Psychotic Secretary

PSA

2008-06-19T17:09:00.002-04:00

Hey good peeps!

Psychotic Secretary is undergoing maintenance at present - we will be up again in July and available for all. Seriously, we won't even make you take your shoes off to come in!

* "we" = "me"

Today's Grievance

2008-06-18T23:08:00.006-04:00

The Uberlord likes lists. He has a serious "thing" for lists. It must be the sexy columns of text in 10pt. Times New Roman that gets his juices flowing. Or maybe it's the grid-free layout or the heavily shaded title columns. The man has a hard-on for lists. And the lists are always changing.

I'm pretty sure any day soon he will request a list of all his lists so he doesn't get confused, at which point I will print out every list on my hard drive, compile them into one mondo-document in a giant 5" plastic binder and beat him over the head with it.

Then I might make him a list of all the local hospitals.

Seriously though, anyone using Times New Roman out of choice should have boiling oil poured on their Netherlands. It's not a sexy font. It's a default, ugly, plain fault. It's like that boring nougat centered chocolate that's always left last in the box. It's the last kid picked for the dodgeball team. I will allow Arial if you MUST, but please. Have some respect. Times New Roman is for losers. Verdana is perfectly acceptable for a plain, everyday fault - clean, sans-serif, pleasing on the eye. Century Gothic works and Tahoma is ok and Trebuchet is pretty for a plain font. If you must have a serif go with Georgia or something. Or get old school freaky with some Courier New just to mess with people's heads. Get a life people! Times New Roman is the Devil's font.

And by "Devil" I totally mean Uberlord.

You know what happens to people who use Times New Roman every day? They end up writing blog entries about fonts. Let this be a lesson.

No, there is no chart today. You are SO demanding!

Attentiones!

2008-06-09T21:04:00.005-04:00

I'm still alive. Kind of. Just not inspired! Inspire me, damnit.

* Also, I'm being bad over at the 'Stache today. Come on over! There's free beer. And like...little cocktail sausages on sticks.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T13:44:00.006-04:00

Hey there American peoples! It's Memorial Day (not to be confused with "Mammorial Day" which occurs only in porn). It is a day to not be at work - gets full points right there, really - and remember stuff. I'm not sure what stuff but I think it's to do with wars and servicemen and veterans and people no longer with us and I probably should not make light of it at all, however, since this is me and I don't see a blue moon, I probably will anyway.

Here are some random things I remember:

The time the Evil Queen and myself superglued Mr. Panty Waist's stapler to his desk so he had to staple all day at a really weird angle.

One afternoon spent drinking red, white and blue margaritas on July 4th and having a blue tongue the rest of the day

Hiding from Daleks when I was little.

Driving in a convertible over the Golden Gate Bridge on a sunny day

Living here in lower Manhattan on September 11th 2001

Getting drunk before my band played a show, tripping over a cord and falling off the stage onto my ass (And no, I don't have a donkey)

The first time I got on my moped I accidentally twisted the grip and shot across the road into a fence at the speed of light. Well, OK, 30MPH. It FELT fast. The only thing injured was my dignity. And the framed photo of Bill O'Reilly I carry with me at all times. Well one of those things, anyway.

Would you like a pie for Memorial Day? Your wish is my command. Here's one I just baked especially.

Lady of Leisure

2008-05-16T10:15:00.008-04:00

I called in sick to work today and I'm not really sick! What a rebel of society, ladies and gentlemen! I live on the edge, let me tell you.

OK, so technically I do have a headache and cramps too (you don't have to read that part, gentlemen, oh wait, you already did!) so that sort of constitutes being "sick", no? It's also pissing down with rain in New York City and that's reason enough for me. I'd hate to get wet. "I'm melting, I'm meeeeeelting..."

Plus, my good entertainment buddy isn't around today to keep me busy and laughing in an Uberlord-free work day and what am I supposed to do - entertain myself? Pffft! Not damn likely.

What I'm going to do is, go back to bed in about five minutes for a nap, get up, eat lunch (grilled cheese sounds pretty good), do something productive (I haven't decided what yet, ok, I'm working on it.) and maybe have another nap for balance. What a happy, rested and delightfully sane Guv'ner I will be by the day's end at which time I will proceed to procure snacks and alcohol and watch stuff that's been piling up on my DVR since November, while sprawling on the couch. Ah good times. Uberlord free, fancy good times.

Admit it, you're all jealous of my leisurely day aren't you?

I might fit caffeine in somewhere. And possibly beer. You know, at different times...

I'd make a pie chart to demonstrate all this but you know what? I can't be assed. You'll live.

Do Not Fuck With The Guv'ner

2008-05-14T11:52:00.007-04:00

I am what you might call "severely awake" today, which is a) scary, b) unusual on a weekday for me (or indeed any day if we're being honest here) and c) is good for me - bad for everyone else, because this means I will get up to no good, attack all your blogs with ridiculous comments and might even attempt some work! Yes, really!

Talking of work, I've been trying to pull this meeting together for weeks that involves ten people all situated in different parts of the world. Naturally, all these people are 'muy importado' and expect the meeting to revolve around their particular needs, forgetting everyone else involved is equally important and absolutely as needy. This always turns into one ginormous clusterfuck of nuclear proportions filled with passive aggressive office politics that makes me want to take everyone out back, line them up against the wall and shoot them in the head. Quite honestly, I'd get more done if they were all lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard. Well let's face it, I wouldn' t have to schedule that meeting for a start.

Ok, I maybe wouldn't kill them but I'd definitely enjoy tasering (tasing?) their genitals.

I'd spare this one guy though. This guy, no matter when I email everyone for information or to give instructions for something - no matter what it is, this one guy always responds promptly with the exact information required. He's like a ninja, with his finger on the pulse. No sooner does my email drop onto his inbox than his finger is on the dial to call me or he fires back a response. That guy is awesome. Or in love with me, I don't know.

Oh wait, I just saw my crazy hair in the mirror and conclude that no, he's definitely just diligent.

He's the only one though. I have to threaten to castrate people or boil their babies to get answers normally. Or people contact me giving totally the wrong information that I didn't ask for.

And of course when people do respond correctly, none of them actually ever AGREE on a date or time or location. So it's pointless. A bit like this blog entry. Well not pointless exactly, there IS a chart:

Not HERE, Over THERE!

2008-05-10T17:04:00.004-04:00

Happy weekend day of not being at work (I hope!) people! I just popped online to point all you fine people over HERE today, since it's that time of the month again. No, not THAT time of the month, you filthy beast. I mean I'm being typically obnoxious for the Mustache.

Come join in the fun!

Brain Melt

2008-05-08T14:37:00.006-04:00

My brain is so fried today that I managed to book a conference call for participants in NY and London for 8:30am London time with the smug knowledge that “With the five hour time difference that’s 1:30pm New York time and everyone will be happy!”

And they were.

Until two hours later when we all remembered that London is actually five hours AHEAD and I’d actually booked the call for 3:30AM in NYC, which caused decidedly LESS hilarity. Ha! Much as it thrills me to think of these hosers having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to talk about brand marketing and other scintillating subjects of that ilk, I think I prefer breathing without a respirator, so I reluctantly changed it to something more reasonable (and boring). Bah.

I also had to edit a presentation which involved me inserting a pie chart. I think you all know my affinity for pie charts by now, although the one I did today was infinitely less fun than the ones I normally produce for this blog. I always think a slice of any pie chart should be reserved for “Who cares?” because they’re always concerned with the most banal facts or figures ever - the sort of thing that if you read it in paragraph form would turn you glassy-eyed and homicidal in moments. My theory is, that’s the only reason anyone uses pie charts at all – to break the monotony of a bunch of typed figures with some pretty colors and gay abandon.

Plus they make you think about warm apple pie and custard which is never a bad thing. Although that might just be me… Mmmmm pie.

The Guv'ner Is Not Insane

2008-05-07T16:06:00.013-04:00

Due to a lull in proceedings today I have messed around a lot. I know, it's NOT like me and thanks for noticing.

My Gmail account today had a header at the top of the page with the link to a quiz called "Are You Insane?" I have no idea why they thought to place that there because normally those headers are related to the stuff entering your inbox and your basic personality.

I figure that the thing that enters my inbox most, apart from enticements about making my tallywhacker bigger and 'cease and desist' orders, are comments from you people, hence where the "insane" part comes in. Thanks a lot people! Now I have a reputation at gmail for being slightly south of barking mad. At least it replaced the blurbs about Afroman that were there before. Believe me you don't want to know the reasoning behind that...

Naturally, I had to try this quiz, if only to prove I am clearly not insane in any manner.

Hot damn. This quiz is obviously rigged!!!

I take issue with this quiz, because I answered those stupid questions completely rationally and in a sober, thoughtful manner and seemingly this is the thanks I get.

Plus, I know I passed the test because once I realized they were blackmailing me to sign up for all kinds of nasty offers and shit before they'd give me my score, I tried to close it down and then they got all panicky and were like, "Oh Guv, here is your rating, please don't go, the real quiz was that if you went through all those crazy sign-up pages just to find out if you were insane or not, then clearly YOU ARE VERY INSANE INDEED, PROBABLY MICHAEL JACKSON WARP FACTOR 8, HOWLING AT THE MOON, BATSHIT CRAZY, therefore, we're happy to inform you that you pass as merely 'weirdly unusual'".

Those fuckers.

The End of the World is Nigh

2008-05-05T22:21:00.017-04:00

You know that song "Happy Days Are Here Again"? Well happy days just went right up the Swanee because yes, the Dark Uberlord is back in the country and all up in my grill.

He spent the day having meetings, catching up with the state of global affairs with our client and other such noble things, while I spent mine transcribing documents, doing a boatload of expenses and trying not to kill him. Which is harder than it sounds!

I actually accomplished a lot of mundane crap I'd been putting off forever and managed the complicated chore of eating something called a "Big Turk" (yes, his name was Mustafa and he smelled like falafel and anti-American decay) so the day ended on a high note after all. My motto is quite simple: No chocolate, no point.

I do actually alter that motto depending on mood. "No cheese, no point" is another one. "No tequila, no point"? Goes without saying.

"No flow chart, no point" is yet another of my favorites. Which brings me neatly to this piece of crap:

Click click for the big, expanded chart but really, it's not worth it, it's pretty crappy

Remember, I never said this entry would be any good, I'm merely posting or people nag me and are all like "Oh Guv, you haven't posted in DAYS I can't possibly live without you, I might pine away and die, please, please for the love of God and all that is holy, post a new entry so I don't have to cut myself to take my mind off the awful quagmire of doom that is a life without your irreverent observations and sarcastic outbursts. Please make me a flow chart or I will surely die."

It's a sad state of affairs really.

Checking In

2008-04-30T09:43:00.008-04:00

I'm getting far too used to this no boss business. In fact, if someone would just pay me NOT to work for a live person I'd be all set because I can seriously handle chair swinging, playing games, chatting online and sitting with my feet on the desk all day, every day. No, I can! It's dirty work but someone has to do it, so you all don't have to. I hope you remember that at Christmas time and compensate me accordingly.

One thing I am not enjoying is the daily slew of needy Uberlord emails asking me to arrange future trips for which, as usual, he sends no real details, his asking me to schedule hair appointments, have cars pick up his wife and have a minion clad with a silk sponge to wipe his arse upon his return. I mean I am NOT HERE TO WORK, Uberlord, are you delusional? This is supposed to be two weeks of you-free time where I get to relax and create mayhem. You are eating into my me-time. Do I call you in Europe every day asking you to send me croissants? No!

I'm having weird memory issues today. I found some stuff I did yesterday (?) and have no recollection of completing, but it is complete therefore, I must've been half asleep and under the impression I was supposed to work. I was quite clearly insane at the time (working when the UL is away? Please.) I was almost as confused as the time at my old job when I switched around several of the keys on Mr. Panty Waist's keyboard after suffering a stupendously unreasonable day with the giant tool. The old assmuncher was in a state of flux for weeks, trying to email people using & instead of @.

Damn, it was awesome.

The Guv'ner Is A Touch Delirious

2008-04-25T11:55:00.014-04:00

I woke up this morning still tired. Had a nice, long, therapeutic stretch. Briefly thought, "Wow it's pretty sunny out there today, I don't normally get the sun in here so early!", sat up, glanced at cell phone that I use as a clock, stretched some more, in a dopey, retarded manner, then gasped and did that huge double take thing, like say you'd just noticed your waiter for the evening was Elvis. You know Elvis? The dead guy with the swivelling pelvis that put the devil of lust into the hearts of 1950s' teens everywhere?

I leaped out of bed like I was being chased by a fire-breathing dragon. "How can it be TEN O'CLOCK???" I yelled to the cat, who knows a potentially volatile situation when she sees it and therefore went into a sort of Def Con emergency mode and fled under the bed.

I would like to say my alarm didn't bother going off, however as I use my phone as an alarm and I woke up clutching it in my sweaty palm, I'd wager it probably did and I decided to deactivate its noisy ass and go back to sleep. Jesus.

At least there's no Uberlord around this week to know. I am, however, dopey as all hell, feel like I have a major hangover and when I called British Airways upon arrival at work to ask for some information for my less Uberlordian boss, I hung up and realized I didn't understand a single thing they said and had to call them back to ask them again. Oops. This calls for a flow chart:I think the moral here is, "When the Uberlord is away, The Guv'ner will return to a state of undisciplined chaos". And yes, I realize that "undisciplined" in that sentence is redundant, but I'm a grammar rebel so if you don't like it....well you can just come here and say that.

Free To Do What I Want, Any Old Time

2008-04-22T10:45:00.008-04:00

There's this joyous reverie when one wakes up and realizes that two weeks of Uberlord-free mayhem awaits them in the workplace. I mean it's like running in several directions at once. What is a person to do first? I'm all giddy with excitement.

- Arrive late with a giant bedraggled bedhead and put my feet on the desk? (ha ha, this doesn't count because I do this every day)

- Play loud music while drinking coffee and playing Spider Solitaire (Four Suits - you ain't dealing with no amateur, foe)?

- Grin at people in a most demonic and (un?)customary manner until someone calls security?

- Make prank calls?

- Blog?

- Make copious amounts of Pie charts about trivial nonsense because why should today be any different?

- Nap on couch (again)?

The world is my oyster for the next couple of weeks and if there's a pearl in it anywhere I aim to find it. For example what does the Uberlord keep in all those cabinets of mystery in his office? Top shelf liquor? A revolver? A ball gag? His Penthouse collection? I'm going to find out!

There is also a pretty fair chance I am going to play racquet ball in there with a whiffle ball set while commentating out loud to imaginary TV audiences about my superior racquet skills as the ball bounces off his $500 framed golfing photo.

Today's Announcement

2008-04-18T13:24:00.006-04:00

I've spent a delicious morning being stabbed in the kishkas by little Jezebels with pitchforks and making 20 pages of hand-scrawled-by-a-baboon psychobabble into a PowerPoint presentation.

I think you all know my affinity for PowerPoint by now, although usually I prefer to use it in a decidedly non-corporate manner (yes really!). One thing has been bothering me today however, and feel free to fill me in on the answer to this mystery so I can dutifully ignore you, because I actually don't care:

I have no freaking idea what you do with them so I choose to ignore them and move on with my life and I suggest you do similar.

There was no point at all to this entry but I dedicate it to Gnugs for making me feel guilty about not posting and making the world a better all round place. Thanks Gnugs.

I hope you all have a splendiferous weekend filled with....cake?

The Guv'ner Debates

2008-04-15T14:59:00.004-04:00

A Tuesday Conundrum for you:

Again, clicky for large version if you're blind

I'm sleepy. Did anyone get that?

Slice of Sanity Pie

2008-04-11T13:20:00.016-04:00

This whole week, with the Dark Uberlordian Entity overseas, you'd think I would be having a pleasant karmic office experience, full of good vibes, kicking back with a drink, a snack, some muzak and an attitude of sweetness and light, no? Because I'm all about sweetness and light as you all know. Right? Hello?

No.

Naturally, instead of this state of bliss, I have had four thousand things to do all of equally annoying status. I have planned, mapped, reserved and procured flights, hotels and excursions up the wazoo only to have to change them all several times as his Royal Highness is flighty and keeps an idea in his head about the same amount of time as it takes Britney to home in on a Twinkie.

If you can't read it you can click for larger version, whiny!

Things I have discovered about myself this week:

I hate Switzerland, the neutral, chocolate-loving, Jewish-Money-Taking, "Can't decide what fucking language to speak" bastards.

I don't much care anymore if some spoiled prima donna has to change planes in Miami to get back to NYC. They can suck it and at 4am when they're in Miami International Airport and I'm tucked in my warm bed snoring, I'm going to sleep with one middle digit fully extended.

No one in the travel department answers the phone anymore when I call. They have caller ID. Even THEY hate the Uberlord. Or wait...maybe they hate ME?

.....nah! That's ridiculous, I AM CRAZY-AWESOME.

I am invincible and delusional

I like cheese sandwiches a hell of a lot (I already knew this actually!)

The little sanity I have left will be spent this evening drinking what's left of the margarita bucket in my fridge. Yes, I said "bucket". You can all just deal with it.

Hope you all have a finger lickin' good weekend, my peeps.

Plug That Bitch

2008-04-10T10:02:00.006-04:00

I will no doubt whine a little later, because what's a day without me whining, huh? No day at all.

Until then, today is my day over at The Stash and I'm attempting to teach you heathens something academic and intelligent (and blatantly untrue). Come on over and find out the true story of Joan of Arc. And yes you are correct, I totally forgot it was that time already and had nothing more juicy prepared. Bite me.

Mondays Are Hereby Illegal

2008-04-07T12:42:00.012-04:00

I spent all weekend deliberately avoiding my work email, like I do every weekend, because hello, it's the weekend and I refuse to do anything work related no matter how conscientious that might be, at least until someone pays me a shit of a lot more money than I make now or presents me with a truck loaded with gold bullion.

...Although what would you do with that? Is there somewhere you can cash-in bullion for like...dollars, or do you have to melt it down in your garage and trade it to a Mexican druglord named El Jefe, for heroin? Either way it sounds complicated and might involve much money laundering and shenanigans.

I knew however, that I would come in today to a positive influx of Uberlord emails from the other side of the world, demanding I do vague things he can't be bothered explaining or complaining about things I already did that weren't to his liking. And I have to say I was not disappointed.

OK, I WAS disappointed - I'm constantly disappointed - but I was right. A dozen emails featuring instructions to do things that weren't explained in any cohesive manner and emails not written in complete sentences. This is no way to start a week when you've had three hours sleep. I have a good mind to send one email back saying "LA LA LA can't HEAR YOU".

Anyway, he pissed me off enough to make an Uberlordian Venn Diagram:
I feel so much better now.

A Quick Pointless Vent

2008-04-04T16:14:00.006-04:00

It has come to my attention that when someone tells you they will be in Friday morning but must leave at 1pm, then proceed to still be here at 4:15pm, that I get quite cranky. Especially when said Uberlordian entity is all frazzled and insane (no change there) and demanding in a way that makes me want to test the solidity of his head with a plank. I knew today would be insane but urgh.

1) No I cannot demand Delta fly into a totally different airport in Moscow

2) I can not find you a first class seat when there is no first class even ON the flight

3) I have no fucking idea what the problem is with Hong Kong

4) If the Russians will not allow anyone through security to help you through customs I CAN NOT MAKE THEM. Besides they have like...kalishnikovs. And they'd totally use them

5) If you have to wait in line for an hour at their customs and immigration then you have to do it. I can't change their damn commie rules or slip a wad in someone's pocket on your behalf

6) When you force the adapter into the port on your Blackberry, the wrong way up and destroying the little wires inside, rendering the Blackberry completely useless, the Telecom guys will laugh at you and call you a schmuck, there is no way around this, it's a fact of life.

Drinking at work should be legal just for days like this.

Yeah vent over. How are you guys anyway?

Back On The Chain Gang

2008-04-02T13:17:00.005-04:00

Well you'll all be thrilled to know I am back at work. No graphs today or anything fun like that, however, my day so far has been like this:

1) Got in an hour late because I could.

2) Sent an urgent fax to someone 1600 miles away suggesting they hand deliver me a soda in return for a giant Guv'ner sized hug in the off-chance my sweet talking actually can control people and give me ideas for future world domination.

3) Changed some travel arrangements to Rio that were previously to Sao Paulo when the Uberlord realized that Rio and Sao Paulo are actually different places and Brazil is not one big city.

4) Realized I'd left all my money on the dresser at home and had to buy coffee with nickels. Again.

5) Received email from faxee calling me an "ass".

6) Talked to several severely surly people about spreadsheets.

7) Commenced slacking.

8) Lunch.

I know, you're delighted I told you this. Well you are WELCOME.

The Guv'ner Is Not At Work

2008-03-31T12:29:00.005-04:00

I feel it only fair to mention that today, with the Uberlordian entity being in Asia, I have the day off. Yes, I am not at work. I am home, in my pajamas, on the couch, drinking coffee and not being at work. I just thought I'd mention it in the off chance that YOU are at work because I am NOT at work.

Did I mention it's raining out? And I'm not at work? What? I'm thinking of you all, I promise! You know...being at work.

Today's Tragedy

2008-03-27T11:44:00.010-04:00

The Uberlord is heading to Asia at the weekend for a trip we've planned for months. Naturally I'm in a state of excitement at him being half way around the world from me and in a completely unworkable time zone.

Today I found out, while trying to have the hotel arrange a car for him, that he has no reservation there, which is a little alarming since I watched our travel department book it in person last week and because everyone else on the trip is staying there. Oops! He's going to love that.

Turns out the travel people forgot to confirm the booking and now the poor man has to stay at some other 5 star hotel a whole mile away for the first night of the trip as the original hotel is sold out. Oh the humanity. He will suffer greatly and probably catch the cooties in the process.

I've been schmoozing with the people in Hong Kong all morning trying to sort something out but there's not enough coffee invented to prevent me getting medieval on our travel department slowly with a sharp, burning object. I have Scottish blood. And you know how the Scots like a good scrap! Ask Sugartits Gibson.

What will happen when the Uberlord finds out about this?

Basically, he can suck it up. I hear they have these new fangled things called "cabs" now anyway.

Russian Pie

2008-03-26T13:58:00.006-04:00

This morning I got to the Russian Consulate at 8:45 a.m. to wait in a big line with people talking in tongues, to get the Uberlord a Russian visa. The Russians, I have to point out, are in no rush whatsoever. Years of communist queuing for just about everything has rendered them line-lovers. They love to stand in a line and will happily do it all day long.

Well ok, maybe "happily" is not the right word. "Grouchily" that might be the word. Or "begrudgingly".

People kept asking me things in Russian and since the only Russian I know involves Boris and Natasha going to the opera and a smattering of ways to tell someone their mother fucks pigs, I was a little stuck for conversation.

The guy directly in front of me in line was hugely tall, wearing a fur hat and smoking a cigarette. From every orifice! He was probably named "Boris" or "Vladimir" and worked in a chemical plant. He was like the guy you'd draw in a cartoon to represent a stereotypical Russian, minus a great big sickle on his hat. If he had a bottle of vodka in his inside pocket it would be spot on. In fact, I'm pretty sure he did. I think it's illegal not to for Russians or something.

The guy behind me was excitable and elderly - a formidable combination in any language. He was muttering in Russian at the speed of light. I have no idea what he was on about. He might have been drunk off his ass or high for all I know. "I like fairies! You are a doughnut! I am an multidextrous octopus!" Who the hell knows? I'm pretty sure at one point he said the word "womanator" which was slightly alarming, but I could be mistaken. Maybe he just doesn't like the ladies? Either way, I steered well clear of that guy. Womanator indeed.

The officials inside, when I eventually got past the door, were surly as all hell. Maybe they all had partaken in a touch too much Stoli last night? The woman who processed my claim was like a Russian fembot with no facial muscles. She looked like she ate Americans for dinner with a side order of spite. Phew! Lucky I'm European, huh!

I hate to bring everything back to pies, but this is my breakdown of Russians in a nutshell. Or a pie, to be more exact.
You can totally quote me on that in any official capacity you please.

What's So "Good" About Monday?

2008-03-24T11:52:00.008-04:00

I have spent the entire morning making an org chart in PowerPoint that makes no sense to me whatsoever. For a start, the Uberlord presented me with a hand scrawled version of what he wanted first thing before I'd inhaled any sort of caffeinated product to calm my nerves and judging by the fact it looks like it may possibly have been written by a skittish monkey with the DT's I'm not at all sure he's going to get what he is expecting. It took me half an hour to realize that the rather awesome category of "North American Pies" was actually "North American Pres." meaning "president". My version is always better. I was completely disappointed to discover that there are no pies being represented on the chart at all. I've reviewed the situation, however, and I think I'll live.

He also gave me a bio with his photo on that I am sorely tempted to Photoshop in a ludicrous manner and post, however I am evil but I am not stupid. Usually. Well now and then. OK most days, actually.

Anyway, I had a rather emotionally crazy weekend at the Animal Hospital with my cat and now think I deserve a stiff shot of tequila.

Well this was nice and brief wasn't it?

Easter Means Chocolate

2008-03-21T10:11:00.010-04:00

Happy pre-Easter, if Christianity's your thing!

However, if you're a Godless heathen like me you appreciate the wonderful miracle that is chocolate eggs. Cadbury's Creme Eggs in particular. When Mr. Cadbury or whoever, invented those little pebbles of sheer joy, someone should have immediately presented him with a medal of honor or something equally appreciative. The same goes for Cadbury's Caramel Eggs - AKA "the caramel orgasm". I'm overjoyed you can get both these Easter items in the United States fairly easily these days, because this eases my mind and pent-up aggression greatly. Now I just have to find a Cadbury's Mini Eggs provider in NYC and I might become very happy indeed! A chocolated Guv'ner is a happy Guv'ner, this is something to never forget, because one day it could save your life.

What the significance of chocolate eggs is at Easter, I have no earthly idea. Maybe it was a giant chocolate egg that blocked the door to the cave where they buried Jesus? Maybe Jesus, awoken from death and a bit hungry and cranky at being locked in a dark cavern, ate his way through the chocolate to freedom? Even if this isn't exactly how the resurrection occurred, I am prepared to stand behind the theory as "credible" purely because I like it. Besides, wouldn't that just be a much more awesome story?

Someone should absolutely combine commercialism and religion and market a solid chocolate Jesus. I'd be all over that.

This just in: The Dark Uberlord is senile. He asked me for a bunch of details yesterday which I not only went over with him, but also printed out a copy and gave it to him. Today he has no recollection of either of those things. And somehow I am not at all surprised.

Crappy Saint Pat's

2008-03-17T10:26:00.013-04:00

Since most of the world likes to get all up in my business on a regular basis, I expect it is just sitting back, waiting for a moment to spring forth, big kazoo in hand, and wish me a happy St. Patrick's Day while spilling Guinness all over my t-shirt.

You see, every year at work, some over smiley entity will corner me in the elevator, slap me on the back with a knowing wink and say "I bet you're excited, huh! St. Patrick's Day? I bet you'll be celebrating tonight?" and every year I clear my throat and yell, "For the last fucking time, Dialtone, I AM NOT IRISH!"

Ah yes, tradition, you have to love it. Scotland....Ireland. Two different countries with different accents and an entire sea between them, yet no one can ever tell the difference.

We Scots have Saint Andrew. Sure he's more the "Eat haggis, wear a kilt and dance the Gay Gordons." kindly uncle kind of guy, who wants to bounce you on his knee after a few drams of Glenfiddoch and less of a "Drink yourself into a coma or until you keel over and die!" type of saint, but he has his place. He likes a "wee dram" of malt whisky and he might flash his twig and berries during a particularly exuberant waltz, but he's mainly composed. Unlike St. Paddy and his followers.

I'll tell you one thing though. Not even the real Irish in Ireland celebrate St. Patrick's Day like you drunken American types and for that I'm sure they're eternally thankful. Every year I dodge that damn parade full of patriotic people who've never actually set foot in Ireland and who couldn't find it on a map, dressed head to toe in kelly green and liquored up to the eyeballs, screeching and making giant asses of themselves. Every year I'm walking home, down Fifth Avenue and get cornered by some rubberized, uncoordinated office minion in a disheveled suit and a ridiculous, huge green hat the IRA probably once used as a safe house - a hat that would make even a leprechaun look sane - informing me it is my duty to kiss him in the name of St. Patrick. No, minion, it is not. The Guv'ner protests!

from some wannabe Irish twat's FlickR page

I think the moral of this post is, I hate St. Patrick's Day. Bah humbug. That would be all.

Mind Reading Part Two

2008-03-14T10:28:00.012-04:00

Today I get in to a note on my desk that says "Please book my wife and I on flights using the company's companion ticket policy for..." and he gave two sets of dates. And that's all it said. I'm thinking since he couldn't be bothered specifying a destination I'd get him flights to Siberia and rent him an igloo and a sled. He can sit in the sled while his wife dons the reins to pulls it while he whips her and yells "Giddy Up Bitch!". What a fine image. That should get me through the day, I believe.

That was it, I just wanted to vent.

Talking of fine images, I will leave you with this high-larious photo of John Travolta without his weave. Hee!

Dedicated to Beckeye
He's totally gay you know

Can You Hear Me Now?

2008-03-11T14:07:00.006-04:00

The Überlord comes into my office today and says, “Did you get me those urgent available dates from the London crew for the follow-up meeting next week?”

I looked at him the way a cat regards a bug, scurrying around on the floor before going in for the kill.

“Dates?” I asked him, cautiously. I hate when someone asks about something that immediately rings no bells, except for alarm bells signifying that I might have dropped the ball.

“London crew? Follow up Meeting? Que?”

He looked anxious. “The dates I asked about yesterday!” he said. “I sent an email to the crew for dates and said you’d follow up with them about it today? It’s urgent. I need to know today.”

Oh. I get it. I know exactly what he is talking about now. He is talking about my psychic abilities again.

“Did you happen to…you know…cc me on that email?” I inquired, knowing full well the answer.

He frowned. “I don’t think so…” he said. “I think I just sent it to the London team.”

I tried to think of words in response that weren’t illegal in some parts of the world.

“I can’t actually see those emails unless you send them to me…” I said, sporting a fixed smile that I like to call “My Donnie Darko”. “Therefore, I was unaware you wanted me to do anything. Therefore, I do not have the dates you are requesting.” This is pretty much verbatim of what I said.

What I was THINKING, however, was, “For the love of all that is good, Fucknuts, do I look like Miss Fucking Cleo to you? For the 300th time, I DO NOT READ MINDS.”

Later in the morning, he asked me about his travel plans for the week of the 24th, provoking the slightly alarmed response, “Travel plans? You’re going somewhere that week?” He then looked at his feet and admitted he was indeed going back to Europe but had neglected to mention it to me – the person who makes his travel arrangements.

Yup.

Lame Excuses

2008-03-10T10:54:00.006-04:00

Someone needs to tell the Dark Uberlord that Monday morning means you ease into the week slowly and gently with much nurturing and care. You don't show up and dump three months worth of crapola on my desk and want all of it now. Not if you value your life and the use of your limbs.

Anyway, while I snarl, complain and delve into this pile of paper madness, it's my day over at the Mustache, so get your ass over there and help me slander the evil cosmos that is '80s music. Yes I did go there. And you know I'm right.

Just Chillin'

2008-03-06T18:54:00.005-05:00

I'm all kind of mellow today, peeps. Mellow because I've had nothing to do but be wicked, troll the internetz for all sorts of objectionable fodder, send a trillion offensive emails and annoy the woman in the office next door with my music. It's like the last, poignant day of summer, before you have to give up freedom and return to school. Tomorrow the Uberlord is back from Europe toting boring old expenses that need taking care of and other things of equal joy and interest.

Being bored doesn't make for good entries though, so hey, you can't have everything.

But...

Remember the X-Files? That was a great show. In fact, that was my favorite show. UFOs, scary stuff, sizzling chemistry between the leads, people speaking in hushed monotones - fantastic. Well, I have a secret. I have a special, unaired episode of the X-files. It has everything - sex, intrigue, aliens, people getting it on in the morgue, Clangers, a little fat dude sporting a banana... Seriously, come on over to Buckle Up! and check it out.

It's because you're special. Yes, you are.

The Guv'ner Gives You An (Anti) Climax

2008-03-04T22:53:00.007-05:00

If you want my body
And you think I'm sexy
Come on sugar let me know!

Eff you Rod Stewart, you short, pointy-haired man whore. Get out of my head. I'm letting you know right here, right now, that sexy is not on any list of adjectives or phrases I'd ever use to describe you. "Decrepit" is on that list. So is "tangerine, wrinkled sperm vessel" and "uber annoying ass monkey" but "sexy" not so much. Take your "Hot Legs" and shove them up your tiny, leather-clad ass.

And you're not Scottish either, so quit sullying our good name.

That is the end of this public service announcement.

So...before Rod Stewart burned his incessant, poppy nastiness deep into my brain, earlier this afternoon, I was sitting at work, twiddling my thumbs, basking in the warmth of certain Uberlords being overseas again and having nothing to do but cause lots of trouble, when I heard this sound coming from the elusive corner office. I may have mentioned this office before - it's like a black hole in the middle of office land. It's also about two doors from my office. Stuff happens in that office but no one seems to know what or who is responsible for said happenings. In the past I have heard clucking like a chicken emanating from that particular room and even singing, but the door is always closed. It's my theory that the CIA use it for clandestine beatings and top secret classified experiments. Possibly involving the ghost of Bing Crosby.

Today, while passing it en route to the fax machine, I heard...well...sounds. From behind that door. Sounds of, how can I put this delicately...ladies who enjoy being filmed having foreign objects inserted in their various orifices by oiled up men with mullets, mustaches and the IQ of a fishtank. Or at least that's what I've heard.

I bent down to tie my shoe so I could listen some more to see if I was really hearing what I was hearing when suddenly the door opened and two geezers in suits walked out, carrying a waste paper basket.

In case you're wondering right about now what the exciting end to this story is, can I just say, don't get your hopes set too high. The geezers took that waste basket and headed for the elevators and that's the last I saw of them.

I like to think that waste paper basket contained proof of extra terrestrial life or the launch codes for all the U.S.'s nuclear weapons or something secret and important like that and don't want to consider it might contain soggy Kleenex and the stench of old man desperation.

So, if anyone has any idea what any of this is about, please tell me.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

A Psychotic Break

2008-02-28T12:48:00.012-05:00

Sorry for the delay in service, but the Guv’ner is busy saving the world one Excel spreadsheet at a time, ladies and genitals!

Yes, today has been declared “Have The Guv’ner Make YOU a Spreadsheet” day, but all orders are now taken so don’t even think of asking and incurring my almighty wrath. I have constructed charts, graphs, calculations and tables for various people and even made one in my head to demonstrate the pain scale involved in the various excruciating torture methods available to me in wreaking my havoc on the asses of these requestors.

I am now on a psychotic break where I am engrossed in constructing a very lifelike scale model of Bill Gates that I can hang in a noose from my light fixture. I haven’t yet decided if I should fill it with candy and incorporate this idea into a sort of Bill Gates torture piňata. Candy and violence, what more could a person want on a cold, Thursday afternoon?

" This is for Excel you speccy butt-pirate!” I'd proclaim loudly, wielding my big stick in my hand and in return for a good, satisfying whack at his geek head, I get a Snickers. I think I like this idea more and more…

In other news, THIS warms my old, psychotic cockles.

Well This is Boring

2008-02-26T12:48:00.004-05:00

I got in this morning full of the joys of...well...nothing, quite frankly, since I got a hellish night's sleep due to two cats reenacting the Battle of Hastings on my bed, to find a note pushed under my office door that said, "Guv'ner - please deal with the pile of stuff on my couch."

One thing The Guv'ner does not like to find first thing in the morning, before the procurement of caffeine and the customary 2 hours winding down and waking up period, is a note wanting me to do things with "piles" of "stuff". It's like the man thinks I come here to work, for heaven's sake.

I cautiously surveyed this pile in case it included explosives. I was sort of hoping to find a chocolate cake, a keg of something icy and refreshing, Javier Bardem (minus the "No Country..." haircut, of course!), a burrito, an X-Files box set, instructions on torturing bosses, a waffle iron, a ticket to the Bahamas, a tub of Wet Ones, a lb of cheddar, a note telling me I had the next two weeks off and a shotgun.

However a Guv'ner's life is a disappointing affair and the pile contained only a shitload (this is the proper metric term for "quite a lot") of expenses from the last two foreign trips the Dark Uberlord took, some stuff on a Dictaphone tape that needed transcribing and some instructions that made no sense at all and that, on closer inspection, looked like they were possibly in Swahili. This is most unsatisfactory.

Anyway, I took care of business, scanned some things to email to vendors, cleaned my desk for the first time in about six months and to cap it all off, I somehow stapled my index finger so badly the staple was flat against my finger. You don't even want to know how I managed that. I should just suggest that you don't ever try it yourselves, kids, it will end badly and you'll get blood on your bloomers. It hurt so much that it brought tears to my jaded old eyes and I had to do laps of my office to give my body something else to think about.

So in summary, this morning the Guv'ner, a) Worked like a little bitch, and b) injured herself with a stapler. I'm accomplished I guess.

The Guv'ner Does The Mail

2008-02-25T14:27:00.007-05:00

Dear Sir,

While I am flattered and downright thrilled by your kind offer to send me a free, six-month subscription to “Meetings Weekly”, I am afraid I have to decline your very generous offer. While I am quite sure you are correct when you say it will “…greatly enrich and enhance my conference experience” with its myriad of business jargon, corporate accessories and interesting tips on making your PowerPoint presentations “pop”, I think I would much rather dip my toes in ketchup, gnaw them off and spit them at a small child. Please, never send me this publication unless you, in turn, would like me to show up at the offices of your swanky magazine with a sawn-off shotgun and malice in my heart, to bring you all some surprise tiny, metal gifts and a ten second start.

Yours MOST Sincerely,

The Guv’ner

Dear People at Brand Week,

Thank you very much indeed for continuing to make my day, every day. In fact, if I can let you into a little secret, there are days I feel quite sad and I just don’t want to get out of bed, however it is the promise of your daily subscription reminders that forces back the sheets and lets me greet the day with sunshiney enthusiasm. One reminder a day is exactly the right number I need to remember to re-subscribe to a publication I haven’t actually subscribed to in three years, but thank you for reminding me! Truly! In fact, I love your magazine so much, I may take each and every one of those sub cards up on the offer of $149 for a whole year of Brand Week joy at your special subsidized rate. I mean look a gift horse in the noggin? Not I Sir! It’s a bargain at half the price. I would never for one second suggest you take all those notifications you keep mailing me and shove them up your ass sideways and that I hope they paper-cut the entire inside of your poop chute till you cry like a peeled baby rubbed with salt.

Die In A Fire,
The Guv'ner

Dear Readers’ Digest,

NO!

Sincerely,

The Guv’ner

Dear Sir,

Why yes, I surely would love to enroll in some classes at Harvard, thanks so much for asking me yet again. I assume since you are courting me so heavily, that you will be paying? I’m in New York, however, would I be compensated for the daily commute to Cambridge and back? I feel, under the circumstances it’s the least you could do.

I am particularly interested in your course on "How To Dispose Of Bodies Without Detection" and its sister class on "Flesh Eating Acids".

There are many fine Ivy League establishments trying to snare me, you know, you have to work for this ticket, pal. I feel I have to accept your offer, however, because you are obviously keen to get me judging by the invitation I receive every single Monday, enticing me to enroll. God bless you and your stalker mentality. I would however, ask that from here on in, you refer to me in all correspondence as "Professor Guv'ner" and I would like it known that I am not above accepting bribes.

The Guv’ner

All My Heroes Are Gay or Cowboys

2008-02-20T11:13:00.016-05:00

The first email in my in-box this morning was from that giant stench of decaying matter, the Dark you know who, asking me to “download this picture and send to me”. The email subject contained a link directly to the picture in question and he is blissfully ignorant to the fact you can click this. I pasted it into the body of another email and sent it back to him. I’m constantly amazed the man can tie his shoes. In fact, I’m not convinced he doesn’t wear loafers for this very reason. Not “loafers” as in the tremendously flaming, George Michael, white-loafers-and-no-socks sense, although what he does at home is anyone’s guess (my guess is it involves standing in just his tightie whities, gut overhanging spectacularly, swinging a shiny golf club in front of a mirror and pouting a lot - think Ben Stiller in "Zoolander" - and next time he's irritating the baby jeebus out of me, I intend to visualize that scene for my own amusement.)

I spent an hour making hotel reservations for his upcoming round the world business extravaganza. We are a big company and we therefore have special rates at hotels like the Westin, but the Westin does not meet the Dark Überlord’s lofty standards so he has me book Grand Hyatts and the like instead. The travel department then laugh in my face, I convince them that even though they’re way more expensive than we’re allowed, the Überlord is a “very important man” who will take care of the difference if there is a problem, then sit back and watch the great big tool try to convince the CFO that he is special enough to warrant a $500 a night room. It’s better than TV. The Überlord is entitled, damnit.

I am sleepy today due to an abundance of bizarre dreams involving me fleeing some enormous arachnids. I blame this squarely on the fact my friend Maria came round last night to hang out and eat chocolate and we ended up watching a bunch of those disturbing travel/food shows where that little, rotund, bald guy goes around the world eating disgustingly unappetizing, and just plain wrong, things. We sat there horrified as he gnawed on fried tarantulas on a stick, battered worms and goose intestines and our particular favorite - “teriyaki cockroaches” – a large nasty roach, injected with teriyaki sauce and skewered like a kebab. Nom nom nom! They looked just as lovely as they sound I can assure you. And if you heard a giant wail of distress around 10pm last night, that was just my soul dying. Seriously, what traumatic event happens to a person in their life, so dreadful that they wake up one day and go, “You know what? Screw that mashed potato and gravy, I think what I want is a fried cockroach!”

Well I seemed to have eradicated that giant hunger I had five minutes ago, how about you? Having trouble sticking to your diet? Call the Guv’ner!

And no, the title had nothing to do with the post. I'm mysterious damn it.

Give The Guv'ner Strength

2008-02-15T12:54:00.010-05:00

Sorry to have yet another whiny entry about the deficiencies of the stupid Überlord but he’s so full of fodder I can’t seem to help myself.

One thing he’s really bad with is names. He’ll have a person’s name in his head and he will proceed to get one name right and the other name will be totally off. Or else he’ll get a surname completely wrong. Or the spelling will be ridiculous.

“Get me the number for Fred Fitzsimmons at such and such a company.” he’ll say. Numerous searches and head scratching will pull up nothing until I accidentally find a Frank FitzGerald.

“I don’t suppose that by Fred Fitzsimmons you meant Frank Fitzgerald?” I'd ask him suspiciously.

“Oh. Yeah. That’s him! I need his number.” He will reply, as though it were blatantly obvious.

Grrr.

Yesterday he said to me:

“I need the number for a man in Latin America named Luis Garcia. I’m not sure who he works for but I think he’s in Venezuela or it might be Colombia.”

Thanks a bunch Überlord. I mean there won’t be several thousand of those in those countries at all. Every second man you meet in the street will be called Luis Garcia, their sons will be Luis Garcia and their fathers will be Luis Garcia, you stammering buffoon. Nevertheless, I conduct a search through various fields and come up with several possible candidates with that name, in related fields to us. The Überlord frowns when surveying the list.

“I don’t think this is right…” he says.

“You are sure his name is Luis Garcia?” I ask, because really, I’ve been down this road before.

“I think so.” replies the Überlord. “I mean, I’m pretty certain. And now I think about it, I think he works for [company]”

I track down that company, do some more digging and come up with no one named Luis Garcia. There is, however, a Jorge Garcia Martinez. And he’s in Brazil.

“Um…I don’t suppose that by Luis Garcia in Venezuela you actually meant Jorge Garcia Martinez in Brazil?” I ask, getting some severe déjà vu.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “That’s the guy!”

So I picked up my industrial 3-hole punch and beat him to death with it.

Damn Überlords

2008-02-14T12:46:00.010-05:00

The Dark Überlord has a really, intensely irritating laugh. If you took a loud, boorish society matron and mated her with a horse, then tickled the ass of the resulting spawn, with a feather, that’s exactly the sound you’d get.

He also overuses this obscene guffaw in his many quests to be “one of the guys”. He’s in his 50s but likes to think he’s still a frat boy with his curse words, his schmoozing, his corporate lunches with clients where he tells appalling jokes and laughs at them with that laugh.

Yesterday, while walking out of his office, he ripped a giant fart then had a jolly good wheeze at it. I mean, I know farts are funny. I laugh at mine all the time – they are high-fucking-larious, but really, not in an office environment. Not in the corridor where several people can bear witness to your gassy bowels. He also lets out these enormous belches fairly frequently and mutters to himself. Once I heard him joking with his son on the phone about whether or not his son was “getting some”. I doubt they were talking about chocolate. It’s bizarre to me because people are always saying to me “Oh you work for The Dark Überlord, he’s so nice!”

No. No he isn’t. He’s only nice if you don’t know him. He’s a schmoozer. He’s phony. He’s a faux nice guy. He’s a player. With a loud, witchy laugh.

Therefore, it’s some sort of divine intervention when he waltzes out of his office all smarmy and cocky, trips over his shoelace, does an unintentionally fine rendition of a seven year old girl at a ballet recital and flies arse-over-tit onto the floor.

I laughed and laughed. See, THAT, Dark Überlord, is appropriate office humor!

I just got through a whole entry without mentioning V-Day. I deserve an award.

Hell In Excel

2008-02-12T10:46:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I received via email, an Excel spreadsheet that could only have been created by Satan himself, while high on amphetamines. It was the sort of document that was so text heavy, full of unnecessary vertical page breaks, and had about forty sheets contained within all so full of gibberish, that you wondered why the person didn’t just create it in Word like a normal, rational human being (you know, like ME), negating the need for me to curse like a sailor and threaten people’s grandmas. And write ginormous sentences like that one up there.

I briefly entertained the notion of inserting random formulas that would bring up cells saying "DIE YOU C*CKS*CKER!" but sadly this function doesn't seem to have been invented yet.

Naturally, the Dark Überlord insisted on having a print out of this mammoth document because his retinas would melt and ooze onto the floor if he was forced to look at something on a screen. All the more reason to do it, I say.

The problem was Satan had cunningly incorporated more text than a cell can hold into many areas of the spreadsheet which meant you had to click the cell to get a pop up of the contents, making it virtually unprintable. Trying to paste said contents into various other cells didn't work either and I ended up with this page that looked like something a dyslexic spider had woven. Now I’m quite familiar with Excel in its basic form, can work with data bases and write formulas, etc., but this text heavy nonsense is making me insane. This means today I get to spend all day working out how to reformat this beast and recreate the excess contents so the Überlord can have a hard copy. This should take me oh….the rest of my natural (and unnatural) life.

The man’s in Canada today (a lucky feat of fortune or else he’d have a spear in his eye) and I was planning a sort of office “spa” day – music, feet up, snacks, blog reading, all very ambient and lovely. Instead, it’s Hell in Excel for me, so please send food/vibes/gun/hunky man with cake/news on how to print this mofo of a document in order to save the Guv’ner’s sanity. Thank you!

Please donate cocktails!

Psychotic Secretary Will Kill You

2008-02-08T15:29:00.003-05:00

The headache I have today makes me think I know exactly how Lizzie Borden’s victims felt. You know, right before it all went black.

Things briefly improved when, while running an errand downstairs, I ran into this girl who was as excited and flustered as a ten year old at a Hannah Montana concert. This made me momentarily happy that the upper echelons of power must have given us the whole of next week off and a giant raise, but it turned out she was just happy because she heard a rumor there was a cake shaped like a skyscraper in the cafeteria and that we were all entitled to eat it. Fair enough little chick, that would get my heart-a-fluttering too. I went down there and sure enough – skyscraper cake. Who knew! I figured all that cake might place too heavy a load on the flimsy little table they had it on so I volunteered to eat a giant slab of it, thus making it lighter and saving the day. Go me.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Thank God there is someone to take over where Mother Theresa left off, Guv!” Well, you are welcome.

I’ve also been slogging through a slew of complicated work crap and now I feel slightly insane, which, as you know, is a new sensation for me. I sent out emails to all corners (?) of the world demanding certain pieces of information that would prevent me overheating and having to take hostages, but so far no response. I will try not to be offended by this as I know people in Sydney and in India are entitled to sleep once in a while, even if I happen to be awake and demanding things. I mean ideally the whole world would stand to attention every hour I’m awake, ready to spring into action at my command, however, for now I have no choice but to let it be.

On the equally annoying side, I have had to start a dedicated notebook just for the travel stuff I’m doing. This book is already hilarious. It’s filled with flights I need to get, information I need, hotel stuff and due to the constant changes, it has more lines through it than a WalMart store. One day I’m going to take a photo of this book so you can see the mayhem I’m talking about. You will be appalled. You will cry for your mommy. You will cut yourself.

The Dark Überlord is here today and running around like his panties are on fire. This morning he sent me to Starbucks for two double espressos and a latte. When I got back he frowned because he wanted two lattes and a double espresso. I showed him the note he gave me to the contrary but he still sulked because really, I should have decoded that note and reversed the numbers, what was wrong with me, did I not read between the lines?

Give that man a sedative.

Quiet Please! The Guv'ner Is Working

2008-02-07T14:17:00.003-05:00

Despite the fact The Überlord is out of the office, and in fact, out of the country until tomorrow (cue Hallelujah Chorus), I have spent all this morning working. Yes, you heard me correctly. Working. When I could have been blogging. Or reading gossip sites. Or napping on the couch in the Überlord’s office. Or procrastinating and drinking Diet Pepsi. Or making voodoo dolls in his likeness out of office supplies and then castrating them. With a rusty butter knife.

So yes, I worked. Of my own free will. Aren’t you all so proud? I’m putting it in the calendar as a reminder and next year I will bake a cake for the anniversary and possibly commission a bill board in Times Square saying “What were YOU doing on February 7th, 2008? THE GUV’NER WAS WORKING!” and it will be as smug and sanctimonious as it sounds and feature a huge, scary photo of me grinning with spinach on my teeth and giving a cheesy thumbs up.

There has been some rampant compiling of lists for a start. Things are getting to the Code Red stage of hectic as regards travel and meetings for the next few months, and keeping track of the who the where the when is getting horrendous, as is keeping a record of what paperwork has been completed for each trip. It is quite frankly a major spear in the Guv’ner’s side. Therefore, my highly informative lists are very helpful in these matters and as only I see these lists, I can scribble snide little comments in the margins like “get authorization for first class to Australia, chaaa right!” and “who does he think he’s kidding?” and when he’s really pissing me off I can scrawl myself a note that says, “Überlord requests middle seat in coach next to very fat person who hates deodorant”, as well as draw crude sketches of the Dark Überlord swinging in a hang man’s noose or being eaten by a lion or sodomized by Shaquille O'Neal. So even work can be fun to an extent.

Naturally now I am over the lists and more interested in the Internetz and whether Britney’s driven off of a cliff yet, while naked, speaking like Dick Van Dyke and covered in lime jello, weave falling through the air like a giant, hairy spider.

(She hasn’t.)

There are, however, still 9 and a bit hours left in the day, so I wouldn't count her out just yet.

The REAL Super Tuesday Results

2008-02-06T00:02:00.002-05:00

As the various states' election results are still pouring in you may wish to check the official results against the Guv'ner's much more realistic and not at all made-up predictions, which you can find RIGHT HERE! See? The Guv'ner speaks only the gospel truth.

I'm pretty certain you'll find my predictions a lot more accurate in portraying who each state truly wanted to vote for. None of this Hillary or McCain or Obama nonsense.

My apologies to Michigan and Delaware who were just too hard to predict (or I forgot, whatever, sue me). I'm pretty sure Delaware would do whatever Maryland wanted and Michigan is practically Canada so who cares? (I'm KIDDING Michigan, honest, simmer down!!)

Don't even think of suggesting that I have too much time on my hands. Or beer.

The Guv'ner Predicts

2008-02-05T23:38:00.002-05:00

All the various states' election results are still coming in and sadly everything's been pretty much going as expected with a few minor upsets, regarding election results this Super Tuesday.

However, you may wish to check the official results against the Guv'ner's much more realistic predictions, which you can find RIGHT HERE BABY!.

I'm pretty certain you'll find my predictions a lot more accurate in portraying who each state should have voted for. My apologies to Michigan and Delaware who eluded me. I'm pretty sure Delaware would do whatever Maryland wanted anyway and Michigan is practically Canada so who cares? (I'm KIDDING)

Everything Tuesday

2008-02-05T16:16:00.002-05:00

Today, Tuesday, is also known as “The Day of Bloody Mayhem” in NYC. This is because we have problems handling one “event” at a time – OK…I do - but any more than that, you can fuggedaboutit.

Firstly we had this huge ticker-tape parade taking place downtown for the award-winning, killjoy, sporting upsetters, those enormous coffee bean throwers, the NY Giants, making me thankful I work up here in midtown therefore got to escape the crazy that no doubt ensued. I know nothing about football except those boys are way too fond of the shoulder pad and tight pants. It’s all grunting and sweating, touching each other’s asses and rubbing one another’s helmets.

Whoa, I just got the sudden urge to sing YMCA…

Today’s also not the most pleasant weather so that ensures lots of wet, paper pulp littering the streets, which better be cleared by the time I get home tonight, slackers!

Then of course it’s Super Tuesday so naturally much voting has commenced in the five boroughs. I pretend to be uninterested because, frankly, they don’t let me vote as I’m a filthy, stinking, commie, Godless foreigner so I reserve my right to sit back and watch the proceedings while mocking all the candidates in any way I see fit.

This being NYC and not renowned for its Republican stance, my subway entrance this morning was swamped with Hillary and Obama supporters, thrusting leaflets and buttons and their throbbing, sweaty groins in my direction - I made one of those things up (they had no buttons). They tried to follow me down the steps like I’m a purty celebrity. “Vote for Hillary!” one whispered furtively, nodding at me sincerely and waiting for a response.

“I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts!” I replied cheerfully and swiped my way through the turnstiles to safety.

You know what I'd like? I'd like just one candidate to ask ME what I'd like them to do for me if they became President. Because I have some suggestions (of course I do). Firstly, I'd like to be able to enjoy all bad, bad, heavenly things tax free (even the illegal ones). I would like some affordable healthcare and decent education but apart from these things I'd be happy if the government would butt out of my life altogether, unless it's to bring me a wheelbarrow filled with money, a bottle of top shelf tequila and an Uzi.

Most importantly of all, today is Pancake Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday! A day for a face stuffing and I’m happy to report, my coworkers have started early by providing us with many cookies, coffee and pastries. This is a quite splendid and unexpected occurrence. Tonight I will bake up a storm of crepes to drizzle in lemon juice and sugar as is the British way and will proceed sucking them down like oxygen while the election results come in.

The Dark one just left for Europe again and I am drowning in future trips and travel arrangements that need to be made, so I will commence swinging on my chair and singing along with this old Jesus and Marychain album and maybe tomorrow I'll consider doing some work.

I do have a lovely bunch of coconuts.

Last of the International Playboys

2008-02-04T15:03:00.003-05:00

A cryptic message from the Dark Überlord on a scrap of paper on my desk, requested I procure him a flight on a certain date, to “Indonesia”. I am fairly convinced that the Überlord believes that “Indonesia” is a city and not an entire geographic region full of them. I am assuming he wants to fly to Jakarta but really, he could be going anywhere.

Especially if I have anything to do with it.

I looked up some information on Indonesian cities and got back a list of what looks like monsters in a low-budget, Japanese horror fest (“Bogor” anyone? “Probolinggo?” “Dompu”?), drugs with possibly nasty side effects (“Ciamis”, “Cilacap”, “Cinere”), or potential Latin prepubescent pop groups (“Menado”). Some of the others sounded like fun pastimes (“Sukabumi”, “Purbalingga”, “Bangkinang” and “Fak Fak”) or tropical diseases (“Bukittinggi” and “Sibolga” – “Mom, mom I have a rash on my cranker, I think it’s Sibolga!!!” the correct response being, “Don’t worry son, take two Cilacap twice a day and you’ll be golden!”)

And all them sounded infinitely more interesting than Jakarta although less lovely and tropically pleasing than Bali. My only real disappointment was not finding a town named “Punani” because that would have been a stupendous HEE moment.

I think I will await further instructions on this one for the sake of my sanity. Or I could just send him on a one way ticket to Fak Fak where he would have his orifices filled by the phallic appendages of well-endowed, evil tribesmen who would then roast him on a spit and shrink his head to the size of a wee, tiny pea. Ah one can dream.

The Guv'ner Kick Starts Her Social Life

2008-01-31T21:58:00.003-05:00

A nice thing about the Uberlord being overseas is, I can come in late and duck out early if I feel like doing something exciting in the early evening like seeing a movie, as I did tonight.

OK, in the grand scheme of things, seeing a movie probably doesn't rank up there with say...stealing a car and driving it into the Hudson while licking Absynthe off a man's naked torso, but that's my life. The movie I mean...not the naked torso Absynthe licking thing. I'm a respectable human being you know. On Sundays. In April. After the 28th.

So I met up with my friend Christina and we went to see "Juno" because I'm sick of the world telling me how "awesome" it is when I haven't seen it to counteract this viewpoint. Naturally, I can be a touch cynical - no honestly! - and I figured an indie movie hitting the box office hard probably means it's fairly average for someone who is used to indie movies, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was excellent and very cute but not in a way that made you want to swallow Draino then put a sword through your spleen or anything. And the great dialogue prevented it from being too saccharine. I surmise that this is because it was filmed in Canada and starred two Canadians, because Canadians are naturally allergic to schmaltz. It's something they put in the drinking water up there. Labatt's I think it's called. Anyway, if it had been too sweet the main characters would have puked all over each other in disgust and that movie would suck. Then I'd have puked on Christina and she'd have puked on the row in front etc. and it would have been like that scene in "Stand By Me" when Lardass eats all the pies.

Juno's boyfriend was just the sweetest thing ever. It was the geeky dude from "Superbad" who looks awkward in his own skin. I like me a skinny nerd boy now and then you know. They're so corruptible. Allegedly... If he wasn't barely legal I'd load him into my trunk and keep him in a box under my bed for a rainy day.

Ahem.

I especially enjoyed the trailer for that piece of crap Kate Hudson/Matthew McConna-hooey romcom that's about to spread its nasty, non-funny hilarity all over us. It took all the strength and will power I had not to stand up and yell, "YOU have no tits Kate Hudson, and YOU are GAYER THAN LIBERACE McConna-hooey so quit pretending!" I just ground my teeth and snarled instead. Who goes to see these things? Are they mental?

Another Day In Paradise

2008-01-30T14:30:00.005-05:00

I groaned like an oak tree in a tornado at having to get up this morning. This is normal, however, and part of my life-long protest at mornings in general and the fact I have to drag myself out of bed to do things during them, when every sane person knows mornings are for sleeping, drinking coffee, nursing your hangover, peeing and more sleeping.

I arrived at work, cold, frowning and not inclined to deal with assorted dickwaddery from anyone, to find a very pleasing lack of Dark Überlord. I wasn’t sure what to do at first – be ecstatic and do a happy dance or commence being very suspicious of why there was no Dark Überlord. I glanced tentatively around each corner, to make sure the Apocalypse wasn't crouching there waiting to trip me up, but no.

I decided that looking a gift horse in the face is beyond stupid and so I began the dancing and followed it with coffee imbibing and joyous knuckle cracking. My own knuckles I mean - I don’t want you thinking I’m going around smashing other people’s joints with a ball peen hammer or anything. Not that the thought doesn’t occur to me fairly regularly...

When he does show up he’s not going to be happy to learn I haven’t been able to upgrade his flight to Europe for this evening from business class to first because the airline was completely over sold on first class. The fact that no seats exist and there is also a waiting list ahead of him will not be an acceptable excuse to the Dark Überlord, who thinks I can just conjure these things up because he wishes it so. If I had that talent I’d be in Fiji right now, lying in the sun, sucking down exotic beverages while a nubile, tanned lovely boy fanned me with a huge palm frond and fed me chocolates. I'm sorry, I just slipped back into fantasy land yet again.

Also, if I’d only known he wasn’t coming in all morning I could have had a very satisfying forty winks on his couch for an hour or two. Damn inconsiderate man.

On a nice note though, I am very flattered to realize my ambition of becoming an honest to God, goddamn, fabulous Internet quasi-celebrity (like Britney only with panties), thanks to my being subjected to an interview by the mean and nasty SUZE, so go on over there and tell her what a mean beeyotch she really is. And hot damn, that pepper spray stings!

Subway Tales

2008-01-29T11:49:00.002-05:00

My day started with a refined looking older gentleman sporting an expensive coat, old school hat and some impressively gigantic jowls, whining on the train because some lady had the nerve to squeeze into the space next to him.

“There isn’t enough room!” he whined. “You should stand until you can sit down properly.” She looked at him like he’d said, “My God, the last time I saw a face like that was on a stick at a Chinese market!” and refused to budge.

This is the New York subway, Quentin Crisp, be grateful she didn’t stab you in the kishkas and steal your rather fey chapeau.

Myself? I had the pleasure to be seated next to some guy who smelled like a fruity mixture of Old Pee and Old Spice – quite the sexy combination. He was wearing some really tinny, nasty headphones and blasting some god-awful hippy music that made me want to grab the overhead bar, swing from it like a gorilla and kick the dude square in the nuts. Would it hurt you to take a bath, fella? Would the world end, Stinkmeister?

To make matters worse one of my bras had recently gone through the drier accidentally, which distorted the hook in the back, so mid way through my commute I stretched slightly and it unhinged and pinged open in the back, freeing the hounds as it were. Thank God for big winter coats. I mean if you’ve got cute little A Cup boobies it wouldn’t be an issue but when you’re a C/D cup like me, all manner of nastily embarrassing bounce-age can occur if you let it. Think two fighting puppies in a sack! I’m sorry, did I gross everyone out with that visual? Good!

No Dark Überlord today, I’m happy to say, as he had a pressing engagement elsewhere. Sadly not “pressing” as in “pinned under a train” but it is only noon and one can live in hope. Nonetheless a welcome sanity break for me.

And really, a sane Guv’ner is a happy Guv’ner.

Today's Complaint...

2008-01-28T13:04:00.003-05:00

The Dark Überlord’s Dictaphone broke down recently causing the world to stop spinning briefly. You might have felt the jolt? A week past Tuesday it was. The E.R.s were full of broken bones and other related maladies.

I had our office services people get him a new recorder, which they had by the next day – a lovely, silver Sony micro-recorder. Situation rectified, right?

Right.

The Dark Überlord didn’t like it. It was too “flimsy”. It has a hard plastic shell unlike the old relic we were using which was carved out of bedrock and operated by a team of dinosaurs on a treadmill. Damn thing would’ve withstood a hand grenade attack back in the day.

“This thing is too fragile.” He whined about the new Sony, hurting its fragile feelings. “We need to get something more rugged.”

I don’t know what he does with it that would constitute needing something “more rugged” since something more rugged comes with a more rugged price tag that the company will have to pay for. Maybe he plays touch football with it in his office? Or dodgeball? Maybe he chops wood with it. I don’t know or, for that matter, care.

Since our office services people laugh in my face when I put in absurd requests (they got us the “flimsy” but perfectly adequate Sony) we decided to circumvent them by ordering the desired machine online and expensing it back, which is guaranteed to give someone in our billing department a coronary since they like every penny expensed to be a penny well spent. Still there is no point arguing with an Überlord when his mind is made up.

Who knew a micro-cassette recorder (a rugged one mind you!) cost $239? Not me. I was expecting maybe….$30. Tops. Getting the money back should be fun with a capital ‘KILL ME NOW’. Still it’s not my money so really. Who cares?

For the record, the Sony works perfectly well and since he talks into it while sitting at his desk, I’m not seeing why it needs to be made of solid steel to begin with but then I’m not a pampered fuckwit with fancy ideas.

All my fancy ideas involve sharp implements and soft flesh and result in death.

Viva La Résistance

2008-01-25T10:47:00.002-05:00

The Dark Überlord, who’s in Europe this week on business, called me yesterday distraught because his swanky hotel room (a five star hotel room at that) didn’t have an impressive enough view for his lofty tastes. “It overlooks a side street!” he spluttered, terrified by this unknown world of deprivation. Well that must have been just traumatizing. A side street! The indignity. There must be someone we can sue for the distress caused to his emotional psyche. Paging Doctor FUCK-YOU!

Also – horror! - the people in the room next door had the audacity to have an infant. Not that he could hear the kid or anything, but, in theory, he might hear it and then where would the world be if he was forced to wake up bleary-eyed and devoid of the brain cells necessary to participate in his meeting? Well the world would tilt on its axis, Dark Überlord. People would run shrieking through the streets, knocking over nuns and small children in their wake, causing massive traffic pile-ups and mayhem at intersections. Stores would close and public transport would grind to a halt and the market would drop to unprecedented lows and start a recession.

Silly old butt-sausage.

On the upside, since he’s been gone I’ve been taking advantage of my freedom by coming in late and closing my office door all day to block out the rest of the scum. I’ve been playing my iPod through the speakers and singing along. I’ve been avoiding all the minions who are scurrying around hyperactively, like ants, making sure the client’s ass is well and truly kissed and other très important matters of world shattering importance, while I swing on my chair giving them the finger.

It all irritates me. The corporate world is not The Guv’ner’s world. The Guv’ner’s world is filled with margaritas and cake and bad men and music and comedy shows and Edy’s Butter Pecan ice cream and gay abandon and cursing and cats and liquor and drawing cartoons and sticking pins in maps and like...dreaming about a debauched weekend in Amsterdam eating magic brownies and getting up at noon and sitting around half the day in her underpants and a t-shirt scooping cereal into her mouth and patting her tummy and playing with dogs and interfering with boys and writing tripe and playing guitar and wearing fuzzy slippers and it is not about sitting at a desk all day organzing meetings for half-witted fucktards who can’t tie their own shoelaces..

Let the rebellion begin.

A Brief Whine

2008-01-17T10:13:00.002-05:00

My boss is a pretty verbose guy. He spews forth words like a little volcano of vocabulary. He also likes to put things in writing where at all possible; memos, buck-slips, emails, documents indicating progress on a project, that sort of thing. He’s just never brief, is my point.

Usually these things are a case of him talking into a Dictaphone and me transcribing it, with a cackle, into Microsoft Word. Nice and easy. I type fast and really, a chimp could do that stuff. Occasionally though, he demands a cover note or slide for a PowerPoint presentation. This is fine in theory. I am more than coherent in PowerPoint.

He, however, is not.

For a start, he does not comprehend that you can not fit an infinite amount of words onto one PowerPoint slide – at least not unless you want a font size of minus 300 and are planning on handing out free magnifying glasses and an aneurysm with the presentation. He will hand me tapes full of words that would fill three single-spaced pages of Word and expects this all to fit concisely onto one slide. This is the world he lives in. Despite the obvious faces of disgust I pull when asked to do this, he doesn’t see what my problem is. I don’t have a magic wand, Dark Überlord, that’s what. My name is not Hermione Granger.

I actually like working in PowerPoint. You can do some neat stuff in there - like the time I made a presentation of all the people I hated at my last job. I made mean yet oddly accurate cartoons of everyone, captioned them all, wrote some scathing text detailing their various levels of assholity, made some graphs and pie charts (because no presentation is complete without some mathematical goodness) and synched up appropriate music. Every time Cruella de Ville, for example, would appear on the screen, that song “Bitch” by Meredith Baxter would start up. It was quite excellent! I couldn’t find a song about crusty old procrastinating douchebags for Mr. Panty-Waist so he had to make do with Carly Simon's “You’re so Vain”. And the Primitives’ “Really Stupid”.

Honestly it was a classic. When it was finished, I brought it in early one morning on my laptop along with some doughnuts and coffee, so that I and my good friends The Evil Queen and Timo could have a locked-door screening in Timo’s office where we ate, drank and gave copious amounts of "The Finger" when necessary, which turned out to be every five seconds on average. Who knew therapy could be as cheap as six doughnuts and some caffeine?

So you see, PowerPoint can be your friend.

Not for my current boss however. Mr. “I would like twenty different bullet points in one document”. Mr. “I have diarrhea of the verbal variety”. Oh no.

Confusion Is My Middle Name

2008-01-15T11:55:00.002-05:00

When I first arrived in the United States I had to contend with some completely baffling things that were just beyond my realm of comprehension. Like syrup on French toast (this is so wrong, French toast is savory, people!), driving on the right-hand side of the road and people spelling things in funny, misshapen ways.

And of course, filing tax returns. I had never done my taxes in my life and didn't have the foggiest notion how to start. It sounded like something that would involve a calculator the approximate size of a saloon car and a team of bespectacled men with furrowed brows, taking up lodging in my living room for a month and sighing a lot. Doing taxes is something as foreign to me as making out with an alligator (although there was that one time in the Keys after the consumption of much tequila….oh wait, no, that was a crocodile!)

In the UK we don’t do tax returns, our place of employment takes care of all that for us automatically. If we’re due a refund it gets deposited in our bank accounts and as far as I’m aware we never owe anything. We never have to fill out a form or anything.

While I was in the HR department of my former job, here in the U.S., filling in my enrollment forms, the lady asked, “How many exemptions are you claiming?”

I looked at her like her like she’d just asked me the scientific formula for Donald Trump’s weave.

“…how many whats?” I asked.

“Exemptions.” she replied. “Do you have any?”

“Exemptions for what exactly?" I asked. "I used to be exempt from gym class if I had my period. And I am always exempt from Brussels Sprouts.”

“How many dependents are you claiming for?” she also wanted to know.

“….I have two cats and a tequila habit, is that what you mean?”

She looked at me partly with sympathy and partly with annoyance, but it made no difference. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. She might as well have spoken Swahili and done cartwheels around the room for all the sense she made.

I had a similar problem with medical insurance. I’ve never needed insurance because I grew up with the National Health Service, which is free. You get sick, you go to the doctor, it's that simple. You don't pay for anything except the prescription which is heavily subsidized.

The first time I saw a doctor in the United States, the receptionist at the doctor’s office pounced on me as soon as I entered and asked about my “copay”. I gave her that, “What you talkin’ about Willis?” look.

“My what now?”

“How much is your copay?”

I was stumped.

“Is that anything like a toupé?” I said cautiously. “Because this hair is all mine, baby!”

I was really clueless. I was used to receiving free doctor’s appointments. I was used to my prescriptions, regardless of what drug I was prescribed, costing the same standard rate (at the time about £5.15) which you ponied up at the pharmacy and then you were good to go.

Now I have to deal with all the boss’s medical doings and my head could not hurt more if there was a porcupine bouncing around in it. I have no idea why something is reimbursed partially or why a certain claim comes back unpaid or what goes on an FSA and what goes to the regular plan and what questions to ask to clarify most of this and don’t even think of trying to explain how COBRA works.

It’s infuriating and I do not understand. I would much rather pout and mutter.

Un-psychotic Secretary

2008-01-11T15:15:00.004-05:00

After an evening eating cheese and burning fantastic, rare Doug Anthony All Stars video clips from YouTube to my computer (and thank the Lord for the people who make the applications necessary to do this!), I am a little tired, bored and simultaneously hyper today.

My mid-afternoon trip to the water cooler to fill my bottle was sadly disappointing, mainly because I never quite lose the hope that one day I will get there to find it full of frozen margaritas and served up by buff, winking men.

I said WINKING. (that joke probably only makes sense if you're British, sorry!)

Even my meeting The Most Boring Woman In the World on my way out of the subway this morning couldn’t dampen my desire to run around doing things that didn’t involve bloody intent, which is uncharacteristic and slightly frightening. Yes, the Guv’ner was feeling mellow. And at one with the world.

I put the energy factor down to the fact I have commenced walking the 3 miles home from work again each day after a six week hiatus that I neatly excused by saying things like, “Oh, it’s raining slightly! I can’t possibly walk today or I’ll melt!” and “I feel a little off…I can’t walk for over an hour when I feel off, surely!” I’ve walked all week so far and apart from my calf muscles aching today I feel all rejuvenated and stuff.

And marginally less guilty about scoffing the chocolates in my fridge when I get home.

Hey I walked those suckers off! Don’t even talk to me about the flaws in that theory. Well they were just sitting there taunting me, left over from the holiday. The sooner I consume them the sooner I can move on, right? Right.

The Dark Überlord has been absent most of the day meeting with his teams, but the odds are good that he’ll show up all sprightly around 4:30 p.m. and want to do some serious transcribing or something equally unbefitting of a Friday afternoon and I’ll have no choice but to ram a letter opener into his heart with frantic, deadly force. I believe there’s a very ancient corporate law that states this is legal if it’s after one o’clock on a Friday because everyone knows you are officially on weekend time.

Damn Überlords and the horses they rode in on.

WTF Is Going On?

2008-01-09T14:03:00.003-05:00

I think I might have chocolate poisoning hence the delusions of grandeur and strange vivid imagination.

Today The Guv’ner is a guest on the Jay Leno Show, isn't that exciting! Here’s the transcript:

Jay
Guv’ner, welcome to the show. Your giant head that eclipses the sun is beaming at me provocatively.
Guv’ner
Like you can talk about my head with that chin, Leno.
Jay
So..what do you think of L.A. so far?
Guv’ner
Well, I think it’s full of skinny wimmins and Crips, Jay.
Jay
Now, we all want to know all about the tremendously interesting world of admin don’t we audience? Let’s hear some of your stories about corporate decadence and whiny brat bosses who can’t find their own ass with a Lonely Planet Guide!
Guv’ner
Hmm.. Let me see. As I told you back in the Green Room, I have some zany shit…wait, can I say that on TV? Caca how about that? I have some zany caca occurring in my life regarding my job. Incidentally, talking of the Green Room, did I see Seth MacFarlane of 'Family Guy' lounging around back there before in a smoking leather jacket? Because if it helps, I would gladly entertain him on your couch for 20 minutes.
Jay
Uh…the work stories?
Guv’ner
Oh yeah. Whatever. I had this boss…
Jay
Hahahahaha!
Guv’ner
I haven’t started yet, Jay.
Jay
I’m sorry, please…
Guv’ner
I had this boss who was a giant horse’s ass…can I say “ass” on TV Jay?
Jay
Uh…I think you got away with it.
Guv’ner
He was a giant horse’s ass as I was saying…well actually more of a colossal dickwad, to be honest. He used to fart a lot. You know, loud and smelly broccoli farts that hung in the air like yellow fog. And he was made entirely of dandruff.
Jay
Hahahahaha!!!!
Guv’ner
No wait, that’s not the funny part. Try to contain yourself.
Jay
Dandruff? Dandruff is funny!
Guv’ner
If you say so, Jay. Anyway this boss was a whiner. Big time whining. He could whine for America. And most of Canada and probably Mexico too. Bosses suck that is the moral of the story.
Jay
I had a boss once who used to tie his shoes funny.
Guv’ner
Did you Jay? That’s nice. Now about Seth MacFarlane and his sexy voice… Not that your voice isn’t sexy, but it’s attached to that chin, so you know. Balance and all that.
Jay
Oh. Uh. Hahaha.
Guv’ner
I have a great story about my boss boffing a client at a charity fundraiser! I can name names and everything! Republicans are involved!
Jay
I think it might be time for commercials.

Oh what? Like Leno doesn’t interview YOU in your fantasies.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry where The Guv'ner finds out she's lost all of her marbles!

A Day In The Life

2008-01-07T20:51:00.002-05:00

The Guv'ner's not a morning person. I know this probably astounds every last one of you since I practically ooze perkiness and good, solid, upstanding sanity from each of my pores, but alas it's true. Mornings and I are rivals. Deadly combatants if you will. One day I shall be God and mornings will be outlawed along with broccoli, frat boys, anything to do with Bon Jovi and the blatant display of women flaunting their visible muffin tops in public.

Unfortunately mornings are the time I have to drag my reluctant carcass out of bed and into the cold to get to a place where I shiver at a desk while listening to outbursts from the Dark Überlord such as, "My mouse is acting funny!" (The obvious answer is "Stop tickling it and give it some cheese, chulo!") and "What do I do with this document?" (which provokes so many retorts in my head my brain just imploded with the scope of it all.)

I don't like to talk in the mornings because my brain is still waking up. If it's before 11 a.m. please use sign language and pass me notes or I will growl and run my finger suggestively along the business end of my axe while smirking at you menacingly. If you must talk, do it fast then run like your pants are on fire. Hang around any longer and take it from me, they will be.

One thing it’s good not to do in the morning is call me on the phone and try to sell me something I don’t need, don’t want and would bludgeon you over the head with if you were trying it in person. Think of it this way? Would you want it rammed up your ass? Then there you go, sport.

I do appreciate when the maintenance guy shows up first thing and offers to fix my wiring (!) but I can do without the stunning vista of his ass crack as he’s crouching down with his trusty screwdriver. There’s enough cleavage down there to store an entire tool kit. Any minute now he’s going to produce a hack saw and a step ladder from its deep recesses and I will have to stick pencils in my eyes to erase that image from my psyche.

Afternoons are OK though. I’ve eaten, I’ve had coffee and I am running laps of the office really fast (depending on the amount of coffee) and I will talk to anyone, no matter who it is and sometimes even inanimate objects or just myself if no one else is available (or they’re hiding). Although why would anyone hide from the Guv’ner? I will accomplish thirteen tasks at once, find something I lost in 2005 and sing to myself while I do it. I will enthusiastically use big words and join them all together in one monster sentence because I can. I am caffeine woman. I am filled with fake energy and twitchy limbs all desperate to run in five directions at one time.

I will spurt random sentences for no reason:

New Zealand is Australia's Canada!

You smell like sick!

Matt Frei from BBC America World News has a ginormous, papier machier head!

The capital of Bosnia is Sarajevo!

Oprah eats babies!

Hey at least they're all true.

2008-01-07T16:36:00.001-05:00

4:30 in the pee-em and I'm craving a Starbucks iced passion-tea lemonade. If you've never tried this concoction, don't - you will ache for it every day and will proceed to re-mortgage your abode and sell your children into slavery to get it. It's like crack in a plastic tumbler. Tasty, fruity, unsweetened, red-colored crack that you desire with all your being.

I want mine in a bucket (venti is that what their huge size is called and why is the word "LARGE" so hard for them?) and I want to suck it down in one huge, satisfying movement till it drips down my chin attractively and I can relax and put down the axe.

I'm always thirsty this time of day. My body knows subconsciously that the cafeteria closes at 3 o'clock and so it waits, cunningly, until that hour passes then sends me into a state where I would ransom off someone's elderly granny to procure something icy cold and quenching. Luckily for lots of reasons, there are no elderly ladies in the vicinity although Starbucks is on the next block so if I get really desperate I can sneak out and go threaten someone in there to make me one.

Today my boss is flighty. He can't sit still. It's like someone put itching powder inside his tightie-whities. Obviously I wish I had thought of this, although it would involve a stronger stomach than I possess not to mention some industrial strength rubber gloves and tongs before I'd ever agree to touch anything that had come in contact with his undercarriage.

Still Serene....Sort Of

2008-01-04T13:21:00.002-05:00

Today has been deceptively quiet and serene again. I say “deceptively” because although it is indeed quiet and not filled with tense, hair pulling situations that make you want to reach for a bong and the yoga matt, it is also filled with disguised anguish in the form of my somewhat podgy boss (what did he eat over the holiday I wonder, a few sweet meats or his whole family?)

I got him a huge bottle of booze for Christmas because I thought it only polite and because if he, in return, got me zip, I could pour that bottle of booze over his fat head and set it on fire, providing entertainment and a long absence during which I could relax and ignore work completely. Naturally, he got me nothing and the booze is nowhere to be seen. Damn! So much for the plan.

You see the Guv’ner always has a plan. It might not be a smart plan or even a particularly well thought out one, but it’s a plan nonetheless. A planless Guv’ner is like a small, insignificant child tossed like seaweed upon a wild ocean during a typhoon, clinging to a raft made from like….palm tree fronds and the sinews of turtles. A scary and pathetic sight to behold.

Today my boss said, “Get the number for [new lady] from the directory.” Which I dutifully did.

“This isn’t right!” said boss, frowning like a diseased Teletubby. “[woman] has a different area code!”

“Well this is the number in the directory.” I told him. “That is the only number there is.”

“Well it’s wrong, you should make sure to give me the right number.” he said like I should automatically know when someone's number is wrong and sulked off to his office to stare at his feet. Because, you know I am responsible for the directory all by myself. For 9,000 people. NOT.

Later he came in and tossed some money on my desk. “Go buy tea for my guest.” he said and mumbled something about getting him a Coke.

“Diet?” I asked, because he always drinks Diet Coke or Pepsi. I wasn’t hinting that his gigantic bulbous belly region needed trimming or anything.

“Regular!” he snapped as if I’d asked if his mother fucked baboons. And actually, that would go a long way to explaining a lot…

Since then he’s been generally whiny and silly.

Last night he had a dinner with an ex-client that another of our Account Heads was involved in. At the last minute my boss decided to change the venue and go to the client instead of making them traipse into the city. He naturally didn’t bother telling the other Department Head who was attending, this vital information. I called her on the off chance, since little alarm bells were going off in my head and what do you know - it was complete news to her. If my boss had his way she’d still be in NYC sitting confused and abandoned at a little corner table of an expensive restaurant drinking Martinis, getting teary and drunk and waiting for people who would never come. Isn’t that sad?

Then I remembered she is my extremely annoying ex-boss and a total mega-bitch. This pleasing image of her all alone in a busy restaurant, tears dripping down on the gingham table setting, started to give me a warm, fuzzy feeling in the pit of my tummy and I had to slam my head off the desk as penance for preventing this awesome fantasy from ever coming true.

I blame this head cold. It’s slowing down my evil thinking.

Happy New Year?

2008-01-03T14:18:00.003-05:00

The past two weeks The Guv'ner has been partying hard overseas and cultivating a quite spectacular head cold. Despite this frivolity and mayhem, the thought did cross my mind a few times that I probably should think about checking my work email, in case all hell had broken loose in my absence. This is not entirely unheard of, you see.

So indeed I thought about it. Then I thought "Screw that!" and moved along.

Well come on, there’s no point in actually checking it because if all hell has unleashed a pestilence of nasty while I’ve been gallivanting in foreign climes, I really don’t want to spend the last week of my vacation worrying about it when I should be drinking interesting drinks filled with noxious substances and relaxing. See my logic?

“I’ll have a quick look after Christmas!” I told myself, figuring that at least I could spend Christmas happy, drunk and carefree.

After Christmas passed into the mysterious holiday in the UK known as “Boxing Day”, my cold was getting worse so I decided I was much too unfit to check my email. Silly virus. I was not, however, too unfit to drink cocktails, eat my bodyweight in salty nibbles and chocolate and play “Guitar Hero” with an 8 year old hyperactive boy-child. Still one has to choose their battles, no?

Finally, New Year’s Eve arrived and I thought, “I really should check my work email because I ought to know if the boss’s golf gear didn’t make it to Mexico as planned or if the Chinese office didn’t send that letter I am relying on to get a visa or the visa letter from Moscow didn’t arrive as promised.” But then I thought, “I really don’t want to know these things because what can I do about them anyway except worry?” and this logic allowed me to happily back away from the computer, middle fingers extended in triumphant defiance.

So this morning, as I unlocked my office door with some trepidation, expecting a barrage of angry emails, voice mails, tasks gone wrong and giant cock-ups, there was instead serene silence. My letter from China sat neatly in my email inbox. The letter from Russia arrived by UPS at 10 a.m. All my questions were answered. All three of my voice mails were from a mis-dialed fax machine. The boss’s trip had been postponed a month giving me a much more realistic time frame to work with. It was fabulous.

I was immediately suspicious. How can this be? This is my world. Smooth sailing is not the norm here.

There is definitely an apocalypse coming. Remember I told you so.

Last Day Blues

2007-12-18T10:56:00.002-05:00

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

2007-12-15T19:22:00.002-05:00

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

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.

2007-12-13T22:16:00.002-05:00

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

2007-12-12T13:55:00.002-05:00

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

2007-12-10T14:00:00.002-05:00

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...

2007-12-07T16:21:00.003-05:00

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)

2007-12-04T11:35:00.002-05:00

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)

2007-12-03T12:15:00.003-05:00

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

2007-11-29T12:45:00.002-05:00

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:

Who is clucking like a chicken?

Why?

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

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

2007-11-27T00:11:00.003-05:00

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

2007-11-19T11:13:00.002-05:00

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

2007-11-14T23:17:00.002-05:00

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...

2007-11-09T16:58:00.003-05:00

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

2007-10-31T22:47:00.003-04:00

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

2007-10-28T22:43:00.002-04:00

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?"

2007-10-25T15:26:00.001-04:00

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...

2007-10-25T11:46:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-24T14:30:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-23T14:40:00.003-04:00

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...

2007-10-18T21:20:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-18T19:49:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-16T13:21:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-07T22:54:00.003-04:00

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

2007-10-05T15:22:00.002-04:00

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

2007-09-26T15:53:00.002-04:00

*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

2007-09-17T20:30:00.002-04:00

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

2007-09-14T12:05:00.002-04:00

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

2007-09-11T14:42:00.004-04:00

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.

Where Bitter Begins

2007-09-06T15:40:00.002-04:00

If you wonder why the Guv'ner - in real life a fun-loving, silly sort - is a cynical, bitter shell of a human being in journal form, this earlier glimpse into my early job history should clue you in on what got the ball rolling. It basically comes down to this: People are asses, the Guv'ner is God.

After college and before my days wiping the asses of the rich and corporate, I did a stint working in a greetings card store. It wasn’t a planned vocation, it just sort of happened. I had just returned from traveling nomadically in Europe (20 countries in four months - 21 if you count the UK, which really, who does?) and needed to find a fast way to make the rent while looking for a “real” job.

Anyway, I was walking past the store in question and they had a badly spelled sign in the window that announced that they were seeking “candydates” for a store assistant. "Really?" I thought. "That sounds like a hellova good time since I like candy and I like dates and…"

Well anyway. I had rent to pay and no job so I went inside to inquire about application forms and such and they decided to go ahead and interview me on the spot as either they were “desperate” or I was just a fine specimen of humanity they couldn’t allow to slip through the net of top notch “candydates”.

Actually, it must have been desperation since there were no knees in my jeans and I hadn’t washed my hair in about a week although I was hosting a quite spectacular (for me) European tan. So my sun addled brain obviously got confused and I accepted this job paying 3.25 UK pounds an hour (bear in mind this was the mid-nineties, not the stone ages so even then this was slave labor). Even the kids in the Virgin store down the road made at least two pounds an hour more than me, I later learned.

I’m digressing…

So I got this job. At the greetings card store, working for a boss about four years younger than myself, although seriously, she might have looked twenty, but I will swear that goddamn woman was born forty-five years old and mean. She thought she was hot shit. She was married to some sucker who’d lost most of his faculties (clearly) and who was pussy whipped to such a miraculous degree that it was amazing he had the fortitude to leave the house unassisted. She talked about him all day long. Good and bad. I never met the guy but honestly, I plotted his demise the entire time she worked there.

We also had a district manager who was based 40 miles away and came to the store twice a week to check we’d restocked and had the latest deliveries and to chastise us for just about everything. Quite frankly, her main reason for gracing us with her evil presence was to criticize everything we did, anywhere, ever. She was little, blonde, mean, bitchy and would stab you in the back as soon as look at you. Probably literally too. I always hid the scissors just in case.

She baffled me totally because she was pure, unharnassed evil yet she had this live-in boyfriend who would come in to the store sometimes to see her and he was the polar opposite of her in every way. He was a huge, six feet two black guy, built like a brick shit house and the sweetest guy you will ever meet. What he saw in a tiny, frizzy blonde, dwarf witch totally escaped me. Later she let him impregnate her with Satan's spawn and then kicked him out.

The owner of the store and its four sister stores she “district managed”, was a sleazy, obnoxious, money-grabbing little prick who looked uncannily like a younger Tony Blair if Tony Blair bathed in canola oil, wore pistachio colored suits and talked out of his nose (as opposed to out of his ass). Every now and then he’d show up and complain loudly about everything in a pompous manner that just said to me, “Someone key the sides of my car immediately!”

After a few months, the annoying harpy and her pussy husband got pregnant and she quit. My fellow slave laborer and I debated opening all the tins of silly string in the store in celebration and decorating the place with all the candy colored rubber.

The downside to all this? They made me manager.

Most people with an ounce of sense would realize that making me manager would be an idea as stupendously moronic as having a cat baby-sit a school full of mice. The only thing I liked about the job was bullshitting with customers and playing pranks and making fun of management, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t want to be responsible for cashing up at the end of the night, working holidays, carrying large sums of money to the bank and working long hours and other annoying tasks for zero money or reward. I didn’t want to deal with Miss District Manager (‘Bitch-trick manager’ we called her) and Mr. Oilypants or the older lady who worked part time and had halitosis so bad it was like a garlic-eating dragon was breathing on you.

I ended up spending two years in that job (I call it my “lost period”) hating everyone and everything. I hated the whiny customers, I hated the senior management, I hated the photocopier that never worked, I hated the cards and the paper cuts they gave me, I hated the schmaltzy cards with their saccharine verse, I hated the goddamn, nasty pop tapes we had to play of session artists covering real artists songs, I hated the stupid card reps, I hated the counting and recounting of the money every night, I hated the fact our basement was part of a system of underground caves that the whole city was built on, that smelled as damp as a whore’s drawers and I hated that we kept all our stock down there, and that these caves, completely unknown to city inspectors, who frown quite heavily on such things, were full of giant, not-at-all-afraid rats.

Most of all I hated myself for putting up with it all.

Shortly after I left that job, filled with the joy of knowing I was never going back, I did find out that city inspectors are quite happy to act upon such information should that information happen to cross their paths.

So, really I did learn one valuable thing from that job. Revenge is indeed “sweet”.

How To Disappear Up Your Own Ass

2007-08-30T11:49:00.002-04:00

Another Cruella entry briefly. It's not a funny one but it gives you some perspective about the level of evil we are talking about.

On September 11, 2001 some serious crapola went down here in Manhattan. You might remember it? Big, tall towers, planes crashing, stuff asploding, people jumping?

That morning I was on the subway when it all started. I got to work just a few minutes after the first plane hit the WTC and a few minutes before the second. We (Cruella's four other assistants and myself) were all huddled round the TV in her office watching the news unfold, while Cruella herself, was still home in her luxury Park Avenue apartment uptown - she never graced us with her presence until at least 11 a.m.

Now a lot was going on. Chaos reigning. Everyone in the company was trying to reach family or friends who worked in the financial district and the WTC in particular. I was trying to reach The Boy who worked at the WTC site. No one was getting through to anyone. Our phones would work but we couldn't get a line to anywhere. Cell phones were down because just guess where the transmitters were? People were understandably a wee bit stressed.

In the midst of this chaos, Cruella calls, furious because she'd checked her voice mail and had three new messages and Cruella rule number one is: you never let the phone go to voice mail, it must be answered. This crime is akin to murdering your own mother after first sodomizing her with Erik Estrada.

One of the other assistants took her call (it figures that most of NYC can't get a line in or out yet the Devil manages to connect).

"Have you seen the news this morning?" this assistant asks Cruella. "Have you seen what's going on?"

"Oh that World Trade thing..." Cruella said dismissively, "Yes, I heard about that. But this phone business is not going to be tolerated. I have important clients that have to be attended to!"

We finally got rid of her and all sat down on her designer velvet sofa and watched the news come in about the plane hitting the Pentagon then the Pennsylvania plane. Most people had already left to try to get home. Cruella had called again around 10:30, right as the first tower at the Trade Center was falling.

"There's a man I need you to call..." Cruella says. "He's a jewelry designer. He has an ad in Cosmopolitan. He makes this sapphire ring in a platinum setting. I want one."

At this stage only three of us assistants are left, the others having gone to rescue their kids from daycare. One of the assistants has been IMing her friend who worked on one of the higher floors at the World Trade and the connection just went dead. We're all freaking the hell out. So, we're all a little speechless at her request.

Her personal assistant, who was still there with me and the other girl took the phone and said, "Look. Everyone has gone home. We are about to leave. There is no public transport. There are no cell phones working. All the bridges and tunnels are shut down. Everything below 14th Street is an emergency zone. The ARMY are in the street with guns. People are throwing themselves off a 110 story building rather than burn to death and you want us to buy you jewelry?"

There was that silence you get when everything stops at once.

"But...who will answer my phones?" Cruella whined, clearly unhappy.

"Voice mail." said her PA and hung up.

When work resumed the following Monday after a six day hiatus, Cruella was hyper and irritated because we were "out of the loop". One of my fellow assistants' best friend was a fire fighter who went in to the WTC and never came out. She was at work but understandably freaked. Cruella berated her all day about all the things she was messing up because her mind was elsewhere.

The part that really got me was all day long she had us write thank you notes to "important" clients who'd been calling her on her cell to make sure she was ok.

I guess they had no idea she was four miles away, uptown when this stuff happened and as soon as it got serious she got her family in her SUV and made her driver, who had to eventually find a way back to Brooklyn, take them to her Connecticut farmhouse. Of course she was fucking "ok". If that woman ever went below 42nd Street she'd die from the cooties.

This is who Cruella is. Completely free of reality or scruples of any sort.

A Cruella Fate

2007-08-29T15:19:00.003-04:00

Back in medieval times (well...2001), when I was working for Cruella de Ville, she received a summons for jury duty.

As expected, she took this about as well as a person who had been told their baby was sold to a Mexican drug cartel to pay for crack so obviously she tried her utmost to wriggle out of it. She had deferred over and over again and this was her final summons.

Being Cruella, however, she was under the impression that a different set of rules applied for beings of a “higher stature” such as herself, so she dutifully had our CFO and her personal butt-boy, The Cobra, call to try and convince them that really, Cruella was not at all necessary for any of their little trials as she was busy doing important things (like visiting a small Korean lady for a pedicure).

Naturally, the courts had heard it all before. In fact, if I was the person who worked for the jury selection department I would personally make it my life’s work to write a book about the most inventive excuses people give for excusing themselves from performing their civic duty. This court was having none of it. It was really sort of beautiful. You can pay thousands to a lady to carry a baby in her womb for you for nine months, you can buy shares in a private jet and spend summers on a yacht in the Mediterranean with a spoiled billionaire to sun your wrinkled old frame, but lady, when Uncle Sam wants YOU, no amount of cajoling or bullying will prevent you from hauling your spoiled carcass downtown, pronto.

This being Cruella, a woman physically incapable of doing anything for herself, she had to take The Cobra along with her for moral support, to explain the big words and to basically have someone to take the whole miserable ordeal out on. If it had been anyone else, I would have felt such overwhelming pity for the person's having to spend such long periods of time in close proximity to her that my heart would ache with the volume of it. However, since it was the Cobra I just prayed she was assigned to a case the approximate length of the OJ trial.

Anyway, a few days after the jury duty episode, Cruella had to go to the DMV to renew her driver’s license which had already expired. I wasn’t aware she even had a license as she has people drive her everywhere. The mere thought of her in control of a moving vehicle is only slightly less scary than the thought of a buzz-cutted Britney Spears, naked, swinging by her knees from a chandelier with a baby in one hand and an Uzi in the other. (on reflection, I realize this sounds like a plausible scene - set in slo-mo - in a Robert Rodriquez/Quentin Tarantino movie).

So, she did what she always does; she took The Cobra with her to the DMV then sat out in the car with her driver, while Cobra went in, stood in line for 20 minutes and finally is told that in the United States, people have to come and renew their license themselves. So Cobra tells the guy that his boss is “a very important person” and can’t possibly come in to a government facility where there are nasty germs, fluorescent lights and people of dubious national origins. The DMV guy, presumably of dubious national origin himself, completely unfazed, replied “I don’t care if she’s the Queen of England, if she wants a license, she better get her ass in here, now!”

So a glowering Cruella had to haul her stupid, pampered, fur-coat clad ego inside and do all the necessaries herself, including having a photo taken that made her look like someone was ramming a Swiffer up her back passage.

Isn’t that a beautiful story? I love it. In moments I’m feeling a little fragile emotionally, I imagine this scenario and immediately I’m full of the joys of life.

A Heart Warming Memory

2007-08-21T11:22:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, in your work life, all the frustrations and hair pulling become worthwhile and a little karma is dealt out.

A few years ago, my ex-boss, that whiny old assbandit, Mr. Panty-Waist, had been driving me steadily bonkers for about a month with some vague project we were supposed to present our client with. A very “important” project that was so important he never seemed to actually get anything done except procrastinating and complaining a lot about the project that we hadn’t even started, due to his inability to pull his finger out of his ass.

Naturally, this period of ridiculousness involved much foot tapping, muttering under my breath and going into the ladies’ room and shrieking with frustration when after one more day of procrastinating and whining and sulking, we’d be no further forward than the day before or the one before that.

Thursday arrived and Mr. Panty Waist told us he was going out to the Hamptons, where he kept a summer home, for a long weekend, to “think about things”. By “things” we were under no impression he meant “the project” since he couldn’t manage that in his office on a weekday, let alone on a beachfront with a highball glass in his hand and half naked 19 year old blondes running around playing volleyball. Actually, scratch that. Mr. PW is definitely asexual. Those blondes might as well be squirrels. Apparently his wife and kids weren’t going with him, he just needed some “private creative time”.

Frankly, we didn’t care if he went to the Moon so long as he was out of our hair.

We didn’t hear from him until the following Tuesday when he called to say he wouldn’t be coming into the office because he’d had "a little accident" and broken his leg.

We all made sympathetic noises, then had a party after he hung up. I believe cake was involved. And maybe a Panty Waist pinata.

We found out later that the reason for Mr. Panty Waist’s broken limb was that he had sipped one too many Scotch on the rocks and fallen into his pool. Which is funny enough in itself, if you know his mannerisms and great, big, clumsy body, but doubles in hilarity when you find out there was no water in the pool at the time. Hee!!!! How it is even possible to fall into an empty pool is beyond me but I didn’t care. It made my whole week.

This amused us even more than the time someone dredged up some old print ad from the seventies which showed an alarmingly hilarious photo of a grinning Mr. Panty Waist, boasting huge lapels you could house a small Hispanic nation on and sporting a startling, partial mullet, as a TV weatherman in North Carolina along with a caption about Mr. PW bringing sunshine and smiles to your morning. Clearly this TV station's marketing was top notch and they'd obviously downed a few vodkas before coming up with the type. The mere idea of that horse’s ass being on TV talking about sunshine and hurricanes was just unfathomable, yet strangely irresistible.

Anyway, he had to lie in that empty pool for about 2 hours until a neighbor found him and called for help. I wished I’d been the one to find him. I would have paced around the top of that pool very slowly, sipping one of his vintage cellar wines, looking down at him clutching his limb, asking things like, “Does it hurt? Do you want me to get help? If I get help can I have a raise? Where do you keep the top shelf tequila?”

Damn, my fantasies are always so much better than my reality.

People Are Also Stupid

2007-08-20T14:34:00.002-04:00

The Guv'ner is puzzled by a chain of emails between herself and a coworker, that took place today. It went a little like this:

From: The Guv'ner
To: Retard

Are you free on September 28th for meeting with blah-di-blah?

REPLY:

From: Retard
To: The Guv'ner

Sorry, no, I'm out Friday and all of next week!

From: The Guv'ner
To: Retard

Oh. Well I guess it's lucky we're talking about SEPTEMBER 28th then, huh!

From: Retard
To: The Guv'ner

No, sorry can't do it. As I said I'm out all of next week.

From: The Guv'ner
To: Retard

But...next week is only August. I'm talking about the end of September. It's five weeks away.

From: Retard
To: The Guv'ner

I won't be back in the office until September 3rd.

At this point I decided to just stab myself in the heart with my left-handed scissors.

People Are Strange

2007-08-16T14:19:00.003-04:00

Sometimes the smallest task can be a touch surreal. This morning I had to order a car service for four separate trips to and from the airport for my younger boss. Normally, the routine goes, you dial the number, some dullard who hates people, therefore is ripe for the customer service industry, drones, “*sigh* Hellothisiskeishahowcanihelpyew?” sounding like they would much rather push a fork through their eyeball than give a flying crap about helping your ass. Then when you suggest you might like to reserve more than one car they sigh even louder like, “You’ve got some freaking nerve asking me to do my job when I have my nails to polish!”

So imagine my surprise when this morning, instead of a member of the plankton family, I got an awesome, drawling, laid back, Jamaican chick named Tiffany, who not only was agreeable to my four car demand but was so laid back and pleasant about it, I thought she must be dangling a giant doobie from her lips as we spoke. You can take the girl out of Jamaica but you can never take the Jamaica out of the girl.

Truly, I want some of what she was having. Nothing was too much trouble. She sounded vaguely miffed I only wanted to spend twenty minutes on the phone with her when I could so easily have booked a year’s worth of cars and she wouldn’t have broken a sweat. I swear to God I am not embellishing this conversation. Much.

Me: Hi Tiffany, I’d actually like to make four reservations, if that’s ok.
Tiff: Why sure, Sugar. That is never a problem. That is why I am here! Who is the first one for?
Me: Well, they’re all going to be for [boss’s name]
Tiff: OK…I see his number comes up as [boss’s number] and his address is [boss’s address]. Will he be using that address and number?

*this in itself is impressive because normally I have to spell the guy's name fifteen times and they still get it hopelessly wrong

Me: Yes, he would indeed. That’s great you have that, it saves me so much time!
Tiff: Well I’m happy if you’re happy. That’s fantastic! That’s super.
Me: He needs to be picked up at five a.m. on the 27th.
Tiff: Five huh? That’s pretty early! That’s wonderful! I just love early mornings. It’s so peaceful. Mmmm hmmm. Beautiful!
Me: Not for me. I’m not a morning person. I’m a night owl.
Tiff: I love mornings. I’m up at five every day. It’s just fabulous! The start of a new day!
Me: Um…ok.
Tiff: Now, he’s going to the airport? That’s great.. You know, I love the airport...
Me: Yes, the airport, thanks.

We then went through the other three reservations in much the same manner, where Tiffany pronounced her love of everything from “complete addresses” to “fabulous customers”. Honestly, I really do want what she’s on.

I hung up slightly terrified that I might just have made contact with an actual alien.

And the thing is, none of what she said was said in an even remotely sarcastic or condescending way. She really just loved everything!

This has thrown my whole day off. My brain’s having trouble comprehending.

How Not To Start A Morning

2007-08-15T12:26:00.002-04:00

This morning I had to pick up a document from finance which included information I needed to amend, take the document to The Most Boring Woman Who Ever Lived so that she could, in turn, present it to her boss for signature.

Now even though TMBWWEL’s office is just at the opposite end of the corridor from my own, if the matter hadn’t been extremely time sensitive, I would have sent that sucker via inter office mail, rather than have to go into the monster’s lair in person.

As I’ve pointed out before, she’s not a mean lady, or even an unpleasant one in the true sense of the word, it’s just that she really is the most boring woman who ever lived. There is no human being who is still living, who is more boring. I challenge you to find anyone else with the personality of Ambien.

Firstly, she scrutinized the form I gave her and pointed out the following:

“Where [boss’s] name is printed, that’s a ten point font. We usually use a twelve point font. You see, ten point font is hard to read if your eyes aren’t great. Unless you use ten point Courier which is a larger font. However, most people don’t use Courier as it’s old fashioned. But this is Arial. Ten point Arial is a little narrow and therefore smaller to read. Twelve point Arial however….”

At this point I picked up one of those electronic pencil sharpeners with the weighted bottoms and I smashed her head in.

Anyway, to get her off the subject of fonts and their comparative sizes, I noticed she’d had a big, metallic bulletin board installed on the wall on the back of her usually, personality-less office. It was covered in photos. It was then it happened.

Not having ingested any caffeine yet, or indeed, woken up properly, I made a fatal mistake. An error of judgment, which, at any other time of day I would have been alert enough to prevent. I pointed at one of the pictures on the board – a man with a stupendous and quite alarming mustache that curled up at the ends (obviously a circus performer or child molester) – and I said, “Who is that guy?”

I might as well have said, “Hey, how about picking up that phone directory and reading it to me?”

I then was treated to a run down of EVERY. SINGLE. GODDAMN. PERSON. ON. THAT. BOARD. (the child molesting trapeze artist was her grandfather)

“This is my mom and me. That’s my mom and dad in 1945, I think they were at a party. This is my ex and I in Vegas. That was a fun trip. [aside: for YOU maybe, bub, but the guy must've been like 'kill me now'] This is my ex-husband’s nephew and his twins, they’re five. When they were born they had problems with blah de blah de blah…”

Twenty fucking minutes I endured this and at the end of the tour my brain was dead as Phil Rizzuto. Holy cow!

I wasn’t back in my seat five minutes when her name appeared on my caller ID. I made that noise Marge Simpson makes when Homer’s sold the baby to gypsies again.

“It’s ok!” she said cheerfully. “[Boss] didn’t even mention the ten point font!”

“No shit!” I didn’t say, wondering if I could lure her into the fire escape and push her down the steps. I mean accidents happen all the time on stairs, am I wrong? All the time...

When Violence is the Only Answer

2007-08-08T14:48:00.002-04:00

Our company owns a fleet of cars. Well - about four cars to be exact – maybe more of a “fleetito”. A mini fleet. Three of those cars are owned by one enormous ad team for their exclusive use and the fourth is generic, to be signed out by any employee who needs to use it for company business.

One of my teams use it a lot. We have a very big client out on Long Island so the car is useful and saves on things like car services that cost the same as a weekend in Cabo. All we have to do to reserve the car is call a guy down in the finance department who is in charge of such matters, pick up the keys and he logs it in a spreadsheet. You then go to the parking garage downstairs, which, given this is Manhattan, we pay as much to park the damn car per month as it costs for my entire rent and bills, and you drive the car away.

Or not as the case may be.

Today, one of my team needed the car to go to a client presentation. It was her first time using the car so she went down to the garage with the keys, checked in with the management down there and was told, “No you can not have the car. Not without a signed permission note from Lisa!”

“I need a signed permission slip from Lisa…” yelled Amy, my team member, into the phone, when she called me in a panic.

“Just who the fuck is Lisa?” I replied, bemused, “And how come we’ve never needed a permission slip the other 500 times we’ve used the car?”

“The guy won’t let me have it!” she yelled back frantically. “He says, no permission, no car.”

I put her on hold and called one of our heads of finance, Carlos, whose department deals with the use of the car.

“Who the fuck is Lisa?” he said, when I explained the situation. “You don’t need permission to take the car, just the fucking keys!”

Carlos swears a lot. It’s why we get along so well. “Tell her to tell them to give her the fucking car or have the fucker call me and I’ll fucking give them permission!” he snarled. I had the distinct feeling the permission Carlos would give might involve a baseball bat and a lot of anger.

I switched back to Amy and conveyed this delicate message. Some mumbling. Lots of arguing. “He still won’t let me have the car” she said feebly. “I’m already so late I’m going to be in real trouble. He still wants a note from Lisa.”

At this point my other line rings and I see Carlos' name on the caller ID. I put Amy on hold and pick up. “I found out who the fuck Lisa is!” he says. “She’s an admin on the other account! (the account who own the other three cars) She doesn’t have anything to do with our car so that fucker doesn’t need any fucking permission whatsofuckingever and certainly not from fucking Lisa.”

I tell Amy this and the douche still refuses to let her take the car. So I call this “Lisa” who is horrified and offers to go straight down there and beat someone’s ass. Or talk to them rationally, I don’t know which. I just know which I’d do.

Eventually, 45 minutes later, after a lot of cajoling and threats, Amy gets her car and Carlos is promising to go down there and “talk to people” probably in the same way the mob like to "talk" to people.

Me, I am ordering some popcorn, sitting back and watching the entertainment.

Do Not Feed The Admins

2007-08-07T15:54:00.003-04:00

If there’s one thing the Guv’ner hates about a work day (actually there are many, but let’s focus here), it’s when the cafeteria promises one sort of nourishment for lunch and when you go to collect, provides something entirely different.

Like, for example, you’ve had a hard morning, typing, running around, calculating things (like best murder instrument in your desk drawer) and sticking push pins in a voodoo doll of an ex boss you still want dead, you want some comfort food. You know, some sustenance with a calorific value that would make Jenny Craig faint. So when your new spanky phone leaves you a computer generated voice mail with today’s cafeteria specials (this phone should be on the Enterprise, who else has a phone that tells them menu specials and emails them voice messages, huh!) and boasts “Macaroni Cheese” as the special main meal of the day, causing one to bounce up and down with cheerful anticipation, and drool on one’s clean shirt, it is not acceptable to provide this poor, hard-working individual with a green bean casserole instead. People in less civilized nations (like England) have been hung, drawn and quartered for less.

This switch does not make for a happy Guv’ner who had an egg salad sandwich with a dressing of spite just to make a protest.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, when has anything ever made for a happy Guv’ner? Well there was that one time at my last job where the mailroom guys arranged for a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge of the executive kitchen to be uh…how can I put it…enhanced with a much more alcoholically potent substance, providing many happy menial employees, one step closer to telling their boss where they could put their “monthly report”. Good times.

Guv'ner Phone Home

2007-08-06T11:36:00.002-04:00

I had Friday off work due to our stellar Summer Friday program where we each get six Fridays during June, July and August off work, paid. Like extra vacation. Six extra long weekends. As you can imagine, the Guv'ner is very agreeable to such policies and equally enthusiastic about the week between Christmas and New Year where we also close down and it doesn't count as vacation time. I prefer to call these days off "Necessary Homicide Prevention Days" because it does somewhat allow me time to pop Xanax like candy in order to sleep for twelve hour periods at a time and in between fill my veins with Captain Morgan's Spiced rum and cheese (not at the same time, although really it depends on the amount of rum we're talking about here).

Today I arrived in my office to find that things were not as I left them on Thursday, despite the fact my office is kept locked. Hmmm. The reason I knew this? Well stuff had moved around my desk as though some invisible force were trying to find something. Then I turned around to dump my bag and I saw it. The. New. Phone.

Now you may be thinking, "Geez Guv, so effing what, it's a phone!" but you see, you clearly don't understand. My previous phone had the numbers etched in stone. It had a horn that you held up to your ear while you yelled and a lever you had to crank to get an operator who sounds like one of those ladies from a Pathé News reel. Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad but let's just say it probably was really, really cool in 1976. When you picked up the receiver, instead of a dial tone you got 1970s' "Starsky & Hutch" theme-type, funky porn music. Bow chica bow bow.

The new phone though. It made me recoil in horror, my back against the wall, while I watched it cautiously in case it decided to evaporate me or give me orders. There are buttons and options up the wazoo. I'm still pretty sure there's an option for making coffee on there someplace... It's on a stand which makes it stand upright and it has a glowing, full color, TV-like screen display that can tell you exactly who is calling, their number and probably even what color underpants they're wearing, what they plan on ordering for lunch and maybe those dirty, nasty thoughts they're having about that new girl in planning. It also tracks calls rather blatantly, so no more calling "Boys Butts R Us" or 1-800-GUN-PLEASE during my lunch hour anymore. Shame.

Naturally, I have as much idea how to use this beast as I do the cockpit of an airplane so today should be interesting.

It sure looks purty though.

Topical and Tropical

2007-08-02T14:37:00.002-04:00

When it’s hectic and there’s paper strewn everywhere; when you can’t see my desk for pens and calculators and magazines and finance reports; when there are three half empty Diet Pepsi bottles littering my desktop and the occasional Kit Kat wrapper; when there are twelve things that need to be done now and all have priority... At moments like these I like to look at the wall by my monitor which is completely covered with a poster of a perfect blue tropical ocean beach with palm trees and I like to think that if I focus really hard, I can pretend that I’m there, on that beach, hearing the waves lap against the white sand and the palm fronds swooshing slightly in the breeze to the faraway lilt of steel drum melodies and the pleasing, wafting aroma of Malibu and pineapple...

And then the sound of frantic gurgling (because in this daydream I am also drowning my boss in the tide while screaming, “What do you mean can I stay late to prepare some binders for an early morning meeting, you sniveling shitmeister????”)

Every day I feel a little more of my sanity slipping away. Possibly to that beach. Possibly to eek out a 2 liter bottle of tequila to hide under my desk. Possibly to the nearest gun store to buy an AK47. It’s hard to tell.

All I know is my mood today is as fragile as a Minnesota bridge in rush hour.

And every bit as dangerous.

The Case Against Machines

2007-07-31T12:21:00.003-04:00

Remember that scene in “Office Space” where the three geeks steal the fax machine (printer?) and smash it to smithereens with a baseball bat, in the middle of a field? That’s like every day in my office. My fantasies consist of moments where I lasso the photocopier on our floor, forklift it to the nearest window and launch it eleven floors down to the street with a primal scream. Of course there are obvious reasons why I’d never actually do this…I mean come on people, I am human. I mean, how am I ever going to get a forklift in the elevator?

I’m not overly concerned with any passers by down below or anything, I think worse things fall on them in NYC every day and since there are approximately seven billion ways to die in New York City at any given moment, Xerox machines falling from the sky are just one of many unforeseen circumstances we put up with every day. If that were to happen, tourists would shriek and cover their horrified faces in terror at the vision of a giant, mangled copier with limbs splaying out from underneath, whereas New Yorkers would be like, “Can you please f*cking move, you’re getting your blood all over my shoe, asshole!”

Calm down, I’m kidding. New Yorkers would never say “please”.

Today one of my coworkers – one of the ones I like, fortunately, was photocopying a stack of materials, which, if placed out on the Avenue, one on top of the other, would rival the height of the building itself. This was practically a seamless job as far as our evil Copier from Hades is concerned. Or it just likes my lovely coworker so much better than I. I guess she doesn’t kick it and say, “You like that don’t you, you little whore!” like I do.

When she’d done and I was trying to copy my one measly expense report, the machine chewed it up and spat it out. Well half of it anyway. The other half was still wedged somewhere in its innards and well…following those little diagrams inside the door that tell you how to clear a jam? They’re worse than Ikea instructions. Trillions of green knobs and pulleys and stuff you yank out and things you press and little, hot, scaldy things you burn your digits on every time because there’s a law that says in order to have a paper jam inside the machine, rather than on the peripherals, the jammed paper must be next to a metal bar the exact temperature of an erupting volcano and since the copier doesn’t generally come with asbestos gloves you just have to agree to give up the skin on your hand.

It tells me the most useless crap too (a bit like this blog entry). It boasts “tray 1 is low on paper” even though I’m using tray 4 and could not give a shit about tray 1’s deficiencies. Shut up copier. Once you can make me an omelet and a margarita then you might be relevant.

Opening the Old Oak Door To the Guv'ner's Brain Basement

2007-07-29T00:02:00.002-04:00

The truly awesome Miss Katrocket Radio gave me this meme type of thingy to answer so I thought I'd deviate from the office for a moment to enlighten you on the Guv'ner's fascinating persona. I'm cross posting this to my Live Journal too because I'm a whore.

The rules: and here's the guidelines to include in your post:

If you care to participate, leave me a comment saying "Interview me." I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

The five:

1. You are given the opportunity to earn five million dollars for one year of work. The catch? You have to be a tour guide for the Precious Moments Museum, and you have to be NICE and say NICE and POSITIVE things about Precious Moments for that entire year. You may not utter a single negative thing (or write, record, blog anything negative), both on the job and after hours. Do you take the job or forfeit? Why or why not?

Well naturally only an imbecile of great standing would turn that job down. The key here is the five million bucks ensuring I never had to work for degenerate fucksticks ever again and quite frankly I'd stick my granny with a branding iron and sell her to an Arab for five million bucks. (It's ok, she'd be fine, she's not Jewish or anything.) However, given the job itself I would have a set of tactical plans in place because obviously the urge to lapse from the agreement would be intense. Plus I would have one of those insulin pens handy that people with The Diabeetus use when their blood sugar gets too high. I would have my friend C., who is an electronics genius, wire me up with a contraption that zapped me every time a swear word so much as formed in my brain or if it detected an oncoming bout of sarcasm. Secondly, I'd wire my jaws shut and not talk at all if things got really dire. I'd record a nice little ditty about the museum on tape, beforehand and hand it out to visitors so I didn't have to say a word. Thirdly, I would go home from work every night, in some sort of frightening zombie trance (as you'd imagine) and I'd drink Cuba Libres until I thought I was Dean Martin. Fourthly, I'd call in sick a lot. Fifthly (fifthly is a word?), at the end of my term I would unleash a sea of profanity so intense, entire continents would shake like Michael J. Fox at a Parkinson's convention. Then I might go pipebomb the museum. You know, after they paid me.

2. Your ‘24’ moment has arrived: There’s a bomb somewhere in your home that cannot be found or dismantled, and you have five minutes to pack up and leave before it explodes. What goes and what stays?

Hmmm...Well. My cats go that goes without saying. People are generally enormous shits but animals are good spirits, loyal and kind - even ones that routinely wake you up at 3am every night to feed them "breakfast" or else they trash the living room. Then I'm thinking my passport might be a decent idea and my green card because that fucker was harder to get than it is to persuade Jessica Simpson to grasp the basic concept of tuna. I would then immediately throw my Dalek cookie jar out on the fire escape ready for the escape (who wouldn't save the Dalek cookie jar, duh!?) and my photo albums. And that big bar of Cadbury's I have in the fridge. Let's get our priorities right immediately. Probably my iPod and laptop would come too, I mean all my friends live on my laptop after all. Oh yeah, then I might take my lovely boy El Codo. Depends on the mood I was in. I'm kidding, El C. I'd also escape butt naked therefore the thing I'd leave behind is my dignity. And my pants.

3. What’s your favourite scripture? Hahahahahahaha I’m totally kidding.

Thank the Lord. That gave me hives.

3. (for real this time) If your life is ever made into a made-for-TV movie, who would play you?

If my life was ever made into a made-for-TV movie I'd be played by Bruce Willis. Sure he's a ton older than me and there's that business of him having a penis (I guess, I haven't looked) and no hair, but he would kick ass and might manage to make my life exciting, adding a few explosions here, a few terrorists there. Although he mightn't be all that convincing in a dress and I'm not sure I'd like to find out. Hahaha, that suggested I ever wear a dress. Ha ha ha.

4. What has given you the most pleasure in this past year (July 2006-July 2007)?

In all honesty, this past year has sucked donkey balls. It's been a never ending stream of poverty, frustration and I've had a friend die. Positives? A wealth of Irn Bru, a nice little sunny vacation at The Evil Queen's house in Florida, the discovery of "On the Border" margarita mix and hanging out in "Vegas" with my Live Journal buddy Tony Spunk. And maybe that time some hobo pinched my ass on the train (I appreciated the attention).

5. You often write about your horrific work experiences a world of corporate incompetence – as a kid, what was your idea of a dream job?

When I was really little, I wanted to be a sky muffin. I mean an air hostess. Stewardess. Flight attendant??? WTF do they call themselves? Anyway. One of those. You see, I loved planes, everything about them, their huge size, their majesty, the roar the engines made, the fact they were going to exotic places...like Luton. And Detroit. I used to spend days at the airport with my dad watching planes take off and land. I guess he liked planes too. Either that or he had a thing for airports, I don't know. So yeah. Then I got over the sky muffin phase and decided, why not start at the top so I wanted to be a pilot. This was going well until I realized that a) I sucked at most things mathematical. b) I sucked at science and c) I hate flying and need to be sedated before stepping onto a plane. Apparently airlines don't like their pilots tranquilized. Well unless you want to work for Aeroflot. After that I think I just wanted to be a rock star and a writer. I still kind of have the aspiration for the latter. The former is a matter for me and the bedroom mirror only.

I Like A Challenge

2007-07-26T13:09:00.003-04:00

We “assistants” just adore having to do things at the last possible minute. It’s a sickness of ours. We thrive on it. Really. So what if you’ve known about that Defcon Red important creative presentation to the CEO and his team at the client for about ten weeks, the presentation is this afternoon so this morning we will do about three weeks necessary prep. in about two hours.

No, honestly, don’t apologize, there’s nothing we enjoy more than giving up our morning coffee, our entire lunch hour and what remains of our sanity so that you can have 50 color, bound copies of this 300 slide presentation that you need by 2 p.m. and that you’ve known about for all these weeks. Oh what’s that? You haven’t quite finished the presentation yet, you’re still making edits? No sweat. You’ll be done by around noon you say? Well that’s great, thank you so much. That gives me a whole hour to provide those 50 bound copies of 300 pages. Of course I can have it done. It’s not like there are 3,000 people in our company and anyone else is using the two color copiers we have on the premises.

Is there anything else I can do? Oh, there is? What a pleasant surprise! Can I make 20 CDs of the presentation as well? And you need them in a half hour? No problem at all. While I’m juggling the 50 copies of this novel I’m about to bind I’ll just use my special octopus extension arm to throw in a few CDs to burn. You know, I still have my feet free, do you need anything else?

Oh you need a car service to take you to the client? Of course I can do that. I can do that in my sleep, if need be. It has to be here in ten minutes? Lucky I am well rehearsed in pulling sedans out of my ass. Will that be all?

Do I Look Like a People Person?

2007-07-23T16:49:00.002-04:00

While I’m in the midst of a whole plethora of posts about travel and travel cock-ups, I should point out a little something that happened this very day, in the midst of a busy work schedule that made me contemplate just super-gluing the phone receiver to my ear to save time.

There’s this crazy little chick who, while not part of one of my client teams, does work with this team on various projects, albeit in a different capacity. This little chick occasionally pops up to visit our neck of the woods to meet with our team, full of perky, loud opinions and a deafening chatter that sounds sort of like a million birds on amphetamines, magnified through a guitar pedal.

Today this same little chick calls me, on her cell phone, from San Diego, where she is on client business. The fact is, I have spoken to her maybe once ever, so why she is calling me is a mystery. Although, apparently it’s not going to be a mystery for long.

It seems that this Crazy Little Chick was about as confused as Anne Heche at a sexuality conference, because when she called she said, “I’m in San Diego airport but I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know where the meeting is!”

Hmmm. Now it’s possible I’m being unfairly presumptuous here Little Chick, but, when partaking on a business trip, be it close to home or 3,000 miles away, one would assume that maybe taking vital information with you like, for example, where you are going once leaving the airport, might be a pretty useful idea.

As it happened I didn’t have that information either, since none of my team are involved in said trip. She was a touch annoyed at this, which bothered me about oh…not at all. She was going to go make some calls to get the information elsewhere.

Fast forward ten minutes. Phone rings and I see her cell number on my caller ID. I pick up with my utmost, polished professional corporate greeting of, “Yeeeeeeeesssssssssssss?”

“I got to the hotel!” Little Chick says, sounding a touch frantic. “But they won’t let me go to my room.”

“Are you wearing a jacket strapped with explosives?” I didn’t ask, although I wanted to.

“My reservation is there.” she said. “But apparently I need to pay for it in advance, with a credit card.”

“Yeeeeeessssssssss…” I said again, not quite sure what her point was. “They generally insist that you to pay for your stay.”

“And…I don’t have a credit card!” she said. “So they won’t let me in.”

“You don’t have a credit card.” I said flatly. “You don’t have a single credit card?”

“Well yes, I have a credit card.” She said, “But it’s in NY. I didn’t bring it with me. I didn’t think I’d need it.”

Who the hell travels anywhere without taking a credit card and stays in hotels without a means to pay for them? I mean we can book the rooms but someone still has to pay for the damn thing. Tinkerbell doesn't just fly in on the breeze and sprinkle her magic invisibility sparkles on the bill.

“Maybe you could do some sexual favors for the Concierge?” I also didn't suggest although again, I wanted to.

Little Chick wants to know if my boss will let her use his credit card, however, he is not only currently in another state but hello… the card is with him. Unless you have one of those little devices that Captain Kirk used to beam stuff all over the place, I fail to see how this plan could ever succeed.

“What you need…” I started to explain helpfully, “Is an ATM. Because all hotels take cash.”

She liked that suggestion even less than she liked anything else I’d said all day.

“But, I don’t have much in my account.” She said. “I can’t afford to pay for a $200 room in cash.”

“Hence why one requires a credit card!” I said. “Seeing any light bulbs go on yet?”

OK I didn’t say that. But you know I was thinking it.

The whole time this was going on I was thinking, “Why the hell is she calling me? She doesn’t even know me. I don’t work for or with her. She has a fucking assistant she can talk to!”

Finally, another company member attending the same conference paid for her room on his credit card. Meanwhile, I spent an hour of my life I’m never getting back, running around trying to figure out her problems. Joy.