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About that new guy at work

I’m always running my mouth, at home, on the Internet, at work. Especially at work. At the restaurant, it’s not like I’m even trying to get in anybody’s way, I just can’t help myself. I’ll see two or three people standing around doing what they’re doing and I have this compulsion to go over and start talking. And I don’t even have anything to say, not really, I’m just bored, I just want to hear the sound of my own voice, I just want some distraction from the mundane of the workday.

For example, maybe two people will be polishing silverware and I’ll walk up behind them and insert myself into whatever it is they’re doing. I’ll pretend like I’m in charge, like I’ll start giving critiques on what they’re doing, something like, “Ooh, hey guys, let’s make sure that when we’re polishing, we’re like really polishing, like let’s make an effort to really make sure that we’re getting each piece of silverware just really sparkling clean. Is that cool? I’m not saying you guys are doing a bad job. No, not a bad job. A great job? Well, definitely not a bad job. Let’s just constantly strive to focus on how we can improve, like how can we be doing this better more efficiently, stuff like that.”

Like one or two sentences in, one of them is sure to walk away, but I can’t stop myself. I just have to keep going. I have this natural ability to go on and on and on like that, without pause, for hours. I could have stood there talking about silverware for the rest of the shift. But like I said, I’ve gotten to the point at this job where people will see me start to open my mouth, and they’ll roll their eyes and look for some other direction in which they might escape.

And so it was getting rough there for a while, me, constantly in need of attention, everybody else, not wanting to give me any attention at all. I’d try to go a whole night without running my mouth, like maybe I might gain back the esteem of my colleagues, and then after a couple of weeks of acting like a regular employee, I could slowly start making long-winded jokes again. But I tried, and I couldn’t even get through one night.

It got to the point where I figured I’d exhausted the patience of pretty much everyone on the staff, and so I was just about ready to hand in my two-week’s notice, to move on to another job with a new group of coworkers. But then we got this new hire, a guy about my age. He made it through training no problem, and as he started his first few nights on the floor, I thought, well, maybe he’ll listen to me for a while, maybe I can joke around with the new guy without having to worry about him walking away mid-sentence.

So I went up to him one day while he was at the computer and I was like, “Hey man, I bet you can’t guess what number I’m thinking of.” I would do something like this pretty often. Even if whoever I asked wound up guessing correctly, I’d never admit it. I’d just keep saying, “Nope. Nope. Nope,” until it was painfully obvious that I was just wasting everybody’s time.

But this guy, as soon as I said, “Hey man, I bet you can’t guess what number …” he just blurts out, “Seven,” and he’s looking me right in the eye and I’m taken a little by surprise, I mean, it’s not like I was really trying to pick a number, I never do, but I guess yeah, seven kind of was in my head, like maybe just formulating that question, my mind picked out a number at random. I think. Or did he say seven so quickly that it caught me off guard? Like maybe he said seven and I started thinking about seven right away?

“Nope,” I told him, he was like, “Really,” the whole time looking at me right in the eye. Man, this guy was such a weirdo, always straight-faced. I mean, yeah, I spend probably a little too much time goofing around at work, but this guy, it’s like he’s a machine, an emotionless, soulless robot. And he just kept staring at me, this creepy gaze.

One time a couple of days later, he’s standing around with a group of three or four other coworkers, they’re not doing anything, everybody’s checking their cell phones. I decide to walk over and start talking a bunch of nonsense, I say, “I’ll give anybody two hundred bucks if they can guess what song I’ve got stuck in my head.” It’s classic, because they can never prove it, I’ve got their attention, and even if they got it right, there’s no way I’m paying two hundred bucks.

But again, this new guy, he looks me right in the eye and he starts singing along with the exact song as it’s playing in my head. And I can’t make excuses for it this time, there’s no trying to justify whether or not who put what in who’s head. This is like, line for line, he’s in my head, I’m hearing this song, and he’s mouthing it out in real time. And that gaze is locked, I can’t pull myself away, I can’t turn the song off in my head, everything’s out of control. I’d like to freak out and run away, to say something, anything, but I’m frozen.

Finally the song ends, I can feel him let go of the mental lock, he stops singing, he just opens out his hand and says, “Pay up.”

Twenty minute blog post

I’ve got exactly twenty minutes to write up a blog post before I have to go to work. It’s a totally self-imposed deadline, and yeah, I did get up really late today, so I shouldn’t be complaining about time constraints. But I want to get something done, and unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for a good idea to pop in my head.

See, I just wrote that, and it didn’t lead to anything. I finished that last sentence, and then I sat for a second, I looked at the clock, a minute passed by. Twenty minutes on the computer? If I’m not actively typing sentences, those twenty minutes are going to straight up evaporate. I’ll click over to my Internet browser just for a second, just to look at one thing, and the next time I look back, not only will those twenty minutes have disappeared, but the Internet will have stolen more time along with it. Like I’ll be late for work.

And I don’t even know what I do online. There’s nothing going on. There are only like three or four bullshit web sites that I’m clicking back and forth from. One link leads to another link leads to ten minutes gone, fifteen minutes, finally I get a hold of myself, I regain awareness of what I’m doing, of what I was trying to do, I’m looking at some really boring Internet article, I can’t even try to piece together how I got to what I’m doing, totally uninterested.

How are you supposed to get anything done with the Internet? I remember my brief career as a paralegal. It had to have been some cosmic joke, like let’s just get a bunch of young people, set them up with some computers in some nondescript office building somewhere and we won’t really tell them what they’re supposed to be doing. There were like eight of us in the room, and we were all just professional Internet surfers.

And I can do the Internet for a while, but like three, four hours, tops. That’s a lot of Internet, like I’m feeling drained after I’m on the Internet for that long. But back then? When I was getting paid to sit down for eight hours a day? That’s entirely way too much Internet. That’s when you’re surfing the Internet while at the same time actively hating the Internet. You completely exhaust any bits of worthwhile information from all of the top notch web sites, and then you look at the clock and you’ve still got four hours left.

Holy shit. So you wind up on those aggregate sites, just bullshit piled upon bullshit, everything in hyperlink form, all of those lists, thirty-two sure signs that you’re a human being, you click on number one, then you have to click for number two, everything that you read, nothing’s new, it’s all just labeled differently. And those secondary, tertiary web sites, they’ve all got really weird sidebar ads, like why is this web site offering me payday loans, offering me the chance to learn to become a mortician, do I want to meet interesting twenty-somethings from Uzbekistan?

Man, I complain about my job, I complain constantly about waiting tables, but whatever, at least I have to walk around. Take this over there. Do this and do that. Whatever, I’m moving my body. I remember one time as a paralegal I spent like a month mustering up the courage to march down to the attorney’s office and tell her, listen, boss, I’m not doing anything. What am I supposed to be doing? Give me something to do, please.

So she’s on her computer when I walk in, she doesn’t even look up, she’s like, “What is it?” I tell her my concerns but she’s mostly unresponsive. And that’s when I look in a little closer, her glasses, they’re reflecting her computer screen. I swear to Christ, she’s playing Scrabble. She’s sitting there doing exactly the same nonsense that all of us young people are doing down the hall. So what was the difference, besides her law degree? Her own office? She had to sit there for seventy hours a week and us just forty?

Seventy hours of Internet a week, I don’t know if I could take it. I’d have to get into some really niche web sites. Anyway, my twenty minutes are up. I should get up earlier tomorrow.

I’m not here to judge anybody

I’m not here to judge anybody. Except for that guy sitting up front with the big cowboy hat. Hey pardner, we don’t wear cowboy hats around these parts. And even where they do, how is that at all acceptable? Like you don’t think anybody wants to see what’s going on up front? Maybe you could’ve taken a seat in the back? I’m just putting it out there, take a look around, nobody else is wearing anything even close to as big as what you’ve got on your head.

And again, I don’t want to judge, but what’s the point of a cowboy hat? You know, besides the dramatic increase in perceived head size. Maybe, take it off inside? It just seems like it would be a nice gesture, again, I don’t want to harp on it here, but front seat? Cowboy hat? Come on man, that’s just rude. Aren’t southern people supposed to be known for their good manners? Because I can’t think of anything less polite than still not having the decency to move, or at least take your hat off, after me going on and on about not being able to see.

It’s fine, it’s just, I hope you don’t mind complaining, the sound of me complaining during the whole movie. Or plastic crinkling or popcorn being chewed. You want to play passive aggressive? Yeah, well, I’m playing aggressive aggressive. How much did that thing cost, like two hundred bucks? Do you have to get it professionally cleaned? It just comes off as silly. You look silly, you look like a big silly cowboy going to the movies and sitting right up front.

Hey, maybe if you sat all the way in the back, your hot could block the projector, and then nobody would be able to see anything. This is a free country, right? I’m just saying that maybe you could get in the way of everybody’s movie experience if you wear an even bigger cowboy hat, right? Like what is that, a ten gallon hat? Maybe go for the twenty, fifty, do they make hundred gallon cowboy hats?

You could get one so big that it envelops your whole body, OK, and then you’d be sitting inside the cowboy hat, and it would still be big enough to block everybody else’s view. And then you could poke a little hole in the back, you’d take a seat right in front of the projector, like I was talking about before, and there you go, problem solved, now it’s your movie, now it’s projecting only on the movie screen that you’ve got set up on the inside of your oversized hat.

No you be quiet, ma’am. If Yosemite Sam over here is allowed to come to theater and impose his big hat on everybody else, then I’m allowed to sit here and talk and complain and put way too much popcorn in my mouth and start showering the back of this guy’s cowboy hat with little half-chewed up pieces of popcorn.

What’s wrong Hoss? You got a problem? That’s pretty annoying right? Having to keep brushing off the sides of that hat? Keep scooping out all of those little popcorn bits from the sides? And what the hell’s a guy like you doing at a movie like this anyway? John Wayne’s not in this movie. This isn’t a Clint Eastwood production. Why don’t you go and see if there aren’t any other movies that might more suit …

Ow! What the hell man? You can’t just flick me like that! Way to take it to the next level buddy. Yeah, well, you’re not allowed to hit me. It was a hit. You touched me, man, you crossed the line. Yeah well, just take off the hat. Bro, just take off the hat. Just, just take off …

There you go. Oh … Oh my God. What is that? A goiter? What do you have like an iodine deficiency? Hey man, I’m really sorry. Yeah, put the hat back on, that looks incredibly … just … I’m just … Oh God, some things you can’t unsee. I’m really sorry pardner. That was really uncalled for, on my part. I can’t believe you held your shit together so well, considering all the verbal harassment I was, I was just, man, and to think I only got off with a flick. A little flick. And all that popcorn, it’s all stuck in the material. Yeah, Jesus man, I’m really sorry, I …

No you shut up ma’am! I’m trying to apologize here! Did you see that guy’s head? Well just chill out, all right? This movie sucks anyway, you just know they’re both going to die in like half an hour. No, I didn’t spoil anything, I’m just guessing. I’m just, this whole trope isn’t that original, just sit down. You want some popcorn? Sir? I’m talking to you now, sir. Again, I’m really sorry, just have some popcorn, just, just take the whole bag, I’m … Jesus.

I trapped a fly

I was just sitting down to write when I noticed a black horsefly on the screen window next to me. My reaction was pure instinct: shut the window closed, and then investigate. Sometimes a fly will be on the other side of the screen, giving the illusion that it’s trapped inside the house, but this guy was definitely inside, and now it was trapped, now it is trapped in this space in between the screen and the glass.

Now that the time for action has passed, I’m settling in to think about it, my first thoughts are, how did this fly get inside the house? Did something die in here? I’ve had squirrels in the basement before. This is New York City, so it’s not totally out of the question to assume mice or rats. And then the plausible gives way to the farfetched, to an imagined family of opossums setting up shop somewhere in the basement, camping out, leaving all sorts of garbage in their tracks, attracting flies, this fly in my window.

Or it could have just flown in through an opportune door opening, which is probably more likely. Now I’m stuck with this window closed right next to me. I’m deprived of my breeze. It’s summer and this overhead ceiling fan is only half of the equation, the other half being the open window from which new air comes in to replace the old air. I can feel the room, it’s a little bit less comfortable, the CO2 levels are definitely building up. I open up a window on the other side of the room, but it’s not providing the same direct circulation.

And this fly right next to me, it’s climbing up the screen, all the way to the top of the window, then it freaks out, I can hear the buzzing, and it’s back to the bottom, climbing up again. I guess there’s not really too much to do in there. And I start to feel bad.

Like, isn’t it just a little cruel for me to shut this fly in there, to sit around and wait for it to drop dead? How long does that take, at least a day or two, maybe three? Which doesn’t sound like a lot, not to a human anyway, but I remember that two or three days, that’s like an adult fly’s entire lifespan. It’s consigned to a life sentence of being trapped in that little space, the open world impossibly close, like it can probably reach its little feelers or whatever through the holes in the screen, maybe some of its fly friend might come up to it from the other side, shaking their heads back and forth, now you’ve done it bro, look what you’ve gotten yourself into.

I’m getting carried away. I’m anthropomorphizing this tiny cluster of nerves and wings. There’s no way it’s feeling anything. I think. I hope. I keep wondering what I would be like if I found myself in its position. I think that, for one thing, at least it has a little bit of space. I imagine me being trapped in a jail cell the size of a basketball court. So at least I could run around, or at least pace the perimeter, walk up and down and few times, try to keep my mind off the futility of my existence, the almost certain doom I was likely to face without any food or water.

But bad as I might feel for this little speck of existence, there’s no way I’m letting it out. Do you know how annoying a loose fly is inside a house? Even just one fly, it’s really, really irritating. They’re crazy fast, like where are they getting the energy from to fly back and forth across each room at such high speeds? And they’ll land on your leg every once in a while, or they’ll buzz really close to your ear and it’ll sound like a helicopter landing inside your head.

No, and then what? What if it’s pregnant? I’m going to get a fly infestation? No thanks. I had flies in the house when I lived in Ecuador. There weren’t any screens, so there were just always flies in the house, flies, June bugs, moths, frogs, no thanks. One time in college, yes, I lived like an animal, but for maybe a month, we had this fruit fly infestation. Fruit flies are a whole different type of nuisance, because while horseflies spend all of their time flying at high speeds across the whole house, fruit flies kind of just hover in one spot. And they’re so small that if you try to grab one, they just slip right through your fingers. It’s not happening

I just want this thing dead already. I want to not think about this fly, I want to open the window and have a very mess-free clean up, just pick it up with a napkin and throw it in the trash. But no, it’s going nuts. I’d go nuts too. I just have to put it out of my head for a while, not think about this little black dot at the periphery of my vision, a reminder of my mortality, a general symbol of all things slightly unpleasant.

Black, laceless, size fourteen

Every once in a while I’ll find myself in a shoe store. I have a size fourteen foot, so it’s unlikely that they’ll have anything past thirteen. But sometimes there’s going to be something, and maybe it’s not a fourteen, maybe it’s a thirteen but I’ll try it on anyway. And it looks great, I feel like I’m doing a normal thing, buying shoes at a shoe store, I’ll do like a whole series of laps around the showroom just to make sure I’m not tricking myself into thinking that these things are going to work out when they shouldn’t. And I’ll do it, I’ll buy them.

And it always turns out that, despite my in-store laps, I had tricked myself. Because whatever pace I was maintaining on that soft shoe store carpet, now that I’m outside, man, these things are way too tight. It’s the kind of discomfort that only starts to manifest like an hour, two hours after continuous wear.

One time I bought this pair of black shoes for a job at a new restaurant. I needed a very specific style, laceless, black, some sort of adhesive grip on the bottom. I don’t know, it was all a lot of very exact rules for buying these shoes. And I had like a week to make it happen. And so I went online, I found the shoes, they showed up maybe five days later, but they were too big, like way too big. These things said fourteen but they felt like a seventeen.

And so now I only had three days left. I placed another online order, but I wasn’t sure they were going to get here in time. And they didn’t, so I wound up at the shoe store again, tricking myself into buying those thirteens. Don’t worry, I told myself, you’ve got this. These are going to work out fine.

But that slow pain that starts after an hour or two, it was crippling after three or four. By the time I got out four hours after that, my toes were practically purple. Thankfully, while I was at work, that second online order arrived at my house, and so I didn’t even bother to try to them on, I thought, well, I’m definitely never wearing the thirteens ever again, and I don’t have anything else, so they have to work, they simply must fit.

The shoe store lady kind of put up a fight when I went to return the thirteens. “Did you wear them?” and I should’ve just said no, like, what is this lady, the shoe judge? No, just accept the return, thank you very much, you have a nice day too. But for some reason I was overly honest, “Well, yes, but just for one day.”

“One day?” she looked up at me, recoiling the handheld barcode scanner that she was just about to use to zap the purchase clean from my credit card. “What do you mean one day?” and usually I’m much more confrontational, like usually I would’ve been like, “What do you care? Just zap it, what are you, personally invested in this pair of shoes?” But I was so defeated, my feet still swollen from the day before, I think I might of started to weep, a soft weeping, but still, I was like, “Come on, please, they hurt so badly, I can’t …” and she kind of deflated, like I could tell she was looking forward to that confrontation, but this, I had to have been weeping, it was a pity zap, she thought I was pathetic.

And I got to work, my second day on the job, and these shoes, the second online delivery, they said thirteen, and these actually felt like a thirteen. I couldn’t understand it. The fourteens felt like seventeens, but the thirteens a strict thirteen? There was no winning here. It was another painful night. I thought about how I was going to go forward. I thought, am I going to have to find a new job? Why is it this hard to find a pair of shoes?

At the end of the shift, peeling those thirteens off, the rush of blood to my deprived extremities, I said, screw this, I don’t care. No way am I going through another night. I returned everything, all of the boxes, take it all back, I give up. I went into the back of my closet and reached for my trusty pair of blacks, laced up, a little scuffed on the edges, soles so smooth I could slide across the floor with little more than a brisk two-step.

And you know what? Nobody said anything. That stupid rule book that they gave me when I was hired, what a joke. Someone must have written it up years ago and that was the last time it was ever seriously consulted. One time I was on the floor and one of my managers even stopped me, he was like, “Hey Rob, your shoe lace is untied.” I was like, “Hey thanks a lot boss, good eye man,” and he gave me one of these winks, a really mild thumbs-up, like keep up the good work Rob, nice shoes buddy.