September 4, 2007 – The Office

            So as my days progress here at Cortez Cab I am beginning to realize how peculiar of a company this in fact is.  Case in point, the office…

            Every time that I step into the office it goes something like this…

            There is a large, if not completely obese woman, often surrounded by other large women, sitting on an old beat up office chair with a small portable fan desperately trying to cooling her off.  As I continue into the office I see the accountant who is older than dirt, I don’t doubt that he has fond memories of life before electricity.  As I continue my journey through the mess of papers, post-it notes, and used car parts strewn about I see more large women as well as a number of cracked ceramic floor tiles – draw your own conclusions…  Everyone is unusually upbeat, and then come the metaphors about the lord.  The ubiquitous Christian music, the religious pamphlets, and smell of WD-40 linger ever so ominously.  As I make my way to the bathroom I see a set of detailed directions for changing a roll of paper towels.

            “To replace roll of towels: Place your right hand on the rolling pin (stick that goes through the center of the towel roll) and pull all the way out to the right.  Put the new towel roll between the brackets and push the pin back through the towel roll to the left. Thank you.”

            Is this not humorous for a number of reasons?  The fact that the office needs to aid it’s employees with detailed directions in tasks as simple as changing a paper towel roll I find funny, but perhaps what is even more comical is the fact that the note was obviously placed there because at some point in time someone must have been confused by the intricate inner workings of a paper towel roll holder composed of only two parts.  I also like the fact that the office had to refer to the rod that holds the paper towel roll as a “stick” in case the employees weren’t bright enough to figure out what a rolling pin was, as well as telling them which hand that they needed to use.  The only thing the note was lacking was a recommendation that employees have their eyes open when changing the roll… 

Perhaps the funniest thing about this is how the holder from the towel roll looks like it was nearly ripped from the wall – perhaps from an overly confused and frustrated employee?  The cliff notes must not have been posted yet…

            But it doesn’t end there, oh contraire.  As I look on the other bathroom wall, next to the rusted out sink that barely turns on and the moldy fixtures, is an apparent reference to a religious publication of some sorts.

            “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.  See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you.”

            First off, is this not inappropriate in the workplace?  Second, what are you supposed to take away from this?  And third, why do I need to be reading this when I am taking a crap?

            As I wander out of the bathroom I see Bertha, who is the most obese of the office workers, hitting the scales at roughly 400 lbs.  I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a connection between Bertha and the broken floor tiles.   And Bertha is MEAN.  But there is one thing that seems to calm her…  Right now, Bertha is sitting in front of a computer listening to music about “the lord.”  Are you supposed to capitalize “lord?’  Well, I’m not going to consider it to be a proper noun.   The jury’s still out on that one.  Anyways, as I look at the playlist it seems that every song has the word “god,” “Jesus,” or “lord” in it.  She just sits there staring at an old CRT monitor from probably 10 years ago – one of the offices many antiques.  Of course, like everyone else in this nether realm that is commonly referred to as “the office,” Bertha loves “the lord.”  Probably not as much as she loves jelly donuts, pizza, or hot dogs though.

            If that weren’t strange enough, there’s the back office…  This is Catherine’s lair.  The back office is draped in carpeting and furniture circa 1972.  This place could have served as an alternate set for the Merv Griffin show if only the Merv Griffin Show had a musty smell and dozens of boxes and papers stacked many feet tall, covered in dust and strewn about in a dimly lit room.