The Troll

I abandoned my cubicle life today and have the day off to take care of some "personal business". That's what I called it in the email request I sent to my boss early last Monday morning. I apologized for giving such short notice and then crossed my fingers, hit send and waited for his reply.

All fucking ding-dong day.

Usually, wherever he happens to be, my current boss responds right away to anything I send him, whether it be a time-off request or reporting some kind of project issue or new idea. He's good that way.

How novel. An attentive boss that actually listens to me and pays attention to my needs. In previous time off requests he has said things like "Sure! Take as much time as you need. I appreciate all your hard work here".

What was taking him so long this time? I waited for his reply, squirming with discomfort and as the day wore on, wondering if I should write him back and call the whole thing off. He normally responds so quickly. What if something is wrong? What if he is putting it off because he has to tell me no? What if, what if, what if...

The next day he stopped by my cube and apologized for not getting back to me right away and said of course I could have the day off and then thanked me again for all my hard work.

Yeah.

I felt bad for silently cursing him (and myself) all day while I was waiting.

He's a good boss. And thanks to hideous, bastardly evil bosses I've had in the past, I'm apparently not able to trust or appreciate such kindness and understanding.

I am thinking in particular of the boss I had when I was still in school and working at my first official IT job, the guy would wait for weeks to reply to my time-off requests, even though he was in the next office and we saw each other daily. He even did this when I requested time off 9 months in advance for my wedding. We called him The Troll.

The Troll was a balding, pudgy, 50ish man, who wore his pants belted tight and high around his wide, gelatinous gut. He had big, mushy lips that looked as though someone had pasted two snails on his mouth and steely blue eyes perched closely atop a smushed, yet slightly turned up Hogarth-equese nose. Imagine if you will, that Tweedle-Dum and Jabba the Hut had a baby.

The Troll enjoyed intimidating people with his mental catalog of meaningless IT acronyms.

The Troll often made up his own acronyms, refused to tell us what they meant and would chuckle with glee when we guessed them wrong.

The Troll found it hilarious to schedule network hogging back-ups, system slowing updates and upgrades during his days off or his lunch hours.

The Troll thought it was amusing to make changes to the system or software upgrades without warning anyone. "See if anyone notices a difference", he'd snort. Thus causing my co-worker and I to spend our entire day fielding annoying, "my computer is really slow today" support calls that might have been completely unnecessary had he sent out an email or given anyone, including us, a clue.

The Troll was once overheard boasting to other department heads that he used a management style to keep us on our toes that he liked to refer to as "management by embarrassment".

I've never been one to judge a person based on looks, but when I first met him at my job interview I distinctly remember mentally wincing at the sight of his wide, waddling form coming toward me in the reception area. Oh you poor sad thing, I thought as he reached out to greet me with a handshake and the snails lifted their tails in a gruesome attempt at a smile.

He was a bit gruff and intimidating in the interview, but alas that is the nature of many an IT slug/computer nerd. They are not exactly what you would call People-Persons, so I gave The Troll the benefit of the doubt. But the more he talked, the less I liked this man.

I wasn't completely sold on taking the job until The Troll called in the other person on the team to complete the interview. She was the one I would primarily be working with. I liked her on sight. She was terrific, funny, smart and personable (and I think it goes without saying, much easier on the eyes). Unlike the troll, she had a face that was very expressive, all eyebrow arching, smirks, winks and smiles. We hit it off instantly and I knew that if she worked for this train-wreck of a man that it must be all right. I'll call her Sunny.

On my very first day of work it happened that Sunny was busy working on a project on the other side of the building, so The Troll briskly showed me around and then gave me a task that I was to complete by noon. Basically I had to take apart a desktop computer, replace the power supply and reformat the hard drive.

I bet you didn't know that I could do that.

Neither did I.

Although officially I had never done this professionally (that's why I was here, to get some experience), I had just aced a class on small systems hardware and I knew what and where everything was. No problem-o.

Or so I thought.

The power supply went in OK, but then when I tried to reformat the hard drive something was drastically wrong and I kept getting an error. And it's not like I was getting the error right away either. I waited and waited as bright text whizzed by on a black screen and then thump - error. This never happened in my class.

The time was ticking away and periodically The Troll would come in to check on my progress. When I told him about the error he came unhinged, got all red faced and blotchy and started yelling at me.

What kind of error?!

The blah-blah kind.

WHAT is your problem?

I don't know. I've never seen this error before.

I thought you said you could handle this job. If you can't do this simple thing then you may as well go home right now.

I started to cry. I'd had some asshole bosses before, but nobody had ever yelled at me like this. I was frozen, mortified.

And then Sunny came in.

The Troll then barked at Sunny, "see if you can fix her mess. Now!", and then he waddled out of the room in a blotchy red huff.

I explained the situation in a raspy whisper to Sunny who said it was no big deal and that she'd seen this error before on some of the other older machines and miraculously whipped out a new thingy-ma-bob that we installed together. Fixed.

Sunny was very reassuring. She said there was no way I would've fixed it on my own in the amount of time The Troll had given me to do the job, and that she too was flummoxed the first time it happened to her. She had spent hours back and forth on the phone with the computer company's hardware support to solve the problem and had ordered extra parts knowing that it was likely to happen again to the other machines. She said if she had known that he was going to make work on that kind of machine she would've warned me.

Speaking of warnings... when I asked her about The Troll's atrocious behavior and whether or not he was like that all the time she said, "I tried to warn you in your interview, didn't you notice me making all those faces?" I hadn't taken the hint. Then she said that if The Troll hadn't been in the room the whole time she would have told me to run away screaming and never look back and that she had been looking for a new job for several months.

I moved on eventually, but the scars remain.

Me & The Guys Part 3

Personality Disorder Had a Date With a Real Live Woman

Personality Disorder was our other sales dude at the sub-contractor where I worked in the middle and late nineties, and the polar opposite of Perky Man. Although he too was a big pot head, he was perpetually depressed, short tempered and prone to brooding.

Personality Disorder was always really sweet to me though.

I heard through the grapevine that he harbored a terrible crush on me. I kind of knew it, but refused to acknowledge it in any real way. He would compliment me by telling me I smelled like rose petals or that my hair looked like satin. His mouth barely moved when he spoke and he couldn't look me in the eye when he said these things. I would usually respond by saying things like "Wow. That's really nice of you to say," and then Personality Disorder would skulk off muttering self loathing things to himself.

Don't get me wrong, I was indeed super cute and had (then and ever after) excellent grooming habits that caused me to smell very nice and have shiny hair, but I think he liked me more because I was the only woman he knew besides his mother that he could talk to and was nice to him.

After I had been working there for about a year, the moment I had been dreading arrived. Fueled by a the confidence of a recent raise, a haircut and a pep talk from Perky Man, Personality Disorder asked me out on a date. I politely refused, stating that I made it a strict policy to never date anyone that I worked with. A huge lie, but at that moment, working for that sub-contractor, the only woman among all those nasty men, it was never more true.

He was totally bummed out and skulked off muttering to himself and didn't speak to me for several weeks. He would come in and pick up his schedule in the morning before I came in.

I felt terrible. He was a really nice man, but there was no way I was going out with him. He was a fuckin' weirdo.

One afternoon my boss Laughing Boy came in from his morning appointments and asked what part of town Personality Disorder was working in that day. I grabbed the schedule and showed him and he said to get him on the phone immediately. Laughing Boy had heard on the news that a man in Personality Disorder's neighborhood was on some shooting spree was still on the loose. He fit the physical description of Personality Disorder. Laughing Boy's first thought was that Personality Disorder had finally had his inevitable freak out and was going nuts killing people.

It wasn't him, but he certainly had the potential to be that same brand of psycho.

Eventually he recovered from my refusal of his affections and we got along just fine, although he continued to scare me a in a Lenny and Curley's Wife kind of way. I would never have been alone with him in a barn or let him hold my puppies (wink).

Believe it or not, Personality Disorder had a terrific sense of humor and we had a great time making fun of our customers together. I would put little stars next to the names on his schedule of the customers whom I predicted would be nutty or asshole-ish so that Personality Disorder would know to ask me about them before going out for the sales call.

Personality Disorder would give our customers funny nicknames like Chicken Lady (kept chickens in the house) or Crazy Legs Morton (a guy that couldn't stand still), and would always come back with a full (and I'm sure sometimes exaggerated) report of all the nuttiness witnessed in people's homes.

I mentioned before that Personality Disorder was terribly jealous of our other sales person, Perky Man's suave skills with the ladies.

Personality Disorder was a very lonely man.

He lived with his mother who relied upon him for everything and waited on him hand and foot. His dad died when he was a teenager. He desperately wanted to fall in love, get married and start a family.

I started giving him dating advice. Offering suggestions on how to meet women and how to talk to them without coming off like a total psychopath.

One day he came in from his appointments and announced that he had met someone special. I was really pleased about this until I found out that he had met her in the personals in the back of the Columbus Dispatch and had only talked to her on the phone twice. A little over eager with the "special" in my opinion, but I was excited for him and asked him describe her.

She sounded like a smaller female version of him. She was in sales, lived with her mother, was painfully shy and wanted desperately to fall in love and start a family. As it happened she went to a therapist in the same building as Personality Disorder's therapist.

Clearly it was kismet.

Personality Disorder asked me to schedule his appointments light for the day of his date. Then later he changed his mind and asked me to clear his entire schedule after 1pm thinking that he'd need some extra time to get ready.

I asked him what time his date was and he said 7:30pm.

Laughing Boy and I speculated about what exactly Personality Disorder would do to get ready for a date that required 6 and half hours. We had a lot of laughs (hence the handle Laughing Boy) tossing out possible Personality Disorder agendas of getting ready for a date:

• 1:15PM - Bong hits
• 1:18PM - Eat peanut butter sandwiches with crusts cut off prepared by mother
• 1:20PM - Play Galaga
• 5:30PM - Masturbate
• 5:35PM - Cry
• 5:40PM - Bong hits
• 6:00PM - Shower
• 6:15PM - Shave
• 6:10PM - Anoint self with oils
• 6:15PM - Beat self with willow branches
• 6:20PM - Chant
• 6:25PM - Masturbate
• 6:30PM - Cry
• 6:35PM - Wash hands
• 6:45 PM - Get dressed
• 6:46 PM - Avoid bong hits and masturbating
• 7:00PM - Drive to date's house
• 7:05 PM - Sit in car...
• 7:06 PM - Masturbate
• 7:10 PM - Cry
• 7:25 PM - Ring date's doorbell
• 7:26 PM - Ask where the powder room is so he can wash his hands.

and so on...

He called in sick the day after this date.

He was married to this woman within 6 months of this date.

She seemed very controlling to me because she would call the office and ask me to lighten his schedule which did nothing but piss me off. I told her that I would defer to Personality Disorder who was usually asking me to do the opposite and schedule him with more sales calls so he could potentially bring in more commissions.

He quit shortly after this. His fiance, whom Laughing Boy and I referred to secretly as Anita Man, was pregnant and didn't think he was making enough money and demanded he find a new job.

I never saw him again, but sometimes Perky Man would give me sad updates about how Personality Disorder had been brutally emasculated by Anita Man and was no longer able to do anything he enjoyed like smoke pot, play video games or hang out with the boys. Basically Personality Disorder was every bit as miserable as he was prior to having all his dreams of love, marriage and a family come true.

The dating advice I wish I'd given him: Don't marry someone who calls your work and asks them to change your schedule for you, like you're some kind of pussy-whipped bitch.

Oh, and be careful what you wish for.

Me & The Guys Part 2

Perky Man Goes On His Dream Vacation

Perky Man was our #1 sales dude at the subcontractor where I worked as the Office Manager from 1995 to late 1999. He was a great guy to work with because he rarely complained about anything, was always really upbeat and positive and I knew that I could rely on him to be places on time and that he would behave like a gentleman and not act like a total asshat when he was in a customer's home.

He was an attractive man, but he was a little too cute for my tastes.

He had a baby face and his features were just too precious and I could tell that he was going to look like William H. Macy as he aged. Lots of other women found him attractive though and were constantly calling looking for him or leaving messages with me at the office. Perky Man was a rather suave ladies man, and that's another reason I found him unattractive. I liked him a lot, just the same and considered him a friend.

It was nearly impossible not to like him.

I met his mother once when she was in town visiting and stopped into the office to meet Perky Man for lunch and I nearly choked because she looked exactly like him. I fussed over him and told her what a nice son she had raised. Later I told my boss, Laughing Boy, about it.

Laughing Boy: Oh, I'm sorry I missed Perky Man's mother, what was she like?

Me: Imagine Perky Man wearing knit separates from Talbot's and a curly frosted wig.

Perky Man was one of the most contented people I have ever known. He wasn't particularly ambitious and seemed perfectly cozy so long as he had enough money to cover his living expenses and had enough left over to buy pot and go to concerts. The man loved pot.

Perky Man was really cheap. He kept a pair of scissors in his car and would pull over to the side of the road and cut wildflowers to give to his girlfriends. They, of course thought this was wildly romantic. I, on the other hand was familiar with his patterns and knew that he kept scissors in his car because he did this all the time for every girl he dated and would be breaking up with them by leaving a message on their answering machines 2 weeks later.

Another fun example of his cheapness was that he refused to buy a new cell phone and walked around carrying one of these giant nightmares.

Perky Man usually went on vacation every year with our other sales dude, Personality Disorder, and many of their other hippie lettuce buddies to the Outer Banks, where they'd rent a house and lay around like a bunch of dopey slobs. Somehow Perky Man always managed to get laid on vacation, and Personality Disorder was terribly jealous of Perky's prowess with the ladies.

My boss, Laughing Boy, marshmallow that he was, allowed both of our sales dudes to go on vacation at the same time. It infuriated me because I was the one who did all the scheduling, but since Laughing Boy was the one who had to pick up the slack and do all of the sales calls while they were gone I didn't fuss about it too much.

One year Perky Man went on vacation to Jamaica. It was his ganja dream come true. Personality Disorder couldn't afford to go so Perky Man went with a different pothead friend. I was really happy for him because he'd been excited and talking about it for a long time.

When he came back he had an entire photo album of pictures of pot in various stages of growth and himself in various states of consciousness. There were many pictures of him holding giant (like 3 feet long) dried weed clusters in much the same way a fisherman has his picture taken holding up his big trophy catch.

Proud and confident, only instead of a fish he was holding giant dried stalks of cannabis and wearing a hooded, red-eyed, bleary smirk.

He lovingly reminisced over the pictures in the album with everyone at the office in much the same way that anyone would who has returned from their dream vacation (back in the days before everyone had a digital camera the photos were tangible kids!) as if the pictures were of things other than pot and of him by himself, smirking and stoned.

Did I mention that Perky Man was one of our best and most reliable employees?

Well, yes he was.

The next time you have work done in your home take a good long look at the sales rep who comes out to take measurements and the workmen who eventually come out to complete the job.

Take a good long look at them.

Don't ever leave these people in your home unattended and don't ever ask them any personal questions.

Unless you're looking to score a dime bag, then you're golden.

Me & The Guys Part 1

Junebug & The Most Ridiculous Phone Message I Have Ever Taken

At first I refused to take it.

The foremost part of my job at this place was to answer the phones and a great deal of that involved taking messages. Most of the messages were for my boss, Laughing Boy, the manager of the sub-contractor where I worked as the Office Manager from 1995 to late 1999. But some of the messages were for the men in the work crews. During this time hardly anyone had a cell phone, but most of our crew leaders had pagers.

Over time I had developed pretty good relationships with most of the guys wives and girlfriends. They would call during the work day and leave messages with me for the guys, knowing that I would see them when they called in or stopped back into the shop between jobs.

The wives and girlfriends also knew that I was the one who made the schedule and that I knew exactly where the men were (or were supposed to be) at any given point during the day.

I had a strict policy about this.

I did not give out exact locations.

After the person who called was confirmed by the crewman to indeed be a legit wife or girlfriend and he also confirmed that it was OK for this woman to know his business if she asked, I would reveal only what area the man was working in and when I expected them to be finished for the day. After that I would take whatever message they had. If it was an emergency I would page the crew leader.

I never lied or covered up for them.

If I knew I wouldn't be able to contact them I would tape their phone messages to the mailboxes I set up for them by the back door where they parked their trucks for the night before going home.

The Most Ridiculous Phone Message I Have Ever Taken was for a gentleman named Junebug.

I don't know why Junebug was allowed to continue his employment with the company and my best guess is the sum of 2 reasons.

1) Laughing Boy was a marshmallow

2) We were desperate for workmen and couldn't afford to pay very much so everyone with a strong back and a pulse was given a shot. Laughing Boy was over the moon if you had your own tools.

Laughing Boy shared with me this tid-bit from Junebug's interview:

Laughing Boy: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Junebug: Well I'm hopin' to be off the sauce and get my drivin' license back.

Laughing Boy: Are you drunk right now?

Junebug: No sir. But I smoked a little weed in the car on my way here to take the edge off, 'cause I was feelin' kind of nervous.

I reminded Laughing Boy that we would have to send Junebug to work in people's homes and that people would see (and smell) him wearing clothing with our company logo on them. But Laughing Boy felt sorry for him and admired his honesty and hired him anyway, but with very low expectations.

Junebug didn't disappoint us.

On his first day of work Junebug showed up on time but made 4 enormous mistakes.

His first, second and third mistakes were these:

He strutted through the door, walked over to where I was sitting, put both his hands on my shoulders and said at top volume, something to the effect of, "Damn girl, you lookin' fine today. OOoo-Whee! Can you go and get me a cup of coffee?"

His fourth mistake was this:

He did these things while I was on the phone with a customer.

I ignored Junebug who began to speak to me again in the same vein, until I turned around and he saw my face.

He stopped bugging me and skulked off.

When I got off the phone I informed him that my name was Lady and that is how he may refer to me from now on. I informed him that he may keep his hands and his opinion of my looks to himself, forever, no matter how fine I may be looking, and that the next time it happened he would be introduced to the company's sexual harassment policies which included firing or suspension without pay.

I further informed him that I was usually pretty busy doing my job and would never, ever have enough time to get him a cup of coffee, but that there was always a fresh pot in the break room and he may help himself whenever it should please him. Lastly I let him know that he was never, ever, under any circumstances to speak to me and expect an answer while I was on the phone.

After we understood each other, Junebug was kinda sweet, and as much of a gentleman to me as he knew how to be. He even attempted a little extra formality and added the word Miss to my name. Miss Lady.

Unfortunately Junebug could never be relied upon to show up for any Saturday shifts and would often disappear after I handed out the paychecks on Friday, leaving the crew leaders stranded with no helper for the rest of the day. No crew leaders wanted to have Junebug on their team and would often choose to work alone rather than have him along.

One Saturday morning he came in drunk and Laughing Boy had to send him home. It happened before I came in, but Laughing Boy said that it also appeared that Junebug had pissed himself.

It surprised me to find out that Junebug had a lady friend. A pretty serious one.

Here is how I found out:

One afternoon when I answered the phone a really wasted sounding woman politely asked for Junebug in a barely comprehensible slur. I said that he didn't really work in the office, but out in the field and that I'd be happy to leave him a message. She said no, that it was OK and she'd just get in touch with him later.

The same woman called back a few minutes later. Apparently she had changed her mind and decided to leave a message after all. It was the Most Ridiculous Phone Message I Have Ever Taken and after she gave me her name it went exactly like this:

"You tell Junebug that I DO love him and that I WILL marry him!!"

Allrighty. Yes.

I thought to myself, "I can't believe I am writing this down."