DO IT TREE!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

the art of office: gotta get the papers, get the papers

A semi-regular feature in which I detail all the tactics one should carry in their office arsenal or the behaviors one must always avoid when working in an tightly-bunched cubicled community.

Let me start with the basics. The most egregious breach of office survival is the printing of personal materials. Don't get me wrong; I do it all the time. Often one is FORCED to print personal materials (hello home buying!). That is fine; the devil is in the retrieval.

Personal printed materials must be retrieved posthaste. Ideally, do a spot check of the printer to make sure no one is already waiting for a print job. Because if they are, they will most assuredly pick-up your "Guide to Identifying Pussy Skin Lesions" before you're able to retrieve it.

Printing 20 "sour milk" recipes from cooks.com, while embarrassing (and frighteningly thorough) probably won't jeopardize your job. Worst case is your boss asking why you don't abide your milk's expiration date. However, printing a list of the "100 Most Frequently Asked Java Interview Questions" (sandwiched between printed emails to your person) might get your superiors to asking some questions. Even if it wasn't you, who wants the boss snooping through internet usage logs? Furthermore, who prints emails? Are you going to file them using pneumatic tubes to your home office to which you travel via quadricycle? Will you then make copies on your ditto machine? Silly.

The last contingency to plan for is the dreaded "Warming Up"printer message. Excitedly did you print you Beanie Baby collection spreadsheet (complete with pictures - so you used the color ink jet, of course), fast did you run back to the printer to retrieve it. But, alas, the printer wasn't ready to create the documentation of your small bundles of joy. F*$k! Here comes your boss! Back to retrieve a printout of his own. What to do? Box out. Stay between him and the tray. Use your ass!!! But he's curious as to why his job isn't printing. Now he's right next to you, about to snag your sheets. "Oh here comes something" . . . whirrrrrr . . . you only have one option -- punch him in the face. Maybe you have a twitch?

Follow all these steps and you're sure to safely retrieve your Herself the Elf Appreciation Club membership form while your co-workers are none the wiser.

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Thursday, August 21, 2008

faith in humanity restored (minus $120)

So, Friday night I went to happy hour and the Indians game. I was a little drunk, but not too bad. I was having a good time; the Indians won. We were headed out of the stadium and just was we went past the gates, I realized something. I can't feel my wallet. Ok - it's not like your wallet taps you on the shoulder ever few minutes, but you usually have a vague sense of its presence on your person. But I thought of it and, yah, no tapping on my shoulder . . . no wallet. Extra super.

theMonica, Alan and I searched our seats in vain. It was gone. I spent the rest of the night being being incredibly pissed off (for serious - who loses their wallet?) and temporarily neutering my financial life. I mostly blamed myself, but there was a small element of "What is this world coming to where you can't leave your wallet out amongst 30,000 people and expect to get it back?" And hadn't I read a study that said that the vast majority of the wallets they purposefully lost were returned unmolested?

theMonica called the Indians on Saturday and they said they didn't have it. Oh well. By that point, all I really needed was a new license.

Fast forward to Monday (yah, this is taking forever for me to tell with like zero payoff). I have a voicemail . . . from the Indians . . . they have my wallet. The message was from Saturday. Apparently, all the Indians people don't talk to each other or the people answering the phones couldn't care less about my wallet. This was disappointing. What was heartening? Not that they had my wallet, no, whatever. What was really cool was that someone actually used my business card to contact me! Yah, they found my office number on my business card. That was totally cool. And the first time a business card of mine was used for its intended purpose.

I went and got my wallet from the executive offices and found all of my now-canceled cards present. In fact, everything was there, except for my cash. My theory is that one of the stadium cleaning crew (i.e. temp agency, i.e. hired on a nightly basis, i.e. hoboes) found the wallet, took the money and returned it. I would say "fair enough," but really, after you take the money and leave the cards, there's not much worth salvaging.

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

it's fundamental

Some politician or a representative of some politician (maybe Barack - can't remember) said something like this:

"Race is one of the greatest dividers in our country as is gender."

Gender is a better divider because it makes about half and that's usually pretty easy to keep track off. The greatest divider would have to be infinity Infinity is a lot of parts to divide something into. Conversely, 0 is our least greatest divider because that shit's illegal.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Spanish National Basketball team threatens to "go pee-pee" in world's Coke.

bball_ad

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Friday, August 08, 2008

In society's continual assault against my person news . . .

In noggin news, I took a soccer ball off of my beautiful face last week during our disappointing 3-3 tie (they scored the tying goal with like 3 seconds left). I was running at this dude about 20 yards away from the goal. I was no more than 4 feet from him and he somehow managed to hit me in the face with his shot (?). It was a glancing blow that jostled my eye and contact around a bit. It didn't necessarily hurt, but I felt like Mr. Magoo for a minute there. Anyway, it looks like I’m wearing eye make-up on Lefty. So, I put some eyeliner on Kevin (my right eye – 100 million bonus points if you know this reference) to balance things out. Then I darkened my eyebrows to bring out my baby blues and added a little foundation to even things out and – viola! – I’m a SUPERSTAR!

Or maybe I made up the whole story to hide the fact that theMonica beat me up. And maybe this is a cry for help (waaah, waaah, nudge, nudge).

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Monday, August 04, 2008

choices

I've decided that from now on (and for an indeterminate amount of time) that my euphemism for losing something (game, bet, whatever) will be, "bested my Spaniard." Like, "I played Scrabble last night and Jimmy bested my Spaniard." Wait . . . that sounds stupid. I don't play Scrabble and I don't know anyone named Jimmy. How about, "My hockey team got its Spaniard bested 11 to 0 last night."

At any rate, "Spaniard" represents my ego/ability to win. It's fun to say too. Feel free to use it.

I have now like quadrupled my lifetime usage of the word "Spaniard." "Spaniard" has bested my [lack of] Spaniard [usage].

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