I'm sitting here right now listening to two of my co-workers yell at each other from the other side of the building. This is fun. I'm a people-watcher (perhaps, since I can't see them, I should say "observer") by nature, and it's really amusing sometimes the things people can get riled up over.
Right now, the argument seems to be about exactly where on a form a certain bit of information needs to be written, about what the word "bin" means, and who said what when. I feel like I'm listening to a Presidential impeachment hearing, at high volume.
I think this is an outstanding reason for doors on all of our offices. We don't have that now. Granted, our building isn't that big, and they're yelling pretty loudly, so I might still be able to hear them with a door or two in between. At the very least, though, it would keep me from having to hear our Marketing Director's kid singing from across the hall when she's here. Hell, for that alone I think I'd pay for the doors myself.
To be honest, maybe it's better this way. For one, it's sort of amusing. Actually, when they're finished, maybe I'll go offer some suggestions, just to see if I can rile them up again. Secondly, it serves as a warning--by the nature of this conversation, I know it's probably going to involve me at some point. At least now I won't be blindsided.
Friday, January 30, 2004
Friday!
Being that I don't like my job very much, Friday is always a day to look forward to.
This one didn't start off so well. I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but a hot shower always helps me to wake up a little bit. Unfortunately, the best I could get out of my shower this morning was "lukewarm." Ah, the wonders of apartment living--I think the problem was caused by my neighbors also showering at the same time, but who knows? At any rate, that didn't get me up and going as much as it usually does. Maybe I should have tried a cold shower. Hmm...no. Anyway, after that, I had to drive to work, which involves fighting through traffic. I just don't understand how some people are granted licenses to drive. The drive-time traffic always irritates me, but today was at least a little worse than usual.
This is an exceptionally rare thing for me to say, but my day has been getting better since I got to work. I'm finally starting to feel alert. There has actually been some work for me to do. I'll be getting paid sometime in the next twenty minutes. Life is good.
The weekend is coming up, and it looks like it'll be a good one. After work this evening I'm getting together with a friend I haven't hung out with for a while (his girlfriend had a baby last month, so he's been plenty busy). On Saturday, the Falcons men's hoops team has a home game, and Anderson Arena is one of my favorite places in the world (a topic I'm sure I'll explore at some point). After that I'm driving to Brandi's for the remainder of the weekend. The Super Bowl is on Sunday. In short, there are plenty of things to be excited for this weekend.
The real reason that Friday is such a great day, though, has nothing to do with any of this. Friday is great mainly because it's a Wendy's day. I work Monday through Friday, and I have a general schedule I keep about where I eat lunch each day. The rest of the days are subject to a little bit of change, depending on several factors, but the one immutable thing is Wendy's on Friday.
I love Wendy's. In fact, Wendy's is the reason I made a schedule--without it, I would just eat at Wendy's every day, and by now I'd probably weigh about 750 pounds and have two orange ponytails sprouting from the back of my head. I do generally eat there one other time during the week, but as I've made a conscious decision to start eating at least a bit healthier, it's not quite the same. On Friday I don't worry about it, though: I go straight for the greasy burger and fries, woohoo! My stomach is rumbling and my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
This one didn't start off so well. I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but a hot shower always helps me to wake up a little bit. Unfortunately, the best I could get out of my shower this morning was "lukewarm." Ah, the wonders of apartment living--I think the problem was caused by my neighbors also showering at the same time, but who knows? At any rate, that didn't get me up and going as much as it usually does. Maybe I should have tried a cold shower. Hmm...no. Anyway, after that, I had to drive to work, which involves fighting through traffic. I just don't understand how some people are granted licenses to drive. The drive-time traffic always irritates me, but today was at least a little worse than usual.
This is an exceptionally rare thing for me to say, but my day has been getting better since I got to work. I'm finally starting to feel alert. There has actually been some work for me to do. I'll be getting paid sometime in the next twenty minutes. Life is good.
The weekend is coming up, and it looks like it'll be a good one. After work this evening I'm getting together with a friend I haven't hung out with for a while (his girlfriend had a baby last month, so he's been plenty busy). On Saturday, the Falcons men's hoops team has a home game, and Anderson Arena is one of my favorite places in the world (a topic I'm sure I'll explore at some point). After that I'm driving to Brandi's for the remainder of the weekend. The Super Bowl is on Sunday. In short, there are plenty of things to be excited for this weekend.
The real reason that Friday is such a great day, though, has nothing to do with any of this. Friday is great mainly because it's a Wendy's day. I work Monday through Friday, and I have a general schedule I keep about where I eat lunch each day. The rest of the days are subject to a little bit of change, depending on several factors, but the one immutable thing is Wendy's on Friday.
I love Wendy's. In fact, Wendy's is the reason I made a schedule--without it, I would just eat at Wendy's every day, and by now I'd probably weigh about 750 pounds and have two orange ponytails sprouting from the back of my head. I do generally eat there one other time during the week, but as I've made a conscious decision to start eating at least a bit healthier, it's not quite the same. On Friday I don't worry about it, though: I go straight for the greasy burger and fries, woohoo! My stomach is rumbling and my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Some Pet Peeves About Work
It's always cold in my office. Actually, it's always cold on this whole side of the building.
Our Marketing Director comes to work around 9:30 (we start at 8:00) and goes to lunch around 11:30 (the rest of us go at noon). Sometimes she comes back afterwards, sometimes she doesn't. Coincidentally, she's engaged to the company president. Hmm....
Also, when she is here, she often brings her kid to work with her. The kid, who is a ten year-old girl, sits in the office across the hall and jabbers and/or sings (poorly) loudly and constantly. I'm not even allowed to have a radio on my desk.
I hate it when people don't get back to me. If I call someplace and leave a message, send an e-mail, or request a quote or whatever, it would be nice to get some type of response. I also hate it when there are shipping delays and they don't inform me. I just can't believe how some places do business.
The work flow is incredibly inconsistent. On the whole, business has been down lately, so work has been scarce. However, even now, sometimes there are days when everything is rushed and we need it done now, and there are other days when I just sit here dying of boredom. On days like that (today, for instance), I try to come up with new ways of amusing myself, like writing pointless blog entires. It would be nice if the work was just spaced more evenly.
Our Marketing Director comes to work around 9:30 (we start at 8:00) and goes to lunch around 11:30 (the rest of us go at noon). Sometimes she comes back afterwards, sometimes she doesn't. Coincidentally, she's engaged to the company president. Hmm....
Also, when she is here, she often brings her kid to work with her. The kid, who is a ten year-old girl, sits in the office across the hall and jabbers and/or sings (poorly) loudly and constantly. I'm not even allowed to have a radio on my desk.
I hate it when people don't get back to me. If I call someplace and leave a message, send an e-mail, or request a quote or whatever, it would be nice to get some type of response. I also hate it when there are shipping delays and they don't inform me. I just can't believe how some places do business.
The work flow is incredibly inconsistent. On the whole, business has been down lately, so work has been scarce. However, even now, sometimes there are days when everything is rushed and we need it done now, and there are other days when I just sit here dying of boredom. On days like that (today, for instance), I try to come up with new ways of amusing myself, like writing pointless blog entires. It would be nice if the work was just spaced more evenly.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Windshield Wipers
This morning, my windshield wipers successfully made the list of "Most Useless Things in the Universe."
My girlfriend Brandi lives in Stow, OH (near Akron), and I occasionally drive over there to see her even during the week. It's about two hours from where I live/work, which usually isn't that big of a deal. This morning, though, there was a good deal of snow and rain between Akron and Toledo, which necessitated a good deal of windshield wiper usage.
It seemed like most of the time, using the wipers just made it worse--instead of clearing my view, they just smeared a whole bunch of crap over my field of vision. Lovely. I'm sure I ended up using most of my wiper fluid just to fix the damage it caused, which generally made things better for approximately four seconds. Most likely they need to be replaced.
Another thing. Maybe it's just me, but whenever I've had wipers start to wear out, they always start to leave streaks...RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE. How does this keep happening? It leaves a perfect streak of exceptionally unclean glass right in the portion of my windshield that I want to look out of, meaning that I either have to crane my neck to see over it or crouch way down to see under it. This happens to me each time I start to need new wipers--it's uncanny, really.
My girlfriend Brandi lives in Stow, OH (near Akron), and I occasionally drive over there to see her even during the week. It's about two hours from where I live/work, which usually isn't that big of a deal. This morning, though, there was a good deal of snow and rain between Akron and Toledo, which necessitated a good deal of windshield wiper usage.
It seemed like most of the time, using the wipers just made it worse--instead of clearing my view, they just smeared a whole bunch of crap over my field of vision. Lovely. I'm sure I ended up using most of my wiper fluid just to fix the damage it caused, which generally made things better for approximately four seconds. Most likely they need to be replaced.
Another thing. Maybe it's just me, but whenever I've had wipers start to wear out, they always start to leave streaks...RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE. How does this keep happening? It leaves a perfect streak of exceptionally unclean glass right in the portion of my windshield that I want to look out of, meaning that I either have to crane my neck to see over it or crouch way down to see under it. This happens to me each time I start to need new wipers--it's uncanny, really.
An Introduction
I was highly tempted just to jump right into this, but it would feel pretty strange to do so without a bit of backstory. It would help to know where I'm coming from, yes? Okay, maybe not, I don't know. I'm new to this, and that's where I'm going to start. I'll try to make this as short and as painless as possible.
I'm 26, but I have a tendency to think of myself as being younger than that. That may be because I still live in the town where I went to college (Bowling Green, Ohio). I'm currently doing a job I don't particularly care for--I'm the Purchasing Manager for a small manufacturing company just outside of Toledo. That's just what I'm doing right now to pay the bills, though; it's certainly not how I define myself. I'm a writer/editor by inclination, although finding steady work in those fields is not especially easy. That's okay, though; I'll get there eventually.
If you read this blog regularly (assuming I continue to update it regularly, which remains to be seen: I have good intentions, but we all know how that goes), you'll read about a variety of different subjects. I'm a writer who hasn't been doing as much writing as he should lately, and I feel this is a good venue for me to change that. There will probably be plenty of writing about the things I love--sports, literature, music, films, etc. Plenty of other stuff crosses my mind, and you'll see that here too. Some of it will be deep (hopefully), some of it will be banal. That's just the way I am. All I ask is that you come to it with an open mind, as you'll probably find that a lot of my views don't line up with the mainstream. In return, I'll try my best to keep it amusing and/or thought-provoking. Just don't hold me to it.
I'm 26, but I have a tendency to think of myself as being younger than that. That may be because I still live in the town where I went to college (Bowling Green, Ohio). I'm currently doing a job I don't particularly care for--I'm the Purchasing Manager for a small manufacturing company just outside of Toledo. That's just what I'm doing right now to pay the bills, though; it's certainly not how I define myself. I'm a writer/editor by inclination, although finding steady work in those fields is not especially easy. That's okay, though; I'll get there eventually.
If you read this blog regularly (assuming I continue to update it regularly, which remains to be seen: I have good intentions, but we all know how that goes), you'll read about a variety of different subjects. I'm a writer who hasn't been doing as much writing as he should lately, and I feel this is a good venue for me to change that. There will probably be plenty of writing about the things I love--sports, literature, music, films, etc. Plenty of other stuff crosses my mind, and you'll see that here too. Some of it will be deep (hopefully), some of it will be banal. That's just the way I am. All I ask is that you come to it with an open mind, as you'll probably find that a lot of my views don't line up with the mainstream. In return, I'll try my best to keep it amusing and/or thought-provoking. Just don't hold me to it.
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