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."