Poetry Slam

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

 

A Haiku for Today, and Most Other Days:

If my boss said, "Good!"

As often as she said, "Bad!"

She'd say, "Good!" a lot

Weighty Matters

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Around noon today, a shirtless man appeared in the courtyard below my window, walking around carrying a giant barbell with enormous weights toward my office building.  But he was in no rush, it seemed, to get this barbell to wherever it could reasonably have been going, and he stopped for some moments in the middle of the courtyard, lifted the weight, and- as you can see if you give this picture a good squint- stood with his foot on top of the barbell as a conquering hero might stand with his foot proudly on a rock of some sort if he had just successfully killed off a bunch of native people in an effort to make some land or another his own.  Now, there is a gym inside this building, though I have to believe that they have nothing like a BYOW(eights) policy, and if this guy did somehow really need to get this particular weight to the gym here, I can only imagine- as someone who personally could not lift or carry this weight and who looks down on public half-nudity- that dollies have been invented (yes- just checked- they have) as have shirts (a check on this also came back yes).  In short, it was ridiculous.


However, it seems that a coworker of mine may be trying to protect this stupid courtyard body builder by distracting me with something that I dare say is even more inane.  The floor in the studio where we tape our show was recently painted, and- after I saw the body builder- a few of us were putting out seats for our audience.  I was in charge of the taking the chairs down from the big chair stack part of the assembly line; I take down the chairs, someone else moves them to the carpet part of the floor (so that they don't make noise during the actual taping).  My coworker pointed out the newly painted floor to me, and told me to, "Be careful."  You know, with the floor.  I couldn't imagine what I might do that would be un-careful with the floor so just carried on... Until he made himself plain and asked me to please stop putting chairs down on it because we didn't want anything to go wrong.  He asked me to not put chairs on the ground because something bad might happen.  Something bad like... Gravity?  Instead he asked me to carry them over to the carpet, the sweet sweet safe carpet.  Next time I'm borrowing the barbell from the courtyard guy.   

Day of Stressed

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Yesterday was the first day since the beginning of Job Slobs that I didn't post anything.  You might think that it was because everything was so slow, relaxing, and jovial at the office that I just forgot.  Or maybe you imagine that I was so distracted all day by my exceptional physical health, my ache-less head, and remarkably un-runny nose.  Or perhaps you envision me in my own office all day just doing a great job rather than being called in to the big boss' office to hear that I'm not.  Alternatively you might picture that, after not hearing that I was doing a not great job, I would never have dared to sneak out of the office for an hour on a day that we tape our show because I had an audition that I really wanted to make it to, and that the reason I didn't post was because I was so dutifully at my desk not doing that.  On all these points you would be wrong.  Like, super wrong.  But I do appreciate your optimism and good faith.

You Think Your Fish Don't Stink?

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Someone microwaved fish in the staff kitchen! FISH! Do you know how bad that smells? I will tell you: really bad. The smell has permeated our entire (admittedly small) building. My boss and I ended up having our meeting in another building because neither of us could handle the smell. It's windy, cold and rainy out right now and people have their windows open because the cold, fresh air is preferable to the fish odor, a reasonable temperature, and dryness.

And God are we pissed at that guy who he did it. He's really nice, but kind of a weirdo and just the type to be so out of touch with social norms to not realize that microwaving fish in the workplace is a real no-no. My boss yelled "what is that awful smell? Did someone cook fish?!" and the guy was standing right behind her. She felt bad, but I think someone needed to clue him into this not being okay.

Once I accidentally burned popcorn in the office microwave at my old job and people came after me like I burned down the whole damn building. But that was an accident and popcorn is a food that is typically meant to be microwaved and when all goes according to plan, the smell is not bad at all. But fish? You know fish is gonna stink.