• 1Apr 08

  Someone Started Singing It Not Knowing What It Was

  Today was a LONG day at work. I have to admit that I was watching the clock from the very first moment. Thus, it seemed the hands of the clock weren't moving, so that wasn't helping at ALL.

  Not that I wanted to leave work, mind you. But I was watching the clock to see what time my next victim was clocking in.

  Yes, April 1st is MY holiday. And I celebrated it in full glory this year.

  In no particular order...

  Our manager is pretty lenient on people clocking in "late". As long as the person has an isolated assignment, such as Cake Decorator, and don't abuse it, they came come and go as they please. In his opinion, it's important that they get the work done right, but not the exact moment of the day. (Note to the idiot bagboy who's YET to come even close to arriving on time. That doesn't apply to those us on the front end. Somebody's waiting on us to get there so they can take a break or go home. LEARN TO TELL TIME, FOR @#$%'S SAKE!!!)

  Sorry about that. I guess I've been watching to much Hell's Kitchen and Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. Where was I?

  Oh yeah.

  To dairy clerk as he walks in, obviously still half-asleep. "Where have you been?!!! The yogurt case went out. The manager and department head have been loading product into bascarts and putting it in the cooler for the last thirty minutes. They're LIVID that your not here yet." That's adaptable to just about any department in the store.

  Fun variation with front end employees who NEVER work the same shifts two days in a row. "What are you doing here? I thought you were off today." The major enjoyment from this one comes from the fact the employee walks all the way to the breakroom in the back of the store to check their schedule, and then has to walk all the way BACK to the front so they can clock in.

  To opening office clerk as she walks in. "I'm having to check in the night checker's till because the CAST is offline." Gotta explain this one. I've no idea what C.A.S.T. stands for, but all checklane tills are controlled by this system. Nothing goes in or out of the safe unless it's been thru it. "And we can't get U-Scan open. It's giving us an unknown transmission error. Oh, and the second checker (due to clock in NOW) called in sick." I admit I ruined this prank by laughing when she did a U-turn without breaking stride.

  This one took some timing. The set up required me to be coming back from a smoke break, and for the checklanes to be backed up DEEP. And for the victim to have been away from her car for several hours. "You drive (whatever the @#$% it was), don't you? I think you left your lights on." I swear I've never seen her check so fast in my life!!!

  But the two highlights of the day...

  To employee who recently transferred from another store. "You didn't park your car in the parking lot did you? Today?!!! Don't you realize what today is?!!! Good Lord, you NEVER leave your car in the parking lot on April Fool's Day. There's people in this store who @#$%ing LIVE for the opportunity to get away with messing with other employee's cars today. They'll let the air out of your tires, unplug all your spark plugs, or something to totally destroy your day. Call your husband and tell him you're coming home on break and he'll have to bring you to back to work. Tell you what, I'll watch U-Scan so you can hide your car until you can take it home." After she had parked her car WWWAAAYYY at the opposite end of the shopping center, she called her husband. I walked up to her while she was on the phone, and said "Uh... I TOLD you it was April Fool's Day, and that didn't provide any clue at all?"

  (You have to love an practical joke that works because you specifically warn them they're being punked.)

  I've saved the best for last. I didn't plan it. I was just smarting off to the boss, and pulled the what may just be one of the funniest April Fool's joke of all time.

  All of our check lanes have a globe above the check lanes. Customers know that a lit globe means the check lane is open. This is important because cashiers sometimes have to step away from their stations, but our customers know to go ahead and unload groceries; the cashier will be right back.

  Now that the set-up's out of the way...

  I'd forgotten to flip the switch and the light wasn't on, even though I was already checking. The manager walked by and told me to turn the station light on. I turned to him and said "I tried to. But when I flipped the switch, the light went off. Flipping it the other way turn the light on. I think somebody wired this station up wrong."

  I noticed the other cashier and his customer completely stopped what they were doing when the manager said "Oh. I'll call maintenance and get that fixed."

  I actually had to say "Think about what I just said." before he remembered what day it was.

  Something tell's me, next year when I ask for an extra day off so I can take a long weekend, THEY'LL LET ME !!!

  • Posted Apr 1, 2008 7:49 pm PT
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• 8Mar 08

  The Answer My Friend... (sorry, but it's just too obvious a lyric to ignore)

  There's a few subjects that shouldn't be brought up. Religion is high on most peoples' list simply because "I'm right, and you're an idiot." Politics is up there also because "I'm right, and you're a @#$%ing idiot." And sitting at the very top, above race, religion, politics, and a man's daughter is any conversation that begins with "I had a dream last night."

  Having said that...

  Last night I had I nightmare where I was programming weather alert radios.

  Okay, that might not sound so scary to YOU, but I had chills from it, lemmetellyou. (*sigh* Guess I gotta explain this one.)

  For you Yankees, @#$% furiners, and other unwashed masses, here's why hearing "We need someone at the office to program a weather radio" over the intercom is the stuff nightmares are made of. The deep south in the US has the most unpredictable weather season on the planet. We've got the one weather phenomena that is unique to our area, TORNADOES.

  Earthquakes, floods, blizzards and a host of other disasters are democratic; every person is affected evenly. But a tornado will utterly destroy one home and leave a flimsy lawn chair unscathed next door.

  True story: When I was just shy of being a teenager, our neighbor's oak tree was picked up out of the ground, roots and all, and came crashing down into our OTHER neighbor's den. Our house? No damage at all. Mine and my brother's bicycles were still sitting propped up against our garage where we'd left them that evening. But at the house behind us, the massive garage door was GONE.

  Everyone knows that southern men have a rifle rack in the truck, a grill on the back porch made out of a discarded oil drum, and a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on top of the fridge. But a little known requirement to get the Southern Boy Seal of Approval is to have a weather alert radio with a fresh set of batteries on the dresser in the bedroom.

  And redneck that I am, I've got one, of course. Mine has several useful features; you can set it for the style of alert (from natural disasters to product recalls or any combination), or to a specific county or combination of counties, or even use it as simple alarm clock. And being the STUPID redneck that I am, I mentioned to the people at work that the one we're selling is the same style I have at home.

  So guess who get's to do the @#$% programming for all the customers?

  Not once, not twice, not just a few times. WE'VE SOLD SEVERAL THOUSANDS !!! And we're selling not just to people in our city. Setting every radio exactly alike would be too easy; I've got to remember the codes and setting for every blessed county and city around us.

  And simply programming the @#$% things isn't enough. I have to show each and every customer how to USE them. "Ya see that big button to says ON? Push it once to turn it on." "Ya see that button that says OFF?..." (Personally, I'd rather read the INSTRUCTIONS THAT COME IN THE BOX than trust my life to some long haired freak I've never met before. But that's just me.)

  I've pushed the same buttons, and recited the same speech for hours and hours, shift after shift, day after day, for too long now. And after we had a mild weather alert go thru the area the other day, we're starting to have customers bring their weather alert radios complaining that they're not working.

  Why?

  Because I left out the most important part of my speech.

  So I've added something to my patter.

  "You see this cord with the adapter at one end and the two prongs at the other? And on the back of the radio, you see this little hole that says "AC Outlet?..."

  • Posted Mar 8, 2008 7:52 pm PT
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• 6Mar 08

  Fate Is Just The Weight Of Circumstances

  Dungeons & Dragons was released a generation ago and quickly became a national craze. I must admit that I was amongst those who spent their Friday and Saturday nights hacking, slashing, picking pockets and throwing fireballs from our fingertips instead of going out with the fairer sex. To explain how obsessive we were, the group I rolled dice with beat the creator of D&D to getting the monsters manual published by six months. Granted, ours was in a loose binder instead of bound in a hardback book, but still...

  Fairly quickly D&D, or more accurately AD&D by this time, had a slew of imitators. One of them was a sci-fi themed game called Paranoia. Though it was certainly a RPG, our group transformed it into the ANTI-role-playing game. Most RPGs stressed teamwork. But Paranoia was set up to prevent the players from working together.

  Set up in a dystopian future controlled by a insane computer, the characters found themselves forced to pit themselves against each other in order to survive. Secret societies were classified as terrorist organizations and membership was grounds for automatic execution. Being an unregistered mutant was also illegal and resulted in summary execution. (And yes, every player got stuck with a character who was in an illegal secret society and an unregistered mutant.) Damaging property owned by the state was one of the greatest acts of treason to be found. (Maybe that was why Research & Development was so quick to hand out broken equipment to the party. "It worked fine when they left with it.") Additionally, most of the organization characters belonged to, such as Armed Forces or Department of Commissaries and Supplies absolutely detested one another. Any opportunity to embarrass another branch was a chance for quick promotion.

  It was game of constant note passing to the DM, as players took every opportunity they could to sandbag their companions.

  And to top it all off, we rarely used dice to decide the outcome of actions. The DM usually ruled that the most outlandish, off-the-wall, sure-to-get-everyone-killed idea was the one that happened.

  Now that I've "briefly" set up the story...

  Several years ago, a group of us were in Atlanta for a fantasy convention one weekend. After doing "con stuff" all night, we relaxed in the courtyard at the Omni one morning before the convention reopened. And how to do a bunch of people who've played AD&D for 18 straight hours relax? Why by playing a DIFFERENT RPG, of course.

  So there we were handing out character sheets for a fresh game of Paranoia, when a man slightly older than we were sat down at the table next to us. We realized fairly quickly that this guy was laughing just as hard as we were at the game, so we invited him to join us. The DM tossed together a new character sheet, made a few adjustments to the other characters so they would have reason to sabotage Gary's character, and he joined our merry party.

  Our group was already feared for making DMs run crying into the night, but THIS guy... Gary's character assassinated the party leader (with documented evidence of treason to justify it), and took over the party. He reprogrammed the Funbot's laser cannon to shoot lemon meringue instead (gotta admit it does make more sense in a bizarre sort of way). And altered the atomic powered cruiser so everyone else's seats were OUTSIDE the vehicle (much easier to return fire that way, you see). And all this before his character had failed an insanity check.

  After a couple hours of play, the party found themselves cowering inside the cruiser surrounded by a mob of NPCs intent on the destruction of the party. To make matters worse, the party was THIS close to their objective, needing only to get up a two hundred foot cliff to reach it. Gary quickly conceived of a brilliant plan to both defeat the NPCs and create a pass in the cliff face. He directed the other party members to expend the last of their firepower while he did something to the cruiser's engine. He passed a note to the DM explaining exactly what he wanted to do.

  Remember the part where I mentioned how the cruiser was powered? What happens to a bunch of violent NPCs who are caught in the blast of a self-destructing atomic pile? And that pesky cliff wouldn't last long if hit with a two megaton blast, now would it?

  Granted, Gary's character would have faced charges for damaging the cruiser, and the other characters clothing, and... But as Gary pointed out, the mile wide crater left little evidence that HIS character was at fault.

  After our session broke up, he mentioned in passing his last name. I'm sure you AD&D fans have already guessed, but we had sat down and played a role-playing game with none other than Gary Gygax, the creator of an entire industry.

  You'll be missed Gary, and thank you for helping us socially inept people find a way to make lifelong friends.

  • Posted Mar 6, 2008 1:47 am PT
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