Thursday, February 23, 2006

boy, was i wrong

Actually, I was one out of two in the ‘wrong’ department. I was correct in my guess that I would be the one taking the blame for last Friday’s contract breech fiasco, because this is exactly what happened. It was as if I, personally, kidnapped our AWOL inventory clerk Lori, stuffed her in a trunk, and dropped her to the bottom of a river somewhere, thus causing the orders not to get shipped on time.

I was wrong, however, in the assumption that my job would be safe…being that I was the sole billing associate. Because, as it turned out, my job was much less safe than I suspected. So much less safe, in fact, that I no longer have a job. And I am once again unemployed.

I was called into the director’s office on Tuesday afternoon, where he and my boss Kelly were both seated. I sat down in the chair closest to the door, my preferred seating space in case a quick exit is ever needed, and was greeted with ‘I don’t feel that we’re a good fit for you’, from Kelly.

Automatically, I knew things were going to head downhill fast from here. Because this statement is the business world counterpart of the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ break up line when dating someone you can no longer stand the sight of.

“What, exactly, are you saying?” I asked Kelly… knowing full well what she was saying, but wanting her to actually say it.

“I simply don’t think that we’re what you’re looking for in a company,” she said. As if, by letting me go they were doing me a favor. Obviously, they were so very concerned for me that they wanted me to find a company that ‘fit’ me better. Of course, the fact that I would no longer have any benefits or income didn’t seem to weigh into their consideration for my well being.

“Effective immediately, your employment here has been terminated,” she continued.

“Kelly, I think that, at the very least, I deserve some type of explanation as to why I’m being let go,” I said.

“I’m not going to debate this with you! I’ve had several complaints from co-workers about you and don’t feel that you fit in with the team we’ve assembled here,” she countered.

And with this, it became clear why I was finished. The reason was Bettie Jo.

Bettie Jo is constantly in varying states of miserableness and doesn’t like anyone…but the fact that she once held the position that I was currently employed in (or had been currently employed in) caused a special hate for me that the other employees of the company hadn’t yet achieved.

Bettie Jo is also the office tattletale. She is also very close friends with my boss Kelly. Over lunch in the employee break room, they could often be found sitting, huddled over their Bacon Cheeseburgers from Wendy’s, whispering fervently. I had suspected that Bettie Jo had been campaigning to get rid of me for awhile, and now it seems that I had my proof. Of course, as I sat in the office, shock slowly setting in, I realized that this proof had come too late.

“Bettie Jo will be taking over your duties for the time being while I search for your replacement. You have ten minutes to collect your things and leave the building,” Kelly told me.

As I stuffed my scant personal belongings into a cardboard box that I found near the copier machine, I began wondering which restaurant might have the best selection of food to in their dumpsters for dinner…because money has now become a non-renewable resource for me.

Prior to accepting this job, I had only one other company show any interest in hiring me. And now, things are so bleak, that I may need to start seriously considering a career as a cemetery plot salesman.

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Sunday, February 19, 2006

visionaries don't keep their eyes closed

Some companies are run by visionaries. People who can read the upcoming trends and act on those trends before they approach. Men and women who can lead their business in the right direction and ensure success for years to come. Unfortunately, the company I work for is not one of these companies.

The unwritten philosophy of the company I work for is ‘ignore the problem as long as possible.’ In short, they see the bomb coming from miles away, watch as the bomb falls to the ground, continue to watch the resulting explosion and destruction, and then run around with buckets of water trying desperately to extinguish the many fires that have sprung up.

Lori, our inventory clerk, has been gone for almost a month now. The people in charge have known this, but have conveniently decided to forget that there is no longer an inventory clerk working at the company…until this past week. This is when, finally forced to accept that Lori is not going to return, they had to face the fact that many of their contracts with clients are not going to be filled on time. Friday was spent with the head-honchos running around trying desperately to fill in the gaps…gaps which have long since become craters.

Kelly, my boss, was among those running around in a state of panic. And, in another act of exquisite bad timing and short sightedness, Friday was also the day that Kelly arranged to interview several applicants. The billing department, which has consisted solely of me since I began working here over seven months ago, is supposed to be a two person operation. This is the position that Kelly was interviewing for on Friday.

The first two applicants never showed up, perhaps receiving some type of sign from God that no sane person would actually choose to work here.

The third person arrived at two o’clock. Kelly briefly introduced herself, threw an application to him and instructed him to take a seat in an empty office, the same office that is supposed to be home to my co-working billing associate, while he filled it out.

An hour and a half later, I walked by the front desk and asked our receptionist Sondra if Kelly was done interviewing the applicant. Sondra, who was in the middle of painting her nails a shade of red that apples can only dream of achieving, paused and said, “Kelly has been in meetings all afternoon. That guy she was supposed to interview walked out about ten minutes ago.”

I stopped by the empty office, and sure enough, it was still just as empty as it always has been. The guy’s application sat on the desk. And on top of his application was one of Kelly’s business cards, ripped in half.

My guess is that the position isn’t going to be filled anytime soon. Which is probably a good thing, because if the number one motto of the company is ‘ignore the problem as long as possible’ a close second is ‘blame someone else when things go wrong.’

And because I’m low man on the totem pole, I’m fully expecting that Monday morning will start with me taking the blame for Friday’s problems. Honestly, I’m less worried about being blamed and more interested in how the higher ups will try to connect the dots to prove that I’m the one who’s at fault.

But, at the rate Kelly is going in the hiring process, I’ll most likely remain the only billing associate. So my job is safe for the near future, or until Kelly remembers to actually interview the people that she’s scheduled interviews with.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

cooking outside my comfort zone

Pam had placed me on relationship probation following a poor Christmas gift performance that consisted of a Lava Bun foot warmer. The status of which, she had decided, would be re-evaluated after Valentine's Day. And, in an effort to improve my ranking, I opted for treating her to a home cooked meal.

Up until now, my cooking skills have mainly consisted of delicacies such as ham and cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread and the occasional bowl of cereal. After careful consideration, I decided to try cooking outside of my comfort zone and found a recipe for crab cakes.

And while my cooking skills remain under-developed, I tend to read quite well. Therefore, I reasoned, the process would be simple. Read the directions. Follow the directions. And behold! A glorious meal would be created.

Upon arriving home from the supermarket, I assembled the ingredients on the counter and began the whole cooking process. I opened the can of crab meat and tore open the package of seasoning superbly well. I mixed and stirred the ingredients like a world class chef. All that was left was the actual caking of the crab.

I scooped up a mushy glob of the crab mixture and began packing it down into a perfect little patty sized piece of crab heaven. I dropped it into the skillet, waited the instructed five minutes which the package told me was the ideal browning time, and scooped it up for the final flip. But somewhere in mid-flip my perfectly formed patty deteriorated quickly, and I was left with a multitude of mini-patties sizzling in the pan.

I quickly grabbed a spoon and tried to reassemble my broken crab cake by pushing them into one another. And while the chunks of crab skittled around in the frying pan, much like a miniaturized game of hockey taking place on my stove, they failed to congeal into one larger sized cake. I pleaded with them to no avail. They were stubborn little crab chunks that were decidedly against cohabitation.

My dream of a Valentine’s Day meal of crab cakes was quickly evaporating. So, in an effort to salvage my attempt to impress Pam, I threw the rest of the crab in the pan and, cakes be damned, decided we were now having scramble crab for dinner.

An hour later, the salad was tossed, the veggies were steaming, and the wine was chilled. I had just lit the candles and rearranged a single rose on the table when Pam arrived. I took her coat, poured her a glass of Chardonnay, and we sat down to eat.

Once our salads were finished, I rose from the table to bring about the main course, which looked quite like scrambled eggs without the eggs. Pam gave me a curious look as I walked back into the dining room and served her dinner.

“I thought you said we were having crab cakes,” she asked.

“No,” I told her, “there will be no caking of crabs tonight. Instead, I have chosen to prepare un-caked crabs…which I believe is all the rage in Portugal, or one of those over seas places.”

Despite the lack of confidence that my reassurance evoked in her, the crab wasn’t too bad. Luckily, the dessert I had prepared, which was an array of Godiva chocolates, was truly the high point of the night.

And I fully take credit for preparing this dessert since I was the one who had to rip off that tricky cellophane wrapper around the box. Because, I discovered, this is the type of cooking that I do best at.

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Saturday, February 11, 2006

the sheep has returned to the flock

I’ve tried hard to hold firm to my recent decision to pack my lunch instead of eating out every day. Along with this, I’ve tried hard to convince myself that the South Beach Diet variety of microwavable meals I purchased were just as satisfying as a greasy burger and fries would have been.

This lasted for two days when, unable to fool myself into thinking that the reheated food contained therein was actually good, I gave up on the whole South Beach lifestyle. I’m beginning to understand the concept of ‘diet’ meals. You choose not to eat rather than endure the horrible tasting food, which is like dieting by default.

The very next day, I decided to make my own lunch…ham and cheese on Wonder Bread…which pretty much exhausted my knowledge of food preparation. The finishing touch to this culinary creation was the brown paper bag which, with a flourish, I threw the sandwich into.

After driving to work, my sandwich was then deposited in the employee lunchroom refrigerator…a communal area that I had yet to experience. I opened the door, prepared to toss my lunch bag onto one of the shelves, and realized that lunch space real estate is perhaps even more valuable than finding a prime parking spot in the office lot.

No empty shelf space was visible, every square inch being packed with containers of various shapes and sizes. I was forced to do some rearranging and realized that what was housed within the office refrigerator was a museum of 21st century foodstuff products. I ended up clearing a small spot in between a bottle of Paul Newman’s Ranch Dressing (which expired on 3/03) and a Tupperware container that had Frank’s half-eaten lunch sealed inside…which was odd because Frank left the company six months ago.

In my expedition for a few inches of clear shelf space, I also came across a bottle of Red Hot, a banana that had long since gone from yellow to brown and was now well into the decomposition process, and moldy dregs of a yogart container which had long since been forgotten about.

My small little spot suited me just fine until noon when I noticed that an odd green liquid had dripped all over my brown paper bag. Upon closer inspection, I realized that on the shelf directly above my bag was a pickle jar which had been knocked over on its side. A jar from which, now in a supine position, a trickle of pickle juice had leaked onto my lunch.

Extracting my soggy bag from the refrigerator, I was forced to admit that my experiment with lunch packing was over. I pitched the now pickled ham and cheese sandwich into the trash and headed out to my car.

I drove down the street and, upon seeing those glorious golden arches…much like the gates to heaven must look to the recently departed…I knew that I had been converted back to fast foodism. I once was lost, but now am found.

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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

relief

The city has been buzzing with dreams of Super Bowl rings for several weeks now. And while I'm as big a football fan as the next person, Super Bowl Sunday caused a re-shuffling of my normal weekend schedule.

Generally, Sunday is my designated grocery shopping day…the day in which I restock the staples of my kitchen, such as coffee and Pop Tarts. The thought had crossed my mind to keep with my normal schedule and head out on Sunday night after the game...knowing that shopping before the Super Bowl was a bad idea because of the last minute chips, salsa, and pretzel buying public stocking up for many hours of television munching, but at the last minute I decided to replenish my Pop Tart supply on Saturday instead.

I headed out to Target, a store that always impresses me with the variety of Pop Tart offerings that are on display, and after grabbing a box I took a detour through the electronics section.

I always make a point of walking through the technological wonderland of every store that I go into. My meager paychecks don't actually enable me to purchase any of the amazing gadgets that I find there, but I like to keep abreast of all the hip and cool items that I won't ever be a proud owner of. $300 Ipods, $800 GPS devices, $5000 flat screen plasma television sets...all things that I desperately want in my apartment if it wasn't for the fact that my wallet would go into cardiac arrest and flat-line if asked to extend itself to this type of credit overload.

As I was sadly saying my goodbyes to all the television sets that lined the wall, I overheard a college aged girl asking her friend about a purchase that she was pondering.

"I really need a TV set for my bedroom, and look at this one...only $120 for a 20 inch set! What do you think? Should I buy it?"

"Listen," her friend told her, "I refuse to watch anything on a TV that's less than 32 inches. A TV set that small and you'll need binoculars just to see who's sitting on Letterman's couch every night. I mean, really, what's the point? You may as well just read a book."

They both laughed and walked away from the little set, a set whose ego had surely been bruised by this rebuff. I guess I never realized just how out-of-date books are. A few hundred years ago, when the printing press was the pinnacle of modern technology, I’m sure that books were all the rage. Now, however, they’re the entertainment equivalent of the ice box. Though I'm sure if books were given a technological twist, such as a remote control that would flip and fast forward through pages, sparing your fingers all that difficult work, more people would probably buy them.

I spent the next day watching the game with my family, a game in which my heart stopped beating several times. In fact, I had to crack open the box of Pop Tarts I had bought the day before and begin munching on some simply to calm my nerves.

And though it was an ugly win for the Steelers, it was a win none the less. As my little league coach once said, “Regardless of how you get it, a win is still a win.”

Of course, shortly after he told us this, Billy Strothers, who was our catcher that day, lost the baseball in his chest protector and the other team ended up scoring three runs, winning the game in the process.

After the Steelers victory, the typical post-Super Bowl win festivities ensued in our city…festivities that included drunken mobs swarming the streets and cheering until the wee hours of the morning, all caught on television and shown on every single local news station.

But it wasn’t until the game ended and the hordes of people began filling every street in the Pittsburgh area that I could finally let out a sigh of relief.

Not only because we won the game, but also because I had gone grocery shopping the day before. Because there was no way I would have been able to drive through that crowd of people to buy my box of Pop Tarts.

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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

fast food will kill you

I work in an area of town that, while the city’s Visitors Bureau would probably give the neighborhood its safety seal of approval, most of the residents would tell you otherwise. But usually I don't dwell on the unsafe conditions of the community which surrounds the office.

My lack of any office windows cut me off entirely from the outside world. The apocalypse could come and go and I would miss it from inside my windowless little room, completely stunned upon leaving at the end of the day to find that humanity had been wiped clean from the face of the Earth while I sat behind my desk.

But at noon today, as I drove a few blocks from our office building to pick up my lunch order, I was reminded that perhaps this isn't the safest area of town in which to venture too far from the four walls which encase me.

I drove down to the street which is home to several little delis and sandwich shops...or 'restaurant row' as we call it...and noticed that a three block section had been barricaded by the city police, allowing foot traffic but making it impossible for cars to navigate through the maze of wooden horses.

Not one to let police interference ruin my lunch, I parked a few blocks away and walked to the restaurant where my food sat waiting for me...upset that I was unable to drive right up to the restaurant door, but figuring that the calories I was burning off from all that exercise would account for at least a smudge of the mayo that would be smeared upon my sandwich.

After paying and grabbing my meal from the front counter, I walked back outside and overheard a group of people discussing the police presence on the block.

"I can't believe that somebody was shot up the road!" said a lady wearing a blue wool coat.

"The ambulance just raced off, and judging from the mess on the street, somebody lost a lot of blood," her friend with the Eckerd Drug shopping bag responded.

"I heard that it started in the McDonald's at the end of the street,” said a guy in jogging pants and a windbreaker. “Two guys started fighting inside, got thrown out, and then started shooting at each other. I was sitting in my living room watching the news when I heard the gunfire.”

"You know," said an elderly man with a cane, "people always said that eating all that fast food shit will kill you. And I guess if the food don't do the trick, the other folks eating there will."

Personally, this bit of news just confirmed my suspicion that Happy Meals really aren't making anybody happy at all.

In any event, I plan on packing a lunch from now on.

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