Tales from the Cubicle – Part 9

Salsa Shark

I don’t like onions. Hate them, in fact. However, the rest of the world doesn’t understand this, so there are many, many, many opportunities to eat them if you’d like at various resturants. Salsa being a big one. In the Atlanta area, you can’t throw a stick without hitting a Mexican resturant, which means I’m going to have a big bowl of chips sitting in front of me. Now, while others use those chips to scoop up as much of the salsa as they possibly can, I take a slightly different tactic.

I dip the chip in, allowing it to get a little damp, and then make sure to effectively wipe any of the bad stuff on the side of the bowl.

I’ve done this for as long as I can remember. Which also means when I first started working, I would do the same thing in front of my co-workers.

Now, I’m sure people thought this was odd, but they also realized they had more of the “good” stuff for themselves. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Flash forward nearly twenty years at the company Christmas party. One of our remote employees was walking around, introducing her husband to people when suddenly he immediately recognizes me. It takes me half a second and I recognize him from that first job, having worked with him for maybe a year or so. Truly, it is a small world.

And then he says to his wife, “John always dipped his chips in the salsa just barely enough to get some juice on them and that was it.” Twenty years later and he still remembered the random way I eat chips. Talk about making an impression on someone.

***

You Knew What You Were Getting Into

As an engineer, there are long periods of work where you need to get really focused and avoid any distractions you can. There are tasks which can be very repetetive, so over the years I started bringing headphones to work to listen to music and later podcasts. I was certainly not the first at this particular company to do it. I personally found that the focus allowed me to be much faster and efficient with those tasks. A win-win.

However, flash back to a moment where during one of our staffing meetings it was brought up that the budgets on some of the projects were getting stretched thin. An one of the bosses made a point about how headphones and listening to music was likely at the cause of this issue. That because we (and I mean multiple people) were doing it, we were completing tasks slower than we would have if we weren’t covering our ears up.

Not what I was doing at the office.

Now, I’m normally not a person who seeks out confrontation, but this infuriated me. So I asked whether it was possible that the projects were running low on money because they hadn’t originally had enough money in the contract. His response was, “There are tasks that you have to do which are not always fun. But they have to be done without distractions. And hey, you chose your profession… you knew what you were getting into.”

Which, to this day, I still don’t understand what the hell that meant.

We still continued to have our headphones. Maybe the other project managers explained to him how dumb his thinking was (or at least how poor his people managing skills appeared to be).

***

You Don’t Have To Turn On The Red Light

Back in the days of being a younger engineer and living the true cubicle life, your immediate neighbors were the ones you were likely to have the most conversations with. My three closest neighbors would sometimes just have random chats about life, music, whatever you could think of… while sitting at our desks and doing our work. The cubicle walls doing little to damper our talks.

And it is during these times when you really get to the root of things. About how much you don’t know about someone or how much they may not know.

So it was that we all began talking about music. Lloyd was more into hip-hop and was attempting to educate me on those artists. Somehow we got to Puff Daddy, and I said “well, I’m a little indifferent to him after he took the Police song.”

Lloyd was silent for a beat, and then said “Who are the Police?”

After which I was silent for more than a beat. “Every breath you take… that’s the Police. Roxanne? Message in a Bottle? King of Pain? Everything She Does Is Magic?”

“Nope. Nope. Nope. I don’t think I know them.”

My world cracked completely open.

My other neighbor at least tried to save me. “Lloyd, don’t be stupid. You know who the Police are. You’ve heard of Sting.”

And at that point, it clicked into place for him. “Oh, yeah…”

As the years have gone by, I understand more that everyone has their own tastes and blind spots. But in that moment, I couldn’t have imagined not even having heard of the Police.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 8

Image by piviso from Pixabay

She Knows Where You Live

During 2020, I was lucky enough to have the type of job where I could work from home. However, the job wanted to make sure we still felt some level of connection with the rest of our coworkers even if we weren’t seeing them regularly. So we ended up with Zoom call happy hours where we would chat… it was actually nice. However, what always cracked me up was one of my coworkers would normally ask a question about where someone lived and from that appeared to hack into the government database to discover all sorts of things about you that you didn’t think was out there.

It became a running joke for any new employees to warn them that if they gave her any information, she’d have their addresses within the hour.

 

I’m Having a Problem With My Computer

We once had a Temp employee who was helping us out on a series of deadlines wih the goal of hiring them on full time if things worked out. At that particular job, I was the one who they designated to help them out on any problems they might have with our network/computers/jobs/etc. I didn’t mind doing that at all (I’ve come to realize over the years I really like helping the junior engineers, so in some ways this was one of the steps down that path). After a couple of weeks of the Temp working on any number of projects, they came over to me and said there was a problem with their computer… it was crawling.

I walked over to their desk and saw it was really slow. Like slower than I’d ever seen any of our machines run. I start doing some digging and I realize what the problem is – the computer is out of storage.

Then I dig further.

The Temp had been saving all the files they’d worked on to their computer as an extra level of backup in case something went wrong. Now, I can understand some things you might want to do that with… and maybe they’d had a nightmare scenario at a previous job which caused this behavior… but this was above and beyond. It was as if ANY file they touched at all got backed up to their computer.

After a conversation about the companies’ backup procedure, we managed to get the machine cleaned up enough… for like a week. And that became a weekly routine of trying to explain that not everything needed to go on their computer.

Every week.

Owen Wilson

At the various holiday parties and monthly lunch and learns, there are moments which hit you out of the blue. I can’t recall what we were having lunch for in particular, but a series of stories were being shared. At the end of one of them, one of the engineers made what can only be referred to as an “Owen Wilson WOW” sound. At that point, I started paying attention to her reactions and sure enough Owen Wilson Wow made multiple appearances. With the best moment being during a meeting where some rather uninspiring thing was being shown for the group and I heard a “Wow” from two rows behind me and nearly lost it right then and there.

It has now entered my own lexicon throughout my daily life. Anytime anything deserves a Wow… Owen Wilson gets his kickback.

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 7

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Everything I know or think is wrong.

One of the younger guys at the day job is writing a manifesto. Well, not actually, but he honestly should. He has tons of thoughts and opinions on things that don’t really affect anything in the real world, but for him they are not in any level of gray. This are black and white issues and you are a fool for thinking otherwise.

Chicken Nuggets is for children.

I heard this one about a year ago and it both blew my mind and made a level of sense. If you think about it, chicken nuggets are one of those staple foods for the pickiest of eaters (kids under 10). My own nephews will refuse many, many things, but nuggets are not included in that bunch. And there is something fundamentally childish about their size. Basically small enough where you shouldn’t have to cut them up for the child.

These are food items that might take each and every one of us on a little trup back to when we were kids. Maybe, perhaps… is that why we’ve been choosing to eat nuggets over tenders?

Twizzlers are the worst candy EVER.

I was told this last week when asked what my personal favorite candy is. The look of disgust which reflected back at me was unexpected and honestly, unwarranted.

Listen, I get it if you don’t like licorice. I don’t like the taste of the stuff, but Twizzlers is just processed strawberry goodness. How can that ever be wrong? This is one of those where I will dig my heels in and not budge on my love for this one.

Besides, the man didn’t know the difference between a Milky Way and a Snickers. I’m not sure his vote truly counts here.

A frequent sight

Hey, There’s a Leak

My last office had a nasty habit of leaking after particularly hard rainstorms. The ceiling is made up of tiles, and so the telltale signs were extremely easy to notice. My office mate and I would put a trash can under the most likely drip spot and go about our day (after informing the powers that be of the problem). They would then call out the roof guys (I’m not sure specifically what the “roof guys” actually did to the roof). I know they walked around on the rocks up them and we could hear every step.

Inevitably they would come down and say it wasn’t a roof issue, it was an air conditioning issue.

Which feels weird because it leaked after it rained on the roof… but OK. The A/C people were called in. They would go through the pipes and stick their heads through our ceiling for a day before informing everyone that it couldn’t be an A/C issue. It had to be a Roof issue.

And like Groundhog Day, this cycle continued about every other month for the better part of twoish years that I was in that particular office.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 6

Even though these last couple of years have introduced the Work From Home model of hybrid life to me, I still spend a ton of time in the office, which means weird interactions with your jobs, your fellow co-workers, or just strange days that you might not always be able to explain. I’ve written about a handful of my own here, here, here. here, and here.

I Wouldn’t Say He Had a Poker Face.

Many years ago, a couple of co-workers and myself, made it a nearly daily ritual of going somewhere for lunch. It was a good way to get out of the office, and a better way to spend time than staring at the computer screen at our desks. However, it turns out that even with a plethora of options near the office, you will eventually run out of new places to eat. And the repetitions may or may not start to wear on you. I think in our rotation we had Wendys, Mellow Mushroom, and Chick fil la.
However, it turned out that on one particular day, none of us could determine where we wanted to eat (much like many married couples). I suggested that old standby of Chick Fil A, and my friend James made a face like I’d offered him the worst/grossest thing he’d ever heard.
From that day onward, anytime he gave us that particular look, we referred to it as the “Chick Fil A Face”.

Clean, Old Fashion Hate

In Civil Engineering there have been two dominant programs that we use for drafting: Microstation and Autocad. Typically (in Georgia), Microstation is used for roadway projects and Autocad is used for site design projects. This really means that because you don’t have a choice once you’ve chosen your path, you also must hate the other program with a passion. No matter what is presented to you, you have no choice but to hate the program, the person running the program, and potentially any offspring they might have.
Or in the terms of Nick Miller (from the tv show New Girl), “I will teach my kids to hate his kids, and I expect him to do the same.”
For me, it wasn’t quite so clear. See my first two years on the job I pretty much used both programs every day. Sometimes in the morning I would be working on one type of project and then in the afternoon, a completely different type. I had to retrain my brain to use both because they do some things very backward. In one, you double-click to do something in the other program you only right-click. For the most part, I can see the benefits of both but am much savvier in Microstation.
But one of my co-workers couldn’t accept that. You see, he used both and there was a clear winner in his mind: Autocad. And no amount of discussion was going to change his mind. I believe I wore him down over time until he finally gave his line in the sand:
“Autocad is better because you can print directly to the plotter from the program, while in Microstation, you have to create a pdf first.”
Now, this was news to me, as I had been printing directly to the plotter from Microstation since the first day I started working. But he didn’t believe me. Until I brought in some plot drivers I’d used at a different company and demonstrated it. There was silence for a moment, I think his brain must have been spinning to try and figure a way to save face or something. Instead, he went another way.
“Yeah, well… Microstation still sucks.”

Image by Tiny Tribes from Pixabay

Children Work Here
This one is a very recent entry in my career as one of my coworkers has plenty of theories about life that he likes to share with the rest of us. I have told him he should write them down, but I doubt he’ll take me up on it, so I’ve decided to record this one for the future generations!
We were having lunch one day when the discussion of wings and spice and heat came up. I volunteered that I wasn’t really a spicy wing guy as I don’t find much pleasure in trying to kill myself with my food (at least not in that way), and would rather enjoy my meal (and not suffer the consequences later). In the process, I made my mistake. I admitted that I probably liked boneless wings better than the real thing.
Had I been in Buffalo, I would have never said such a thing, but I thought I was safe here in Georgia. However, he looked at me, with a smirk, and said “Boneless wings are for children.”
I didn’t have a response, and when I thought about it, they are basically chicken nuggets which my nephew pretty much only eats. So, after some dilberation, I think he may be correct.
Of course, I’m not going to stop eating them because I’m an adult… and I’ll do whatever I want! 🙂

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 5

You work long enough, you’re going to have weird interactions with your jobs, your fellow co-workers, or just strange days that you might not always be able to explain. I’ve written about a handful of my own here, here, here. and here but a couple of others have invaded my brain recently.

Not Charlotte’s Web

During the course of most of my days, you can find me at my desk deciding the fate of everyone who has ever taken I-285 and wondered why all the exits are closed (or at least that’s what I tell people I do). So my interaction with any kind of wildlife is pretty limited to birds or squirrels that I might see on my drive to work. Occasionally we might have a safety moment where they talk about the snakes you might encounter in the field. Now, I wouldn’t say I ever completely tune that stuff out, but maybe I don’t give it my full attention (as again, it doesn’t affect me).

However, there was an evening when the wildlife decided to take a stroll within the office walls. I think a couple of us were working a little late, and I was close to being done for the night, but probably had another half-hour or so to go. That’s when I spotted it.

A rather large spider had come into my cubicle. Now, I’m pretty sure there is some kind of deal that this spider was violating by being there, but I was more taken by the size of the damn thing. Let’s just say that it was the type of thing that couldn’t be allowed to live. It was very much a me or it type of scenario. Even James stopped by and let out a “damn, that’s a big spider.” I took my shoe (which I had taken off to try to be as comfortable as I could while still working) and effectively threw/slammed it down on the spider.

It didn’t kill it.

In fact, the damn thing decided that it was going to start coming after me. James and I evacuated the area as fast as we could. If it wanted to be the owner of the cubicle, I’d just have to start looking for a new job…

Home Movies

I started dating my now wife in high school, which meant that she had to take many a barb thrown at her by my friends. Most were good-natured, but one was irrefutable. Whenever Courtney and her friend Robin ran into each other, whether it was at school or the mall, they would start talking to each other. Their voices would begin to get a little higher pitched and faster as the conversation continued, until it reached a crescendo where we were convinced they were no longer speaking any human language, but were, in fact, speaking Dolphin. It was a true transformation, and I only wish that Atlanta would have had its aquarium back then. Who knows what scientific achievements might have been unlocked.

However, I’d never seen (or heard) such things since those days… until I hit my career years.

There were two ladies in the office that, while they didn’t get to a dolphin level pitch, their banter reminded me of something I’d heard before. That excitement in their voices seemed familiar and yet not. And then I was up late one night, watching Adult Swim, when a little show called Home Movies came on, and two of the characters began talking in the same excited tones. It was nearly identical.

So they forever became Walter and Perry in my mind for the rest of my time with the company (and if you’ve never seen Home Movies, you can find all the episodes on HBO Max, check it out… I miss that show).

 

Second and Third and Fourth Opinions

In a previous blog, I mentioned a co-worker we nicknamed Floody due to his inability to find long enough pants. However, there were other things he did that baffled some of my friends. Their all-time favorite was when he would call you over to ask you an engineering problem. This sort of thing certainly happens all the time. You need a second set of eyes on something, or you just never have encountered the problem before, or whatever your reason. Now, when you do this, if the person you are asking doesn’t completely seem to know or maybe stammers their way through the answer, I think you are well in your rights to seek out someone else to make sure you are on the right path.

That said, if the person isn’t hedging their bets, but instead walk you through the reasoning why they designed a similar situation a certain way, you’d do well to not only listen, but to take that to heart. And even if you aren’t 100% sold, you should definitely not go immediately to another engineer, in front of the first person, and ask them the exact same question.

Might be a little demeaning.

And the thing was, Floody did this constantly, to the point that it made you not want to engage with his questions in the first place… or maybe only give him a short answer so that you can move on and he can go to a source he trusted more than you.

I believe James even told him one time, “Hey, why are you asking me, when you are just going to go ask Carl as soon as I get done telling you the answer.”

Why indeed.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 4

You work long enough, you’re going to have weird interactions with your jobs, your fellow co-workers, or just strange days that you might not always be able to explain. I’ve written about a handful of my own here, here, and here but a couple of others have invaded my brain recently.

This Man Is Losing His Mind!

As you get older in whatever industry you have chosen, eventually the company will start to hire people that are not only younger than you are, but they may be a completely different generation than you are. What’s weird is I’m not even sure exactly when it happens, but one day you look up and realize everyone is at least a decade (if not more) than you are. And it is definitely a situation that you have to wrap your brain around. However, one of my co-workers didn’t quite seem able to do that.

It started innocently enough where Thomas (who I believe is in his early 30s) begins chatting with our summer intern. I’m not sure what question Thomas asked that sent him into a spiral, but I’d like to think it was about a movie. The Intern stared at him with no recognition in his eyes. Thomas couldn’t understand how there might be someone who had not only not seen Movie X, but also didn’t know what it was at all. As we were heading to lunch, Thomas began peppering him with more questions.

This went on for the entire drive to the restaurant… then through lunch… then on the way back, and I’m not convinced Thomas did any work the rest of the afternoon. The questions only stopped long enough for Thomas to exclaim one of the following phrases:

“How young are you?”

“How do you not know X thing?”

“What is going on?”

Shaken to his core… I’m not sure if Thomas ever recovered.

Don’t Worry, I Have A Connection

We all know that guy or gal who has access to the stuff we might enjoy in the privacy of our own home. You know the type of thing I’m talking about, it’s been compared to the mana of the gods many times in my household, and everyone I know prefers it to many other… things. So what happens when your source dries up, and you are suddenly lost in a world.

Where are you going to get your Mountain Dew Live Wire?

Now, for those of you who don’t know what Live Wire is, Mountain Dew came out with a flavor of their soda that was orange flavored. My brother introduced it to me while we were on a beach vacation, and sometimes I wish the sweet nectar had never passed my lips. It was everything good about Mountain Dew, only better.

There was a problem though. I live in Georgia, and for whatever reason, Pepsi has decided not to distribute the greatest drink of all time in my state. So the only time I could get it was when we traveled to the Carolinas or were in Florida. I’d buy out the gas station of their 20 oz. bottles to stock up for the next couple of months. But, inevitably, I’d run out again and need my fix.

Then Gary started working with me. I’m not sure why, but he had taken a job in Atlanta, but actually lived near the Georgia/Tennessee border. So he made the commute every day. And somehow we began talking about soda. I mentioned Live Wire and the frustration of not having it in Georgia. Gary nodded, and eventually, we went back to work.

A few days later Gary comes up to me and tells me he has something in his trunk for me. Kinda odd, but I’m a curious sort. But when he opened it up there were about 10 2-liter bottles of Live Wire waiting for me. For the next few months, he became my source, carrying the precious stuff across state lines.

It was kind of a Smokey and the Bandit situation. “They’re thirsty in Atlanta, and there is Live Wire in Tennessee.” OK, maybe it doesn’t match up exactly.

Every Damn Day

I’ve always struggled with my weight (like so many people). I’m waiting for that Easy button to come along and solve all my problems. But years ago, I decided to give this diet thing a go in the form of Atkins. For those not aware of this diet, it basically is a low carb, high fat style of diet. Now, I don’t claim much in the way of my Irish heritage (I don’t drink), but I do love potatoes in pretty much any form, so this style of eating was going to be a huge adjustment. Bread, beans, and all the good stuff I liked were a no-go.

However, I found out that one of the foods which were on the list was pork rinds. This was great because I loved pork rinds. They would be my replacement for chips. It was perfect.

On that first day, my buddy James saw me eating chicken salad with pork rinds (acting as crackers). I smiled and said, “I get to eat pork rinds every day!”

Flash forward about six weeks later. I’ve lost some weight but eating the same things every day was beginning to wear on me. I started not looking forward to my lunches as much. And James stopped by, “So, how’re are the pork rinds going?”

I looked at the bag, then back at him. “I get to eat pork rinds every day… every… damn… day.”

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 3

I’m always amazed by the stupidity you can sometimes encounter at work. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since you can encounter stupidity everywhere in life. But more and more I think of the stuff that just makes no sense when a coworker/boss interacts with you in some strange way. I’ve written about a handful of my own here and here, but I thought I’d branch out and collect some others from people I know (names changed to protect the innocent!).

Consider That A Gift!

One of my friends is beyond dedicated to their job. Whether it is because of their own bit of crazy or because they are actually… cough… dedicated, this person will always go the extra mile for the company. Obviously, the benefit of doing our jobs is the fact that we get paid every couple of weeks, but sometimes… just sometimes, you’d like to be appreciated for what you do.

Cut to a scene many years ago where, we’ll call her Nancy, Nancy has put in a ton of work over the past 2 weeks. Over 90 hours in about 9 days, but had requested that particular Friday off well in advance. Of course, since she’d already put in more than what her hours called for, she chose not to put any PTO down. Her boss sees this, knows about the Friday off and comments that he didn’t see any vacation time on the timesheet. To which she replied, “Yeah because I got my hours in… you know, working on the weekend.”

His reply was “Well… don’t worry about it. We’ll consider it a gift.”

Yep… that guy knows all about employee morale. Definitely makes you want to go that extra mile when you reward a person with something they’ve already earned! However if you’re an employee and if it happens that you get involved to a job related accident, a good work accident lawyer Las Vegas here can help you get the right compensation you deserve!

You’ve Got Nothing to Worry About

Another friend was at a company that wasn’t doing very well. Even with his limited experience (this was his first job out of college), he knew that things were spiraling in a downward direction. But one of the big wigs from the parent office was coming into town to help clear everything up and put everyone at ease.

And he did clear everything up. Bigwig told them all that things were a little rough right now, but the outlook was good going forward. It seemed convincing, even if the numbers told a different story, but our hero was willing to believe him in this at the very least.

Until he closed the meeting – “So don’t you worry about it. I mean, I’m not worried. When I hop back on the plane to head home, I’m not going to be worried at all with a drink in my hand.”

Drink in your hand… not worried, huh?

So yeah, the Atlanta office was closed about 6 months later. But there was nothing to worry about.

It’s only sexist if you finish your sentences

That same friend sat in on a meeting where his coworker Vicky was going over one of the clients and talking about how she was experiencing some difficulty with the project manager.

Who was a woman.

I only mention that because of what the boss said to her.

Boss – “Well, you know how it is sometimes with women.”

My friend leaned in, realizing something amazing was about to be said.

“Women don’t always take direction well from other women.”

Vicky was now staring at the Boss, unsure what he was going to say, but pretty sure it was not going to be something he should be saying.

“You know, they’d rather take direction from a man.”

It was only then that the Boss looked at Vicky and maybe the lightbulb went off in his head.

“Because… you know…”

Obviously, trailing off is not only useful in sitcoms but just as useful in the real world too.

***

I’ve been lucky in the last couple of jobs that I haven’t had to deal with Dilbert’s Boss, but it also means needing to rely on the kindness of others for their stories!

***

John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?

Click here to join John’s mailing list.

His prose appears in The Dark That FollowsTheft & TherapyThere’s Something About MacHollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Further Tales From the Cubicle

The legend of Floody or how to have a stupid character in the Star Wars Online Game

When Star Wars got into the online gaming experience, many of my friends (me included) rushed out and bought a copy of the game. We loaded it up and tried to coordinate as best we could so that we might adventure together. And it was fun, for a while.

Eventually the fact that you couldn’t just be a Jedi drove many people away. And I slowed playing because when you can only play a couple of hours here or there while everyone else is spending hours upon hours on the game… well, you get left behind in a hurry.

That being said, two of my co-workers also played the game leading to many lunches where we would discuss (or they would discuss and I’d listen) how to do certain things, whether there was a mysterious “quest” you could go on and become a Jedi if only you found certain clues (as far as I know, you could not do this), and just how to make the most abusive characters in general.

One of those friends was able to make creatures for himself and others in the game. Basically allowing you to have a “buddy” with you at all times. Through gene-splicing and bio-something or other, you could make all sorts of super strong critters. One of which was a dinosaur looking guy who he named Floody.

Futurama - floody

To understand the meaning behind that name, you’d have to go and look at another of our co-workers. For some reason, which we could never comprehend, his pants were never quite long enough… and if 3 guys are noticing something like that, there probably was a problem. They were high enough that you might think he was expecting a flood (hence the name). So in casual conversation we started referring to him as Floody.

Now Floody was a strange bird. Peculiar. Nothing necessarily wrong with him, but he’d do things that’d make you scratch your head – ask questions about a project and then, after you answered him, go and find someone else “in the know” to answer the same question. He’d wander around the office looking for someone in power to talk to, not listening to your knowledge of the answer.

Kinda frustrating to say the least.

So when this dinosaur got the name Floody, we thought it funny. Then we realized that the dinosaur wouldn’t follow orders from a character. He’d wander around aimlessly, running into fences and getting stuck. In short, this was not one of the better creations to go adventuring with. But it was so damn funny to see that of all the creatures this guy created it was only Floody who he seemed to have any problems with.

Coincidence?

Probably.

Tripping Incident

At that same company a new sheriff eventually came to town and our corporate overlords decreed that we must have Safety Meetings to ensure that there were no accidents out in the field. And whether you were a field employee or stayed behind a desk most of the time… you needed to attend.

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And hey, it makes sense. We’re out there alongside traffic (high-speed traffic in many cases). We’re climbing down embankments to check out pipes. Places where snakes and spiders and all sorts of other animals might be living/hiding. So being told to wear your hard-hat and vest was a good thing. Being told to pay attention to your surroundings was a good thing.

I say all of this to now say – they went WAAAAAYYY overboard with all of this. We had to have monthly meetings (maybe they were bi-monthly, but they felt monthly) where we’d discuss office style accidents that could happen. And again I understood (though was annoyed), as there was a small possibility of maybe hurting yourself lifting an item that was too heavy.

But the final straw, the one that made me realize they’d lost their mind and traveled directly from a Dilbert dimension, was when we had an emergency Safety Meeting because one employee had tripped…

In her own office.

We had a meeting about that. I’m not kidding.

We had a meeting to try and address why it happened (she effectively tripped over her own feet – something I have done a hundred times if I’ve done it once). Something we’ve all done from time to time. It is called an accident for a reason!

But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was listening as they tried to figure out ways that this could have been avoided.

Ugh!

(Not move once you are at work was the only sure-fire way I could see it working.)

So much time wasted.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

And Here I Thought Dilbert Wasn’t True

I design roads during the day. Unlike Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker (who can run a multi-national company or take pictures for a newspaper), my day job is to sit in an office and (according to my wife) point, click, and write down numbers. That’s not entirely true, but probably truer than I’d like to admit.

Which means that, as much as my hermit self would rather avoid it, I have to interact with others. Or more to the point, sometimes people end up interacting with me. And of course, sometimes you have to scratch your head about what happens.

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Make a Saving Throw Versus Poison Gas

My first job out of school was with a company whose office space was in downtown Atlanta. We were on the 3rd or 4th floor (I no longer remember). It was a very simple and relatively small office: about 12-15 employees max could be set up in either offices (for the senior staff) or cubicles. For some reason the ceiling didn’t have tiles so you could see the duct-work and the piping for the sprinkler system. Not sure if the money ran out at some point when they were building the place or what. I do know that’s how things stayed from the day I started working there until we moved offices a couple of years later (to a place which actually had a ceiling!).

In the middle of the office was the printer and an old-school blue-line copying machine.

For those not in the “know”, the blue-line machine allowed us to make copies of our plans for submitting. For some reason in the early part of this century, something being “only” on White paper didn’t make it official enough for some jobs. Not a big deal though.

However, to make the copies the machine used Ammonia, yes that smell you might associate with cat pee. So when someone got the machine pumping and going good the smell would start to penetrate through the office. Luckily someone was forward thinking and put a vent directly above the exhaust of the machine to take most of the bad smell away.

And that should have been that. One day I was in the middle of a large job copying plans for the better part of an hour or two. I flipped on the vent immediately, but as the minutes ticked past the smell was beginning to get too great for me, and I had to take a break. My buddy came over to complain about the smell at one point, but I pointed to the vent above us.

Remember how I said we could see up into the ceiling? Turns out no one had really taken a long look at where the vent was actually… venting.

No where. It was collecting the ammonia smell and then effectively exhausting it right back into the ceiling where it would then seep right back down into the office.

Sigh.

If I end up with some ammonia-based problems later in life I know exactly what caused it.

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You Don’t Have to Tell Them What You Are Sick Of

Two of my co-workers got the short end of the stick when our Transportation Head moved on to a different company leaving the Office Head as the defacto leader of the group. And at some point there was a presentation needed to be done down at the Department of Transportation (DOT) about a project that our company had done in the past, but no one currently employed had worked on. That didn’t dissuade Office Head and he recruited my co-worker Nick to help with the presentation.

Nick realized immediately this was going to be a problem. Not only did Office Head not understand anything about the project, Nick knew that he’d just deflect all the questions onto Nick… making him look bad in front of DOT. So Nick hatched a scheme. He’d bail on the meeting in question by calling in sick… but not for him, for one of his daughters. And given that his “wife was out of town” he wouldn’t be able to come in, avoid the career crippling meeting, and not give it anymore thought.

James saw the flaw in this plan. Without Nick there (Beth Ann was out of the office that day for client work and I was doing Site work at the time), James would be the go-to guy to accompany Office Head to the meeting. And probably take all the blame.

“Hey, you can’t call in sick because he’ll make me go!”

“You could call in sick.”

“Hey! I could.”

I heard that the meeting went really well… if you wanted to laugh at how much someone didn’t know about a project. I’m just glad I wasn’t there.

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A Part of the Solution, Not the Problem

For some reason the power blipped from time to time in the early 2000s. Looking back I’d like to blame it on the Ghosts in the Machines left over from the Y2K mess, but I’m sure it was just “one of those things”. The thing is with blackouts in the modern age… well, I can’t do my cad work if I have no power. And no, we didn’t have work-station battery back-ups… we didn’t have ceiling tiles!

So when the power went out it was complete downtime for the office. Yeah, maybe you had some paperwork you could do, forms to fill out, notes to take, but when the outage lasted for longer than 15 minutes you sat around and talked to your co-workers. Most importantly though, you are not really billable when you aren’t working, but still at work… and that did not sit well with our Office Head Pooba. No, this was a chance to do some Spring Cleaning. Maybe organize some old plan sets, maybe throw out some things we no longer needed.

Me and my buddy James did a little of this, but it was difficult to see so both of us gave up after a few minutes. I believe our exact words were:

“I can’t see shit.”

“Screw this, I’m going back to my desk.”

Beth Ann didn’t give up so easily, but in dealing with old projects the last thing you wanted to do was throw out something that was still needed. So she approached the Office Head about just that.

“Beth Ann, you need to be apart of the solution and not the problem.” He spoke the words to her and then went back to his office.

The next thing I hear is the sound of many plan sets going into the recycle bins. Loudly. And then more and then more, until both James and I emerged from our cocoons to see what the ruckus was about. What we saw was a full bin and more plans being dropped into it by Beth Ann.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you know? I’m being a part of the solution.” As another set was thrown down.

From that day forth we used that line as much as possible.

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.