The @-Work Nettwerk
Mundane Tasks and Capitalist Pig-Dog Commands

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Volume Forty Three: JonBenet Ramsey Will Not Receive This Email.

Today’s Golden Cubicle Award goes to some random girl whose entry got forwarded to me, so I don’t know her name or where she is. Come back, little Sheba, come back! **Today one of my bosses called me and asked me if I was at my desk. I told her that I was actually sitting at the bar across the street having a margarita. She didn't think I was very funny.**

Today my very thoughtful co-worker Wendy did a tap dance outside of the bathroom stall while I changed my tampon. Thank you, Wendy, thank you.

Working at a youth group for gay kids offers certain liberties not often found in the workplace. For example, one of our staff members was introducing one of our counselors to a youth and she jokingly added that Hollie used to be an Olympic diver. I couldn't resist: "Yeah, she's a Muff Diver!"

My cowerker and I, whose desks are four and a half feet apart, made a covert drug deal over email this morning. I put her little baggie of weed in her in-box, she slipped a $20 in my bag, and then returned to our work stations.

Today I had a wrestling match with copying machinethe likes of which has not been seen since the WWF rivalry between Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper of the mid 1980s. It was close, but I won.

I'm pretty sure my boss was smelling my recently de-shoed feet when he came in my office and quickly retreated to the hallway to finish the conversation.

At some point last year, Elizabeth Rose posted an anecdote about trying to help someone write a resume when all they had ever done was sell crack. At the time I couldn't decide if it was humorous or poignant, or a Golden Cubicle award-winning combination of both. The other day I was helping one of my kids write his resume, and he put down, "1995-present. Killing people I don't like."

On my way back from delivering an invoice, my cowerker Elizabeth and I hid in my office where we hid behind the door and practiced eating Saltines without using our hands.

One of our kids has multiple transsexual personae, as indicated by the configuration of the tee-shirt wrapped around his head as "hair." She expects to be addressed by the proper manifest personality, which changes literally with a swing of her head. This continues until you rip the shirt off and say, "Eric, get the hell out of my office!"

The woman in the office next to mine is listening to Fugazi's "Waiting Room".

This is in response to the person in the last volume whose job convinced her that she has a wide variety of diseases. Well, I work for at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and there are some people who claim that hypochondriacs actually have a neurological disorder called fibromyalgia. Although, as a hypochondriac, you probably don't want to hear that.

I am now the proud owner of and industrial and laboratory plastic supply catalog. There is actually a lot of cool shit in it. Plus, you never know when you are going to find yourself in need of a Nalgene Y connector.

That woman has now played the same Fugazi song 4 times in the past half-hour.

My office is on the second floor, right above the youth center’s "cafe" space where there's an old upright, out-of-tune piano where one of our youth now sits playing the only song he knows: Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" over and over and OVER again. Do I jump out the window now, or wait til he gets to the chorus?

I think I sexually harassed a job applicant today. I told him his resume was impressive, and that he reminded me of a character in a book I was reading. He asked me what the character was like, and I told him that the character is into s/m and sexual death fantasies, and likes to pick up strange boys, kill them, and manipulate their lifeless bodies. Needless to say, he emailed the next day saying he was no longer interested in the position.

Volume Forty Four: Haley Joel Osmonts First Wet Dream!!!

Today’s Golden Cubicle Award is a nettwerk ego special! Our loyal winner is Miss Sarah Mercure, of Baltimore, Maryland: **Today I read all 41 volumes of the @ work nettwerk..at work.

My company recently fired our Systems Administrator, a 17 year old UNIX prodigy and ex-hacker. They fired him for always being late, missing deadlines, and calling out. I'm happy to report that he WASN'T fired for being a furvert (http://www.deviantdesires.com/map/furverts.html) or storing images of himself fucking a dalmation on our company's web server. We still have a bimale who gets blowjobs in gloryholes, an African American woman into the local BDSM scene, a hood-fetishist into nurse uniforms and medical torture, a grand-pubah who smokes weed with a noted public radio figure, and I frequently wear my "Bitch Goddess" t-shirt to the office. I hope our merger doesn't fuck this up.

Universal Tautology #4: Monkeys are, have been, and always will be, funny.

Today, while standing at the urinal, I quite plainly heard someone vomiting, loudly and copiously, in the bathroom directly above me. I decided I probably shouldn't eat in our cafeteria anymore.

Today I got in the elevator, looked down on the floor, and saw a dirty pair of underwear, a toothbrush, two razors, and some Speed Stick. The underwear had very prominent…uhm…tracks, which surprised me given the range of hygenic products that came with it.

My boss is throwing me a farewell ice-cream social, and has nicknamed me "J. Mocha."

Work Today, A Haiku:
Drugs Saturday.
Work Monday.
Can joy linger?
No.

As my first submission to this, the greatest idea conceived by a human since auto-fellatio, I just want to say that http://mchawking.com/ is the greatest site EVER.
(FROM THE UBERMENSCH: As a sidelight to this entry, I should note that in addition to creating the nettwerk, Andy and I actually invented auto-fellatio as well.)

While spending a good hour at work searching the internet for evolutionary perspectives on the functions of armpit hair, I came across this enlightening piece: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/5043/Shorthair.html

http://www.cousincouples.com

I work at a newspaper and my editor sits across from me. He eats all my pretzels, then tells me if I keep eating them, I will get fat. He also calls every person he thinks is an asshole a flamer. I thought he was telling me all these men were homosexual. Because of the generational gap, he never knew people use the term as a derogatory slang for homosexuals.

For lunch a co-worker went to the coffee shop down the street and got a tuna sandwich for lunch. The entire office now smells like tuna.

It has been one week since I started my new job. I scan documents all day and post them to the web, very repetitive. It was only today I noticed one of those cheesy posters with a picture of nature, a random positive word, and a little slogan under it hanging behind me. My picture is of a huge rolling wave with the word CHANGE...and underneath the phrase "If you're not riding the wave of change...you'll find yourself beneath it." Aren't these goddamn things meant to inspire, not defeat?

@-work nettwerk copyright 2001, Benjamin Wyskida and Andrew Myatt