Since it was so fun the first time around, I’d thought I’d post some more about my job.  But before we begin, let me just get this straight.  It’s a kickass job.  I enjoy it, and for once, I don’t wake up every morning wishing I was dead.  I just wake up every morning wishing I didn’t need to go to work – so I’m at normal human feelings now.  Which is good.  I think I actually have a better job this summer than most people I know, with the exception of Max.  I question whether or not his job actually meets the definition of a “job” because it certainly seems there’s no real “work” involved.  CURSES.  Anyway – let’s get on to my bitching.

– The New Girl opened the window shades today.  So I’m getting nasty monitor glare from the sudden abundance of natural sunlight now.  I hate it.  I hate her.  I hate YOU.

– Today was Jeans Day or something cheesy like that, where people are encouraged to dress down to casual from business casual.  Now…I like to think that I don’t actually actively seek out opportunities to BE racist…but I swear to you that it comes to me regardless of what I personally want.  Jeans Day completely eradicates the illusion of racial anonymity in the officeplace, and draws lines in the sand to divide the office into clearly defined groups.  It’s more like Stereotype Day.  And there’s a healthy visible representation from each race, so the sample space I’m making my observations from is solid.  All the blacks and latinos go right back to the standard stereotypes on Jeans Day – baggy jeans, basketball jerseys (I saw a Clippers one with Odom – that’s hilarious), and ECKO t-shirts everywhere.  Whereas you look at the white folk and the chinese…and they’re dressed like exactly the same.  Golf shirts and polos, tight jeans, short-sleeved buttoned plaid shirts…essentially they dress business casual casually anyway.  Brown people is where it gets interesting.  Anyone under the age of like 27 or so will dress like the first camp – jerseys, ECKO shirts, crazy cool medallions, etc.  The ones above that age are all golf shirts, and whiteified (it’s a word, look it up).  I’m the only exception, because although I wear a button shirt…I wear it UNBUTTONED.  Get it?  That’s the key detail.  And since I don’t have any jeans, I go khaki…making me MORE of an exception.  I’m not even wearing jeans on Jeans Days.  And if I ever show up in a jersey…it’ll be a baseball jersey.  And how many non-whiteified people do you know that follow baseball?

– I forgot my security card yesterday.  Left it in the breast pocket (heheheh “breast”) of my other shirt.  And with the exception of the front door to the lobby, EVERYTHING is locked down.  So I had to hang around the lobby pretending to tie my shoe for ten minutes until I recognized someone from my floor, just to get to work.  And then I would do the ninja-shadow and sneak into the office after them.  Lunch was even harder, because everyone takes it at different times and you don’t know who to shadow.  And unfortunately I didn’t bring a lunch this time, which ended up ended up causing all sorts of other wackiness for me (more on that later).  But at the end of the day, I think I did pretty good.  That empty box of oranges came in handy – thank you Metal Gear Solid for teaching me so many things.  I only had to break the neck of just ONE co-worker.  That’ll teach you not to put cover pages on the TPS reports.

– So regarding lunch yesterday…I had what is perhaps the most bizarre social experience you could go through, outside of like…meeting a former kindergarten classmate you haven’t seen in over ten years but there is still MUTUAL recognition (happened to me twice before).  Yesterday I didn’t bring a lunch so I decided for the first time to check out the Harvey’s across the street.  So apparently…my exact double works at Harvey’s.  I mean this guy REALLY looked like me.  And for me to admit that should be saying something – I don’t mean AL-and-Emu-both-wearing-denim-shirts-in-grade-school similar.  I mean looking-into-the-mirror-and-seeing-my-own-face-LOOKING-BACK-AT-ME similar.  And he served me too, which further established it as one of the weirdest experiences of my life.  I’m willing to wager a bet that it was for him as well.  There we were.  Him over on one side of the counter with his Harvey’s hat and apron working his minimum-wage burger flipping job.  And me in my suit and tie over on the other side of the counter, on a lunch break from my almost-minimum-wage office job.  It was like the Prince and the Pauper…except completely not.  If you ask me (or maybe even him), there was far too much eye contact during the entire transaction from both sides – the type with a lot of shifty eyebrow movement and suspicious looks.  He didn’t have a name tag, so I was going to ask for his name…but I ultimately decided not to.  I mean, what if he even had the same name?  That would just be TOO weird, and I would have no other choice but to engage him in a duel to the death, leaving only one of us behind.  Or what if he was Bizarro Yak?  A normal, hardworking, law abiding citizen of goodwill, a man who openly embraced his proud Chinese heritage?  That would be worse.  So I got my order, wolfed it down as fast as I could, and got the hell out of there – all while avoiding eye contact of any kind.  Suffice to say, I’m not eating at that Harvey’s ever again.  In fact, I might just completely burn the place down tomorrow.  It disturbed me that much.

– I also had another bizarre social experience yesterday – The New Girl was introduced to this other guy while I was sitting right there.  A guy I’ve never seen before in my life.  Here’s how it went down…

 

New girl: [blah blah blah not relevant] “- and you’ve met Yak before right [the dude]?”

The dude whose name I don’t even know: “…why, yes!”  <looks at me>

Myself: “…” (NO, you’ve NEVER met me before!  Why the hell are you LYING about it?  What possible purpose could that serve!?!)  “Uh…y-yeah!  Course.”

 

At which point I quickly turned around and started ghost typing into Notepad, to appear that I was far too busy to be further drawn into this unholy sham.  Why would you lie about something like that?  There’s no other skinny Chinese guys of my age on the same floor, so an honest mistake is out of the question.  Just say “Why, no!”, we’ll get the obligatory quick awkward handshake over with, and we can carry on with our lives.  WHY THE LIE!?!

– And finally…I gotta come clean and confess, because the guilt is killing me.  I’ve been stealing staples.  YES, I know…I don’t deserve to live.  But all the staplers I have at home are empty, but here, I have all the staples I’ll ever need or possibly want.  And seriously – I’m a web developer.  What the hell do I need staples for?  So I take some of them home with me, on days that I leave late.  I transport them in staplers tucked up my sleeve, so in case anyone catches me, I can whip ’em out and empty the clip at them Smithers-style while I make my getaway.  And then the next day I come to work with an empty stapler, with no one the wiser!  Yes, it’s a dangerous life I lead…but then again…I’m a dangerous man.

“Sorry sir, this was all I could find.  Take that, and that!”

“…please don’t waste those.”