A Five for Friday Rewind: Movie Quotes for the Stressed Office Drone

It's been that sort of week here at Stuff, Installed.  In the last ten days there's been a major argument about a pickle,  the day when the carpet cleaners and the electricians all disrupted Captain Nubbin's peace and quiet so he ran away for a couple hours, an interview with a potential employee that ended with C.N. fanning the guy's cologne stink out of his office  (hint:  He didn't get the job) and the usual parade of freaks and geaks and broken people who insist on giving Stuff Installed business.

In thumbing through some of my past Five for Fridays, I ran across this list of movie quotes which sort of brilliantly sums up everything I'd like to scream while on the phone with people who are incapable of getting through a day using the tiniest amount of common sense allowed.  If you, too, are sick of dealing with people who believe there is such a thing as a self cleaning bath tub, and get enraged when you suggest there isn't, and there certainly isn't one you personally installed because you don't do that, then this list is for you:


5)  I've been blown up!  Take me to the hospital!  Take me to the hospital, I'm sick!  (The 'Burbs)

One of my top 100 all time favorite movies.  "The "Burbs."  And one of the best quotes from a very quotable flick.  And a pretty good way to signal to those around you that you've had ENOUGH.


4) "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."  (Gone with the Wind)

Now, while I would NEVER advise cussing...something about tossing this classic verbal hand grenade into the middle of polite society is making me giggle at the moment.  Best part?  Ya don't even have to use much energy with this one.  Just calmly let it drop on the person or persons making some ridiculous request of you and walk away.  Perfection!

3)  "I'm Bob. Would you knock me out, please? Just hit me in the face. "  (What about Bob?)

Granted, this isn't so much an angry quote, but it just happens to be my Face book status at the moment.  Sometimes just asking for this kind of help will get your point across.  Sometimes.  Then again, if you're to the emotional point where you're asking to be smashed in the face, chances are you're working with complete morons who simply aren't going to get it.

2) Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED????????(Gladiator)


Yep, this one is the go to when those around you just aren't going to be happy no matter what you do or say. I'll admit, I've used this one...and had fairly decent results. Shut my kids up for about six minutes one hot summer day when I'd dragged them across God's green earth for summer time fun and they still wanted MORE!

1) Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.  (The Princess Bride  )

When feeling like the world is against you, wouldn't you just love to walk into a room full of people who have been making you insane and shout this battle cry?  And then proceed to share some of the sweet ninja moves you've been practicing since you were ten and some kid pushed you in the mud and you knew, you KNEW that someday you'd have a moment when the world was pressing down on you and you'd rise up, you'd RISE UP AND YOU'd TAKE CONTROL because you ARE A NINJA  and you RULE!


Um, oh wait, where was I?

So anyway, that's a list of five movie quotes everyone should have in their brain banks, just in case the right situation arises and you simply can't take it anymore....

Some days you just need to see someone else giggle.

Good evening!

Over the weekend I was beyond blue.  Things around here have sort of been weird, and not in the usual "oh hey, Sarah's going to laugh it off" sort of way.  In fact, I was in the middle of writing a very dark, depressing, not at all funny blog when Hubby invited me to walk to Starbucks with him.  (We have a Starbucks about a mile from our house.  Makes for a nice walk.)  I said, "It's cold, it's gray, it's windy.  I'm not walking to Starbucks."  He said he'd walk there and I should meet him in twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes later I dragged myself away from my very unfunny blog and drove to Starbucks.  He'd already ordered my favorite late in the day beverage, a grande vanilla rooibus tea.  We sat at a table in the middle of the place, which was full of people sitting at their laptops, sort of being social in a very isolated way.

In walk two girls, maybe 16 or 17.  They sort of giggling, the type of giggling girls do when they're in a group and doing something they're not comfortable with, but they're in a group so it's not uncomfortable it's funny.  They went to a woman behind me, and put a small cake on the table.  It was the kind of cake that you get at bakeries, sometimes it's brownies, sometimes it's a cake in a foil pan.  They said something about random acts of kindness...it was hard to hear because they were giggling so much.  The lady at the table said thanks, and they left the table, giggling.  

The girls then went to the counter and ordered a drink, giggling the whole time.  By this time Hubby and I were looking around, but obviously the laptop crowd hadn't exactly picked up on the fact that something pretty fun was happening.  The girls took the drink over to another lady at a laptop and said something again about random acts of kindness.  This time the lady explained she couldn't drink anything with caffeine in it.
(Wait, you're at a STARBUCKS!)  So the girls were now confused...in a very vocal, giggling way.

They ran out of the store, giggling the whole way.  Hubby spotted the adult with them, some youth group leader or something.  (Hubby is our church youth group leader, so he knows the look.)  The leader sent those girls back in the place with the drink.  Doggone it, they were going to bestow a beverage on SOMEONE.  

They found another lady, handed her the drink, and, covering their faces with their hands, giggled out of the store.  By that point it was hard for anyone to ignore them, and there was a general murmur of social approval before everyone went back to their laptops.

The lady with the cake, well, come on, she's not going to sit at a Starbucks and eat a cake, she gave it to the Starbucks employees, explaining that she wasn't headed home any time soon, and she didn't want the cake to go to waste.  The lady who wound up with the drink did drink it and seemed pleased.

As for me, I got into my car and on my windshield was a pink sticky note that said, "have a blessed day" and it was written in that loopy, giggly handwriting teen girls tend to have.

I felt a little brighter for a bit, which is saying something given how the past few weeks have been.  The sticky note is on my dashboard and every time I look at it I think of those two girls giggling.

They'll never know how big their random act of kindness was for me.

FIVE FOR FRIDAY! Easter Egg Hunt torture and other memories...

Good morning!

Easter is two days away and I can't help, as I pack the traditional shoe boxes full of goodies from the Naughty Easter Rodent  (oh what, you don't stuff shoe boxes full of goodies from the Naughty Easter Rodent?  Then how do you make sure your children have a year's supply of apple cider and toothpaste?) of my Easters as a child.

No Johnny for you!  It's Easter!

I didn't love Easter much when I was a kid.  Easter Sunday meant a couple things in my world:

5)  I wouldn't get to watch "Emergency" the night before.  

Most Christians know Easter Sunday means SUNRISE SERVICE.  This was especially true at my house.  We'd have to get up at 5 AM.  I've never been a morning person, neither has my brother.  My parents figured they'd put us to bed at 7 PM on Saturday so we wouldn't be so hard to get up at 5 AM.  We all know that didn't work.  But every year I had to miss Johnny Gage.   Taking away "Emergency" was also my mom's favorite, go to punishment for me.  Way to equate punishment with celebration of the Risen Savior, Mom.

4)  Everyone was in a foul mood.
My mother never drank coffee.  And, since it was the seventies, neither did my dad, because my mom wouldn't let him.  Staying up late to hide the eggs and baskets plus getting up early to be at church early plus extra long service because it's EASTER plus having to be nice to more church people during the Easter breakfast plus the basket and Easter egg hunt at our house plus loading into the car to drive from Michigan to Wisconsin to spend the week after Easter with the grandparents equals two parents in ROYALLY FOUL MOODS.  And, throw in two kids who are sleep deprived because no, we didn't go to sleep at 7 Pm and yes, we did stay awake until  my parents finished hiding the Easter Eggs and baskets  (they would yell, "WOULD YOU KIDS GO TO SLEEP?  WE HAVE CHURCH IN THE MORNING!"  My brother was an idiot, he'd yell, "WE AREN'T TIRED!"  That would lead to my mother and father arguing about the drive to Wisconsin.  "They'll just sleep in the car.  Then they'll be up all night when we get there.") and you have four people in WILDLY FOUND MOODS.

3) We always, always, always got in trouble for doing something early.

Again, my mother didn't drink coffee. Maybe she should have.  One of my clearest memories of Easter Sundays always involved getting yelled during a predawn breakfast of cold cereal and milk.  Dad would be showering  (mom and kids bathed the night before) so he was never part of the fracas of breakfast.  Mom would slam breakfast in front of us and snarl something about "eat it quickly, we have to leave."  Inevitable, while sitting at the table, minding our own business...one of us would find an Easter egg.  We'd point it out.  That was enough to set my mother off to some outer limits rage.  ("SO YOU DON'T WANT YOUR EASTER BASKETS?  IS THAT WHAT YOU;RE TELLING?"  Well, no, we're telling you, we see that egg you hide on top of the fridge.)

In my parents' defense, Easter was stressful on them because they were in church choir and Easter is THE DAY for Church Choirs, plus the 8 hour drive to Wisconsin was never fun.  There was always traffic, car trouble, something.  Once we got there it was okay, but getting to my grandparents' house was stressful.  Plus, we had no money, so my folks did the best they could with the whole Easter egg thing.  Our baskets weren't anything special, but I think they took some pride in hiding the eggs, imagining the fun of the Easter Egg hunt after church.  Thing is, they were always, always tired, my parents were.  I get that now, I understand the endless exhaustion that comes with trying to be a good parent.  But really, a cup of coffee might have fixed the situation.  And maybe we wouldn't already be in trouble when we walked into church...it was still dark outside, but not nearly as dark as my mother's expression.  We always managed to break some unwritten rule in church so that by the time we got home, we'd get yelled at or, maybe even a spanking before we did the Easter egg hunt.

2)  Easter Egg hunt torture.

My father is a quiet man.  He's an educated man.  He's a well read man.  He's a calm man.

He's a man with an evil, twisted, demonic sense of humor.

EVIL DEMON EGGS!

Those Easter Egg hunts at my house were sometimes torture dressed up in Sunday best.  Oh we'd have to keep our Sunday outfits on while crawling through the house looking for eggs.  My father would follow us with a checklist.  (In retrospect, this was not a bad idea.)  He'd say, "You have 14 more to find."  The rule was we weren't allowed to "find" the basket until we found all the eggs.  The house was only 900 square feet, and we knew there weren't eggs in the bedrooms.  You'd think two kids would figure it out in ten minutes.  Every year, however, we'd find all but one or two of the eggs in the first half hour. What followed next was an hour of whining, crying, destruction, and yelling.  My father would give no hints about the last eggs.  My mother, at this point, was lying on the couch trying to catch a nap.  My brother and I, sleep deprived and on edge, and wanting to get at the candy in the baskets we'd found immediately, would descend into tears begging him to tell us where the last egg was.  

He'd just grin and say, "You have one more to find."

"If I have to get up from this couch and find that egg"  my mother would shriek from the couch, "NO ONE is getting their basket."

That would set us to wailing even harder.  We'd tear through the house, banging doors, upending laundry baskets.  One year I dumped the flour and sugar cans on the floor.  That did NOT go over well.

1)  The one thing that made it all awesome...Tips and Butts.

Once we'd found all the eggs and had stuffed as many jelly beans and peeps into our mouths as we could, we'd get in the car and head to Wisconsin.  Easter dinner at my grandmother's house was always fun. My dad's side of the family didn't get together very often, so when they did, they shared stories and everyone laughed loudly.  We kids were left to our own devices so it was a blissful week of not getting yelled at because the adults were busy laughing.  

Easter dinner meant the long table in the dining room was full of food and in the middle there would be two huge platters of decorated eggs.  My grandmother LOVES decorated eggs. She loved making them.  But the thing about hard boiled eggs is that they do tend to go bad after a while.  So, what to do with these platters of decorated eggs that won't involve wasting food?

Tips and Butts!

Here's how you play:  Each person at the table gets an egg.  Challenge someone.  Decide if you want to battle the tip end of the egg or the butt end of the egg.  Decide who is going to be the hitter or the hittee  (we say "up or down")  the person who is "up" is the hitter, and he hits the "down" egg.  The egg that cracks is the loser.  The same pair then does the other side of the egg with the "down" person from the previous challenge being the "up" person.  Inevitably there will be one egg that survives battles and is the champion of the day.  You can play until all the eggs are cracked.  My uncle Bob didn't take part in the game.  He peeled the eggs and happily ate his fill topping egg after egg with salt and pepper.  Meanwhile, battles would rage around the table as relatives gleefully yell "I've got a butt!"  indicating the butt end of their egg is still unbroken.

It might seem like a dumb game to play, but we've passed it on to our kids, with a feel twists.  While my grandmother was never this twisted, we have, some years, included an uncooked egg in the tips and butts game.  This makes for a jolly mess and not every home owner loves cleaning raw egg off the floor, so be careful with that one.


What's the point of all this?  We parents try hard to make memories for our kids...not all of them are great, obviously.  But if you can end a holiday so fraught with stress on a high note with something as stupid as cracking eggs, then that holiday will, one day, become the favorite holiday.  I know it doesn't seem possible, but it is.

Easter is, for so many reasons, my very favorite day of the year.


 Whether  you celebrate the secular... or the religious, have a wonderful Easter.

Looking for something fun and a little twisted to share with your kids this Easter?

Good early morning all!

Another holiday where small children
pee on mall workers clad in
overheated costumes.

For Christians this is Holy Week, which will culminate with Easter.  Easter is fast becoming like Christmas with many secular traditions adding to the fun of a holy festival.  The biggest is The Easter Bunny. 

Growing up, my parents had Easter Bunnies as part of the holiday decor.  We hid Easter eggs  (I'll rant about that later this week) and had baskets of candy (that had to last us until Halloween.)  My parents were pretty traditional...and therefore never really explained why there was an Easter Bunny.  It just was.

Our children were a bit more inquisitive, as they should be.  "Why is there an Easter Bunny?"  "What is the Easter Bunny's purpose?"  "Did the Easter Bunny role away the stone and get Jesus out of the tomb?"

Faced with these heavy doctrinal questions, I did what any mother with a twisted sense of drama would do:  I created an alternate story for the Easter Bunny.

In our house, it's not the Easter Bunny.  It's the Naughty Easter Rodent.  He a rabbit who somehow manages to get into the house in the wee hours of the night.  The Naughty Easter Rodent takes all the eggs we spent hours the day before boiling and coloring and he hides them.  This is very annoying to the parents because we have to be in church, singing with the choir, by 6:30 in the morning.  The Naughty Easter Rodent will, however, as a way of making peace for his naughtiness, put a small gift, usually some piece of clothing or new shoes, by the child's door in the morning.  These are clothes the child is to wear to church.  When we get home from church, we have to search the house for the eggs and at the end, the Naughty Easter Rodent also hides baskets full of small gifts and candy.

Then we sit down to a ham dinner.  After dinner we open the cellophane on the packages of Peeps so they can age and be stiff and crunchy enough to eat in about June.  (Oh you eat your Peeps fresh?  HAH!  We've got a package from two years ago sitting there, aging.  This year we have well aged Peeps on the menu!)

I'm not saying this works for everyone, and when the kids were small they were a little nervous about the Naughty Easter Rodent wandering around the house...well, they were until my daughter found her dream shoes and my son got that Pokemon shirt he wanted.

And no one in my house has ever asked me why there's an Easter Bunny.  So...win for me!

Farewell, John Pinette: YOU GO NOW!

Good afternoon!

Yesterday, while most people were mourning the loss of the great Mickey Rooney, another star fell up to heaven:  John Pinette.

On AOL he was listed as "Seinfeld actor."  I had to be honest, I didn't even know John was in Seinfeld.  Turns out, he was in the final episode.  And, sadly, most in this world will remember him as the fat guy in the last episode of Seinfeld.

But to his legions of fans, John Pinette was a stand up comic genius.  He was a large, baby faced wonder who made us laugh until we tore a muscle. His love of food came as a surprise to no one, John was a large fellow and he didn't shy away from it.  Salad was anathema to him, a big theme in his "I'm STARVIN'" tour.  

John made it okay for fluffy people to find humor in him and in themselves.  And he made it okay for non-fluffies to laugh as well. His story telling was masterful, and we knew exactly what he was talking about because most of us had been there.  (Who, among us fluffies, likes the idea of going down a water slide in our swim suits?)

For me, John pointed out a part of life that resonated with me:  Standing in line.  He could work himself and his audience into a frenzy talking about the stupid things people do when they are ahead of us in line. His furious shriek, "GET OUT OF THE LINE!" echoes in my head every day.  

Very well said.

John had other, classic, catchphrases I'm sure we've all heard:  "I say, NAY NAY!" is one of the best and it works when someone suggests something stupid.  Click on the video to the left to check out one of his best specials. His moments talking about working out with a trainer might be the best work any comedian has ever done.

The first time I saw John on TV, however, was when the comedy channel aired his uber famous bit about eating at a Chinese buffet.  For the last twenty years my husband and I will find reasons to mimic his high pitched faux Chinese accent and yell "YOU GO NOW!" at each other. Check out the video below, recorded years ago, before he'd started dieting.

John was working on his health in recent years.  The last special I saw him do he'd lost quite a bit of weight and was actually talking about exercise as something he did on a regular basis.  So it was really sad to learn he'd passed away on Saturday, probably from liver and heart disease.  

He was very much an inspiration to me because he made the small things about being big funny.  I loved him, and I will miss him.    I want this post to be a salute to one of the very best, very funniest men to ever walk this earth.  Farewell, John. you were gone too soon, but I will never stand in line without thinking about you yelling at the people in front.

The Birth of Captain Nubbin!

Good afternoon!

So this week on Face Book I promised that I had a new nickname for NBM my boss at Stuff, Installed.  

I did not get out of bed Monday morning expecting to be putting a new name into the record for my boss, but wow, did he earn it this week.

Last week I shared with you five things he did that made Michael Scott, the oblivious goofball boss from "The Office."  If you haven't read my Five for Friday last week, go read it.  We'll wait.

 Okay welcome back.

So this week I thought it couldn't get any worse.  Surely, I thought to myself, we've hit the peek of the ridiculous, childish, gross, icky behavior and NBM will, certainly, at some point return to proper boss behavior.

I'm starting to wonder if proper boss behavior is just that: childish, gross and icky.

And then, on Wednesday, NBM answered that question and earned himself a new nickname.

To be honest, NGTJ, PM, and I had been tossing around new nicknames for him.  Officially, NBM didn't have a nickname.  We would just listen to him rant about this or that, or make some kind of ridiculous proclamation and then retire into his office to watch golf or basketball on his phone.  And we'd whisper, like those filthy raggeddy people in "Les Miserables" when they sang songs about revolution, we'd whisper, What is it, you say, you do here?"

On Wednesday, the skies cleared and it became obvious just, exactly, what NBM's new name would be.

It went like this:  at 8:25 Tuesday morning I place a phone call to a potential client.  The phone rang once, clicked and went dead. This happens frequently in my line of work.  It means one of a couple things:  The client has hung up without the courtesy of saying any words to me or there was a disconnection in the phone.  I chose to call the number again.  This time the man answered and before I could tell him who I was, he laid in to me with a tirade about how this was too early to call a home  (for the record, he'd asked us to call him...and he'd not answered his phone at other times of the day and evening.)  and that his wife had had a rough night  (oh, dude, do NOT go there with me.) and that I was basically a horrible person for, you know, doing my job and what he'd asked us to do.  I said, "What would a good time be to reach you?"  He spouted something.  I don't know.  I don't care.  I was busy killing his lead so that NGTJ and I would not have to suffer this abuse again.

At 9 AM Wednesday morning a gentleman called the office demanding, rudely, to speak to the branch manager.  Well, that's not going to happen unless he proves he needs to talk to the branch manager because, see, NBM never takes calls.  I mean never.  I mean if someone calls and asks for him by name we've been instructed to tell them he's not in, he's never in.  If someone walks into the office for any reason, he dives into his office and informs us, like he has to, that he's not there.  He takes no calls...he talks to no one.  Because his time is spent in much other, more important ways, like watching golf and basketball on his phone or writing poorly spelled, woefully constructed rants for the local newspaper, which he then puts on my desk to edit down to 300 words or less.

After the verbal dance that is my duty every time someone asks to speak to the branch manager, it became clear this guy was not going to leave a message, he was not going away, and he was really outraged about something.  I wasn't in the mood to take more abuse.  By Wednesday morning I'm pretty much battle scarred anyway.  So I put him through.  NBM talked to the guy for about twenty minutes.

After the conversation, NBM walked out of his office and spent the next fifteen minutes talking about how rude the man was and what a jerk he was and how unreasonable he was.  We dissected this phone conversation  (It was a big deal...after all, it was the first incoming phone call he'd taken in more than a month.) for a long time and I explained and rexplained exactly what I'd said the day before.

None of this was necessary, because NBM has the capability to listen to any and all phone calls made or received on my phone and on NGTJ's phone.  No, not all phone calls are recorded for "training purposes" just the ones she and I make because, well, NBM is always perfection on the phone. So, we could have saved ourselves quite a bit of time on Wednesday had he just gone in and listened to the original phone call.

At least, that's what should have happened.  Instead, he spent two hours NOT being able to listen to the phone call and not knowing why.  See, remember last week he got a new computer, and he installed it by himself and swore up and down he didn't know why anyone else was having issues with their new computer because his was working PERFECTLY...and then he went golfing?  Yeah, well, turns out, maybe his ability to install a computer wasn't so perfect because he spent two hours on Wednesday stomping around, cursing, calling people at our corporate office and cursing at them, all all because for some reason he couldn't "access" the database that allows him to listen to our calls.

(My guess?  He couldn't remember the website address and since it wasn't in his FAVORITES list on his computer yet, he was convinced his computer was malfunctioning for reasons that were NOT his fault or that Corporate was loaded with liars and criminals or that everyone everywhere was wrong and stupid except for him.  Really, when he gets lit this, it's like watching a second graders struggle with a math problem to the point of hysterics.  

NBM kept talking about how this man told him he was convinced NBM wouldn't do anything about the problem.  That's pretty much our attitude around here.  A problem comes up, NBM stomps around cursing for a couple hours, and then someone else will solve the issue.  Either he'll pass it up to the owner, or PM and I, or the sales guys, or NGTJ will figure it out, but NBM rarely actually DOES anything.  I sort of have to applaud the man for being that intuitive. 

After wrestling unsuccessfully with this for two hours, and talking about it with me for the same amount of time a sick thought dawned on me.  He wanted me to apologize to this guy.

FOR WHAT?  For doing my job?

I let this wash over me for a while and about the fourth time he brought the phone call up to me that morning I said, "So, would you like me to apologize to him?"

I have not seen that expression on anyone's face since the day I told the math department in my high school that I wasn't going to take physics.  There was relief, joy, and a certain light of "oh good, you've finally realized you're a moron" in his expression.

We stared at each other for a few seconds and then he said, "Well what you should say, what I would say, would be this..." and he launched into a long soliloquy on what he'd say to make things right between Stuff, Installed and the guy NBM had spent the last several hours insulting and cussing out.

Apparently I have no self esteem.  I dialed the number and left a groveling message apologizing for my rude tone of voice and promising that if he gave Stuff, Installed another chance he would certainly never experience such awful treatment.

Satisfied that the problem was solved, and that he'd proven he would DO SOMETHING, and exhausted from a morning of not looking at basketball scores, NBM went on a long lunch that didn't end until Thursday morning.

Thursday morning he attacked the problem with renewed vigor for reasons I don't understand.  After all, I apologized. We were just waiting, I thought, for the man to call back and do business with us.

But this was far from over.This time...and remember I never make anything up....NBM decided to hook up his old computer, find his FAVORITES list and listen to the call that way.  Which he did...although it took him two hours of yelling and stomping and crawling on the floor around my desk  (he decided that rather than hook his computer up in the privacy of his own office, he'd do it at my old desk next to where I sit now.  His noisiness crushed any ability I had to do my job for most of the morning.)  He managed to hook up the computer and TAH DAH "found" the phone call.  (It wasn't lost.  He is just one of those guys that commits NOTHING to memory and therefore if he can't find a web address then there must be a malfunction in the computer.)

He made me listen to the phone call.  And what do you know?  I WAS PERFECTLY LOVELY AND POLITE and the man was A COMPLETE AND TOTAL JERK.

NBM looked at me and said, "Well you didn't say anything the way he told me you said it.  You did everything just right."

I glared at him.  "And you made me apologize to him."

NBM said, "Yes I did."

He then decided he needed this man's email address.  Why?  Well isn't it obvious?  Having proved HE WAS RIGHT, NBM was now going to send the evidence to the man proving that I wasn't a horrible rude person and that yes, he IS A GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE manager who DID SOMETHING.

I looked up the email address, what do you know?  Turns out, this guy pulled the same nonsense on NGTJ back in September when he asked us to call him and then she called and he hung up on her twice.  So...it really wasn't me, this guy is just one of those people...you know the type, the ones who just live to be rude.

No one torments my office girls but me.

NBM saw that and moved into a whole different gear of upset.  He started talking about how he was going to write all of this in an email and he was going to give the man what for for being rude to his office girls. 

Yep, we live in 1955 and he's Don Stinkin' Draper and we are the office girls.

I don't know how this will end, but I know this:  NGTJ and I will wind up taking the brunt of whatever rage the man has left in him because if he calls back, he probably will, we all know NBM won't take that call.

Somehow, it will wind up still being our fault.

So, I promised you a new nickname for NBM and you shall have it.  Ladies and gentlemen, my boss will now be known as...

CAPTAIN NUBBIN!

Why Captain Nubbin?

Well, those of you who watch the TV shows "Friends" will recognize the word "nubbin" as the affectionate term Chandler used for his third nipple. A body part that really doesn't belong, and has NO practical use, and only serves to annoy people or gross them out.


I find the nickname appropriate...

Five for Friday: 5 reasons Michael Scott would be an upgrade.

Good morning!

My issues with coworkers at Stuff, Installed is well documented both in this blog and in my two books, "Not While I'm Chewing" and Unsafe at Any Speed..

  We all know the workplace is a tremendous gold mine for humor.  Just look at movies like, "Office Space" or the wonderful TV comedy, "The Office."  There have been many boss-directed jokes in movies like "Horrible Bosses" or in TV shows like "Rules of Engagement."  (Timmy, I feel your pain.)

We all work at jobs and the vast majority of us are working in jobs we don't particularly adore, but hey it fits our schedules and it pays the bills...sort of.  Besides, if we really think about it, the people we work with are pretty cool, most of the time, and at the end of the day, it's not a terrible way to live.

Well, I thought that about my job until this week.  With Elsie W. and Noelle C. a distant memory, I've been pretty happy at work.  

And then I realized something:

My boss might be a horrible boss. He might be a child unable to do any job other than management...because that's where he can do the least amount of damage to the day to day work at Stuff, Installed.

I was thinking this yesterday, when, reviewing my week, I realized that TV disaster boss Michael Scott might just be an upgrade from NBM.

Don't believe me?

Here are five things NBM did this week that proves Michael Scott would be, at worst, a sideways moves.  And I maintain he would be an upgrade.

5)  Keeps the knife he licks after every use on top of the office jar of peanut butter.

I've chronicled NBM's inability to wash the spoon and bowl he uses for his breakfast every morning.  (Reminder:  He licks the spoon, rinses the bowl, and puts them in the cabinet where we keep food.)

The knife thing is new.  His lunch of late has consisted of an English muffin  (which he always burns, which means we get to work in an atmosphere of burnt English muffin all afternoon) topped with peanut butter.  And every day, once he's done using the knife, he licks it and sets it on top of the jar of peanut butter which we keep, again, other food.

I understand marking your territory, but could you maybe pee all over one of the cabinet shelves?  It would be more sanitary.

4)  Asked me what poking on Face Book meant...and then didn't like my answer.

I'm not saying NBM doesn't have enough to do in his day.  But earlier this week he was truly troubled about what, exactly, it meant when someone poked him on Face Book.  Face Book has been a favorite of his.  Every couple of weeks he'll ask me how to do something on Face Book.  I try to explain it to him, but giving him verbal directions is like telling a five year old how to put together a vacuum cleaner.  Most of these conversations end with me saying, "Well, NBM, I could show you, but company rules say I can be fired to going on Face Book during the work day."

So this week he discovered the "poke."  I explained to him that it was like someone waving at him or saying hello.  I told him he could poke back or ignore it.

He didn't like that.  So he walked down the Tunnel of Sound to PM (who has all the time in the world for topics like this) and they discussed it.  

Gee, glad no one actually needed his attention for work things.  Of course, this is the type of time you have in a work day when you never take a phone call and when you are always "out" if someone comes in to see you.  Unless, of course, it's a TV rep who is coming to take you to lunch.

3) Started golfing on his "lunch."

NBM is a salaried guy.  He pretty much comes in when he wants to and leaves when he wants to.  I can't fault him for showing up in the AM, he's always there early.  And I will give him this:  When he leaves before 4 PM, he's always got a legitimate reason to leave.  (The fact that he picked a car repair place a block from his house is just a coincidence...all of our company vans need service all the time, especially when we have very nice golfing weather.)

As a salaried guy, he doesn't so much have a "lunch" as he has time

Something we would love to ask him...but
he's out golfing/having lunch/checking/basketball scores.

when he eats at his desk.  And his pay doesn't vary regardless of when or for how long he takes lunch, unlike us hourly wagers.  This much just have occurred to him recently because this week his golf bag moved into the office.  And now,  after he's burned his English muffin and licked his knife, he heads out to some indoor golf place where he hits balls for 30-45 minutes.  I shouldn't complain because life is just better when he's not in the office (because when he's not disrupting my day with nonsense, he's asking me why I'm not accomplishing enough in my day.) but since the golf clubs live in the office, he now feels the need to discuss golf WAY more than before.  And that's saying something.  (I could be thankful, he talks about golf so much now, he's backed off a little bit of his political ranting...but only a little.)

2)  Completed the computer install...as far as he was concerned.

Computer issues have been a major sore spot in the office for the past couple months.  I wound up getting a new computer because, like most of the computers in the office, mine was woefully outdated and loaded with who knows how many viruses and gremlins.  Well, this week NBM pulled some money out of the owner's wallet  (replacing anything cuts into our bottom line, and NBM's whole deal is he shows a profit more than any other branch...of course, we all have to bring in our own pens and he locks up copier paper so I have to ask him for paper when the copier is empty and I have to tell him why I need it.) and got new computers for himself, NGTJ and PM.  Yesterday was the day of installation.  PM managed to get his installed all by himself because PM knows a thing or two about computers.  PM then showed NBM how to install his.  Four seconds after PM left NBM's office, I was summoned to show him how to transfer his files.  I told him how I would do it.  He said, "That's now how PM showed me."  I said, "well, then do it the way PM told you."  He said, "I don't remember what he said."

But the biggest SNAFU happened when he took what little he could remember and he tried to install NGTJ's computer.  I don't know what he did, but it wasn't what he was supposed to.  I know this because when she tried to use it, it not only didn't work, it scolded her and insulted her wardrobe.  She tried to ask NBM what he'd done.  He said, "Mine works just fine."  And then he went to the golf place leaving NGTJ unable to use her computer and therefore do her job.

And OF COURSE his worked just fine.  He rarely, if ever, USES his computer.  He's on his smart phone all day, checking golf and basketball scores, and political stuff.  For the record, his computer was not working because we looked at it while he was golfing. Whatever he'd done to NGTJ's, he'd done to his own.

His question to her, upon returning from golf, was, "Why aren't you at your desk working?"

1) Needed me to help him see his bracket.

I didn't say much when, a couple weeks ago, he had me fill out an Oscar's score sheet so he could enter a contest sponsored by a local TV station.

Tuesday of this week he called me into his office.  He had just filled out his March Madness bracket so he could win a contest sponsored by another local TV station and he was unable to print the bracket from his computer.  (This was one of the reasons we got new computers.  Mine was the only one in the office that played nicely with the printer.)

I gave him several tips, but, like a parent dealing with a whiny child, I finally said, "Email it to me, I'll print it."

He emailed me, not a file to print, but a LINK to a WEBSITE (one of those I would be fired for being on during working hours). I opened the link and realized I would need his account password.  I asked him for it and he gave me three passwords, none of which worked.  

Not the worst thing I was asked to do this week.

He then stomped around the office, swinging his putter, asking the air what his password was.

Meanwhile, I did the whole "forgotten password" thing and told him to check his email, that he now had a temporary password.  But that was not good enough for him.  Nope, he then decided he would reset his password and give it to me.

Except in the time it took him to speak the actual password to me, he forgot how he spelled it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

At least Michael Scott never complained
that their outgoing call totals were too low.

This took about 45 minutes of my day.  And he asked me at the end of the day why my outgoing call total was so low.

So, yeah, I'm pretty sure Michael Scott, a guy who burned his foot on a George Foreman grill, would be an upgrade.