So I know it’s been a while since my previous attempt at a blog met its premature end after more than a year of mocking the hapless and deserving, but I decided it was time to return to cyberspace. After all, I have this iBook, and to make it worth the $1,000 I paid for it a year and a half ago, I guess I need to use it for something other than occasionally watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs.
This time around, I’m not going to take as many potshots at the literary efforts of some people who shall remain (sort of) nameless, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some, just not today.
But anyway…
I re-entered the workforce officially today, and I found out where the imbeciles whose granddads don’t own newspapers go to work.
Some moments of Zen from my eight-hour training session at All Faces Need Incisors:
I was sitting next to a young man from New York City. On the other side of him was an older woman of the larger persuasion from Ohio with a voice that on first hearing I mistook for a man’s. This woman, whose name I wouldn’t write here even if I could actually remember it, was also possessed of a rather volatile temperament and a vocabulary that was fully stocked with some rather colorful idioms, most of them involving words not printable in a family publication, and some including words that would probably be inappropriate for publication in Penthouse Forum. The best approximation I can come up with for this person is a misbegotten cross between Roseanne Barr and Larry King. How’s that for a frightening image? (For the sake of brevity, in the rest of this account I shall refer to this creature as Larryanne, which rhymes with "Carrie Anne," who was that girl in that song by The Hollies. This woman was like her, only scary instead of pretty. And old instead of young. And... never mind.) To her right was another more-than-adequately-sized older woman and then a younger girl who appeared to be a recent high school graduate.
The main part of today’s eight-hour adventure was a getting-to-know-everyone session, during which we all went around the room and told some things about ourselves, including our favorite foods, vacation spots, and experience as customer servants.
Three things that came to light during this session, and I cannot stress enough the fact that I’m not making any of this up:
1. One woman has some pet meat goats. I still don’t know what the hell a meat goat is, but what I do know about them is that they “need as rough as ground as possible,” and I passed that little tip on to her, then laughed and laughed. The meat goats’ owner looked a bit mystified, and I think she probably regards me as a somewhat suspect person now, but that’s life.
2. The guy to my right, whose dark skin made him appear to be either of African-American or Hispanic descent, doesn’t like to be asked what race he is. I know this because after he introduced himself, he launched into a random diatribe about that very thing. As far as I could tell, no one had actually asked him what race he is, at least not in the past several hours we had been together in the room, but you don’t interrupt a guy when he’s in the middle of a good rant. After the rant, though, I overheard him confide to Larryanne that he’s Puerto Rican, so that’s one mystery solved.
3. Another guy has a small dog that might (the dog’s owner wasn’t sure) be a Shih-Tzu, or at the very least is a member of some similarly rat-sized canine breed. But the owner, a sallow-faced young man of maybe 20, hates the dog because every time it comes near him, it bites him. Multiple times. Savagely. So basically, we have a five-pound dog which randomly attacks the person who is its alleged master on a regular basis. I don’t know what that says about the dog, but it does suggest some things about the owner, one of which is that he might be from Letcher County, which was held at bay for several weeks while I was in college by a pack of 27 “marauding Chihuahuas.” Really. I didn’t make that up, either. The Lexington Herald-Leader did a big story about it. I wanted to link to it, because no matter how many times you read the phrase “marauding Chihuahuas,” it’s still two of the funniest words you can possibly string together. Right up there with “meat goat.” But, alas, I couldn’t find it in their archives. You’ll just have to trust me about the Chihuahuas. Marauding Chihuahuas, even.
Anyway, during the course of this fascinating series of revelations, someone mentions that an unusually high percentage of homosexuals (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) work at this company, for reasons known only to themselves and their respective higher beings. Said revelation came toward the end of the session, and then the class took a fifteen minute break.
During the break, I remained in the training classroom to read a few more pages of Faithful by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan (a really interesting book, by the way). Directly, my neighbors return. Apparently, during their break, they had overheard a lengthier discussion of the sexual proclivities of our new coworkers, including the training session leader, who, it seems, doesn’t drive stick herself.
When the four of them realize that the teacher is, or at least might be, swinging from the other side, they are overtaken by fits of laughter that go on for several minutes.
I thought that this was about as bad as it could get and was just minding my own business, listening to the teacher (who, according to consensus, might be… say it with me, in a whisper, with some giggling… lesbian) carry on about her dog, which, in her expert and unbiased opinion, is very smart. (No word on the dog in question’s sexual orientation, in case you were wondering.) Of course, I couldn’t resist the chance to question someone’s evaluation of the relative intelligence of a nonhuman creature.
“He’s not part dolphin or anything, is he?” I believe was the first question I asked, followed by, “Have you seen any evidence of opposable thumbs?”
The instructor, a nice enough woman, assured me that she’s sure the dog is smart because, on a trip to some lake last year, he sat perfectly still after she and her roommate (girlfriend?) left him on a dock to take his picture.
I didn’t really see how this proved his intelligence, any more than I believe that a turkey’s ability to outwit one of my former coworkers on a regular basis demonstrates that species’ superior intellectual prowess, but I let this one slide.
At this point, before I go on, I have to reiterate that I am not making any of this up.
So then, after the dog intelligence discussion, we move on to some other inane topic, and suddenly I hear Larryanne say to the Puerto Rican guy in the loudest whisper ever, “I can’t wait to take this fucking bra off.”
The four other people closest to me obviously heard this declaration and immediately went into gales of laughter. I tried my best to cover the look of sheer horror than I’m absolutely sure must have been on my face at the thought of this woman removing any of her garments, especially one with such a vital containment role. The younger girl a few seats down jumped on this comment with a fervor that I found more than a little disturbing, and she and Larryanne began a spirited discussion of the discomfort caused by feminine undergarments and the mechanics of removing said garments while driving cars in traffic.
At this point, the instructor (who, you’ll remember, is possibly gay) asked what all the laughter was about, resulting in them calming down somewhat. I can honestly say that I have never been more grateful to be forced to watch an excruciatingly boring Powerpoint presentation about the history of a company than I was at that moment.
