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


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Volume Fifty-One: Axis of Dweezil

Today's Golden Cubicle Goes to Elizabeth, of Washington D.C.: If I were a office supply rap superstar/MC (despite the fact that I am a woman) I would be Sir Marks A Lot.

It is such a bummer when you spend 15 minutes waiting for an elevator and when one finally comes, there's a dead person in it.

There is vomit on my shoe.

As part of our office filing system, we create a four-letter code for each case, using the first two letters of the names of the parties, so Larisa/Dennis would be 'lade,' and so on. Our confidentiality policy prohibits me from actually sharing our client names, so let's just say we had a case named Andrew/Alison. I laughed hysterically every time I looked up anything on the computer in that subdirectory (anal-billing was a favorite) until the senior partner noticed and made us change all the codes.

Today while I was typing address labels, I accidentally typed "United Kinkdom" instead of "United Kingdom." Then I imagined Winston Churchill and J. Edgar Hoover drinking tea in lace teddies. Also crossing my mind was a vision of Margaret Thatcher in Dom gear, brandishing a bull whip.

I went to the mens room this afternoon, and there was a plastic fork in the stall, on top of the toilet paper dispenser.

I was having trouble deciding which of the five frozen entrees I had in the freezer I wanted to eat for lunch today. So, I numbered them 1 through 5. Then, I cut out 5 small paper squares, all the same size, and numbered them 1 through 5. I shuffled them in a desk drawer, picked one with my eyes closed, and ate that entree for lunch. I plan to do it again tomorrow.

Work has been terribly busy lately. Yesterday I had to skip lunch. I wasn't able to break even once. Unfortunately, this meant I didn't have time to stop and change my menstrual pad... which turns out to be the one thing you shouldn't neglect no matter how busy it is in the office. I had to quietly take my desk chair into the closet and clean it with a cold damp cloth. How embarassing.

There is construction on the road I take to work every day. My husband and I carpool, and as we passed the work zone, my husband said, "If that truck weren't in the way, I could run over the port-a-potty." Not one to be so easily defeated, I suggested that he pass it, then back up to knock it over. He said, "Yeah, but who wants to back into a port-a-john?" My response: "A really fat guy who has to poop." I haven't found a single person besides me who thinks this is amusing.

There's a guy here in IT who never washes his hands after taking a crap. Every time he comes to fix a software problem on my computer I have to disinfect the keyboard. Sometimes when he's working on my computer he asks me to type in my password, so I type it in using the end of a pencil.

From my filing today:
SMELL (Read Buckley, 28-29)
1. It is not necessary to prove injury to health in order to succeed in an action for nuisance by smell (Cramp v Lambert (1867) LR 3 Eg. 409) "…it is a question of degree. You can only appeal to the common sense of ordinary people. The test is whether the smell is so bad and continuous as to seriously interfere with comfort and enjoyment." (Rapier v London Tramways Co (1893) 2 Ch. 588 per Lindley LJ at 600). Pig manure – Bone v Searle (1975) 1 All ER 787, 1 WLR 797

I sat in front of my computer for twenty minutes today trying to think of something funny to submit to the Nettwerk. This is it.

Recently I got a new boss who is four feet ten and a half inches tall, so she just eeks past the cut off point to be considered a dwarf (4'10" is the tallest height for a dwarf), and she also weighs about 350 lbs. The other day she was leaving my office and I heard a gigantic thump sound. As I ran to see what had happened outside, I saw her on her hands and knees with her underwear exposed trying to get up. Remarkably, she was uninjured from the fall but later on in the day my officemate noticed that there was a break in the drywall from where she had fallen. I really hope the repairmen don't ask me how this happened.

My boss just handed me the 50-page document that I typed yesterday. He said, "can you tidy this up quickly please, I need it for this afternoon." I took it away to correct. There was one correction. Page 32, change "a designated attachment point" to "the designated attachment point."

I've discovered that the day moves by much more quickly if you have sex all morning, then roll into work around noon. The hard part is explaining to your boss why you are so drowsy, even though you "overslept" that morning.

One of my co-workers reminds me of my Catholic Nun Nursery school teacher - very stern and proper. She shattered that image recently at lunch when she fished out a piece of broccoli she'd dropped down her shirt and into her bra and then ate it.

I have a hot date tomorrow night, and I think it is pretty telling where my mind is right now. I was typing a memo to some co-workers and spelled "next" as "sext," as in "I be all sext up."

Every time the religious woman next to me asks me what I did last night, I tell her I took lots of drugs just to scare her. Today my boss overheard me and came running out of his office to ask me if I could get him some.

Panic stricken quote of the day: "WHERE IS THE GREETING CARD FILE?!?!?!?!?!?!??!! WHERE IS IT????????????????????"

I work for an archive that has a large collection of oral history interviews with artists, gallery owners, art critics. . .you get the idea. Our West Coast director recently completed a series of interview about artist's models who were working out in LA. Many of them are quite saucy to say the least. They must have sent our office double copies of these interviews because we've been using them as scrap paper. Today, the printer was jamming up so I took the papers out, and when I turned them over I just happened to notice some of these saucy passages. I really dodged a bullet too, because I've been using this paper to print out requests that I send to libraries and universities all over the world. Let's just say that the University of Sydney almost got a very detailed passage about two models who were making love while the interviewee filmed it. . .and the follow up question by our assistant director: "Were you aroused?"

Note From the Ubermensch: I received the following email in the cubicle85@hotmail account: "I can see hot sex with horses pigs goats and camels." I'm not really sure if its an entry, or porn spam. It's from a yahoo address, and included the Yahoo signature "Yahoo - Your Guide to Health and Wellness," which made me think, you know, if hot sex with horses pigs goats and camels really IS the guide to health and wellness, well bust out the chaps and sign me up.

Volume 52: Bill Gates, Will You Hold My Hand?

This weeks Golden Cubicle goes to Paul, of Chicago IL:
Would it interest you to know that every day the computer servers I administer 'dump'? Yep, they're always 'passing' and 'dumping,' with high 'throughputs,' and then announce satisfyingly that the 'DUMP IS DONE.' Amen, bit-wise brother. Here's a sample 'log':
DUMP: Date of last level 2 dump: Mon May 6 23:54:36 2002
DUMP: Dumping /dev/da1s1 (/cnt) to /dev/nrsa0
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: 11.00% done, finished in 0:40
DUMP: 94.42% done, finished in 0:02
DUMP: finished in 2548 seconds, throughput 2610 KBytes/sec
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE

This morning I had a request for photographs of a Seneca Indian who was known as "Summer Eve." I didn't find anything in our catalog so I did an internet search. Needless to say, I found nothing about this particular Seneca Indian, but if anyone out there needs any "feminine products" I can hook you up with some websites.

One of my coworkers always calls me Ed McMahon. Fair enough, I guess, except he always gets it wrong and calls me Ed McMillen instead. So several times a day, I'm greeted with: "Ed! Ed McMillen! Where's my million-dollar check?!"

I have just typed an advice on a property at 33 Kuntpipi Street. Hehehe

there are two of us working on this project. my business associate has taken to color-coding his many memos, as my boss and i typically ignore them due to their multitude: red (actually pink) post-its are high priority, yellow post-its are mid-level priority, and greens are just f.y.i.

I got a new mouse pad today... it's filled with gel and is soft. i like that. That's it.

A woman called into AAA where I work as a receptionist. She asked if we sold French "douchemarks". I said I could see how she would think the "douchemarks" were French, but that, in fact, they are German douchemarks.

Our facilities manager is walking down the hall wearing jogging shorts. He's a tall man. Thank god I'm not short enough to be on eye level. I think he changes in his office. That's a disgusting thought.

Make sure you go to the "cousins" section so you can see noelle bush's mug shot:
www.thefirsttwins.com

Today I have mostly been creating combinations of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2,1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7.

I got spam in my email account that said I won the porn lottery!

Today I am listening to a collection of Puccini arias. It is making me feel very passionate and romantic. It is also making me feel like going out and purchasing a jar of spaghetti sauce.

I started a new internship today, 50 miles from my house. The total time commuting means that I'll be getting up at 5am and getting home at 7pm, every day, for the next six months. One of the first things I was asked to do this morning was set my network password, so I just picked what was on my mind at the time. An hour later, I'm sitting in a training session, and the Pathologically Happy Network Guy taps me on the shoulder. He needed my password so he could set up my printer connections and would I mind giving it to him? Certainly not. I took a post-it and a thick black marker and wrote "HOPELESSNESS" on it, nice and big, and handed it to him.

Today after asking a perfectly innocent question of my co-worker she said to me, and I quote: "If you don't know what da' bling-bling is, I ain't tellin' ya."

Just a couple of days ago, the lawyer who has moved into my bosses office while he is away came out to my desk out of the blue and played me a dictaphone tape recording of calves mooing when separated from their mothers. He said he'd been up to his father's farm that weekend and never got a moment's sleep because of all the noise the calves were making.

The Blue Angels, a group of Navy fighter jets, are practicing for their Naval Academy graduation show here in Annapolis. My boss heard them fly over and earnestly commented that its "The Sound of Freedom," which, I have to admit, is nearly the opposite of the sound I hear (not to be dialectical). Another boss added, "it gives me goosebumps when four of them are together like that." Wow.

Kelly just sent me a link for my August horoscope. As a Sag my fitness forecast reveals that: Games of agility such as fencing or archery, could appeal to me as well. En garde!

Nothing that new to report from the office as I have just had a couple of sick days. However, this afforded me the opportunity to watch Live! with Regis and Kelly's "Hunky Husband Pageant" and "Sexy Hula Girl or Hawaiian Hunk" on Maury. Regarding the later, I found that I had about an 80% accuracy rate in guessing which designer gown models were sexy hula girls and which were Hawaiian hunks. Incidentally, I think one of my co-workers is starting to go through "The Change." I'll keep you all posted.

It sounds like someone is coughing up a hairball down the hall.

Lastly, I wasn't sure if this was an entry or not, but the nettwerk received the following offer and I felt compelled to pass it on to all of you. It is the last week, after all:
This is Ann, this is the last week I will be giving away the free memberships for my new site www.anassite.com. I am giving away 100 pecent FREE memberships to my site to see how people like it. Just click on the link and get your free membership, Then Email me and tell me what you think of the site.


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Copyright 2002, Benjamin Wyskida, Andrew Myatt & Elizabeth Rose


@-Work Nettwerk : Cubicle85@hotmail.com
Elizabeth Rose : rose@monkey.org