Daily Archives: June 4, 2009

wet pants

Posted in science by

Part of my job at The Lab is to ease new people into our environment and give them some knowledge so it looks like they know what they’re doing. I get all fresh meat for a couple of hours on their first or second day, we go over company policies and internal systems, and I send them on their merry way. It’s a good system.

Early last year – not long after I had started working here myself – a new guy joined one of our teams. We made plans for me to do my training thing the following morning, and I left him to the devices of other people for the day.

The next day rolls around, and it’s a wet one. I rode my scooter to work, and was rewarded with a torrential downpour – my pants were soaked right through, and I was late getting into the office. I ran to my desk then to the new guy, explaining that I was having a pants emergency and needed 15 minutes to wring myself out and then we could get started. He said fine, I tried to dry myself off as best I could, and we started the meeting.

We adjourned for lunch at 12, and started the meeting up again at 1. However, the new guy was nowhere to be seen. I told the others to hang on while I went hunting for the new guy, but when I was unable to find him, we continued without him. Whatever; I was sure there was a good explanation for his absence and we could just catch up later.

There was a good explanation, alright – the new guy quit. He walked into HR, told them he was quitting, and left after less than 36 hours on the job.

Why did he quit so suddenly?

MY PANTS WERE WET.

I am dead serious. He quit the company because my pants were wet. Specifically, he told HR that it was “the most unprofessional and ridiculous environment he had ever been in”, that I was “sloppy and inappropriate”, the rest of the team were “rude and incompetent”, and he had never been subjected to such an insult as being asked to delay a meeting because someone had wet pants.

Me and my inappropriately sloppy wet pants are unprofessional, ridiculous, and fucking hilarious.

He quit because my pants were wet!

This guy wasn’t some 60 year old from the Mad Men era; he was a fat slouchy neck beard who had mouth-breathing issues and an enormous chip on his shoulder. His team manager and I were pulled into HR to talk about the issue, and luckily she was just as incredulous as we were – we weren’t in trouble (although she did ask me to refrain from telling new people about my pants); it was just a formality because he lodged a complaint. WET PANTS! QUIT YOUR JOB AND RUN AWAY!

It later came to pass that another coworker in a different department knew this guy – he had worked at a company that this chap had just been fired from. He was fired because he took issue with something the team manager did, and reacted by throwing his headset down, sweeping everything off his desk and launching himself at the manager, swearing and yelling. Police were called. He went nuts and had to be escorted off the premises. None of this was known when he interviewed, and HR really wished she HAD known – it was actually noted that no one was really sure about this guy because he was “a little weird”, but we were desperate for new staff so they took a chance they would later regret.

It’s now become a running joke – when a new hire shows up for work on his or her third day, I congratulate them for making it further than this guy.

It’s been a while, but he’s resurfaced. He actually works for a client of ours, and had to call us for something. He’s been coming down to our office and demanding to speak to managers, throwing his (considerable but nonexistent) weight around, and barking orders left and right. He’s threatening to take his business elsewhere – except “his business” is the company he works for, and the company he works for is a tiny one-office non-for-profit CO-OP. He’s in absolutely no position to be making the demands he’s making, and I’ve personally volunteered to kick him in the nuts the next time he shows up at our offices trying to bitch us out and get the home numbers of managers because he thinks he deserves the same level of service given to our largest customer (who, for the record, don’t get our home numbers either). The fucker tried to get me in trouble, and for him to show up again with that kind of attitude means that it’s on. I’m small but mean. Try me.

WET PANTS!

the bucket, explained

Posted in everyday kimli by

It’s my mom’s birthday today, and in her honour, I will attempt to explain just what is the deal with the pee buckets:

My mom’s apartment is oddly laid out. It’s technically a two-bedroom place, but is laid out in such a way that there is no clear living room – it’s shaped like a square donut. Because of this, we decided to make the second bedroom into the living room, and set it up accordingly.

She complains that we don’t visit enough, but we’ve flat out told her why: her place is incredibly uncomfortable for us. I’ve been trying to get her to buy a futon (or at the very least, a full-sized couch) for us to sleep on for YEARS, but she is cheap and doesn’t want to spend the money (that she definitely has). When we do visit and don’t want to shell out for a hotel, we make do: her bizarre apartment came with a sort of .. window seat, I guess. There’s an alcove at the end of the hallway that for reason I absolutely cannot fathom, has a piece of plywood across it. It’s too low to be a table or shelf, yet too high to put anything useful on top of it. There’s also no window. It is completely pointless, so we sleep on it. It’s not big enough for two people, but the alternative is worse: sleep on the floor with the spiders, or banish one of us (me) to the Love Seat of Doom: a 1980-era leather love seat constructed out of steel girders and rocks. It’s about 3’ wide and has deeply slanted arm rests, meaning you sleep with your legs hanging off the end and fuck your neck up for weeks. Sometimes the thought of sleeping on the love seat will literally bring me to tears, so Ed and I will attempt to sleep head-to-toe on the plywood so we both fit. I hate the plywood, but I hate that love seat so much more.

My mom is courteous in the strangest ways. She’ll call me fat, then urge me to take home food from her bakery and chocolate bars and candy. She will say she’s not buying us any presents, but will hand me some cash or buy me something I’m interested in when we’re out together. She refuses to buy grown-up furniture that she actually NEEDS and will provide us a place to sleep thereby making our visits much more frequent and less painful, yet she pees in a bucket to avoid waking us up in the night.

For some reason I am sure makes perfect sense in her own head (my mother and I are a lot alike in this way), my mother will not leave her room to use the bathroom when we are visiting because the light and noise might wake us up. Instead, she will use a bucket or pitcher in her bedroom, then dispose of the contents in the usual manner in the morning. It is SO WEIRD. I don’t get it. My mother is insane.

Happy birthday, you utter wackjob. Maybe I will buy you a new bucket for your birthday, assuming I haven’t talked myself out of our visit this weekend – I hate that fucking love seat.

kick you in yourself

Posted in everyday kimli by

Hey, left uterus. I can feel you trying to release that egg into the depths of eternal afterlife in my womb. If you don’t cut it out – or at least do it quieter – I am going to haul off and kick you in yourself.

Just a friendly warning.