Don't Stare & Mind Your Own Beeswax

i am not really sure what's wrong with people. i don't. for example, no matter where we go, people seem to stare. now lest you think we're a couple of supermodels, you would be dead wrong. adorable hubby is tall and looks like a football player. me, i'm short and well, overweight. so we're not good looking or stunning or really that interesting looking in my opinion.

nor are we sporting tails or horns or anything like that. but people stare. it's weird. maybe because i have a loud voice and it tends to carry. not sure. anyway, we go to dinner at bravo!, after seeing brokeback mountain (yay, we liked it a lot--ang lee really knows how to make an excellent, quiet movie, and we can almost forgive him for the psychobabble that was the hulk). and we're just sitting in the lobby and this cheap looking white trash whore, wearing a super short skirt, who looked maybe 20 and was with a guy that looked like was 50, were attached at the hip, with her arms circling his neck. you could not have gotten a piece of plastic wrap between the two, trust me.

and she's staring and staring and staring like i'm going to steal her old man, and i do mean old man. and i want to say, "listen sweetie, my hubby is like a million times more adorable than than that geezer you're draped on." so, we get seated and unfortunately, white trash whore and geezer ebenezer are seated at a table that is like right on the other side of this short wall/divider thing, so they can clearly hear our conversation, see our table, etc.

so, we're with our dear friends, d & j (delightful people), having this nice dinner and white trash whore keeps turning around and looking at us. now, i admit, i'm outspoken, to the point of being rude some times, but you know, the people who stop the minute they walk into a store or leave their fuckin' grocery cart in the middle of the aisle, need to be told, "hey, don't mind the rest of us. just stand there. just leave your cart wherever you feel like."

i have to say this, i lost it. i actually pointed at the white trash whore with my fork no less and said loudly, "stop staring at us and turn around." i can't remember the last time i actually did something like that, but i'm known for speaking my mind (surprise!) and confronting people that act hideously in public, like white trash whore.

so, if you're out and see me, don't stare and mind your fucking beeswax.

Why I Like The Restroom At Work

okay, i know i write quite a bit about the bathroom at work. here's why. it's usually ten degrees cooler than my cube, which is always a balmy 90 degrees, and the only place to offer any kind of privacy, especially when i'm in there by myself, which does happen. oh, there's a supply closet i have access to, which i am considering using to take a nap one of these days if i ever get up the nerve. ever see the seinfeld episode where george has jerry's contractor build an entire area under his desk, just so he can nap? yup, i am george constanza in that regard. what i wouldn't give to find a private place at work to nap.

here's the problem with work. there are no private places, especially if you work in a cube, and a tiny cube at that, surrounded by other cubes, and a network printer on the other side of your cube, where people regularly pick up their print-outs.

so, the bathroom is literally a haven for me at times. what's nice is when i can just sit in the stall and space off. have you ever been so deep in a daydream or thought that you literally snap yourself back to reality? yay, i've been doing quite a bit of that lately. guess i'm spacey, but it's amazing how you can lose yourself and lose track of time.

anyway, now you know why i'm so fond of the bathroom at work. and as g.i. joe says, "knowing is half the battle." man, i miss that show!

Another Tale of the PB

in another example of why the pb is the pb, see if you can make sense of her, well, insaneness. so, our city gets hit with a foot of snow, no joke. now, let me be the first to say that i have never, ever skipped work and stayed home due to inclement weather. like three years ago there was this horrific ice storm that immobilized the entire metro area. we were without power for like four days and the temperatures hovered around zero. to say it sucked was like saying the pope is catholic. seriously. and i showed up to work on time every day.

okay, so me and the ch decide that for once we are staying home, which was awesome. have always wanted to enjoy a snow day and yay, it was so nice. we slept most of the morning, watched tv, and i think i even took a nap.

well, here's the weird part. so when i got up that morning to call in and check my email, i read a message from one of our general managers that needed some marketing collateral. it was fortunate that i brought home my work laptop as i was able to send him some pdfs of printed material. and he emailed back what he wanted, which was like 18 copies of two brochures.

so, the pb emails that she is going into the office, once she digs her car out. and i explain that i will not be going in and essentially she can ship the materials to the gm, once she gets in. and then i go back to sleep. well, i wake up around 11:30 a.m. and check my email and there's like three messages from the pb saying that i need to take care of having the materials shipped to the gm. hello? i'm at home beeyoch!

so, i call the admin that handles that kind of thing and get her voicemail saying that she will be in after 1:00 p.m., so i leave her a message. and then i call our admin and ask her to follow up and ensure the packet gets mailed out. which it does.

and i email the gm and the pb and confirm that everything was taken care of. which should have been the end of it. but no, like an idiot, the next day, i hear the pb in our area, cuz you can't miss her booming voice. and so i practically have to lasso her to speak with her, as she always acts like she can't get away from me fast enough, and yes i wear deodrant and no i do not stink.

so, i say something like, "hey, i thought you would not mind shipping out the marketing material, and i am sorry for any confusion yesterday." and then the pb, who truly earns her nickname, practically chews my head off with this nasty retort, "well, it shouldn't have taken so much email communication." and i was like, "well, i thought if you were coming in, you could ship the materials." and she's like, "well, there was a chance i would not have made it in, so you should have followed through." which is true, but still, did she have to be such a beeyoch about the whole thing? i mean, she acted like i ran over one of her dogs or something. what a freak.

making matters worse, i try once more to clear the air. first, i stop by her cube after a meeting and i'm about to talk to her and the phone rings. she picks it up, turns to me, and says, "i'll call you." now, i know that psycho and she's not gonna call. so about an hour later, i traipse back down to her area. what is she doing? reading a book on posting to the internet as she maintains her business line site on our intranet. big whoop.

the minute she sees me, she gets up like she wants to run out of her cube. and no, i am not exaggerating. seriously. so she stands up and i say something like, "hey, i just wanted to clear the air. you're right that i should have ensure that the materials were going to be shipped, whether you would have been in the office or not. so i just want to apologize." and get this, she still looks at me like i'm satan.

which may make my new year's resolution of apologizing less a lot easier to keep.

Crack Whore Shoes

so, there's this one gal on our floor and she's from a foreign country, i'm guessing india or pakistan. just a guess. so, one day i'm in the restroom and she's in there and turns to me and says, "what do you think of my shoes?" now, seriously, i would not have been caught dead in those crack whore pieces of shit. they were open-toed platform sandals with that creepy corkwood material that i hate.

so, i say, "um, they are nice." total lie as usual, but you can't really say something like, "well, i saw the prostitutes wearing those last week, so you're good." she kept asking me as she said she was getting weird looks all day. duh!

here's the kicker. the other day i head to the restroom and she nearly runs me over. naturally, she looks at me like it was my fault. so i get past and go into the bathroom only to be assaulted by the most horrific odor. it was so bad i had to go to a different restroom on another floor. yup, it was that stinky.

moral of the story: she who wears crack whore shoes can literally and figuratively stink up a room.

What's Weird About Work

let's face it - work really isn't that hard. it's not like brain surgery, at least for me. based on other blogs i've read, i know better than to say where i work and what i do, so what i will say is that i juggle a lot of plates, i coordinate projects, and some times it seems like i am a delivery person, gopher, copy queen (rare, but it happens), and all-around peon. if it sounds like i'm complaining and don't like my job, you would be wrong. after being out-of-work (another time, another story, trust me) for eight months, working where i do, some days, is pretty awesome.

now, let's get to why work is weird. work is weird because of the people. people, i'm not telling you anything new or don't already know. work is also hard because of the people. as the cute hubby (ch) tells me, "work, like traffic, would be okay if it weren't for the people." so true, so true.

anyway, here's who i work with, in no particular order:

super smart daily supervisor (ssds)
super smart coworker/mentor/coach (sscmc)
smart, crabby coworker (oscar the grouch)
smart, ditzy coworker from foreign country that i usually can't understand to save my life (sdc)
gorgeous, driven coworker (gdc)
nice, but karmically challenge coworker (nkcc)
official supervisor i never see (osins)

then, there's the pb--the psychobitch
now, let me just say this, i hate the pb. i hate her with a passion that you cannot imagine. which is kinda sad, because when i started my job a year ago, about this time, she trained me. and i confided in her, and considered her a trusted colleague.

here's where things went wonky. i cover about four to six product lines, whereas she was assigned to just one. the powers-that-be decided that i needed help as my workload was spiraling, seriously, out of control, so they assigned the pb to share my workload. which means the pb is taking up the resources that i use, like for formatting and graphic design, printing, etc.

and ever since she started working on what i consider to be my projects, let me tell you people, she's been a total freak. and i don't say that lightly or by the reason that i tend to be territorial. i say it from the perspective like the following example:

here's me and a project manager walking toward the bank of elevators. pb is also walking toward the elevators and sees us. she pushes the down button, turns to see me again, and walks off, presumbably to walk down the stairs versus taking the elevator with us. now, tell me, if that isn't freaky, what is?

here's another weird story about pb. it's the day before christmas eve eve (so, it's last thursday, mmkay) and she is off that next day, friday. i know this, people, because in our weekly staff meeting, we all have to go around and discuss our schedules. so i go over to our printer to get a project finished and out the door, via fedex that night. now, most normal people, when they are done with work, they go home. not the pb. no, she is hanging out with the folks that work at our printer's office, which is located right behind our building. now, tell me, if you got off of work, would you go and hang out with your like five dogs, or would you go hang out with people that work at the printers? what a freak-o.

this week, the pb is off, thank god, because when she is at the office, she comes up to our floor and sucks up to everyone in my group, including both oscar and the sscmc. and when i say suck up, she's practically got her head up their ass. oscar, your typically man, loves it. it's tough to take, especially since the pb is extremely loud. i mean, you could hear her even with headphones and the music turned up on the highest level. yup, the pb is that loud. and very annoying. like i said, i hate her.

anyway, today i finished writing a story about the pb and i gotta tell you, it was hilarious. if i can figure out how to attach the file, i'll do that tomorrow. if not, i'll copy it into the blog for your reading pleasure. until then, the ah and i are going to play, "the nightmare before christmas: oogie's revenge." yes, it rocks!

Meet The Cast

so if you are actually reading this, allow me to introduce myself . . . sort of. due to working at a global company, can't really divulge too much. thought it would be best to introduce just a few people my little universe, so here goes:

Cute Hubby = CH
Creepy Parents = CP
Annoying Sister = AS
Secretive Brother = SB

we have two adorable female cats that are sisters--we'll just refer to them as AC1 and AC2. We have various friends that we hang with, and you'll get to know them based on our ever-so-exciting life.

much more interesting are some of the weird people i work with, so most of this blog, other than detailing our daily grind, will include what i consider to be my work observations, interactions, and overall analysis of life in corporate america.

Greetings & Salutations

so even though it's not yet 2006, my new year's resolution is to update this blog as often as possible. the funny thing is, i must write a hundred entries in my head every day, usually while i'm at work, and more notably in the bathroom. which brings me to an interesting point. some of the noises i hear are not what you would expect, and i am not talking about the icky gaseous noises you're thinking of.

i kid you not, there are times where i have heard a noise that sounds like the alarm or claxon from the original "battlestar galatica" series, where they show the cylons on the little cart, and there is a red light flashing. yay, i swear there have been times where i've heard something similar. then, there's the phantom jewelry bangle noise. it sounds like some lady is just outside the bathroom with jingly-jangly bracelets. i refer to it as the "moaning myrtle" sound effect, for those HP fans.

of course, i would be remiss if i didn't mention the noise that sounded like major construction was going on the floor below - think of one of those drills that bores into the earth. if all this sounds weird, especially for your average, stuffy corporate america bathroom, you're right.