Rants!

So now that I’ve given my two-weeks notice at my current place of employment, I can finally unleash all my repressed work-place frustrations onto my website, with impunity. Now who will be my first victim?

Let’s see. Well, there is this one guy that sits near me from a different department who has a very irritating artifical laugh. But he’s actually one of the friendliest people here, so I can’t with good conscience make fun of him. And then there are all my other colleagues… who also are actually quite nice. (Hmm… this may be more difficult that I had imagined.)

But alas, the chilly office misanthrope who sits 5 feet above my head, sealed to the ceiling, has just kicked on. It bellows a windy suspiration of icy cold air, making my arms goose-up uncharacteristically in the hot August month. Outside, the air is a balmy 80 degrees, but inside this office, it’s always a frigid 60 — making the need for refrigerators in the office almost superfluous.

This pernicious vent! I can’t turn it off. I can’t adjust the temperature control. And no one knows why.

Denis, the IT Manager, and I, were discussing crawling in, past the drop ceiling, and deactivating the vent. But that was riddled with problems, one in particular being: we don’t know how. Our final decision, was to take heavy folders and stuff them into the vent, in effect to block the path of air from exiting it. The result: a still frigid office, with a vent stuffed with heavy folders in it. No effect! The vent laughs that evil villain laugh.

Eventually, the strength of the air that flows out the vent caused the folders to shift around in place; now the folders are off to the sides, jutting out at the wrong places; two are threatening to fall down at any moment. People that stop by the office to visit feel it their duty to throw out a comment about it. One lady, Rosy, after seeing the disheveled folders hanging off the vent said “What the….? What’s that a RISD design?”. It sure could be.

I haven’t taken the folders off the vent. That would mean letting The Vent win. I’m too sore a loser and ruefully stubborn to let that happen. Withdraw my folders from what I know is a losing battle, regardless of the escalating casualties, and non-existent exit-strategy? I’d rather die trying.

So until then, I guess I will just continue to wear a sweater in the office (in summer), and continue to make the periodic trips to The Outside, where the climate is less harsh and tolerable and where it feels less like the setting from March of the Penguins.

Two more weeks, and one reason why I’m counting the days.

Lemme tell ya, working from home is exhausting. The commute is about 5 steps from my bed. The commute back, depending on traffic, which is usually not a problem, is another 5 steps. I was watching the Godfather II and III while working (Thank you Mark). You know, maybe I shouldn’t say too much, lest I be another one of those poor souls that have been fired by their blog. Which is another topic in itself that I want to address one of these days. But in my defense, I did do some work. I was on top of the work-emails with “lightning quickness”. I missed my one work-related call from “The Chad”, who should know better than phone an IT person. Email people! Email is the way to reach us!

And while I was “hard” at work in my room, I heard the sounds of grinding, and the buzz saw did snarl and rattle, snarl and rattle. My parent’s balcony is being renovated. It’s a big job. We’re closing the entire balcony, putting up windows, it should be nice. And the work is being done entirely by one man. His name is Mohammed. And, like the sultan from Aladdin, “I’m an Excellent judge of Character”. But no really, I am. And Mohammed so far is turning out to be one of the most honest carpenters we have had work for us, and in the words of Hamlet, “… to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” How true.