now? I'd be like...SO stoked to perform a really slammin' mail merge in Microsoft Word, which I could send to seven hundred people informing them of lots of great things they don't give two shits about!"

Yet suddenly one day, there you are, sitting at a beige desk, in a beige cubicle staring at the beige printer by your side and listening to beige people around you talking about their beige lives and you realize that when you were six, you knew shit. And you hate six year old you. In fact, if you had that time machine and you COULD go back in time, you'd kick six year old you right in the kishkas.

My Mind, It Is Imploding

Good Lord, the Guv’ner has been in the need of an “Attitude Readjustment Day” lately. Last week, a full four days of total insomnia had me thinking I could fly like a bird in the sky-y-y-y. The outcome? Now I know, I can't let Maggie go.

Goddamn oldies stations.

Anyway, the more tired I got, the less likely sleep seemed to be. And the more completely psychotic I was starting to feel. Plus I had many thoughts scurrying around my vacuous head like this:

Brain: Print two copies of document, call travel department about London. London. Monday morning flight, on American. Then I have to….wait…what am I doing? Who’s going to London? Why? Where is my scrambled egg roll? What was I doing? Something about London. Did I go to the bank? Why am I wearing two different socks? I…where is my notebook? I need…something about London. My eyelids are glued open. I think I am going to go to the bathroom.”

The problem with fatigue in the extreme is, it seems to dull the filters that operate between your brain and your mouth and you say things that usually common sense would suppress out of the desire to not get bludgeoned (or fired!) by other, less sleepy people. Things like:

Bitchy Ex-Team Member: Make seven copies of this in color please.

Me: I don't think I work for you anymore, do I? Make them yourself.

And:

“I am busy, you can call travel on your own, no? You have fingers. I also have a finger, don't make me show it to you.”

I should point out this was to my EX-TEAM who I no longer work for (cue: hallelujah chorus) but who are now sans assistant and satisfyingly desperate. My ex-boss was pretty desperate before but now she’s bleating like a little lamb about needing help including sending me an email that was suspiciously cordial and asking for my assistance(I was tempted to send her the phone number for the psychiatric helpline and an underground internet site on how to make your own meth), and I’ve been persuaded to help on a limited basis, temporarily till their new person starts Thursday.

I say “new” person but actually? They allotted her and her spoiled team of brats to The Most Boring Woman Who Ever Lived so I feel some sort of divine justice has just occurred. This also frees my already overloaded mind of the burden of feeling sorry for their new assistant because it’s TMBWWEL therefore, it’s called “karma”. May they drive each other to go jump in the East River.

Why People Need Therapy

Back at my favorite den of nightmarish memories, that stinking old horse’s ass, Mr. Panty Waist once called me on a cold, Monday, November morning and said, in his best whine, “I left my client pass on my desk in the office. I have to meet someone at the client’s at 11. Someone needs to walk over to [the client] with my pass and give it to me.”

Naturally “Someone” meant ME since there was no other idiot there stupid enough to do it and he damn well knew it. I could only pray that by “give it to me” he meant “And bring a cast iron frying pan and bash me over the head with it until there is no piece of my skull remaining that is bigger than a quarter.” But I knew that was wishful thinking. That man would live to be 312 and I’d have to hear about it every day.

“Sure!” I said, skipping around my desk, ecstatically as I looked for silly string and some celebratory balloons! “I mean it’s only 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside and I’ve only been in bed all weekend with flu and I’m suffering from the sore throat of the century, aching limbs and I sound like I need a tracheotomy but I’d love a two mile walk in the wind to give you your building pass, even though you’re in a warm car which is practically driving past the office where your pass currently resides and despite the fact that you are also able to sign in at the client’s as a visitor without the pass, certainly I’ll bring it to you, I’d love to! I mean, I have nothing else to do here!!!”

OK I didn’t quite say that… I said “Fuck off and die you needy, whiny, ungrateful slimeball.”

Well, maybe I didn’t say that either but it was THIS close. THIS close.

I threw on about ten layers of clothing and took the pass over like he asked. Even though it was 2 miles round trip and it was cold as a witch’s tit he wouldn’t let me take a cab because, “We’re cutting down on unnecessary expenses!” Silly old fucker. “Unnecessary expenses” obviously didn’t include his daily transport via town car service to and from work twice a day, from home, for which he would slyly bill the client under some vague job description.

I took a nice, toasty bus back and raided the petty cash upon my return to reimburse myself. I quickly counted the contents of the tin to see if maybe there was enough left for a hit man but alas it was not to be.

Mr. Panty Waist, let me point out, had no idea what a bus or a subway was. I think if you stood him on the street and plonked a bus down in front of him, he’d stare at it, a big frown digging a trench in his brow, shake his head sadly and say, “No. No, sorry. I have no idea what that is. Is it a typewriter?”

I truly believe if someone forced him to take public transport to work he’d be so baffled he’d stay home until someone fetched him. Which would be never.

And really, that doesn't sound too bad...

If Strangulation Was Legal

The Most Boring Woman in the World stopped me today as I ran to my old office to pick up some files I’d left behind during my office move, upstairs. She cornered me by the drinking fountain where there is no escape route, unless you count drowning slowly.

“So…” she said, a diatribe beginning to hang ominously in the air over her head like a think balloon, “That big dumpster outside your office…”

“My old office.” I corrected her, subtly reminding her I no longer work on her floor or her accounts therefore she has no reason to acknowledge my existence ever again.

“That dumpster shouldn’t really be left there because it’s large and will get in the way.” TMBWITW kindly pointed out.

I should note she works on the opposite side of the floor and has no reason to come in contact with my dumpster whatsoever. My "dumpster" is a large cardboard box with wheels.

“It could slip out from the wall and into the corridor and someone could walk into it and bump a shin. And well, I just thought you should be aware.”

It's funny because last time I looked there were no blind people feeling their way along the corridor walls, haphazardly amputating appendages on stray boxes, but I suppose if one was sufficiently incapacitated by say...severe intoxication or sudden loss of limb control, one could conceivably graze the edge of the cardboard container and get a light bruise. They’d have to be pretty toasted though. I mean the corridor has LIGHTS and everything.

“It has to be there till Friday, so everyone else can purge all their old files we no longer need.” I told her. "And there is still a good six foot passage at the side of it. You'd have to eat a LOT of Baby Ruth bars to have a problem passing that without injury!"

She made a disapproving noise. “We really need to be careful not to breach Health & Safety regulations. Plus [name of our Company President] might see it and be annoyed.”

“I don’t see why.” I replied. “He’s the reason we’re all moving in the first place - to make room for his people. He already commented favorably about my cunning recycling of all the paper stuff.”

This flummoxed her for a moment but she wasn’t done quite yet. She leaned in a little and whispered.

“Now HE’S here…” she said, nodding towards the President's office, "Having obstructions around might lower the tone of the floor.”

“This floor?” I asked, so incredulous that my voice hit an octave even Mariah Carey can only dream of. “This floor with the plain gray vinyl, sandpapery, 1970s' wallpaper that’s faded in places where they took down pictures to clean them and never put them back up again, leaving their outline forever faded into the grain? Wallpaper that looks like it was probably developed by NASA as an alternative to the heat shield tiles on the Space Shuttle? This floor with the geometric carpet you could take an acid trip on? This floor right here that everyone else refers to as ‘the Dungeon of Doom’ because it's dark, uninviting and gives people nightmares? Do you think so?”

"It's not that bad!" she said, a touch defensively.

"But...that wallpaper!" I whined. "Get a balloon, rub it on your bosoms and I guarantee you it will stick to that wall like it was superglued there. If it doesn't burst into flames from the static first."

"I...don't know what you are insinuating." she said blankly.

TMBWITW has been with the company for 20 plus years, long enough to see off two husbands and several diseases (including one of the mouth - the woman never shuts up) but I don't think she's ever once had some strange foreigner suggest she rub a balloon on her boobies and stick it to a wall. Which turned out to be a good route to take because she had nothing much to say to that and shuffled off to bore someone else.

Some people just don't appreciate knowing me.

This is What I Call A Meeting

*naughty cross post alert

Today one of my teams - the abominable one I generally fantasise about pushing under a train - started their usual drama. It really shouldn't annoy me, it happens every time we have a major client meeting with this team, but each time, even as I watch it barrel towards me with the subtlety of a steam train, I still want to kill people.

"We have a huge client meeting at ten, can you get us ten copies of these eight, 70 page documents by then?" they bleat, pleadingly. (this is at 9:30).

No. No I fucking can not. I am doing other things for other people. You couldn't do this last night maybe? Then no, screw you all.

The Guv is a little grumpy today.

All this while trying to answer phones and arrange emergency flights for my other boss and other last minute craziness.

Then, after I grouchily drop off the two color documents of the bunch at our print center, to be copied, this same revolting team thrust a Gold Amex in my sweaty palm and ask me to go to "Sports Authority" to buy "five sets of boxing gloves" for a noon meeting.

WTF?

I didn't ask. But that sounds like the sort of meeting I want to be in! In fact, I demand a pair of those gloves so I can use them tomorrow when they start with their shit again. Ten copies, you say? *PUNCH* When do you need those? *PUNCH* "Never?" *PUNCH* "Good." *PUNCH*

I resisted the temptation to take that Amex card, pick up a man-whore and fly to Hawaii and instead scooped up the gloves. The woman at Sports Authority looked at me like I was mildly insane. It's five sets of boxing gloves, lady, get over it.

Oh, oh! Then? Noon arrived. I had ordered full lunch and beverages for eight as per their email request of the previous day. I have had this order verified, authorized and confirmed. However, they called me at noon from the meeting and whined, "We want twelve more of everything, there isn't enough for 20 people."

Well of course there isn't enough, you blathering crotchmonkeys, you ordered lunch for eight. And of course catering yelled at you when you called them to demand twelve more of everything (I noticed you called me first to do it but I cleverly diverted your call straight to voice mail when I saw you on my caller ID) because a) it's giving the catering department zero notice, b) there's no one here to authorize the order, c) HELLO it's LUNCH TIME and they're all in the cafeteria working, and d) the guy who deals with the orders is out today. Oops.

Amazingly, after a delightful lunch out of the office, I came back to find zero voice mails whining about anything. This made me a touch suspicious that the world was off its axis or something, but it seems to be genuine.

Still, bring on those boxing gloves.

Papa and the Floozy

Papa Smurf, who I mentioned in the previous entry, was a strange little fellow. This in itself isn't particularly unusual for someone at my ex place of employment - hell they'd prefer if you had something signifying your many anti-social quirks on your resume when you applied for a job there, just to speed things up - but his sort of strange was a particularly virulent strain.

He was also short and squirrelly with a white beard that gave him a falsely serene appearance, like a kindly uncle, or a particularly short and less portly Santa Claus. He was, at that point, in the process of flushing his second marriage down the toilet and had five kids ranging in age from early teens to mid thirties but he couldn't seem to relate to any of them. That was ok though - he couldn't relate to his colleagues either, so at least he was an equal opportunities incompetent.

He was bizarre in lots of different ways. He had no social skills but he spoke fluent Mandarin, something he'd picked up from his Army days. He couldn't make a simple cup of coffee but he would sink into indignant furies over grammar mistakes in newspaper articles or people who couldn't spell. He could be kind and generous and then five minutes later turn into the biggest asshole on the planet. He would never use a one syllable word when there was one with several syllables which would do equally well, a skill which resulted in him firing off elaborate, long, poetic emails to the entire office where people would scratch their heads in wonder and reach for their thesaurus before figuring out what the hell it was he was saying and the fact it could have been said in about three lines.

For all this, his handwriting looked like someone had taped a pen to a skittish chicken. For someone who was high on the correctness of the English language, his penmanship looked like that of a particularly active hospital chart when someone is having a heart attack.

Papa also had a thing for the ladies. After one particularly flamboyant office Christmas party, where he forcefully dragged our receptionist around the dance floor against her will, finally carouselling her into a group of tables and then slow dancing with another ball-breaking, dragonesque, very drunk female executive who kept licking his ear, rumors were flying around the water cooler about his love of the ladies and the liquor.

Also, as everyone knew, he did in fact have a fancy woman. She was in her late 30s, blonde, skinny as a pole and had the sort of high-pitched, irritating giggle that made you want to karate chop her to the floor then pummel her to a bloody pulp. She worked as an EVP within our company and she had Papa wrapped around her manipulative little finger. She would show up numerous times a day, twisting her perfectly blonde hair around her fingers while laughing that laugh and giggling coyly and they'd lock themselves in his office and flirt. At least, she'd flirt and he'd turn a dark shade of scarlet and do really uncharacteristic things like grinning for no apparent reason.

Everyone on the damn block knew about Papa and his manipulative blonde. No one said anything about them out loud but people's glances and knowing nods said it all. She was young, fairly attractive and eager to climb the corporate ladder and she didn't want to wait till she was gray and wrinkly to be powerful and influential. She had Papa hook, line and sinker. She also made sure to send timely gifts to Cruella when an occasion presented itself. PR was really the perfect job for her, since promoting her image was her specialty.

One thing she couldn't seem to do, however, was any real client work. She had a team of lower titled account executives for that sort of thing so she would delegate one of them to scope out a project then she'd go to her yoga class for a couple of hours. People never asked if she was in the office, they asked if she might be expected to come in.

When she became pregnant with her second child, jokes were flying around the place that the baby would pop out of the womb with a beard and an attitude, probably clutching a Cuban cigar and a bottle of anti-depressants.

Which would've been unfortunate seeing as how she gave birth to a girl.

The Manipulator finally left the company around the same time I did. She started her own firm and took a few clients with her when she went, leaving a bitter taste in Papa's mouth and a scowl on his face whenever her name came up.

I guess that was the end of that liaison.

The Real Psychotic Secretary

Back around 2000, while working as a “floating assistant” at a PR firm, right before Cruella came into the picture, I used to occasionally cover for the assistant to one of the other partners, a strange, quiet, demonically-possessed little man who looked like a cross between Imus and a Smurf, if you can conceive of such a being. In fact, we called him ‘Papa Smurf’, although not to his face or anything, we didn’t have a death wish.

Papa was quite the oddity. He was an ex-military man - small, bearded and fierce with a softer side which came out only occasionally on those days we had wine in the office.

He also had zero people skills, which for a man whose whole business is public relations and being a “spokesperson” is a little bizarre to begin with. He was known for an explosive temper, for smoking illicit cigars after hours in his office, for his love of long, multi-syllable, obscure words and for not being able to keep an assistant for more than three months.

Inevitably an excited assistant would start work, get weary fast and end up frazzled to the extent where she would either go bat-shit insane, quit or be fired for some capital offense like rescheduling a meeting on a day Papa Smurf had planned to go have a meltdown on the golf course.

One assistant was fired for amusingly sending him in a car to JFK to leave for an important client trip, when the flight actually was leaving from Newark. Oops! These things sometimes happen when you are multi-tasking. They are cringingly stupid even though they are somewhat important, but Papa wasn’t one for second chances, so she was out.

I heard stories of previous assistants who’d wound up crying in the bathrooms over his brutal treatment and others who’d ended up with therapist bills up the wazoo. I witnessed one fiery-tempered ex-assistant having a full-blown, screaming fight with him in his office – actually the entire block witnessed that argument – which resulted in her throwing a box of file folders clean across the room and stomping out. The last words I heard from her were, “you’re a despicable, bitter, filthy little man!” and then she was gone.

So anyway, on these occasions, I, as floating assistant, would be drafted in to cover the position until they found him a new permanent slave.

Now to be honest, he was always nice to me when I sat over there. It was only his actual assistants he treated like crap and as I was doing him a favor, he generally was agreeable.

He was also a man distrustful of computers so he hand-wrote everything and gave it all to me to type up. Pages and pages of what looked like Apache code but which was actually just his crazy handwriting. A million times a day I would say, “What is this word here? Is it ‘pigeon’?” and he’d sigh as though it were obvious and say, “It says ‘Volkswagen’.”

When he finally got his act together and advertised for a new assistant, we had two applicants that HR called in to interview. The first was a very smart, pretty, impeccably dressed black girl, with a friendly manner, extremely polite and very qualified. She just exuded confidence, but not in an egotistical, insufferable way, she just seemed perfectly capable and suited to the job and was organized and together, which is what Papa needed most. Most of his assistants up to that point, apart from the fiery-tempered file thrower, had been timid, soccer mom types who spend countless hours talking about daycare and groceries and who would cry if he raised his voice. This girl was a definite step up. So he interviewed her and seemed impressed by her abilities and her cheerful personality. A second candidate was coming in a half hour later and he’d practically decided this first girl was “the one” but out of courtesy decided he should still meet with the second.

This was a fatal mistake.

The second girl showed up and before she even said a word I knew exactly where she was from - 1985 New Jersey. She was a tall, thin, white girl, mid-thirties, wearing a black and white checkered suit with pencil skirt, heels, short, blonde-frosted tipped hair held in place by so much hairspray she was probably a legal fire hazard and wearing possibly the most severe facial cosmetics ever witnessed on a human being not of the transvestite persuasion. Thick pancake make-up, lashings of ultra white powder, enough eye make-up to frighten Marilyn Manson and thick pale purple lipstick. Her blush arced to a peak on her cheekbones. It was like someone had written down every offensive trend from the ‘80s and applied it to one person.

In the ten minutes she had to wait for Papa Smurf to be ready to see her, she sat and chatted with me. In that five minutes I learned:

She was married for ten years but was now divorced.
Her ex-husband was her best friend.
He still wanted to be with her and was holding out hope she’d reconsider.
She just wanted him around for the ego boost.
She had just started dating her neighbor who lived across the street.
Her ex had no idea about this and she was never going to tell him.
She and the new boyfriend fought all the time.
He was sexy as hell but had quite the temper.
When they had a fight she would bring some other guy home and make out with him in her car in the car port with the car port lights on so her neighbor could see and get jealous.
He had a 14 year old daughter who she got along with just great.
This man would spend every other night with her then creep home before dawn so his daughter would think he spent the night at home.
He gave her killer orgasms.
These orgasms were so “killer” she had a belly ache afterwards for the whole day.
She still used the same cornsilk powder on her face she used when she was 13.
She was a very efficient executive assistant and there was no job she couldn’t handle.
She had to pee every half hour because her bladder was “compromised”.

By the time she went into that room to meet Papa, my head was swirling and I was looking forward to the horrified look on Papa Smurf’s face when she left, because if there’s one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a chatty woman, especially an inappropriate chatty woman.

She was in there for probably 45 minutes. The other girl had been maybe 15 at the most. When she came out she was laughing and he was grinning ear-to-ear and making jokes, which made me think she spiked his coffee or something.

“So…” Papa Smurf said, after she left. “What did you think of the candidates?”

“Well,” I replied. “I liked the first girl a lot. She was really smart and organized and professional. I wasn’t so sure about the second girl.”

“Really?” he said. “I liked her. I think she’s the one.”

And so, to my utter amazement, Miss New Jersey 1985 was hired. And so the famous saga of “the worst assistant ever” began.

I have so many stories about this woman your head is going to spin.

People And Machines

When I started working at my current job we were on a different floor of the building to where I am situated now, known as "the dungeon" despite its altitude. It was an executive floor, very corporate and quiet and somewhat drab. This floor housed the CEO and other top brass and their armies of ultra-serious, driven assistants and helpers having constant heart palpitations over minor details.

It also hosted, for the rest of us minions, only one Xerox machine, to share between the entire corporate finance department and the little group of eleven or so people in my two teams, who were stranded on the “undesirable” side of the floor, so war was obviously slated to break out at any second over dibs.

This normally wouldn’t be a terrible hardship; The CEO’s army had their own machine which they guarded like a kidnapped child, so we didn’t have to compete with them, however, the communal copier was a problem of military proportions. We were the new kids on the block; a floor jammed full of veterans who’d been there since Noah docked the Ark. These fine folks were just thrilled to have more people use their precious Xerox and eat up their paper supplies. Delighted they were. OK, maybe furious was more like it. The machine was situated in their territory, at the end of a corridor in a tiny room/closet.

They would monitor our every move. How much paper we used, or toner. If a paperclip was out of place it was our fault. They would tell us off for copying decks with more than ten pages, they would sigh with frustration if they came in to copy an invoice to find one of us Xeroxing an expense report. It was enemy territory and we knew it.

One woman in particular was the main culprit. She was the Copier Nazi, a multi-chinned, scowling, older lady who was built like a brick shit house and had the personality of steel wool. “Do you work on this floor?” she would always yell, with a scowl that says “YOU BETTER!”.

She would literally ask me (and the rest of my team) this question every time we went near their side of the office. “Do you work on this floor? Because if not you cannot use our Xerox machine or be on this floor!”

“No!” I said one day. “I actually work on the ninth floor, I just came all the way up here because I like to touch your stuff!”

She worked at the opposite end of the corridor and she had ears like a wild cat. If you so much as touched the linoleum covered floor with a foam flip flop, she would hear and come charging down the corridor, like an angry bull in Pamplona, to make sure we weren’t doing anything amiss with her precious machine. Every day she’d question us; what were we copying, how long would we be, did we know that the machine belonged to her department and we shouldn’t really be using it at all because they were important and needed it much more, blah blah blah.

We learned to be super-sneaky, slipping in and out of there and closing the door so as not to alert the Copier Nazi to our whereabouts, thus risking the third degree. We would take a look-out with us to the copier and we had elaborate signals should she suddenly appear – things like shrieking, “Oh my God, she’s coming, run for the hills!”

To make matters worse I broke that copier. This is nothing new, I break machines daily. I broke it so badly they had to buy a new one. In my defense, it was old, rickety, and I only kicked it after it had swallowed most of my incredibly interesting Powerpoint presentation on Tampons, validating my actions since it started it.

I went to the only other copier on the floor which is closer, but guarded by even fiercer Copier Nazis – the Copier Nazis who work for the CEO! One must be really stealth when trying to evade the Executive Copier Nazis else they will chew you out like a five year old who’s been naughty, despite a very clear sign in there that states we can use their copier if the other copier is busted and none of the CEO’s army of administrative help are using it to copy their many schedules, party plans or suicide notes. Since I’d newly busted the other machine, I felt I was entitled to work in the lion’s den.

On one occasion I went in there to make ten copies of a short presentation and of course after about 5, it decided to eat the remainder of my copies and caused the grandmammy of all paper jams. Normally, I’m expert with paper jams, because I’ve caused so many in my time, I know just how to take the thing apart to get at the rogue paper. Not this one however. This one was the Alcatraz of paper jams. This one came with a miniature Jean-Claude Van Damme inside, guarding its innards jealously.

So I busted the executive copier. I had to hide under my desk the rest of the day because I was convinced they were all out there with their flaming torches, trying to smoke me out…

It was all so comical. It's a PHOTOCOPIER, people, deal with it.