Generally Discontent

And so life continues.

I'm still at the somewhat-shoddy temp-to-hire job, though it's leaning more towards the "hire" end of things these days. Maybe. Last Friday, I was instructed to go to the office of Todd, the older hepcat type who calls you "dude" and has strange bits or art and kitschy crap filling up the place. Not a bad guy, really, and he at least seems to be one of the few people you can hold a decent conversation with around here.

Anyway, Todd gave me a stack of paperwork to fill out, like the kind of stuff you fill out if someone actually hires you. Except, as Todd informed me, I'm not going to be hired by this company any time soon. I'm just a permanent temp. Yeah. But whatever, I can deal with that. I'm primarily only interested in the paycheck right now, anyway, though I will need some medical benefits sooner or later. Anyhow. Regardless, moving on and so on, I got a big stack of papers to read and sign, and boy was I happy!

In the end, half of the paperwork didn't apply to me (Why no, I am not an inventor who makes a habit of grabbing my co-workers' boobs and who also owns stock in your competitors, thanks for asking!), and reading over all that crap gave me a good excuse not to do too much work, so that sure was swell. Though this place can be a drag at times, as there really isn’t a whole lot to do on most days. The machine I’m working isn’t configured properly for me to do any of the shipping work, and the IT dweeb in charge of fixing that seems to be more interested in walking around, schmoozing with people, and talking very loudly on his phone about his house or car or something. So, thanks, dweeb!

Yes, I’m talking about work a lot lately. Fact of the matter is, there hasn’t been a whole lot going on, really. Well, okay, that's not true at all… Jessica came up to visit me recently, and we had a great time. Or at least I think we did. I did, anyway. I’m not entirely sure if she had a great time, since her teeth were too busy chattering from the relatively Arctic winds that were flowing over her Floridian bones. Instead of saying, “Wow, Josh, I love Boston! Thank you so much for showing it to me! You’re peachy keen!” she may well have been saying, “I’m going to stab your balls to death for dragging me up to this frozen hellhole, you motherfucker!” But she was wearing this really cute scarf, so maybe I was distracted. (check the gallery for pictures soon!)

Aside from that, it’s been work, go home, be semi-miserable, sleep, wake up, repeat… Life could certainly be better, especially on the home front, but it could also be much, much worse, I guess. But it’s more fun to write about work, because it’s a fairly non-personal thing that I can direct all my anger, disgust and sarcasm at! IT’S FUN! It also reminds me of the good ol’ days of my ranting-on-websites history, back to Monster Robot and Linenoise and CosmoDNA’s House o’ Pancakes, crap that was only seen by about ten people, but they seemed to enjoy the sites enough. I’ve totally derailed myself here.

Back to work! One thing that I notice regularly in this place is the diversity. Diversity in ethnicity, personalities, and sanity levels. I work with a goddamn bunch of lunatics, which really shouldn’t surprise me, since I seem to forever be walking into situations engineered and commanded by people who are completely batshit out of their minds. And this place is no different. It’s like one of those wacky sitcoms where every does wacky things all the wacky fucking time!

Take for example our old pals Pierre and Yeungling, those loveable scamps. Now, she passed her citizenship test, in case you were wondering. So, it stands to reason that she might be a little protective of her newfound Freedom™, or she at least takes it very seriously. Pierre should know this, but Pierre has shown in the past that he’s not very concerned about being very professional in the workplace a whole lot. Which is fine most of the time, because he’s a pretty cool guy. But…

Apparently, Yeungling asked Pierre how he learned to speak English so well. His answer: surround yourself with the language, talk more to English speakers, watch movies and television shows in English, and listen to music in English. This could have just been a ploy, though, as Yeungling had been playing tapes with music from her homeland throughout the day, and they were kind of a bit…much. She clearly hasn't learned the "We might not want to listen to what you want to listen to. Seriously." rule.

Pierre seemed to think so, too. So it wasn't a huge surprise when Yeungling's husband/boyfriend/really creepy significant other, Larry - the guy who moves slower than a turtle surfing a sea of molasses while watching paint dry - went to my boss' second-in-command (as the boss was out that day) and complained that Pierre had made Yeungling cry. Drama ahoy!

Here's the skinny: After giving his advice on how Yeungling could become a better English speaking person, he turned his attention to her music, telling her that she should shut it off and listen to something in English. When she refused, he pulled out his cell phone and said something to the effect of, "If you don't turn it off, I'm going to call Immigration!" Hence, Yeungling's flood of tears.

Pierre claims it was a joke, but it clearly wasn't the best way of handling the situation. After lots and lots of talking right out in the middle of the Production area (which saved the rest of us from the hassle of trying to eavesdrop, since we had no choice but to listen), some resolution was found. Everyone still has their jobs, so I'm assuming they dropped it. I don't know, I just work here.

Then there's Dee, the tiny Korean man who listens to country music in his office all day. Bad country music. Did you know that some country artist has done a remake of Boys II Men's "I Swear"? It's true. It's horribly true and will haunt my dreams for months, I imagine. In fact, I fully expect to be clinically insane as well by the time I get done with this place. But that's why I get paid the big bucks!