Yup, God still hates me
Today is my twenty-fifth anniversary on the job. Twenty five years of working for the same boss and punching the same time clock. Everything else about it has changed, though.
I was hired primarily to be an illustrator, back when that meant ink and magic markers and pretty, colorful crayons on paper. But an in-house shop does everything, so I also had to do paste-up and publications design, darkroom work, technical illustration, signage, floor plans…you name it. I once illustrated a Basic Hygeine for Retards book, because someone on the kitchen staff had horrible B.O. and everybody was afraid to tell him.
I worked there two years before we bought our first computer. I got to watch all those fields transition from manual (primarily based on photographic technologies) to digital. It was very cool.
Well, I thought it was very cool.
Anyhow, when you have a major anniversary, you get to pick out a gift ahead of time and there’s cake and stories and stuff. Only…nothing. The topic didn’t even come up today. You don’t bring these things up — it’s a pretend surprise — so I’m thinking maybe because I was late picking out my gift (a pocket camera) that they’re still waiting for it.
Oh, and I’m coming down with a cold.
August 22, 2008 — 5:10 pm
Comments: 28
The stealth fighter that almost torpedoed a weasel
The research and engineering company I work for really didn’t need Xtreme image processing technology to do boring old science. Computers that could do graphics cost gigantic bucks in the ’80s and, really, the ink-and-vellum we’d used for a hundred and twiddly-two years would do what needed doing just fine. The purpose of all that expensive computer graphics tech was marketing. It was worth a few hundred thousand corporate bucks for pie charts that made prospective clients go, “holy farging shift, what consummate geeks!”
So Weasel got excellent toys to play with.
We started with a turnkey business graphics system. Then, in 1987, when Photoshop was just a gleam in Thomas Knoll‘s eye, they bought me (me! Mine! Mine, I tell you!) a digital image processing system. Um, a thingie that did Photoshoppy stuff.
I had worked with photos for years before that, but even I have trouble remembering now what life was like before Photoshop. It was hard, slow and expensive to alter a photo in any way, and even the most skillful job usually looked like shit. People took for granted the accuracy of photos, because that was the correct thing to do.
All that changed with digital image processing, and I had a blast giving people their first taste of it. My workstation was a standard stop on the company tour. Typically, I would take a snapshot of the man standing in front of me and merrily erase his mustache, give him a third eye and make his ears the size of dinnerplates, in real time. Oh, to see the sweet innocence fade from a middle-aged businessman’s eye!
Another cool thing we could do, because we did all our film processing in-house, was create nifty graphics and produce slides (remember slides?) while a meeting was still in progress. My favorite was the time we captured a picture of the client’s corporate offices from the back page of his annual report, and I used my P’shoppical skills to set the building on fire. I’m told several old guys in rumpled suits leapt up and dashed for the phones when that slide came up. w00t!
So this one time, shortly after we bought the image processor, we were in talks with Lockheed and the salesdude wanted me to make him a nice title slide beforehand. I was given a photo of a plane that was just crap. TOTALLY blurry and out of focus. I couldn’t believe it; it was the shittiest photo I’d ever been given to work with.
Scandalized, I set about cleaning it up. I mean, it was pretty easy to make out what the thing looked like under the blur, if you were a highly trained professional artard like what I am. And so, using my mad illustration skillz, I basically did a light, semi-transparent drawing on top of the photo. It was coming along pretty good, too — downright photorealistic-looking — when my boss walked in and shrieked like he was a little girl and I just dropped a frog down her blouse.
Yeah, see, the F-117 Nighthawk was still highly classified in 1987, and that blurry, deliberately fucked-up photo was the only one that had been officially released — and then only to Lockheed’s technical partners. Who knew? Not this weasel, for sheasel.
So, back in the days when photos never lied, what were my chances of explaining to the nice men from the FBI or the CIA or the Secret Service or whoever how I came by a nice, clean photo of their sooper-secret stealth dingus?
July 1, 2008 — 11:28 am
Comments: 31
Don’t talk to me; I’m sulking
Rats! Damn! Pooh! Argh! Zounds! Piffle! My Photoshop has learned a new trick: shutting itself down without warning, dumping my work in the process. Bad, BAD Photoshop.
My boss is taking Fridays off for the rest of the Summer, so I spent today drawing you a pitcher. And it was coming out real good. Srsly.
No, I hadn’t saved. Don’t rub it in.
THIRTY people in this building are retiring today. The company isn’t in trouble or anything; it’s a boring artifact to do with how our pensions are calculated. After breakfast, I spent the morning drifting from cake to cake. And then it was time for lunch. After which, some vendor sent us steak sandwiches as a thank-you for some damn thing somebody in our group did. I’m unclear on the details.
…it was a picture of a great bloated sack of a weasel…
Anyhoo, one of the retirees is an engineer with almost 45 years with the company. I was once in his chain of command. Nice enough man, but boy — what an engineer. He sat down with my boss and me one day years ago and tried to come up with guidelines for the design of publications. I’ll never forget it. One of the questions he asked was, “what is the optimum percentage of white space on a page?”
In case thou art not graphically inclined, this makes as much sense as asking an engineer to write guidelines for composing pop music, including the optimum number of oh, babys per love song.
I know you guys don’t like to hear it, but there are problems for which an engineering approach is ill-suited.
There: time to slide down the brontosaurus. It’s Friday! Let’s go home and drink!
June 27, 2008 — 4:18 pm
Comments: 35
Electric weasel
As a special Friday thank-you to my dear readers I’M GOING TO FRY YOUR RETINAS.
The woman who sits next to me was on vacation this week. She expected a delivery of CD’s for a trade show to arrive Thursday. I was supposed to open it, test one, keep five for our records, and overnight the box to the London office.
Gotcha. I’m supposed to blah blah blah blah. Good thing she sent me an email.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep last night, I had a HOLY SHIT THE CD’S DIDN’T COME moment. And then I had a HOLY SHIT I’M A BEAUTIFUL FAIRY PRINCESS moment, pulled the covers over my head and drifted away.
Between you and me, the woman who sits next to me scares me shitless. She was once legendary for her sweaty, screaming tirades (“it was the hormones they had me on,” she told me later). The conflicts between me and the woman who sits next to me were so frequent and so bitter that our mutual boss referred to us as sisters. Just to piss us off. We’ve mellowed a lot over the years, but I’d still rather eat sharp, rusty things than screw with TWWSNTM.
So I’ve spent all morning tracking down that package. It was delivered Wednesday, badly addressed, and found itself with no label at all in the cubicle of the office bing-bong (“how long do you think she’d’ve sat on it if we hadn’t come looking?” my boss wondered aloud). It looked like it had been drop-kicked by an earth elemental. Everything tested out okay, though, and I got it back in the mail.
I don’t care where you work, I guarantee the guy who works in your mailroom thinks his job is fascinating. That’s a good thing, or we’d be training a new one every six months after the old one dragged himself home and smoked a Buick. But damn I could’ve lived without True Wild West Tales of the Customs Declaration Forms this morning. Just mail the thing, Sunshine…don’t chant me a Norse Edda.
It won’t make deadline, but it won’t miss by much and they have some slack.
So, happy Friday! Join me in hoisting a tall frosty…glass of…vodka and tonic in honor of TWWSNTM and Boring Mailroom Guy. Where would we be without them?
Where indeed?
May 30, 2008 — 3:27 pm
Comments: 40
Be nice. It’s the law.
Okay, here’s the scenario: You’ve been on the job six months. Day after day, people roll their eyes when you make suggestions. They don’t invite you to social functions, or even team meetings. They’re rude to you, refuse you help when you ask for it. They don’t return your calls or answer your emails. In fact, you’ve seen them scuttle out of their offices to avoid you. They certainly never praise you or defend your ideas.
Naturally, you conclude:
A. Oh my god! Everybody here hates me and thinks I’m stupid. I’m an incompetent jerk! Mayhap I also smell!
B. Oh my god! This is an office full of incompetent jerks who just don’t get me and my peculiar talents. I’d better find a new job.
C. Oh my god! I can’t possibly leave this job and yet I’m being horribly persecuted. I got PTSD! I’ll stick it out for a few more years and then lawyer up, big time. Mine is a lonely struggle against evil oppressors, just like that civil rights thingie I hear so much about.
Yep. It’s C — at least, if you’re the New York Times.
I’m not making that up about the civil rights movement. If you watch the video at the first link, the lawyer who specializes in ‘bullying’ makes the comparison. It’s part of his standard boilerplate there outta be a law and I’m just the guy to make it speech.
The comment section is rich, too. I cut a little slack to the people who had long and successful careers and then land with a special asshole of a boss. It’s a shock at first, though they really need to butch up. If you haven’t had a genuinely obnoxious boss or co-worker, you haven’t worked much. My favorites, though, are comments like this:
I have been bullied to varying degrees at every job I’ve had. While I support and admire efforts to remedy workplace bullying and would benefit from these efforts if implemented successfully and thoroughly, I don’t hold out much hope. Bullying, especially in the workplace, where people are by definition vying for money, status, and power, is simply inherent in human nature. I wish I could say it’s just the dark side of human nature, but my view has become that a phrase such as “the dark side of human nature” is redundant. Human nature is dark, period. Sorry for being so negative, but my comment reflects my lifetime of bad experiences.
— Posted by Anonymous
Bullied at every single job he or she has had, so there’s something terribly wrong with — human nature! The entire species!
So, go back and read the list of behaviors that constitute bullying — behaviors these guys want to make illegal. Actionable in a court of law. Sue your ass off behaviors. If you had a real jerk of a boss or a co-worker, how many of those bullet points would constitute your only defensive weapons against the obnoxious attentions of an asshole?
March 26, 2008 — 12:27 pm
Comments: 60
Alas, poor Stoaty
Fate has not ceased to take large and fulsome dumps upon the head of an innocent weasel. Oh, no. Woke up this morning with a vile cold; the timing is perfect to make it an airplane bug. Thank you, thank you. Please, sir, may I have some more?
This here thing is, indeed, a weasel skull. Isn’t eBay wonderful?
I’ve got a cow orker who collects skulls. Buys them on eBay. Really, seriously, the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, but a little henpecked. So he doesn’t tell his wife that he buys them. She wouldn’t like it. And he doesn’t tell anybody else in the office. He has that much sense.
Just me.
I am the secret repository of the knowledge that Richard has a skull collection hidden in his basement. And now you are, too.
I’m not easy about this. I’m, like, “dude…please. Promise me you aren’t making an altar down there.”
He swears he’s not. He shares with me his skull cleaning and refinishing secrets. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I guess. There are some who swear by boiling, and them as owe their allegiance to beetles. There’s matte paint and shiny paint and clear varnish.
He leans in my cubicle, gives me the thumbs up and whispers happily, “gazelle! Forty bucks! Three teeth missing and one little hole in the temple!”
I’m thinking it’s a pheromone. A secret, stealthy eau de nutball that makes ’em come sniffing ’round my back door.
Of course, that wouldn’t explain you people.
January 11, 2008 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 16
Monday, right?
My password expired over Thanksgiving holiday. “Please type new password to log in…” it says. So I do that and it answers, “you do not have permission to change your password.”
Huh. Call the Helpdesk.
“Okay, security question: what was your first car?”
“Karmen Ghia.”
“Uhhhh…spell that?”
“K-A-R-M-A — no, E — N G-H-I-A”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Volkswagen?”
“No.”
“Errrr…VW?”
“No. And now you’ve given three wrong answers and you’re locked out.” He huffs in an now look what you’ve done I hope you’re happy kind of way. Then follows a lecture about how it’s extremely important to give accurate answers to those security questions. Well, my answers were accurate, dammit. It’s a stupidly ambiguous security question.
“So what do you do if someone dies.”
-pause-
“Ma’am, I don’t even understand why you’d ask me that question.”
“Well, let’s say somebody gets hit by a bus and you really need to get access to his data. He’s not around to tell you the name of his first car. What do you do then?”
“The manager.” (I swear that’s all he said. The manager, just like that).
“The manager…?”
Then the line went dead. I don’t think he hung up on me. Surely not. Surely. Not. But by then, I’d seen my boss go by. He’s The Manager that all the kids are talking about, so I dumped it in his lap, went back to my desk, and drew these small but hauntingly lovely cartoons on post-it notes until the Help Desk called me back.
I feel like I’ve gone to the Crazy Place.
November 26, 2007 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 49
Notes from the Home Office
That’s not really my cube — I’m three rows and a Data Center up from there — but mine is laid out and stuck in the traffic pattern exactly the same. So I don’t have my back to the door, as McGoo feared, but my partitions are only elbow high — people coming in the directions indicated by the arrows can snag a glimpse of each of my two monitors, respectively. I have to employ all my considerable weasel powers to continue goofing off the extent I have become accustomed.
First thing I noticed, watching humanity walk by, was how very many Indian people work at the home office. That’s funny because the president of the company is Indian. And when the head of Research was Chinese, so were most of the scientists. I know, I know…but when they elevated an Irishman to the top of training, suddenly all the new training hires were European, which flat doesn’t make sense however you look at it.
I don’t substantially object; I assume people tap into their prior contacts or their alma mater to make new hires. It just so damned blatant, is all. We forever hear what arrogant bigots Americans are, but I wouldn’t have the gall to take a job abroad and hire nothing but my own kind.
This map hangs on the wall outside my cube; they’ve moved everything around in this area and everybody’s lost. One of my cow orkers pointed out the highlights to me.
“And down here are the Table People,” she said, pointing to the bottom.
“?”
“That’s what everybody calls them. The Table People. They don’t have cubes. They sit side by side at big long tables.”
“!!!”
“Oh, they seem happy enough,” she said in the same uneasy way you’d discuss conjoined twins or Romanian orphans.
I worked up my nerve after lunch to walk down and gawp at the Table People. PLEASEOHPLEASE…Weasel will be good! Promise! Don’t make me a Table People!
November 8, 2007 — 5:26 pm
Comments: 18
Everything old is old again
The night was made for love, according to such perpetual sentimentalists as Lanny Ross.
But not according to me.
At my advanced age, the night was made for such prosaic chores as getting to the column you didn’t write during the day.
Unobserved, you can sit around in your shorts, stare at the typewriter and sip hot milk until, touched by inspiration or desperation, you begin to write.
Typical blogger. In this case, Paul Coates of the Los Angeles Mirror, writing fifty years ago. A selection of his columns is currently being republished in the LA Times blog section.
The whole page has a sort of wait…what year is this? quality. Teen gangs. Drug addiction. Rogue cops. Gambling. Crime. Mexicans. The problems and the solutions are all of a dreary sameness. Air pollution? Electric cars. Teen pregnancy? Less scorn, more compassion. Rising prison population? Rehabilitation, certainly not more prisons.
Your humble weasel is just a little younger than these words and has thus spent one (1) whole lifetime reading this exact journalistic blah blah blah. I can’t help thinking…any disease that has hung around for half a century without either killing the patient or getting better has to be both less malignant than the pessimists would have it and less amenable to cure than the optimists tell us. It’s also getting pretty damned old.
I am only a little more web-present in this office than when I was flat out offline for two weeks. But this site inexplicably turned up during a legit Google images search (I find some of the weirdest nuggets that way) and, as the entire page had already downloaded itself, I felt entitled to read the whole thing. Starvation may have made this site more interesting than it actually is. But it is interesting, and if nothing else, the fun period ads running alongside make it worth a browse.
November 1, 2007 — 6:32 pm
Comments: 2
Huh. This again.
Man, am I glad somebody reminded me it was Hallowe’en. I saw a helpdesk nerd go by my cubicle with CD’s taped all over his shirt and thought somebody’d slipped mescaline into the water cooler.
This’ll be short and pointless. My trip home was a cascading clusterfuck. There was some boring delay at every stage of the journey. By the time I got home, I’d been at it twenty four hours…an experience I would have laughed away in my youth (ha HA), but rough duty on an elderly weasel. Then a few hours sleep and in to Soulless Incorporated.
My mind is a perfect and absolute blank. Into which I shall now pour alcohol.
October 31, 2007 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 23