Tuesday, May 8, 2007

The Final Days: Meddlesome Mama Bear & Casanova

I am pleased to announce that I am in my final week here at Other People's Money. After months of sweating every time I deposited my paycheck, countless interviews and resume postings, I have finally landed a job at The Financial Institution of a New England State. I begin on the 21st. Of course my final day at OPM is the 15th (w00t! w00t!). What shall I do with myself for my 5 days of unemployment? In a word: drink. Heavily. I've also got some friends in West Palm and Ft. Lauderdale I haven't visited since they moved down there--free places to crash + diabolical friends = mini road trip.

Things are proceeding as normal at OPM since giving my notice. I spend most of my time going back and forth with Charlie obsessing over verb tenses, commas and punctuation while ignoring investor phone calls and transcribing frothing at the mouth voicemails. Mama Bear is "sorry to see me go" and they're both worried that they won't be able to fix things that break anymore since it's all tied together with hot glue and string. This should hardly be surprising for Mama Bear, since she likes to meddle and rummage through people's computers. She found a copy of my resume and cover letter. (I got sloppy and was hitting career builder while Charlie was bitching about all the incompetent fools that he employs.) Lynette is annoyed because I can't wipe the smug grin off my face. And I gloat. A lot. I even dance around a little.

Speaking of Meddlesome Mama Bear, she broke their home network this weekend and I had to go over and suffer through close proximity with Charlie to fix it. The storms this weekend knocked out their Internet connection temporarily. The first holy law of tech support is "if it breaks, turn it off, count to ten, then turn it back on." Do not under any circumstance fiddle with settings, unplug every wire and jam a paper clip into the itty bitty "re-set" hole. Especially if you understand the equipment poorly. You will 1.) Reconnect the wires wrong and 2.) Erase all the settings and put them back into factory default mode. At the very least, attempt to call the person who put the whole rig together and see what they suggest. So that burned through half of my day, calling the phone company and sitting on hold while they restored the correct settings to the DSL modem and I re-established the gateway-to-gateway VPN (those things can be a bitch, the encryption settings are ALWAYS different between devices. grrr.)

One of my favorite bloggers is a 30 something woman who makes fun of "mommybloggers" (bloggers who write about their oh so cuuuuuute kiddies, sharing details like when they poop their pants ensuring plenty of material for teasing and torment in later years--the Internet is forever dufuses.) and rambles about life lessons and things that piss her off. When I read this post I about died. Mama Bear goes through nannies like tissue. I swear, this is her to a "t." When I showed Lynette she burst out laughing which I'm sure the whole office heard, blowing our cover of pretending to do actual work. This triggered a few instant messages from fellow employees. Such as . . .

Casanova is a new-ish Finance employee. I picked this nickname because he's a bit of a perv. He makes lots of suggestive comments to Lynette that would be horribly inappropriate at a real job. He also once walked into her office without pants on to see how long it would take her to notice. Blake describes working with him like "sitting next to an 8 year old all day." From an internal office instant messenger conversation:

Casanova: What're you doing?

MHGT: I'm very very very very very busy. This momentary interruption has caused incalculable disruption and could doom us all.

Casanova: Yeah whatever. Wanna play rock paper scissors over the internet?

MHGT: Sure
One
Two
Three

Casanova: Rock

MHGT: Improvised Explosive Device.
I win.

Casanova: Shit!
One
Two
Three

MHGT: This game bores me.

Casanova: Paper!

Thursday, April 5, 2007

We Need Better Organization!!!

Everything is so disorganized. There are so many objects on my desk at all times I can’t get anything done or keep track of everything, why just now on my desk there’s:

-An apple

-A dandelion

-A banana

-A lemon

-Two paperclip dispensers.

We need to organize these things! Since everyone else is so incompetent, I’ll just do it for you since all I ever do is micromanage things so that I have no time to do anything of value ever or even speak clearly. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take pictures of each of these items and three-hole punch them. I will need at least two binders to organize these. Label the binders as follows:

1.) Things That Are Yellow

2.) Things That Are Not Yellow

Now, in the Things That Are Yellow binder I will need you to create several tabs:

A) Things that are sweet

2.) Things that are sour

A-3.) Things I shouldn’t eat.

C-4.) Blank Paper For Better Organizing My Insightful Thoughts, Opinions, Ideas, Opinions, and Thoughts


In the Things That Are Not Yellow binder I want these to be the tabs:

A1) Things that are sweet

H57) Things that are sour

Circle) Things I should not eat

II.) Paperclips

II-B.3) Blank Paper For Better Organizing My Insightful Thoughts, Opinions, Ideas, Opinions, and Thoughts

Please schedule a task to review this new organizational system with Mama Bear and delegate the actual creation of the binders to PartTimer and ensure Lynette is fully up to speed on the new system. Be sure this task appears on the “Charlie for You but not For Charlie too and doesn’t even remotely involve Melba Toast.” Report.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Sequel Under Production!

The Original Producers has been neglected for quite some time. Not to worry, as there's a new sequel under production as we speak!! Here's a brief recap of the past year or two since anybody's posted about our joyous office:

-Many have come and gone (as always)
-Mr. Happy Go To is now one of the most senior employees with The Producers. At two and a half years, I'm the only one left from past eras except for Lynette, Flo, Charlie and Mama Bear.
-Mackey pulled the ejection lever a few weeks ago which just thrilled Charlie.
-The Producers actually will have to eventually pay rent now that "It's time we sold the building, it's been long enough, too time consuming to manage and a good time to market it." And by that they mean: "We needed to sell it before the bank finished foreclosure proceeding."

Anyhoo, there will be more to come later, but I've invited two current Producers employees to start posting as well. (Former staff members are welcome too, just leave a comment or send me an e-mail or something and I'll invite you!). Without further adieu I introduce:

Lynette - Who has been with the company for 8 years or something insane. Clearly she has a very high BS tolerance and superhuman patience. Having to cope with 3 young boys and a husband (i.e. 4 young boys) probably lessens the amount of irritation she feels here to a dull throb.

Blake - Our new star finance employee is a recent graduate from UCF. Generally cheerful with a positive disposition, I am now clearly detecting some budding cynicism since the departure of Mackey. He now holds the head finance position which I deem the Worst Job Ever(tm) due to the constant required interaction with Charlie. Poor bastard.

More to come!

-Mr. Happy Goto