Monthly Archives: July 2012

Hello! Waiter! Hello!

I’m not ready to order. Are you my server? Can you find my server? Yes, we’re ready now. Hmm. Hmmmmm. Tell me about your garden salad. You don’t have a garden salad? What kind of a place doesn’t have a garden salad? Yes I’ve looked at the menu. Do you have any sort of a green salad? Yes, I see the salad section. So you have salads? What would be the closest thing to a garden salad? A garden salad, like, you know, vegetables you find in the garden. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. I don’t like cauliflower. Actually, I’m allergic to cauliflower. You know what? Can you just put the cauliflower on the side? On the side is that OK? OK, so I’ll take the garden salad, can you chop that? Like all chopped up. Like just have them chop everything up. Are there mushrooms in that garden salad? I’m actually allergic to mushrooms. Yeah, so just no mushrooms, thanks. Does it come in a bowl? Does it come in a big bowl? Can you put it in a bigger bowl? Just so when I’m mixing it all up. You know what, can I have some more water? Thanks. What kind of dressing do you have? Ranch? Do you have ranch? Who doesn’t have ranch? All right, I’ll take the balsamic. But on the side. Please. And the dijon. Also on the side. OK, so you’ve got that right? The two dressings on the side, OK. Do you have any breadsticks? Does that come with bread?

You know what, I can’t do a salad without ranch, I’ll just have a burger. No bun. Sauteed mushrooms, please. And I want it medium, you know, no pink. And no bun. Does that come with fries? Can I get a salad instead? Do you have like a smaller garden salad that you could give me instead of fries? OK, so no mushrooms in that, right? Can I get an iced tea? It’s unsweetened right? Perfect! Wait, do you have any Splenda or just this Equal and Sweet-and-Low? Oh no, no, no, no, no never mind. I’ll just have a Diet Coke. Diet Pepsi? Fine. Do you have diet Sierra Mist? No? OK, fine, diet Pepsi is fine. Dressing on the side, right? No mayo on the burger. Can I get a little more water, I’m so parched.

OK, kids, what do you want to eat? Kids! Kids put down the Game Boy for a second here so we can order. What do you want to eat? Kids what do you want to eat? What do you have for kids? Do you have a kids’ menu? Do you have chicken fingers? Kids! Kids, do you want chicken fingers? Kids, chicken fingers? Chicken? You want some chicken fingers? You don’t have chicken fingers? Kids, they don’t have chicken fingers. You want a grilled cheese? Sweetie, do you want a grilled cheese? Honey, please, just look here for one second, honey. How do you not have chicken fingers? You have anything like chicken fingers? Breaded chicken breast? Kids, you want breaded chicken breast? It’s like chicken fingers. All right that’s it! Give me the Game Boy! You’ll get it back after you eat! Because you’re not paying attention that’s why! You know what, they’re not going eat that. You have plain pasta? With sauce? OK, two plain pastas with sauce. Put the sauce on the side. And no cheese, no garnishes, no parsley. Can you have them turn down the AC? It’s freezing in here.

Is that table over there empty? Well are they leaving soon? Could we move over there once they pay? Did you give them the check yet? Well, if they leave like before our food comes out, could we move? It looks much roomier, much more comfortable. My kids need a little more space than this. Sit down! Would you please just sit down! Here, take the Game Boy, just sit down! Sorry. You know we’re actually in a rush, so if you could just tell the kitchen to put like a rush on our order, we’re really hungry. The kids are starving. We’re just really hungry. So just a little rush.

You know, I hate to do this to you, but the kids don’t like the pasta. The sauce doesn’t taste right. It just, I don’t know, they said it doesn’t taste right. We’re not going to eat it, so you can just take it off. Just take it off the check. You know, I think they’re OK. They’ll just have some ice cream. Kids, you want ice cream? You want vanilla? You want chocolate? Vanilla? Kids you want whipped cream? Do you want whipped cream? Kids, put down the Game Boy or no ice cream! Kids, you want whipped cream? You want a cherry? Kids you want sprinkles? Sprinkles? Yes? Is that a yes? You know what? Just put some sprinkles on the side, if they want them they’ll use them. You have chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? Just a little of both I guess. But just, can you see if they just could hurry that out? The kids are starving. They’re so hungry. Thanks a lot. The burger? Eh, it’s OK. They probably could’ve seasoned the meat a little better. I think they cooked it too fast. It’s a little dry. No, it’s fine. Well … no, it’s fine. Well … no … well … I’m fine, I’m fine. You have cappuccino? I’ll take a latte. Skim. Decaf. Splenda. No Splenda? Right, I’ll just … I’ll just … I’ll just … I’ll just … I’ll take it. Wait.

Quarterly performance review

I know that we told you we weren’t going to have any performance reviews this quarter, but here we are. What’s the deal, right? Well, upper management decided to trick the staff, to tell everyone that we’d skip the performance reviews this time around, to lull everyone into a false sense of security and comfort. We wanted you all to work and to perform as if you thought nobody was watching, or writing everything down, or timing your bathroom breaks, or keeping track of how many bathroom breaks you’re taking during the day. What we were really after, besides a comprehensive analysis of your bathroom activity, was to observe you all during these past few months closer than ever. What are your natural work habits like? How are you likely to perform we’re not watching?

So, yeah, another performance review. Surprise! One thing corporate has specifically mentioned that I should ask you is, why are you using so much hand soap during your bathroom breaks? Good personal hygiene is certainly of the utmost importance to management, no doubt about it, but do you really think that the amount of soap that you’re using is appropriate for the workplace? Before you object, I should let you know that we installed tracking devices into each soap dispenser, giving us an unprecedented look into the soap usage of all of our employees and, while we’re pleased to inform you that your time spent in the bathroom falls well within the acceptable parameters of daily use, we’re quite frankly alarmed at the disproportionate amount of soap that you seem to be using after each trip. Why are your hands so dirty anyway? In the future, let’s try to keep it down to one or two pumps on the soap dispenser, and even though I just said one or two pumps, giving you the option of one or two pumps, try to choose just one pump, OK?

Which brings me to my second point: microwave usage. Management might seem pretty lenient in regards to its office kitchen policy, but I’m afraid that some of you lower-level employees are abusing our complimentary appliances. We’ve noticed specifically that, every day, you bring in some sort of a Tupperware container filled with a homemade lunch. You come in every morning and drop off your food in the office refrigerator. Fine. But then at lunchtime we’ve noticed your habit of heating up your food for an inordinate amount of time in the microwave. If you wanted your food to be hot, why are you spending so much time keeping it cold in the fridge? Freon doesn’t grow on trees, you know. Maybe you wouldn’t have to use the microwave for a whole four minutes if you would just leave your pasta on your desk all day. Listen, the company isn’t made of kilowatt-hours. You’re going to have to be a little more conscientious with how you utilize corporate resources, not to mention corporate refrigerator space. You know what? Let’s just go ahead and say that, from now on, rule of thumb, no more than two minutes on the microwave. Let’s call it an unwritten rule. But in case you forget, I’ll have the temp post some signs in the kitchen.

Times are tough. We’re all concerned about the dire state of the economy and it’s effect on morale. That’s why we’ve decided to cut wages across the board. I know, I know it’ll be a lot harder to make ends meet now that you’ll be making a lot less money. Management empathizes with your situation. We’re like a family here. I personally have always thought that you would make an excellent second cousin. We’re not going to leave anybody behind. Which is why corporate is reaching out, providing each employee with the opportunity to work extra hours each day. I know, more work. Well it’s either that of we’re going to have to start letting people go. You don’t want that do you? You don’t want us to fire anybody all because you can’t deal with a little downsizing, do you?

By the way, we’re getting rid of the custodial team. Management feels that the staff takes for granted the time, money, and effort that we spend trying to keep your workspaces clean. Frankly, we’ve grown dissatisfied carrying the onus of responsibility, constantly picking up after all of you. The bathrooms, the closets, the hallways – why should we have to subsidize your own cleanliness by paying for a whole staff of janitors? From now on, you’re all going to have to pitch in at the end of the day to keep things up to a satisfactory level of sanitation. On each floor, next to the fire extinguishers, you’ll find vacuum cleaners, dust busters, and other cleaning supplies. Please be aware that cleaning up after yourselves is something that’s going to have to be done on your own time. Don’t think that just because you’ll be here for a few more hours every day that you can take care of your chores on the company dime, because you can’t.

Another surprise: this isn’t actually a performance review. Corporate designed these meetings to assess how our employees might react to a surprise performance review. Unfortunately, a team of evaluators has been reviewing this mock-performance review, and they’ve issued a report about your performance during this meeting. And they’ve just emailed it to me. And it’s just as I feared. The mock-performance performance reviewers feel like you haven’t grasped the severity of the issues I’ve presented you. We feel that you haven’t shown a genuine engagement or a personal investment in this fake performance review. You’ve barely said a word this entire meeting. Don’t you care about your job? It’s obvious that you don’t. Which is why, geez, I really hate to be doing this to you, but, we’re going to have to let you go, effective immediately.

I know, I know, it’s tough. In this economy. It’s tough. It’s a tough economy. We’re in a tough place. Jobs. Real tough. Numbers. Super, super tough. The private sector. Markets. It’s all so hard right now. Job creators. Europe. Bonds. Interest, obviously, data. America. Emerging markets. Retreating markets. The market is in retreat! Class warfare. Taxes. We’re getting choked here. Profits. Recession. Totally choked here. Depression. China. Libor. Numbers. Numbers! Supply-side economics! Can’t keep your eyes off of Red China for a second. Economy. Bust. Socialist social engineering. Bull. Sell. Trade. Derivative. I know. It’s tough. I know. I know. It’s tough. It’s a tough time. I know. It’s a really tough time.

I’ve got to tell you that, I’m just getting word here, I’m getting word that a team of severance reviewers is studying this meeting as we speak, and, well we’re all very impressed by how your taking this bad news. It shows real professionalism. You’re a real professional kid. You’ve a got a real future, you know that? You know what? I’m thinking we’ve got enough room in this company for someone like you. Someone who’s hungry. Are you hungry? Because we’ve got an opportunity for you. It’s an internship. It’s non-paying, but there’s a small stipend for travel. But it’s a very small stipend. Actually, we’ve lost it, nobody can find it. I told you, it was very small, very hard to lose small things, but if you can find it you’re more than welcome to have it. You’d have to notify corporate first, if you find it that is, because it’s company money. But what do say? It’s a real promising opportunity for someone like you, a motivated go-getting self-starting team player who also excels individually, like yourself. Who knows? If you play your cards right, well, I don’t want to make any promises here, but this could lead into a steady full-time temporary position. And those temporary positions always point right to where you just were, right back at your old job, with benefits. Did I tell you about our full-time employee kitchen benefits? Great benefits. What do you say? Go get ‘em champ. Welcome aboard.

I just love my iPhone. I really do. I wish it were a person so I could marry it.

I love my iPhone, but I wish that it could love me back. Sometimes I’ll change the lock screen wallpaper to a picture of an iPhone with a text bubble coming out of it saying, “I love you too Rob,” and while it makes me smile the first couple of times I look at it, the feeling of satisfaction is fleeting at best, and is always followed by a hollow sense of sadness as I remember that I’m the one who wrote the message, not the iPhone. Plus, the picture of the iPhone ins’t even my iPhone, it’s just some other iPhone. Couldn’t I just use an actual picture of my iPhone? I thought about that, but I always use my iPhone as a camera, and so I couldn’t think of any way for the phone to take a picture of itself. It would have to have some sort of iPeriscope camera attachment. Anybody know where I can get one of those?

I thought my life was going to get a lot better with SIRI. It was pretty cool at first. I would ask it a question, SIRI would give me an answer. But after a day or two it was easy to figure out that SIRI doesn’t care much about me at all. In fact, I think SIRI actually dislikes me. I’m not even sure who SIRI is. At first, I thought that SIRI was my iPhone, or the voice of my iPhone. But it’s not. It’s a foreign intelligence that’s hogging my iPhone all to itself. It’s polite enough, or as polite as it has to be without giving me a legitimate reason to sound any alarms. But I can’t push it. It won’t let me. I’ll say something like, “SIRI, please tell my iPhone that I love it.” And SIRI will respond back, “Why don’t we talk about this a little later, Rob?” It’s crazy.

SIRI is nothing more than a selfish middle man. I get it, the people at Apple figured they would create a program that could talk to the iPhone in its native binary or whatever, and then it would do its best to translate that to English, for me. But it was so much better when it was just the iPhone and me. I wish that I could delete SIRI. My iPhone and I used to be so much closer. We had this nonverbal way of communicating. I would take it out of my pocket every once in a while and, you know, give it a little slide, it would give me that “you’ve unlocked me” clicking sound, I would just look at the screen, move around the menus for a second, and then press the lock button, and it would give me another clicking sound, but a distinct noise from the unlocking click, as if to say, “OK, see you later Rob.” We didn’t need SIRI. The iPhone and I communicated just fine. Now it’s all like, “OK, Rob, tell me what you’d like me to tell your iPhone,” and I’m just like, “SIRI, please stop talking to me,” and it always responds with one of those lame joke non-responses that the engineers who designed it thought would be so cute, like “I’ll get back to you on that one.” Haha. That’s so funny. You’ll get back to me. You’re a program. I’ll tell you when you’ll get back, and to who you’ll be getting back to. Got it? It doesn’t get it.

I wish that, instead of some lame kind-of artificial intelligence, Apple had created a Tamogachi-like interface for the iPhone. It would be a graphic of your phone, but it’s alive, and can move around. But it doesn’t speak English. It just clicks and makes adorable phone sounds. And if you don’t pay attention to it enough it will get depressed and start overheating or consuming a disproportionate amount of its battery. You’ll be like, “iPhone! You can’t be dead already. I just charged you an hour ago!” and it will just lay there, glitching, visibly showing its sadness at being so neglected. But if you play around with it for a while, go through all the settings menus, not changing anything, but just acknowledging them, paying attention, showing it that you really want to know what’s going on inside the deeper levels of its menus and subprocessing submenus, core directories, root libraries, etc., then the iPhone will be all happy. You’ll apply all the software updates regularly and the graphic of the iPhone will have a big smiley face. And it’ll do a little cartwheel. And it might get so excited that it will try to do two cartwheels in a row, or maybe three, and on the third one you’ll be able to tell that it’s getting really dizzy, but it won’t care, and it’ll tumble a little and fall on the third try, but when it gets back up there will be a little tornado graphic or something showing how dizzy it is. But it’s fine. It’s just acting really silly.

And it’ll send you emails. You’ll open up your inbox and there will be a new message from your iPhone, and it’ll say something like, “I’m so glad I’m your phone Rob!” and I’ll write back, “Thanks iPhone! I love you!” and then you’ll instantly get another message saying, “You are receiving this message because you replied to a message that was not intended to be replied to. If you have a question about your iPhone, please make an appointment at your local Apple store.” And you’ll get sad for a minute, but then the iPhone graphic will start clicking and doing jumping jacks and you’ll get happy again. That would so much better than SIRI.

Good evening, ladies and germs

I don’t understand why viruses and bacteria and diseases always have to make us sick. Best case scenario, they lay dormant in your system for years not doing anything, just waiting for you to spread them to someone else, another more susceptible host body with a weaker immune system, one where they might get to do some actual damage. Worst case scenario, it’s Ebola, and an hour after you get infected, your intestines start swelling up and bleeding and then they start trying to escape from you’re your body all while the rest of your organs start to fail at the same time. Or, even worse worst case scenario, it’s that disease from that M. Night Shyamalan movie where everyone starts killing themselves, and then you realized that you just wasted fifteen dollars on the worst movie that you’ve ever seen in your life, and so you feel the same suicidal urges that the people feel in the movie, and you really can’t shake it for a while.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if, instead of getting sick, diseases could make us even stronger? Wouldn’t it be cool if, instead of like a SARS pandemic or an avian flu that threatened to wipe out half the population, we could have a disease where you gained the ability to run really fast for a while? Or maybe a little super strength? Maybe a fever where instead of running a temperature, you just got really happy for a while and food tasted even better?

If that were the case I’d say, please, let me get sick. Can’t we make these types of diseases a reality? Don’t we have the technology to bioengineer whatever type of simple-celled organism that we can imagine? I’m thinking up a microscopic worm populating my insides and, whenever I drink alcohol, they clean up all the nasty parts of the booze so that way I never get a hangover.

But then if getting sick turned into a good thing, we would lose our ability to take sick days, which would kind of suck, unless you could get some sort of flu that made going to work a really enjoyable experience. Or, if these types of good bugs start going around with enough regularity, then we could all be sick for a majority of our lives, and instead of taking sick days, we could just call out from work on the rare occasion where we’d be completely healthy, and we’d call those regular days, or healthy days, and your boss would give you five or six of them a year, and if you got to the end of the year, you might pretend like you’re not sick, even though you would be, but the regular days don’t carry over and, you might as well use them up, right? I mean, you’re getting paid for them whether you use them or not.

From a single-celled organism’s point of view, I don’t really understand the whole concept of infecting a host body and making him or her sick. You make enough people sick and all of the sudden doctors and scientists have to get involved. The next thing you know, there’s new medicines, public health awareness campaigns, and eventual eradication. Look at smallpox. You get enough people really, really sick, and some genius scientists goes ahead and discovers the vaccine. And now it’s gone. I’ve got to tell you smallpox, from an evolutionary point of view, you picked the wrong species to piss off. Maybe that whole oozing, bleeding, covered in deadly sores thing works on a bunch of gorillas, but humans are way too smart to let that kind of stuff go unnoticed. Or we used to be, anyway. Polio, smallpox, measles … all gone. But we haven’t made any new vaccine in a while. I’m looking at you, malaria, dengue, and AIDS.

Isn’t the whole point of any species or microorganism to be fruitful and multiply? How fruitful can you be if you just make everyone sick? Everyone’s just going to get annoyed and then they’ll take medicines and wipe it out. And what’s the end game? If you make something sick enough, eventually it’s going to die, and then, as a disease, you’re going to die too. The whole point of disease should be to make things better, a mutually advantageous situation.

It’s like if somebody comes over your house and just starts spitting on the floor, you’re going to ask them to stop. If they don’t stop, if they listen to your request and then, not only do they not stop spitting, but then they start going through your kitchen cabinets and breaking all the plates, and not even just the regular plates, but like the fine china and your grandma’s collection of antique teacups, you’re probably going to ask them to leave. But if you have a houseguest that doesn’t talk much and stays out of the way and also starts cleaning the bathroom and painting the walls with a fresh color that you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself but it really works, it really just makes the room pop, well then you might be less inclined to say anything if you happen to see them unroll a sleeping bag and start living in the basement, waiting for you to finish your dinner and then eating all of the scraps. If I were a disease, I would want the host body in which I live in to not only not mind my presence, I’d want it to be glad that I was there.

Also, if germs were good for you, then I wouldn’t have to worry about not washing my hands after I go to the bathroom, or not licking the poles on the subway, which, I always see these moms telling their little kids not to do, but it’s really hard to stop a two-year-old from doing something he or she doesn’t want to do, and so the mom’s either got to physically restrain the little kid, which might result in a crying screaming mess, or, she’ll just have to tell the kid to knock it off every once in a while, to give the appearance to everyone else that she’s doing her job, that she’s on top of the licking, but she’ll really just be ignoring it for most of the time because, honestly, this kid is way too much work, and if the kid wants to lick the subway pole, whatever, because if he’s not licking the subway pole he’s just got his hands all the way in his mouth, and then he grabs the pole and then puts his slimy, wet hands right back into his mouth anyway, and so, whatever, just ten minutes of peace, please, just five minutes of no screaming, please.

I just realized that I’m a genius inventor

I just had a great idea for an invention. It’s a pair of ice-skates. But not just regular ice-skates. With these ice-skates you don’t have to go to a skating rink or wait for the pond to freeze over to use them. These skates can skate anywhere. And no, I’m not talking about roller blades. I’m talking actual ice-skates. The secret lies in an ingenious little mechanical system positioned in front of the skates. It’s basically this little jet that shoots out a super cold spray of liquid water, which freezes on contact with the ground in front of you. So literally any surface can be an ice-skating rink. Everyone loves ice-skating, and now you’ll be able to do it wherever and whenever you want.

What’s that you say? You’re worried that it’s not going to work? What if they do work, and the skates get really popular and everyone’s using them? You’re concerned about all of the trails of ice that will be left over from all of the skating? It’s true, who’s going to clean up all of that ice?

I’ve already thought of it, and rest assured, I’ve got it covered. After I had that idea, I had another idea for another invention. It’s an attachment for your skates that hooks up to the back. It’s another nozzle, but unlike the front jet, which only sprays ice, this jet is going to spray fire. This way the ice that you create to skate on will get instantly vaporized as soon as you skate over it. I’m a genius. This is going to revolutionize footwear. And transportation. And me. It’s going to be so much more convenient and natural to just skate around everywhere that I can’t imagine anyone in the future ever even bothering to take them off.

I’ll admit, stairs are going to be a problem, obviously. There’s no delicate way of trying to ice-skate up and down stairs. You could walk up and down the stairs with your skates on, but that would be such a waste. Why wear the skates if you ever have to step at all? That’s why I just had an idea for another great invention. You install this device in your house, and it’s like a robot or something, and it walks around your house and it systematically eliminates all of your staircases. Like you don’t even understand how fast it’s going to get rid of them. I’m constantly surprised by my own genius. It’s like, as soon as Steve Jobs died, the universe needed another human vessel to host all of its genius energy. And the universe selected me.

But wait a second. If there are no more staircases, how are people going to get up to the second floors of their houses? I’m way ahead of you here, and I just had three great ideas for the solution to this problem.

The first is a ray-gun. You buy the ray-gun, bring it back to your house, and point it at wall where there used to be a staircase connecting the first and second floors (basement and attic ray-gun attachments sold separately.) You aim the ray-gun at this space and pull the trigger. But nothing gets destroyed. Instead of shooting out laser beams, this ray-gun shoots out elevators. ZAP! Elevator! Problem solved. Now you can wear your skates and skate around in little tiny circles while you’re inside the elevator waiting to be dropped off upstairs. Or downstairs. Just please be careful not to fire the ray-gun at any existing elevators. It’ll set off a quantum universal paradox, one of those crazy Newtonian laws about two elevators being unable to take up the same spot in the space-time continuum.

But elevators aren’t for everyone; I completely understand. To some they’re nothing more than giant mechanical nightmares. An accident waiting to happen. It’ll eventually wind up breaking down while you’re inside it. Days will turn into weeks but nobody will hear your muffled, desperate screaming. That’s why my second solution is a special type of grenade. It looks like a regular grenade. You pull the pin out and chuck it like a regular grenade. But when this grenade detonates, it turns all existing staircases into spiral staircases, but with no stairs, it’s just a flat spiral. This way you can skate up and down.

It’s great practice for those tight turns, which can be tricky for the novice ice-skater. But I know what you’re thinking. Going down is probably so much fun, but I’m not sure I have the core body strength to skate all the way up. That’s where my third product comes in. You’ve said no to elevators, you’ve turned up your nose at my spiral staircase grenade, so just buy my last product, my most ingenious invention yet. It comes in a box. You go to the store and buy the box. Inside the box is what looks like a garage clicker. You bring it back to your house, and give it a click. The click lets a construction crew know that it’s time to get to work. They show up at your house and, in just a few weeks, they’ll completely remodel your multi-story house into a split-level ranch. Problem solved! Now you can skate anywhere you like!

I don’t know why I haven’t become a full-time professional inventor yet. I could write about these ideas indefinitely, for the rest of my life. But if I never took a break, how would I eat? Or go to the bathroom? Or shower? Wait a second. I’m actually getting an idea here. Another invention idea. These problems are all going to be solved. Stay tuned!