37 Years Until I Retire

Things that happened at work today:

The ex-steel worker phone technician, before he pulled the cover off my phone box with a string of profanity so irrate I retreated to the kitchenette, and before he stormed out of my office leaving my work order incompete and the server room trashed, sat on a chair in the reception and made a personal call on his cell phone. "Hi, is Joe there? [beat] Joey! It's Jim. How you doing? So, I hear you got cancer. Um, is that right?"

The guy who delivers our coffee and bottled water asked me to go to Santo Domingo with him. At first I was confused because he asked me in Spanish. When he told me what he said, I joked, "Sure, I'd love to go to Santo Domingo. I'll go with you."

"When?"

"Oh, well, you know. Whenever."

"Okay, let's go."

"Oh. Well, I can't go now. You know, I think my Boss would be kind of mad if I just walked out now."

Then the guy asked for my number. I tried to laugh it off. My phone rang, it was the travel agent calling me back. I spent a third of my day on with the travel agent trying to figure out every conceivable way to get a person back from Seattle without spending an extra night out there, including the options available out of Vancouver, Portland and San Francisco. The delivery guy stood staring at me. I made a motion as if to say, do you need anything else? He asked for my number again, getting more agressive. I tried to catch the eye of my passing colleague, one of the new, very tall German guys. No dice. I laughed nervously, trying to carry on two conversations at once. The travel agent on the other end of the phone was getting confused what with all of this talk about Santo Domingo. Laughing was probably the worst thing I could do, I didn't want to offend the guy. Tied to the phone, I angled my body away and eventually he gave up and left.

When my co-workers were being uncooperative about moving their offices, an idea that they were all excited about in theory until they actually had to, you know, move, I told one of them, "Look, it was not my idea to have you move offices! If it were up to me, you would sit at your assigned desks until you died!"

Later I found myself on my hands and knees under the desk of an ex-colleague yelling "Is that a walnut? I think I found a walnut down here. There! In the corner! I'm not touching it. I don't get paid enough to touch things I find under your desks. Wait, I'll use this nail file I found against the base board ... no! no! It's a peach pit! Is that a peach pit? What the hell is that? Fossilized granola bar? A turd?? I can't take it anymore!!"