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2004-08-20 - 7:58 p.m. Vinny's World Soooooooooooo... I was listening to Vinny, the guy on the other side of the cube wall from me, making phone calls this morning. This is the chattiest guy IN THE WORLD. The four of us in my department were talking one day about how you get to know all kinds of personal details about everyone around you in this place because of the lack of privacy in a cube farm. I agreed because I know EVERYTHING about Vinny. I know where he went on his last vacation, why his last girlfriend broke up with him, exactly what he's doing this weekend, what bands he was in when he was in college, bla bla bla. Now I say I agreed, but... does Vinny know anything about me? He may know I talk to myself sometimes when I'm concentrating and I occasionally walk through programming logic out loud or tell the application on my computer that I don't like what it's doing. But does he know even the basics about me? That I'm married - or that I am a professional rock concert audience member? He does not. You only get to know personal details about people if they discuss their personal lives in detail at work. I don't even like to make haircut appointments from my work phone. No one needs to know when I'm getting my layers evened up. Anyway. So Vinny calls someone and says, "Hey, I'm writing a sales proposal here, and I need some help - what's another word for purchase?" pause. "Okay." And he hangs up. Anyone else in on the pre-eye-rolling here? Okay. So almost immediately, the phone rings, and he starts laughing. "Hello?" pause. Hysterical laughter. "No, I didn't hang up on you, you said 'bye.'" Hohoho. "Yeah you did, you said 'bye.'" Heeheehee. "Yeah you did, I asked you for another word for purchase, and you said 'bye,' so I hung up." Hahaha. "Yeah, it's a joke, most people will say 'buy,' so then you hang up, that's the joke." Googoogajoob (I don�t know, I ran out of "I Am The Walrus" laughter onomatopoeia). I think Vinny may be getting moved soon, just because it's been a while since the facilities department people came around and moved the people in that row. Somehow it's judged good for business if no one gets to sit in the same cube for too long. It's like the entire company is a big slidy puzzle. You know those puzzles where there are a bunch of square tiles in a frame, with one tile missing, and you constantly slide the pieces around to try and get the rest of them to make the correct big picture? That's what they do here. They slide everyone around, then step back and go, "Nooooooo," then slide everyone around again, then step back and go, "Nooooooo," and on and on in some infinite loop. It makes sense to someone somewhere whose wisdom presumably is greater than mine (perhaps the person who justifies the budget for the facilities department). For a while, I thought I would be leaving the World of Vinny because I was being moved - right out of the company. For anyone who just joined our program in progress, I am a temp. Been here for over a year now, but technically and in all the ways that count - temp. There have been rumblings about me being let go at the end of almost every month since last October, but this month they sounded and felt very very real. I told my husband a couple nights ago that I might not have a job come September, and he said, "Well who knows, I might not either." Way to be supportive there, honey. He means it in the sense of "I might get hit by a truck before then," but, not comforting. Just makes me panic more. It's not enough that I'm already going through my �ber-severe stress-induced back pain again, to the point where I was up at 4am a few nights ago, standing in the shower with the water pounding on my back as hot as I could stand it, with the shower massager on the strongest setting. Not that I haven't known that this job would be over fairly suddenly one day (TEMP TEMP TEMP - clue!!), but whenever it happens it's still going to suddenly mean same amount of bills, zero amount of income. Well, zero from me. If my husband thinks he can afford to be glib about the fact that he's suddenly going to be handling all the bills, I guess I shouldn't freak out about it. But last time this happened, at least I had unemployment payments. I don't think that comes into play when you're on a contract (TEMP!) job and it ends. However, sudden developments today make it seem that they can't quite yet manage to do without me completely, so I will be coming back in September, at least for a few weeks... which basically boils down to, we can't tell you we want you to stay, but don't go right now. We'll see. Recent Amusing Spam Subjects: "empathy bee" "Crocodile: New antidote found" Isn't medical science wonderful? Recent Intriguing License Plates: JAVAMAN my mood - |
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