My number at work has recently changed and I’ve been getting ten times more wrong number calls than I normally get after my work number is arbitrarily changed.  I checked to see who the ersatz callers were trying to contact and checked our White pages. My number was formerly Molly Simms’, that certainly explains the number’s popularity.
Tag: work
Taking Crap from Housekeeping
Literal translation from conversation with housekeeping:
Him: Why do you not bring in cake?
Me: I have broken my kitchen.
Him: What part?
Me: The box that heats things.
Him: The microwave?
Me: No, the box that heats things that is not the microwave.
Him: The toaster?
Me: No, the box that heats thing that is not the toaster.
Him: The microwave?
Me: When I fix my heat box I will prepare a cake the size of the Fat Lady.
Him: Good *thumbs up*
Lost and Dangerous
I was going back and forth between the R&D lab and the CAD room when I found a woman, walking dazed with two cupped hands full of broken glass. It looked like her desk lamp broke as it was that green frosted glass. She looked at me:
Her: Do you know where I put glass?
Me:Â Yes….
Her: Ok, I’ll follow you.
Me: No. You stay here, I’ll bring a container.
She stood there, stiff as a board, until I returned with a sharps container. She deposited the glass and life returned to her face. She thanked me and wandered away… I met her in a part of the build that is no where near the cubes like she’d broken her lamp and resolved herself to the life of the wandering hermit until she found a place to put it. Would one not leave the broke glass in place, find a repository, and then dump it rather than walking around a building with hands full of broken glass?
Plausible Time Off
Me: JetBlue’s running an all-you-can-fly promotion for a month for 600 bucks. Think anyone’d notice if I disappeared for a month?
Coworker: That’s ridiculous, of course. Three weeks maybe.
Me: How about this, I’ll leave until someone notices I’m gone, I’ll fly back like nothing ever happened and then you can use the pass.
Coworker: Never… you’d never give me the pass.
Me: What if I throw in a carrot cake?
Coworker: Deal.
Poison Ivy Mary
A coworker came in today covered in poison ivy. He asked me what to do to make it feel better. I told him to scratch it and then hug everyone in marketing.
New Title; Different Day
If I were to have some sort of ninja CAD skill, it’d be documentation. I take screen shots, use outline formating, make captions and tables of contents, and even include examples. My time’s worth 1/2 of those who’d do it otherwise so it simply makes sense for me to do the leg work.
I applied a patch to our servers and generated nice documentation to support it, nice enough that my boss didn’t change it when passing it on and submitted the work as mine. I was CC’d on the discussion.
Receiver: Please provide title for “Terry Robinson”. My only search yielded “technician”.
Boss: Whitepages citation did not include appropriate title. Entry updated.
Receiver: Update received. That should suffice. Thank you.
I checked our company white pages to see my new title. I don’t recall being promoted to “Chief Method Development Master Consultant” but with a title like that I imagine it was quite an annointing.
New Title; Different Day
If I were to have some sort of ninja CAD skill, it’d be documentation. I take screen shots, use outline formating, make captions and tables of contents, and even include examples. My time’s worth 1/2 of those who’d do it otherwise so it simply makes sense for me to do the leg work.
I applied a patch to our servers and generated nice documentation to support it, nice enough that my boss didn’t change it when passing it on and submitted the work as mine. I was CC’d on the discussion.
Receiver: Please provide title for “Terry Robinson”. My only search yielded “technician”.
Boss: Whitepages citation did not include appropriate title. Entry updated.
Receiver: Update received. That should suffice. Thank you.
I checked our company white pages to see my new title. I don’t recall being promoted to “Chief Method Development Master Consultant” but with a title like that I imagine it was quite an annointing.
Funeral in Shorts
I avoided the failings of my last Scout funeral and had a slate of prepared statements of condolences for the family of Steve McCreary of which “the world was a better place for having had him” is my favorite as it avoids the saccharine and sacred.  As stated in the title, it was odd to go to a funeral in shorts but the family requested Scouts be in uniform and the event was otherwise fine. During the funerary gauntlet (where mourners speak to the family, I don’t know if there’s an actual term) one woman kept falling back moving 15 people back in line every 5 minutes or so and didn’t really move until the line started moving.
After the event, I drove to work and arrived realizing I was in full field uniform and needed to enter work. I have no qualms with wearing my Scout uniform in public but I’m sure I’d get odd looks from the receptionist for the rest of time and that I would not stand. I parked behind the now empty building across the street that formerly housed tech support and a few other things and began changing thinking it a safe place as shown here. While changing, two helicopters, and a small plane passed over and some how while changing into my pants a lost person did a loop in the back parking lot to turn around. Private indeed.
Library in a Can
Once a month, I take the extra issues of the Economist and throw them in the recycling bin beneath the desk where everyone in the R&D lab eats lunch. This week, I did so and didn’t hear any sound indicating the magazine had hit bottom so I pulled out the Recycling Bin and found every issue of The Economist since December.  Either housekeeping is hasn’t seen this bin or they did find it and didn’t want to move the now 40 pound brick o’ news.
I proposed breaking up the package into several bins to which a coworker responded “No, my library!”.
Dirty Smurfs
A key component to fake bodily fluids is coloring. When one simulates the explosion of the spleen or blood in stool accuracy is a must. Not really, but I still strive for such things. Sadly my current project requires visibility so I’ve been adding a rather strong blue dye which tends to get everywhere. I returned to my desk with hands looking like I was some sort of smurf trauma surgeon. My coworkers had other ideas to explain the coloration:
- Smurf gigalo
- Canning accident
- Blue man group proctologist
- Most Accurately: Inability to properly wear nitrile gloves