please respond

i've been tired lately. too tired to think of interesting thinks. what should i write about?

2 Office-like stories

oh man, tonight is The Delivery episode of The Office. only two hours. my sister is bring over her knitting club, and my neighbors are coming over, too. it'll be a full house, but i like it that way. i know they're a fictitious couple, but congrats to Jim and Pam on the scheduled birth of their baby! (hey, that's pretty realistic to me. i mean, preggo #2 in our office had her appointment at 7am and she's still on maternity leave - shout out!)

ok, our Office-like story today is about a call taken by a Customer Service Rep that will not be named (but we'll say it's a girl, since the probability of this rep being a female is just that high. if you work in an office, you know i'm right).

this poor girl took the call at 10 minutes till 5pm. anybody in customer service dreads taking calls right before the end of the day, hoping that the odds fall in their favor and the caller has all their information ready and only has one question. well, this was the other kind of call. it was about 10 after 5pm when she asked me to take over the call, since she really needed to go. i understand wanting to leave at the end of your shift (last night, my phone rang with one minute to go. nice woman, tons of questions. 10 minutes.)

i took the call. i was a little scared already, since this girl was either laughing or crying, which was causing the other of the two. i wasn't sure of the cause, and that makes a difference in how you want to answer. and then i answered. and i couldn't help myself. i had to hit the mute button just in case my laugh actually vocalized. although, i was warned. when transferring the call, the rep said, "country." i should have listened better. but i couldn't understand more than 2 words at a time. have you ever talked to someone who slurs together their words so badly that "a" and "i" sound the same? i have.

bonus Office-y story!
i just remembered this, which happened yesterday. i went to make a new pot of coffee in the kitchen. i was talking to a couple people in there, so i was distracted (not an excuse, just a description of facts).

anyway, i went to make half a pot of coffee because it was 4pm, most of the office was leaving but since i work a later shift, i wanted some coffee with the half-cookie i had vultured from the kitchen when the visiting company was done with their Panera-catered lunch. yum. so, in the process of making coffee and talking at the same time, i half-filled up our little pitcher with water from the sink. and then i went over and poured it into the coffeemaker.

yeah, i forgot to empty the old coffee out of the pot.
yeah, i forgot to replace the filter and put new coffee grounds in.
but wait - there's more!

so the person i was talking with comes to help. together, we manage to take the old coffeepot from its place in the coffeemaker, allowing the water -- which is running through the old coffee grounds -- to spill onto the table on which the coffeemaker is sitting, and throw the old coffee grounds into a bowl that had just been washed. utter chaos for about 3 minutes, while we run out of paper towels and get more, and clean up the re-dirtied bowl. 


in the end, i did do it the right way and got my well-deserved cup of coffee. so, happy ending. :)

word of yesterday: fictitious

word of today: "atchit" - pronounced like "hatchet" without the "h" and tacked on to the end of a verb. as in, "Google-atchit."

another bathroom post

our bathrooms now have automatic soap and paper towel dispensers. this is pretty cool, except that it breaks up your whole bathroom flow!

1. soap (automatic)
2. water (not automatic)
3. paper towel (automatic)

so then you feel stupid because you put your hand into the sink, and the soap dispenser attacks it with foam, and then you move your hand a little to the right, thinking that the water will come out automatically, and then you realize you're staring at the faucet and nothing's happening. 

this automatic soap dispenser is feisty, too. as soon as you turn the water on, it attacks your hand again! and then, while you're washing your hands, it tries again! 

but i think it's ok. i figure, it's like the fire swamp in The Princess Bride -- it makes a noise before it tries to get you, so you know it's coming. at least there's a warning. 

dog name of the day: foofoo (might be spelled fufu, but i don't care enough.)

i'm really tired. my drive axle is in the processing of breaking, and it's going to cost almost $500 to fix. i got ok'd for overtime, but these 10 hour days are killing me -- and i've only done two in a row! my plan for tonight after dinner is to make a good cup of tea and settle down with a novel that doesn't make me think too hard. 

Office moment of the day: discussing dress code in a meeting, one of the supervisors started laughing and said, "sorry, i just got an image in my head from The Office!" to which the COO responds, "we are not having casual fridays." 

i really do like the people i work with. 

what a disappointing pretzel day

so, here's what went wrong with my master plan:

first, the new girl didn't start today. apparently, she starts next monday. i just wasn't told. so, absolutely 0% chance of her going to the beet farm or egging a building.

there were no toppings for the pretzels!! in fact, there was nobody guarding the pretzels at all. they were in a box on a table in a conference room that nobody knew about until today. i even came in early today! i was so excited. the pretzels were supposed to arrive at 9:30am. it turned 11am, and then somebody found out they were down the hall, past the men's bathroom. i would like to thank the person who finally found the pretzels. they must have been eagerly searching for them, because there's no need to walk down that corridor past the men's room. if you're a man, you miss it by a few feet. if you're a woman, you're even farther away. and if you've got the munchies, the vending machines aren't even as far down that hall as the men's restroom. so i really wonder how someone found it... unless they were a man (or very observant woman) walking to the restroom, and they happened to notice someone walking out of that room with a pretzel in their hand. they might have asked, or they might have gone to investigate. or, maybe they weren't in need of rest at all, and they were deciding how best to spend $1.25 -- a can of coke or two packs of gum? i think i like this situation better, because the person had a better chance of spotting someone in the know, because a really indecisive person (probably a woman) could stand there for at least 3 minutes and not be conspicuous.

anyway, back to the room without a pretzel topping man. yeah, nobody there. just pretzels -- cold pretzels -- in a box. with some mustard that you could squeeze onto the pretzel, if you so desired. at least there was some variety: they had yellow mustard and Dijon mustard. but nothing else. did i mention that they were cold and just sitting in a box? i could have taken that box and walked away, and nobody would have known! except for my company, because we have security cameras. i'm pretty sure all of the other offices in the building are small and don't have security cameras.

my manager didn't even have a pretzel because he didn't want to break his diet. and i forgot to get him to do a Cosby impression.

not the best day. maybe tomorrow will be better.

word of the day: conspicuous /kənsp'ɪkjuəs/

Synonyms:
adjective: prominent, noticeable, notable, marked, outstanding, striking, salient, obvious

1. If someone or something is conspicuous, people can see or notice them very easily.ADJ ADJ-GRADED
   • Antonym inconspicuous
   • The most conspicuous way in which the old politics is changing is in the growing use of referendums.
   • You may feel tearful in situations where you feel conspicuous.
   • conspicuously ADV ADV-GRADED ADV with v ADV adj
     
     1. Britain continues to follow U.S. policy in this and other areas where American policies have most conspicuously failed.
     2. Johnston's name was conspicuously absent from the list.
2. If you say that someone or something is conspicuous by their absence, you are drawing attention to the fact that they are not in a place or situation where you think they should be. PHRASE
   • He played no part in the game and was conspicuous by his absence in the post-match celebrations.

Pretzel Day!

this monday, march 1 is pretzel day in our office complex! i am not making this up. and everybody is looking forward to it.

i'm kind of excited, because we have a new CSR starting on monday, and this makes us look like an awesome company. so, it's kind of cool, because it really is like an initiation! hmmm...

in patterning my office after The Office, the following things need to happen on Pretzel Day:

• keep a log of what the manager does all day.
• the manager needs to do a Bill Cosby impression. (i think we can pull this off)
• the manager needs to get hyped up on sugar after eating his soft pretzel with every possible topping. (this will be more difficult. for one thing, he's on a diet. and also, they probably won't offer different toppings.)
• someone steals someone else's chair.
• we bring to new girl to the Schrute beet farm for some interrogation/training and wrestling their cousin Mose. (highly improbable)
• new girl eggs a building (again, highly improbable)

ok, so 50% of this stuff is actually doable! hooray! i'll give a review of our Pretzel Day next week.

The Office quotes of the day:

Pam Beesly:

Once a year they bring in a little cart and they give away free pretzels. It's really not a big deal. [pause] To some people it is.

Stanley:

364 days... 'til the next Pretzel Day.