Things in an elevator, or The Story of Dave

So, practically every day I come home from work and get in the elevator, I find something different on the elevator floor. I have decided that I should keep a running tally of the things on the floor of the elevators in my building.

So far, since they removed the carpet from the elevators and eliminated the dog pee problem (YAY!) there have been the following things, roughly in order of appearance:

1. Puddle of beer, probably half a can, splattered all over the elevator. Floor, walls, not ceiling. The ceiling is like 10+ feet high, so they didn't drop it with enough gusto. Maybe next time.
2. Tallboy of Keystone Light. Probably empty, 'cause there was another one right outside the lobby doors. Somebody was trying really hard to get drunk on cheap beer. Hope that worked out and that they didn't just end up having to pee a lot.
3. A nice looking red travel coffee mug with a spout cap on it. This made it out into the lobby later that evening.
4. Shattered bottle of 101 proof peppermint schnapps. Easily the most pleasant smelling elevator disaster so far, but sticky and shards of glass everywhere.
5. The Saddest Condom in the Universe. Still in the package, and it looked like it'd been through the laundry twice. I seriously almost took a picture of this one, but there was somebody else in the elevator with me and taking a picture of a discarded condom seems like something one should do while nobody is looking.

So, here's what I'm pretty sure happened. I'm going to name the character in this story Dave, after my lizardman in Skyrim. (Don't judge me. Dave is a perfectly good name for a lizardman in a fantasy world RPG. A PERFECTLY GOOD NAME.) Also, I will warn you, this is possibly in the top 10 worst stories ever written. So don't say I didn't warn you. 

The entire reason I posted this was because I started to crack a joke on Facebook, and it got too long to fit in a status update. So, here you go. Without further ado...

My life is a sitcom, vol I

So, I was at work today, doing my awesome work type things where mostly I sit at a computer and type cryptic jargon into a machine that then does even more cryptic things in response and makes magical things happen. Like unicorns.

And it was just about time to go home. So I got up, and -- oh, I've got to pee before I leave or this will be a miserable drive.

I stop in the bathroom, and march up to the urinal, and do my thing, and it's just another day, and okay done peeing, I should zip up my pants.

So, as many of us have done so many times before, I grab my zipper with one hand, and my jeans with the other hand, and my entire back shrieks in protest.

Fortunately, I had my best friend in the bathroom with me in the next urinal over, and when it happened, I stopped zipping my pants up having gotten almost nowhere with the zipper, froze, and said "Hurk!"

He immediately looked very (some might say overly) concerned. "Are you okay??"

I hunched over a little, put one hand on the small of my back, and winced dramatically.

"I think I threw my back out."

"Peeing?" (Cue cheesy laugh track.)

He helped me out of the bathroom, and we walked to the parking lot, as I leaned against him making pathetic mewling sounds and hobbling like an octogenarian passing a kidney stone wearing only one shoe.

We got to the car.

"I think I'm feeling a little better, thanks."

I reached for my car keys, and tweaked my back again trying to press the button on the remote to unlock the door, instead setting off the panic alarm. Security came running and I had to explain that nothing was wrong, I just hurt my back. He points out that my fly is unzipped. I snark at him. My back hurts, and it's not funny for him to try and make me XYZ right now.

So, my friend insisted on driving since I was clearly not doing well. We got in the car, and headed to the pub that we always go to after work where all of our other friends seem to hang out at constantly unless we are in the apartment complex we live next door to each other in, or at some other public place where we all happen to conveniently be at the same time.

We sat at the booth we always sit at, and another one of my friends was showing off the new perfume she'd been working on. I cheerfully volunteered to give it a sniff, and it clearly tickles my nose. I choke back a sneeze -- barely. Just then, that cute girl that no one has actually ever seen before but which we all refer to as what's-her-name (that I'm always making eyes at but never talk to) walks by on her way to leave and I try to look suave and say hi. She looks interested, but then the sneeze sneaks back up on me.

"aaaaAAAA-ch--hurk!" I wince again.

Cute girl: "Oh my god, are you okay?!"

Me: "No, no, I'm fine, it's just my back."

Girl: "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Me, trying to act charming instead of creepy: "You could give me your phone number!"

(Success! She giggled instead of rolling her eyes.)

Girl: "Oh, damn. I don't have a pen."

Me: "Oh, I have one, hang on."

I fish in my pocket for a pen.

[Cut to a scene from this morning, where I'm rifling through a pile of laundry with the friend who is also my roommate.]

"Hey, (friend's name), where are all my underwear?"

"Oh, heh, the guys thought it would be funny if we put them in the garbage chute."

"Real funny. Seriously, where are all my underwear?"

"Don't worry, they felt bad after they sobered up and left you twenty bucks. Get some more underwear. Besides, you still have pants. Who's going to notice you're going commando to work today?"

[Cut back to the bar, where the girl has just noticed that my fly is unzipped, and while the camera is at such an angle that you can't see anything, I've clearly accidentally exposed myself while looking for a pen.]

At this point, the girl looks horrified, pulls out a can of mace, empties it into my eyes, then storms out.

Roll credits.

...

That, or I just made a face, sucked it up, washed my hands, and promptly told my girlfriend what just happened, she laughed at me, and it was decided that it should go on the blog. I'm not sure which -- my memory's getting kind of funny now that I'm an old man who hurts his back trying to operate a zipper.

College Wars, Episode III: Deja Vu, or How Not To Get Restarted

So, here's what you missed on the last episode. (Isn't it handy that I don't need to assemble a clever plot summary montage like you do on TV?)

Anyway, I needed a degree, which I was fairly confident would work wonders for my career after completion. After all, the combination of professional experience and a degree should be hard to resist, right?

[crickets]


Ahem. RIGHT?

So, with my newfound determination to Go Back To School, I made a beeline for the Internet, where I found the catalog for my local community college, rifled things, and picked a degree that looked like it was related to my job, because work said they'd help pay for it (awesome) if my classes were all related to my current career path. Which made picking one a lot easier, since I really didn't have much choice.

So, decision made, I boldly went where I had already gone before. To college, men! To college!

I arrived in good spirits at the campus to take my placement tests. Now, it had been some years since I'd done this, but I had a general idea. Oh, sit at this computer? Oh, the whole thing is on a computer? Well, that's handy!

I plopped down in the testing room and began breezing through familiar multiple-choice test questions. Read paragraph, answer question about paragraph's main point, this word means this, yawn, click click click. Oh, great, math. Hey, this is easy! Click click click.

Wait. What am I supposed to do on this one?


Now, humans, theoretically, are supposed to learn from their mistakes. I, of course, did not:


GO GO GADGET ANALYTICAL BRAIN! PROCESS OF ELIMINATION CIRCUITS, ACTIVATE!


I proceeded to handily come up with plausibly correct answers for questions which I was totally unsure how to answer properly.

I placed in -- and tell me if this sounds familiar to you at all -- math 95. This sounded familiar to me, too, but I wasn't totally sure if it was what I tried last time, so I figured hey, it's just going to take longer if I chicken out and go back a class. And besides, this is where they placed me. Surely the placement test is better now that it's been ten years. Right?

[more crickets] 


...Right?!

Goddamnit.


As it turns out, it was exactly what I tried last time. I read the first week's material and thought, "Oh. I can do this." A week into it, I realized that no, I STILL cannot do this. I dropped the class. Again.

This time, I was older and wiser and possibly more humble, and enrolled in math 65 instead. I breezed through it, and then took 95 and it was tough, but I did that too, and managed to barely squeeze an A out of it, to boot! Yay!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find some bug spray or a box of lizards. I grow weary of these crickets. ...They mock me.

AND I WILL NOT BE MOCKED!


Up next: How to win at science!

College Wars, Episode II: Bet You Wish You Hadn't Given Up, Stupid!

When we last left our intrepid hero, he had, as a mere boy, dropped out of college.

Insert a whole bunch of years of being an all-purpose nerd. Building computers, tech supporting technical things, and cultivating a healthy fear of telephones and Baptists. Blah blah blah. I'm a badass. Or whatever.

After misadventuring my way through a lot of things that I will probably tell embarrassing stories about later, I ended up working for a giant evil empire who will remain nameless because I will probably spout something that could be construed as rude about them at one point or another, and they have a phalanx of lawyers who will send me angry letters and/or envelopes of white powder.

If my life was a movie, this would be the boring part if I left out the office romances and corporate espionage and all that. Which I am going to do, because it's not really relevant. Maybe later. So, fast forwarding more.

Starting in technical support, I worked my way up the food chain a few rungs, where I discovered something new. Contrary to my previous experiences, once you made it up a certain distance, you hit some sort of magical invisible ceiling. Okay, it wasn't invisible, and it wasn't magical, but it was totally a ceiling. They'd let me poke my head up through the ceiling and see what was there, but the HR Manager monsters had weaved some sort of impenetrable barrier. Turns out, the name of this spell is Corporate Policy. This casting of Corporate Policy enforced limitations on my paychecks; namely, I was unable to be promoted to a position whose title had the word "Engineer" in it unless I could produce a counter-spell known as a Degree.

[Flashback: Velociraptor in a dress, laughing like a mad scientist, while I dangled impaled from Indiana Jones style spikes protruding from the wall.]

Here's how it went down.

Manager who wanted to hire me into the Software QA department as an engineer: "Hey, I have a job opening in QA, you should apply for it."

Me, unusually excited but probably showing no actual emotion: "Yeah?"

Manager: "Yeah, it'll be posted today sometime, keep an eye on the internal job postings."

Me: "Cool. Will do!"

[Quick time-lapse montage of me doing boring looking things and occasionally poking at a website]

Me, thinking out loud: "Ah ha!"

[I then fill out an excruciatingly complicated internal job application, which takes a hilarious amount of time.]

Me: "Done! Oh, this is awesome! Okay. Time to go home."

[I drove home. I then played video games, went to sleep at four in the morning, then woke up at 7 and bolted to the car in a panic, possibly without any pants on.]

Me, thinking out loud because I can't afford a narrator because I am blogging and it doesn't pay anything: "I wonder if I'll hear anything about that job today?"

[Time-lapse montage of me doing boring looking things to the tune of cricket sounds.]

Manager: "Hey, do you have a minute? I need to talk to you."

Me: "Sure, what's up?"

[At this point, the manager is abruptly dressed in a long, flowing black robe, his face mostly covered by an oversized hood. He's holding a bloodied sickle, the tip of which is dripping onto my shoe.]

Me, utterly breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly into the camera like a complete amateur: "Oh, not again. Why does this always happen to me? What did I ever do to you?"

Death/Manager, confused: "What? Who are you talking to?"

Me, still talking to the camera like an idiot: "This guy's about to tell me I'm screwed. It's like the raptor attack from the last episode. Can't I just, like, meet a pretty girl and do something romantic or say something funny or get a cool car?"

Cameraman: "No."

Me, storming off screen: "[expletive deleted]!"


Anyway, Death very sincerely apologized and told me that he wasn't allowed to hire me because I didn't have a four year degree yet. He asked how close I was -- how many years I had left to finish school. I answered honestly. Four years. He said I'd better get to work on that, then.

In the meantime, I was determined not to give up. Four years? That's a lot of juggling a full time job and full time school. Ugh.


So, at this point, if you are ever faced with this dilemma, let me give you a list of things that will NOT work to fool HR into letting you have a job for which you are clearly not qualified:

• Asking the HR manager if they can make an exception just this once, for meeee. No, they won't.
• Asking the HR manager if they actually check up on the validity of a degree that I claim to have. Yes, they will, and I will be fired if I lie about it. Damn.
• Asking the HR manager if the degree has to be from an accredited school. It does. Sorry for bothering you, crappy "life experience = degree" internet college. You won't be getting any money out of me because your degrees are utterly worthless.
• Asking the HR manager (on the advice of a different HR manager who said it was worth a try) if I can have the job, but if we could just name it something less impressive and pay me the same amount. Nope. Not even if you come up with something clever or self-deprecating.
• Asking the HR manager if I can have the job, but if we could just name it something less impressive and pay me slightly less. Bzzt.
• Asking the HR manager if I can have the job and keep my current pay and job title until I finish my degree, but just not do that job anymore and do this new one under a new manager. No dice. I thought this one was actually a pretty attractive offer, too, since I was being paid in peanuts at the time.

I'm sure that I came up with half a dozen more cockamamie ideas to try and interest this monster into giving me a chance, but I don't remember any others at this point.

Next on Observational Tragedy Theatre:

College Wars, Episode III: Deja Vu