Brilliant Brainstorming Meeting

Today we had one of the longest, most boring brainstorming meetings
ever. It dragged from 1:35- 3:57.

I kept dozing in and out, trying to perfect the
burrowing-my-eyebrows-in-my-hand-so-you-can-not-see-my-eyes-are-closed
look. Yes, you know the one.

Alli, one of my dearest coworkers, is leaving tomorrow. I'm glad
she's moving on to better things, broader horizons, but how I will
miss her!

"The Eagle" slowly (and with as much techie speak as possible) went
through our Task Board while we tried to strategize how to maximize Ad
revenue (and meet the challenge of staying awake.) As Alli was
dozing out at one point she actually propped her feet up on the table.
Her little feet, in her purple tights, looked like table little
ornaments.

Monique and I glanced over and had to stifle a giant burst of laughter
deep into our stomachs. I saw "The Eagle's" eyes get large and dart
away. Alli heard our stifled laughter, perked up, and let her feet
drop back to the floor.

I wondered - is she trying to be as rude as possible (as a last
good-bye)...but no...that's not like Alli. She must be in a real
stupor of a mental doze.

I heard some suggestion about including an Evites links on our site.
Evites. Invitations-via-e-mail. The proposed affiliate is charging
$12.95 to invite 5-100 people out to dinner. That's insane!

Feeling compelled to voice my opinion, I woke up and vocalized the
absurdity of the proposed price. It's understandable if you're
inviting 50 people out, but for 5? Unreasonable! Why don't they
charge per invite? I suggested our programmer take a look at that to
see if it could be changed. Before long, Alli was suggesting me for
market research on the project. Fine. I'll practice e-inviting
people to lunch for the next hour, and compare pricing in the process.

As tasks were being assigned I heard myself saying, "yes, but I don't
think I have enough to do." My voice echoed in my ear. What was I
saying? Why am I such a natural workaholic? I spend my share of time
web browsing, but I get sick on it, and I beg for work because I WANT
to be working. Because I enjoy working, and honestly, I like the
challenge.

Alli's eyebrows raised and the Eagle assigned me some some of the
programmer's project briefs to take over. She doesn't alway
understand, I'd rather be busy, it makes the day go by.

The Eagle was bewailing our inability to communicate directly with
Google about our programing dilemmas. "They call me at home when I
send them as e-mail," I blurted out without thinking. "I e-mail them
about the Ads on my personal blog and when I get home there is usually
a message on my machine."

The Eagle's eyes looked scrupulous. "Well, they do," I repeated.

The obvious question came next. "What's your blog about?"

"Oh, just life, you know, my life," I muttered. I watched Monique put
her head in her hand.

"And do you have 25,000 people a month reading it?" the Eagle inquired.

"No! I doubt I have 25 people a month," I replied.

"I'd love to read it!" Mini-me chimmed in eagerly. (No way on earth,
I thought.)

"Maybe we could link to it from our homepage," Diego roared as he
burst out laughing.

Monique, Alli and I again tried (unsuccessfully) to keep straight
faces. If only Diego knew the hilarity of his suggestion. Why not
spotlight The Producers? Fresh content in the "About Us" section!

Pleased to Introduce...Mini-me

We hired a programmer. Joy of joys! The Eagle found the perfect
applicant...a work-a-holic 25-year-old obsessed with cold fusion and
java script, who is not only shorter than him...but just as bald!

Of course he was hired, he met "the criteria!"

Mini-me has proved to be an interesting addition to our office. At
first he seemed like a total techie. He came in, iPod in hand,
immediately nestled into his desk and began hard hitting the
programming code straight off the bat.

The Eagle seemws to be bonding well with him, their pals relationship looked like it was off to a flying start. I can almost see the white light shining on Mini-me
in the office. A little glow around his doorway. We would hear constant accolades being handed back and forth between the Eagle and him, like a tennis match between the two of them all day. Praising each other to high heaven seems to be their specialty. Uck. I can hardly bear to ease drop on any more of this.

It was a couple days later when hints started to appear that Mini-me might not be the ideal, conservative, techie geek the Eagle had hoped for. Brilliant yes, raditional, perhaps not. Heading out to lunch one day he mentioned that most of his friends work at Whole Foods, he listens to Bright Eyes, and has a vegetarian roommate. The curtain starts to raise.

Hmmm.

It was in a meeting last Thursday (Alli and I were chatting about the insanity of our hippe parents) when Mini-me mentioned that his mother is a hard core nudist.

We laughed, naturally (what is the appropriate reaction to that comment?) Then, Mini-me started telling us stories about how awkward it on his previous job, installing computer equipment in nudist restaurants where all the servers and patrons are walking around completely in commando. Especially his mother, who is getting up there. Our jaws dropped.

The Eagle, smiled nervously, and hurried back to his laptop.

More to follow on Mini-mi, developments await...

Diego Helping Along My Editorial Review

Today Diego (our graphic artist)kindly brought it to my attention that a pervy site slipped through my editorial review a few months ago.

We've been inadvertently hosing ads for "Next Door Nikki" for five months. Diego got tired of her photo collection and decided to let me know. To quote him: "She's just not inventive enough for me".

(Have I mentioned that I HATE this guy and he is a PERV! Nice to be reminded he doesn't care a scrap about the integrity of our company. )

I went to the page where Diego said he usually sees her, but I had trouble getting her specific ad to come up. "Just keep clicking," Diego repeated. "Sometimes it takes 10-11 clicks to get her up there."

I finally found her, (apparently her modeling career wasn't going so well,) pulled her off our ad network, and e-mailed her "manager" Bob to let him know her link is no longer welcome on our site. I thought it smart not to mention it to my boss.

I got an e-mail back from Bob (Nikki's manger) about how well porn business is just burgeoning and how he don't care if our site dumps them because our traffic was crappy to begin with. (No surprise. Did he think we would FEATURE him on our national homepage?) As far as Bob is concerned, we should "just get over it, get over ourselves, and get over being offended over beautiful Nikki."

Thank you Bob...I reply...We appreciate your feedback - as always, customer imput is highly regarded.

Back to Diego.

It's not just Diego's greasy hair and unshaven face-- it's the way he leans back in his chair, puts his feet on his desk with that air of annoyance, and either smirks with a look saying "I'm thinking disgustingly dirty thoughts right now," or sneers, disturbed that I knocked on his door to see if he's made progress on anything besides nose picking.) He antagonistically draws his projects out for an eternity.

A tazer guy would be fun in this circumstance. :) Zaaahhp.

One of those tazers that sends out the needle with the line of nitrogen and makes you unable to move or control your bladder for 20 minutes. Preferably.

Presenting...The Eagle

Aiden Anderson is the genius that keeps this place together.

Our Director of Internet Operations, he is an eternal optimist who has
lost most of his hair in the past five years working here. Referred
to as "The Eagle" henceforth.

The staff comes and goes; the Eagle brainstorms furiously in his
little office, the mind behind the show.

He has a clean, slender physique, definitely a techie type. Well
dressed. Nice sweaters. No hair, but a very nice aura. It's always
fun watching him get excited over the latest (unrealistically insane)
projections for our future success. His face glows and his eyes get
bright. It's obvious he's living for this.

He was attracted to a rebellious goth type girl (who he did eventually
marry) in high school. To impress her he tried to dress up as a
rebellious bad boy. We bring up this mental picture whenever we need a
good laugh.

Our personality types are exact opposites. He is on of those
introverted rationalists, at times oblivious to the obvious. I am
outgoing, emotional and creative. To describe our work, I use his
technical ideas and formulas as I write for the Web, incorporating
them into my writing, creating pages that are consumer friendly and
fun, while having all the right mechanical structure in the
background. I love working with my toes in both worlds.

The Eagle, like most geniuses, is a horrible manager. His staff must
be completely self-motivated and independent to produce in this
environment. He got lucky, however, and has a staff of 25-year-old
obsessively-productive girls working with him. He doesn't work well
with, or like, many other guys.

We've been trying to hire a programmer for, oh, about a year now. The
Eagle claims no applicants have meet the criteria. What those criteria
actually are, no one's really sure of.

Last week there was a brilliant looking young man (with great hair)
who interviewed, but all Aiden had to say about him was "He had a HUGE
pimple on his forehead - it was so distracting!"

I wonder. Does Aiden require clear skin for all computer/techie
positions? After all, sitting in that little dark programming room,
skin condition sure relates to productivity! Give me a break. Poor
applicant, he should have layed off the fast food before interviewing
here I suppose.

My female coworkers and I often wonder what the Eagle, usually silent,
thinks about our daily conversations about our latest vege fast diet,
complaints about bad weekends, boyfriend experiences and John Mayer
fantasies. After listening to us for years, he undoubtedly knows much
about us.

In his typical (non)management style, we do whatever we want, as long
as we produce a substantial amount of work every week. Being
micromanaged would definitely kill me after years of this
independence.

Baaahhh!

Today, was a great day. During editorial review I found one of the best web sites ever...

SheepShagger

I laugh thinking about it!

Working in technology definitly has it's perks.

Glenda (the Not-So-Good-Witch)

Glenda is the office complex tenent manager. (More like tenant terrorizer.) She's 5'11, always sporting a new red hair color, and awful 80's outfits that pain the eye.

See a flash of fire in your periphial vision? Don't be alarmed -- it's not flames, just Glenda's hair. (Burning it is just my personal fantasy.)

She goes from burgundy, to blazing auburn, to fire hot, to toxic red, to mocha sun, to can't remember her latest shade but I'm sure she'll swing by and fill me in this week. One day it will all fall out, I'm just waiting.

I have fantasies about submitting a video of her to one of those make-over TV series. She'd be a challenge for them. She has a great figure really. Lovely legs. It's just the persona, the agressive snoopy attitude. Eeesh.

She has been here, oh, since the beginning of time I guess. She knows every tenant's personal business and, as mentioned, has the worst wardrobe you've imagined. It's not just that it's bad, but it's so loud. I think the prize goes to the teal colored lace dress with the flowy crinkle train. I don't know though, it's a close one. That plaid mini jumpsuit is preeetttty bad.

She has absolutly no reason to be in our editorial department. None. Yet she manages to show up to fiddle with the thermostat or investigate some (imaginary) duct problem at least twice a week. She cleverly figured out how to lock the thermostat since, apparently, the five of us who work here aren't capable of controlling the temperature.

Thanks to her it's always freezing or baking us, and we now have to call her for a code to adjust it.

You can hear her coming from 30 feet away. Aggressively stomp, stomp, stomping in her pleather-lizard-skin high heels.
I immediately pick up the phone and pretend to be in the midst of an editorial crisis with Google until she finishes her pointless fiddling around and leaves to harrass someone else.

To facilitate communication with the front desk receptionist, she insists on using a walkie-talkie. He voice is such a screeching blare it really isn't necessary, as we can hear her through the walls. She is constantly threatening to fire receptionists when they won't keep the volume up on the walkie. (And we wonder why that position has such a high turnover rate, hmmm.)

I once walked past her office as she was launching into one of her receptionsist on the virtues of modesty. Apparently the 20-year-old girl has shown a little cleavage. I listened (controling my laughter) as Glenda went on and on about how unprofessional it was. I think her own skirt was about 10 inches long that day.

The (single) maintenance man Bob is always hiding from her. She's been putting the moves on him for months now. I'm actually quite impressed with Bob's ability to elude advances.

My favorite is when he leaves his walkie-talkie in the bathroom with the door shut and takes off for lunch. Glenda tracks him down to the restrooms, and then hears her own voice coming from the bathroom.

"Bob, I need you to lift something in suite 204!!! Baaaaaabbbbbbbbb are you in there?!?!"

Uhhh, her grating voice, can't someone silence her?

The Grape

We hired an HR manager. Joy of joys. Finally we'll be getting some quality
staff! Think again. Her real purpose is to police existing employees and enforce pointless rules we've thus far managed to avoid.

She promply brought it to my attention that I daily clock in 20 minute late, never inital the "sign out" sheet for lunch, and (the worst) I NEVER type up my time-off requests. (The nerve of me!)

Not fiting our office stereotye for females (110 pound 25-years-olds), our CEO Charlie is already itching to ditch her, naturally. Despite being the ideal employee, we know looks matter around here. I hate so say it, but if she wants to keep her job, she needs to seriously think about getting her hair colored.

She favors purple flowy clothing, and as she speaks I usally envision a grape or plumb sitting in her chair. Something in the James and the Giant Peach family. She works an extra hour every day. Doesn't she have a LIFE to live?

Once my clock was an hour off (daylight savings mishap) and I showed up an hour early, at the ungodly early hour of 7:30.

The grape was actually sitting in her car, waiting for the doors to unlock. I was baffled! Has work become an obsessive disorder for her? Is she perhaps homeless, wearing purple all the time to coordinate her outfits for lack of a closet? What else could explain showing up at work at 7:30 for no reason?

My investigation continues...

And Then There's Diego...

Yes, Diego.

What does Diego do? Good question. Usually he's in his office with
the lights off and his computer on the floor. He first stepped into
our office a year ago doing some remodeling and painting work. The girls in
marketing all remarked on what a perv he was.

"How are you today hot stuff," he would greet us with his sleezy grin.

Long hair and wife beater, he hung out for 4 days painting one office.
It was incredible. The pool on how long it would take him to finish
the whole building was a month. I think he was done in 5 weeks.

His deceased girl-friend apparently was the nanny for our boss's
children, before dying in a tragic car accident. And so that's how
Diego go in the door, a sympathy vote. He has apparently won awards
for his creative inventions with light bulbs. Though his light bulb
inventions are supposedly brilliant, his web site is absolutly
atrocious. I mean 80's neon coloring and gross flashy boxes. I can't
believe he's going to be working on our site redesign.

The lowly intern slash talented college student Monique has taught him
enough Photoshop basics to be functional. (While being paid half his
wage.)

He has a wife, Cherie, (her real name has never been mentioned.) She
apparently wanted a visa to come to the US from France and Diego can't
keep his hands off her. Good pair.