Part four: A divinely
placed apple and the second coming of Elsie W.
Those
of you who have been reading this blog for some time know that Hubby takes a
two week break from it all and goes to Colorado to stay in the mountains with
his sister and her husband. And, if
you’ve been paying attention, you also know that over the years, weird stuff
tends to happen when hubby goes away.
Some of
the highlights:
Peaches
moved to her first apartment and I had to rent a UHAUL and then a bunch of kids
to help move. I can barely drive in reverse in my own car, so my friend Sparkle
had to back the UHAUL into my driveway.
Skippy’s
car’s axle snapped in half a block from house in the middle of a torrential
downpour.
After
enjoying a couple adult beverages and a movie, Peaches shaved her head…and I
had to help clean of up the patches she couldn’t reach.
I gave
Skippy the task of clearing out the weeks in a large patch of the back yard.
Obviously the only smart decision was to burn the weeds down. Fortunately for us, we didn’t have any
lighter fluid, and had to try burning green weeds with lamp oil. Spoiler
alert…it doesn’t work.
Anyway,
so my point is that weird stuff, comical stuff, or tragic stuff tends to happen
when Hubby’s calming presence isn’t close by. The kids and I would probably spin off the
globe if it weren’t for Hubby. Which is
why, every time he goes to Colorado, he gives the kids the “don’t do anything
that will make your mother crazy” speech.
This
year was no different, except that this year I was working OUTSIDE the house,
which meant that the opportunity for crazy was far higher. And, true for form, something weird did
happen: I fell down.
I was taking my normal morning
walk. It was one of those lovely early fall mornings when it was cool, but not
cold and not dark, but the sun was just rising.
I had climbed two hills and was just about at the last turn for home
when I stepped on an apple, one that had fallen from a small tree in a front
yard, and fell down. I get points for
not swearing. All I said as I fell to the concrete was “ no, no, no…”
But
yes, yes, yes, I fell. My left knee and
left elbow hit the concrete hard. However, like all adults my age who would
rather die than have someone see them lying helpless anyplace, I leapt to my
feet and kept walking. It was too early
for even the middle school kids to be out walking, so I doubt anyone saw me. My
dignity, what little I have, was intact!
My
elbow was not. I managed to tear the skin open on both my arm and my leg,
although there was no damage to my brand new jeans (thank goodness! It’s very hard to find a 14W in jeans, and
honestly, the 16Ws are too big. Another
shout out to Noom.) I was, however,
having a really hard time bending an unbending my elbow. A normal person would have stayed home and
called a doctor.
I think
we all know what I did.
Sitting
at my desk there at Stuff, Empowered, I had trouble doing things. Like, basic things. Like resting my elbow on
the desk, or like bending my elbow. But hey, who needs to use their left elbow?
Not me!
I
plowed through work on Monday and Tuesday, but by the end of the day on Tuesday
I was sort of done with it all. I was done with the pain. I was done with the
exhaustion too. By then I’d been at the job a month and I. Was. Tired. So, I did what a good employee would do: I
burned a paid day off and slept in on Wednesday.
My plan
was to lie on the couch all day and watch movies and heal. I wasn’t going to
the doctor, I think you all know me well enough by now to know that wasn’t going
to happen. But, when I emerged from bed
after sleeping 12 solid hours, I felt like I had to DO something. So, I fired
my resume off to three more places, this time to jobs that were part time. Ten
minutes later I had a phone call from…let’s call him Matty from a small tech
company in town. They needed a part time office person like…yesterday. Could I
come in that day for an interview.
I
hadn’t planned on getting out of my jammies, but sure, why not. I tarted up, put on my “first interview”
outfit and headed over. I talked to
Matty for an hour. Wow, did they need a
person. Not so much an office person as an office mom. Two computer wizards and
Matty, who was running the office, but really just wanted to quick working
forever. I’ll go into more detail about the weirdness of that interview and the
job in another blog. But here’s the
highlight: Part time, 20-24 hours a week, $18 an hour, and once I was done with
my work for the day I could read, right, watch movies, whatever. They just
needed someone to answer the phone and talk to anyone who walked through the
door.
Perfect.
Especially
since, upon returning to work the next day, I had a new pod mate.
How does one describe her?
Well,
she brought in two large Walmart bags full of candy. She was carrying a Starbucks coffee taller
than she was, and half of it was whipped cream.
When she got into her cubicle, she proceeded to unpack all of her candy
and snacks and whatnot, and then she proceeded to start eating.
And
eating.
And
eating.
OH MY
DEAR LORD… IT’S ELSIE W!
(for
those of you who don’t know Elsie W, you’re going to have to go back to the
early posts of this blog, or buy one of the two books I wrote about her.)
But
yes, friends, my new pod neighbor was the second coming of dear old Elsie.
She
showed up late. She didn’t pay attention
to anything anyone said to her. She always had a better solution to whatever
someone told her to do.
Oh, and
remember the F12 button? Well, they
didn’t use F12 at Stuff, Empowered, they used a VA03, which like the most
common code used to access information there. When I last checked, she’d been
there a month and still couldn’t remember VA03.
But in
all my days, I’ve never, ever seen anyone put away more sugar than New Elsie
W. For training, while she was supposed
to be taking notes at other people’s desks, she took big bags of candy…the
chewy kind like starburst. You know, the exact kind of candy you should NOT eat
when you’re training for a busy phone job.
Oh, but
it gets better. (For those of you thinking this is bordering on gossip, I don’t
gossip. What I do is observe and report.
And that’s what I’m doing now.)
Red had
to train New Elsie. W. Poor Red. Not learning VA03 and the candy thing wasn’t
even the half of the problem with N.E.W.
Nope, the biggest problem was the…sleeping.
See,
once thing I learned in teacher school is that what goes up must come
down. What eats candy from dawn to noon
must, MUST crash immediately before lunch.
Picture
this if you will: Stuff, Empowered keeps
the office cold. Now, most people wear
sweaters. Some will keep a blanket at their desk for those long afternoons of
typing when you can just wrap up in a blanket at your desk and stay warm.
And
there are those few…those very fun few, who wrap up in the blanket and wear it
everywhere they go. Guess which group
N.E.W. belongs to?
The
best part, it was a Baby Yoda blanket.
Did I
mention N.E.W. was very, very short. Not like little person short, because that
would be wrong to poke at her height then. No, she was just short. The top of
her head was just barely visible over the standard cubicle divider. Basically,
she was a Hobbit, wrapped in a Baby Yoda blanket, eating candy all day and
sleeping half the time.
First
weeks I was at Stuff Empowered, I was terrified to have anything on my desk,
including my phone, because, you know, rules. But not N.E.W. Nope, she had zero
terror. She brought her phone along with the big bag of candy and then scrolled
through her social media while Tucker, Jasper, Molly, and a host of other team
members were trying to train her.
Sleeping and scrolling and snacking while wrapped in a blanket.
Hm. You
know, Elsie had a couple daughters. I
should have asked NEW what her mom’s name was.
They say the Starburst fruit chew doesn’t fall far from the tree.
So I’m
sitting at my desk, across the way from the blanketed NEW who has all four food
groups at her desk: Sugar, chocolate, coffee, and energy drinks. (How was she not having a heart attack every
day?) and I ‘m watching her scroll to her heart’s content, except when she’s
firing off giggle inducing messages to her BFF, Trixie, one of Jasper’s pod
mates. Trixie was also a non-stop eater, but her food of choice was salty
snacks.
Remember
how Stuff Empowered didn’t give anyone garbage cands under their desks because
they wanted us to talk to the centrally located cans, thereby forcing us to get
up and get blood flow back into our feet?
Yeah, well NEW was having none of that. Upon hearing she wasn’t going to
be given a can, she took to dumping her trash in a Walmart bag handing on the
coat hook in her cube (so attractive) and periodically, as it filled during the
day, she hobbited herself over to Trixie’s cube to dump it in the can Trixie
brought from home.
The
centrally located can was 11 steps from NEW and my desks. Trixie’s desk was three steps from the
centrally located cans. That means NEW couldn’t be bothered to walk an extra
three steps.
The
minute NEW landed in the cube across from mine, my mind was made up. I didn’t
care about the giant pay cut (because fewer hours) or the lack of benefits or
the fact that I was literally going to be working for the Wizard of Oz. I needed to get out of there before NEW’s
sugar addiction crossed over to my cubicle and I gained back the 35 pounds I
spent the last year losing. Thanks to a
divinely snt apple and the new girl, I’d finally realized cubicle life wasn’t
for me.
NEXT UP: Goodbye
Stuff Empowered, Hello Stuff Recovered.
No comments:
Post a Comment