You take the venom out of a cobra, and what have you got? A belt, that's what.

When I got in to work on Wednesday, I saw that I'd finally got the schedule for the next two weeks. And in the slot for the Sunday after next, I saw that the Zoroastrian had been stood down, and a name I've never heard of before substitued in his place. Interesting.

At 1630 the phone rings.

Me: "Security, Rimmy speaking."

Scheduler: "Hi Rimmy, this is Scheduling."

Me: "What can I do for you?"

Scheduler: "I was hoping you could stay until 0400 today."

Me: "You want me to get off shift at 0400?"

Scheduler: "Yes. We have someone coming to your site for training today, and I told him to show up at 2000."

Oh for Christ's sake.

Me: "Well, can I get a ride home arranged with mobile for 0400 then?"

Scheduler: "Sure, no problem."

Yeah right. Mobile is easily arranged when you need to be at a site, but the priority to get you home seems to be a little lower down the list. Somewhere on par with getting a high colonic.

Me: "Wait, is this new guy going to cover the graveyard starting tonight?"

Scheduler: "Yes, Yumpin' Yiminy has been stood down and this is his replacement."

Me: "Well, then four hours of training is probably sufficient if he's going to be continuing on directly."

Scheduler: "Well, it's up to you. Is four hours going to be enough?"

My opinion on sufficient training is well known enough to have been entered in my personal file with them. I know, I've seen it in there.

Me: "Four hours with me and then continuing on should be fine unless he's a retard. Sorry if that's a bit harsh, but it's true."

Scheduler: "Well, you be the judge. If you're comfortable with him after four hours of training, that's fine. I'll leave word in Operations that you may call to adjust your hours to stay until 0400 and need a ride from mobile if you feel he needs more training."

Me: "That'll be fine."

Click.

As I paused to consider this, the phone rang again.

Ring.

Me: "Security, Rimmy speaking."

Cookie Monster: "Hi Rimmy, this is Cookie."

Me: "Yes? What can I do for you?"

CM: "I just got your report on Yumpin' Yiminy and have stood him down from the site. Sounds like he's a real loser."

Me: "He's not a loser, he's a very nice guy. I just think he's got some sort of early stage dementia, and can't be left to do things consistantly without supervision. And I can't give him that on this site, of course."

CM: "Well that business with not opening the doors, that's just pathetic."

Me: "He's not doing it out of malice or sloth, he just honestly doesn't remember to do it, and yet he thinks that he has. He's definitely not a bad guy."

CM: "Well he's not there anymore, and I just wanted to tell you that."

Me: "Okay, thanks."

CM: "I also wanted to tell you that he doesn't know that yet, and I haven't been able to get hold of him. So if he shows up there tonight, don't let him in and tell him to call me in the morning."

Me: "Wait, he doesn't know he's not here anymore?"

CM: "No. I got your report late in the day and so I haven't been able to reach him. But if he does show up there, don't leave if he's still hanging around."

You jackass.

Me: "Okay, I'll take care of it. And what about Zoroastrian?"

CM: "He's being stood down as well. As you've probably guessed, we've been pretty tight for available people, so I've just bandaged your site and we'll look into a solution when we can."

I repeat: you jackass.

Me: "Alright then."

CM: "If Yumpin' Yiminy does show up there, give him my name and cell phone number and tell him to call me during business hours tomorrow."

Me: "No problem."

CM: "Thanks for taking care of this Rimmy."

Me: "Bye."

God, I hate my company. Here's some speculation from me based on my internal persona of Cookie Monster and some information that he doesn't know that I know:

I've sent him more than one multipage report on Yumpin' Yiminy. At his request, I might add. This one that he "just received today" wasn't the first.

The client (at my request) emailed Cookie Monster telling him to remove Yumping Yiminy and Zoroastrian from the site and giving some of the reasons why. I requested it because there was no indication that my company gave a shit when I told them that the client had requested it. People who sign the cheques have more clout. I also happen to know that included in that email (not at my request) was the observation that the client has me to speak on their behalf, and if I tell my company something, it has the same force as coming from the client herself. That email went out last week.

Cookie Monster doesn't know that I know about the email.

The sloppy and immediate action that was taken upon receipt of my latest report made me look at it again to figure out what may have prompted the speedy response. It's hard to say, since I worded it factually, but with a certain amount of (hopefully) subtle rebukes about CM's lack of response, but I think the phrase that people at the site were badmouthing our company (i.e. "You hire 'em dumb, eh?") was what got things moving.

Cookie Monster may be a useless tit, and be full of excuses to anybody that complains, but random people spreading things via word of mouth are beyond his ability to stem.

Such is my theory, anyway.

The new guy showed up, and seemed to be okay. He remembered things faster than most of the other people I've trained, and he's fairly new to security which I've found I tend to prefer. I've had exactly two temporary guards at the site (filling in) that were old timers in the industry that were fairly good, but the rest of the people with experience have been awful and mostly professional at doing sweet bugger all.

I'm a bad boss, though. I asked him if he was confident enough to do the site and he said yes, so I asked him if he needed me to train him for another four hours (this was just before midnight), and asked if I please would.

We talked a bit more, I fielded his questions, and steered him towards saying he was okay on his own, and then left. He had my number if he needed anything, and I stressed that it doesn't matter what time it is or what the problem is, he should never feel hesitation in calling.

And then I left him there. Even though he'd asked me to stay. That makes me bad.

I mean, I did think he had it nailed, but he was clearly a bit nervous. That's a crutch I didn't want to be though. I can't coddle someone for too long, or they become useless for what I need them to do. Plus, I didn't want to stay until 0400. I think that was a major consideration as well.

Anyway, I didn't get any calls from him all night. I'll see how he did when I go in and review the multudinous data sources I have. Including gossip. ;)

Oh, and how much does it suck that I have the HP in my work profile?

I got a call from the director of operations this morning asking if I'd help them out with a five hour shift tomorrow morning before I head on to my regular site. There's some big thing going on at the Justice Institute and he asked me to be there. I think I'll be patrolling one one other person around a specific area, but I'm not sure offhand what the area is.

Anyway, there are lots of police and whatnot that frequent the halls of the JI, so they don't just send anybody. Hence all the people with HP in the file being pulled, and my name popping out.

HP is High Profile, in case it wasn't obvious. I've got that (i suspect) by dint of speaking english and being a total mook.

I haven't decided if I'll do it yet. But I probably will.

I'm a frikkin' pushover sometimes.

Polly want a crackwhore?

"My name's Kim Jong! The US is wrong! Continue foreign aid or taste my Dong!

I gots mad flow when I eat my pho. Capitalist pigs I overthrow!

We're an axis of evil, like Evel Knievel! No chance of Japanese civilian retrieval!

IAEA criticise us, I say that's insanium! DPRK right to enrich uranium!

I don't mean to boast but you guys are toast - Taepodong-2 can reach the west coast!"

Anyhoo...

I woke up at 0530 again this morning. When this happened last Monday, I ended up pulling a double shift. If I was at all superstitious, I'd be worried about the same happening again today. Fortunately, I'm merely fatalistic, so I'm sure that it's going to happen, without all of that bad luck nonsense.

I spoke to Zoroastrian on the phone when he started his shift on Saturday, and had him run me through what he did the previous weekend (as mentioned in my previous blog entry). He was less than forthcoming, and basically said that he did his duty and it's none of my business what happened.

Clearly he's less enthused about me than he was when he was busy offering up his niece. That's good.

He was even less enthused when I told him he has to actually do full patrols. He said that he did, but I told him that I can see where he's been, and where he's not been.

He tried to brazen it out, and once again I'm simply baffled by people that know they have to swipe to enter an electronically locked door, but don't and then can't figure out why the log doesn't say they were in there. Do they think that the fiction they write on their reports is all I read?

Seacrest out.

Mr. Colgate and his halitosis death ray

I'll admit it, I'm a bit tired. Clearly I'm getting old.

On Tuesday, I woke up at 0530. This is unusual for me, as I normally manage to sleep until at least seven, but whatever. I can never get back to sleep once I wake up. No biggie, I do some cleaning, as well as get groceries and do the laundry. Eventually, it's time for work.

I'll admit to a certain amount of trepidation when I go in to work after a weekend. I keep on top of what my guards do, both electronically and by just talking to people. During the week it's a fairly responsive system, since I'm doing it daily. But over a weekend, there are seven shifts in which my whackos can screw up.

And there was an incident report sitting on the pile when I got in. Oh dear Bob NO!

Now, a couple of weeks ago I printed out this article and left it where my guards could see it. Yes, the guard should have been fired, or at least removed from the site. He broke the contract by abandoning his site, and he kicked someone but not in self-defense. That violates the conditions under which we're licensed in British Columbia.

Anyway, the Zoroastrian had seen someone outside (not our area), and exited our building to follow the guy around without calling in to advise Operations of what he was doing. He found the guy around the corner. He demanded to know what the guy was doing, and the guy said he was looking for cigarette butts.

This is perfectly reasonable. We do, in fact, get lots of people doing that. And I'm inclined to let them. If you don't hastle people that aren't doing anything wrong, they don't come back and throw rocks at your windows. Plus, it cleans the place up a bit. ;)

My guard say there is no such thing, and the guy ran. So the Zoroastrian chased him, way off of the site and up an embankment that leads over the highway.

The guy hadn't commited a crime, and my guard abandoned the site he was assigned to. Not to mention the reprecussions of my guard going into the bike patrol guys' area. What do you think I'm going to ask for, concerning the Zoroastrian? :P

An hour or so into the shift, I get a call from scheduling.

Them: "Would you be able to do a double shift tonight?"

Me: "Why, is something wrong with Yumpin' Yiminy?"

Them: "We have several slots open that we need filled, and I was hoping to put him into one of them."

Yeah, and you just found that out now.

Me: "Is this permanent, or just for tonight?"

Them: "Just for tonight. Although I'm trying to have him moved off of your site permanently."

Hmph. Nice of Cookie Monster to keep me in the loops, that bastard. It looks like me getting my naggy F/M on the case was a good move after all.

Me: "I suppose I can do it."

Them: "Actually, I can get The Sleeper to come and fill in for Yumpin' Yiminy."

Me: (flabberghasted) "The... Sleeper?! I don't think so."

Them: "Oh that's right, there was something about you removing him from the site, wasn't there? I forgot."

This is a woman who appears to have our entire employee roster in her head. I know, I've watched her rattle off names and schedules and such for people she's never actually met before, based only on their name. She did it to me when I had only been there for a month. I'm sure this wasn't an innocent slip of the brain.

Sure, you can call me paranoid, but I find people who call me paranoid are inevitably in on the plot.

Them: "I'll call up Yumpin' Yiminy and see what he's up for and let you know."

It was only after the call ended that I thought to wonder why they didn't send The Sleeper off to fill one of these empty slots, rather that suggesting the musical chair thing.

An hour and a half later over the radio I got the confirmation that I was doing the double shift. I ordered a pizza. Good times.

The best part about working the graveyard shift was that I got to see lots of people I hadn't seen in a while. Mostly even people I wanted to see.

Invariably they would spot me and be astonished. "You! Are you back to working mornings?", "We've missed you!", and my personal favourite "Long time no see - are you here to make sure the door gets unlocked for a change?"

And then, there were the others. I got to see Cafeteria Lady in a setting where she didn't get to hide. So she decided to brazen it out, in her weird way.

Cafeteria Lady has been fairly active in recent months trying to slam me. She slams, but it doesn't work out well for her. Mostly because she's nuts.

She's called up and sat down with the client (at the western Canada level, she and I share the same person as a client) and told them with Edith Bunker intensity that it's because of me that the cafeteria is losing money.

In fact, she regularly tells that to anybody who goes through the cafeteria, if I'm to believe all the various people who tip me off about it. ;)

Her credibility is kind of shot though, because in that same conversation with the client she was asked to order a few flats of Coke and Pepsi products for a town hall type meeting that the CEO was going to have on the site. She said that she probably couldn't do it, because Coke and Pepsi products are hard to get and they don't like to deal with small customers.

Now, I happen to think that this was a gambit by her to make it look as though she had to go through heroic actions to "save the day" by miraculously getting the pop in the nick of time despite overwhelming odds. However, she manages to order those same products to keep her fridges stocked, so it's a bit much to imagine that they are rare products. Plus, I can go to Costco right now and pick up a dozen flats of pop with minimal effort. The client, with what was later described as a "bitch, are you for real?" look on her face, told her that if she couldn't handle a simple task perhaps the cafeteria was too much for her as well. KAPOW!

The pop got ordered, toot sweet. Oh sorry, that's how you spell it when you make cocaine. My bad. ;)

Anyway, the client isn't buying into her crap stories about me. And it seems that the bulk of the employees she trashes me to aren't either. They've all got stories of her weirdisms, and I've managed to both avoid stepping on too many toes and been more likably by comparison to the guy I replaced, Barney.

So on spotting me in the cafeteria, Cafeteria Lady came up to within a couple of meters of me and opened her mouth in an expression that was apparently meant to convey incredulous surprise, but looked more like she was waiting for the airplane to zoom in and deliver a spoonful of Gerber strained peas.

I ignored her. I was talking with somebody, so it was an easy cover. Plus, she doesn't know that the client tells me when CL rips me up. I've let her going on thinking I'm oblivious. It's advantageous with your "enemies" think you're dumb.

She stood there, waiting for me to notice her. I failed. ;)

Finally, she said something along the lines of "Well! What are you doing here?"

I looked her square in the eyes and said in a dead monotone "What do you think?"

Undaunted, her insanity took over: "Do you know anything about a chair?"

Interesting tack. We're standing in a cafeteria with about three hundred of the buggers. But before I could do more than draw in a breath for my reply, she turned around and said "Oh there it is!" and dragged the chair around the corner and into the kitchen.

The person I was talking to, normally the sweetest of people, said in her Quebec accent "What was that all about? Is she crazy or something?"

See? I don't even have to say anything to get my point across. Yay me!

Bah, reading the above story shows me what a horribly disjoined writer I am. Ah well, we can't all be Jay.

I finished up the shift at 0800, took my usual hour and a half to get home, slept for 3.45 hours, then got up and went back to work.

Although I seemed okay to myself, I wonder just how incomprehensible I was to those around me. Hopefully I've got a ways to go before I get ranked against Cafeteria Lady, though.

And finally, I was thinking of going to see V for Vendetta this weekend. I'm pretty sure I won't be disappointed but... what the hell happened to Natalie Portman?!

Cockroft and Walton may have been the first to split the atom, but if all goes according to plan this week, I'LL be the last.

Some people, when they get frustrated with things, say "I wish I could just die." But they've got it backwards.

You wish that the other person would just die. Same effect on the problem, but you're still there. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how people could misunderstand the application process.

Stuff from the last several weeks:

• Yumpin' Yiminy appears to have some sort of dementia, possibly Alzheimers. One day in three or four he forgets to unlock a major door for employees at the site. He remembers to take the chain off of it, but not to take off the deadbolt. He claims he does, but I wouldn't be getting all the complaints about it if that was the case, would I? The log also shows the people on the outside of the door swiping their cards over and over and unable to get in.

• In addition, he asks me the same questions over and over on successive days, without any indication that we've had a carbon copy of the conversation previously. Here's one: "Question. I hear on the radio that people say 10-0. What does it mean?" "It means they're asking for a radio check. A response of 10-1 from Operations means they have a poor signal, and a response of 10-2 means it's clear." Follow-up: "Ah. Because I don't have that code in my list." "That's because the list (printed in the back of our notebooks) is a generic North American police list of ten codes. We only use a few of those. Our actual list is printed in the newsletter you get with your pay statement." I get this, on average, every three days. Down to the exact wording.

• In a similar vein, he once found some of our daily reports in an office. But he's also found them in the HR department. Note that I said once. So the repeating question is "Question. I found our reports in two place. Over there (waves arm in vaguely the right direction) and over there (waves arm to indicate what seems to be straight up, which is wrong. I might add that these arm wavings happen every time too). Why is that?" "That's because our reports are filed in HR, but the guy who actually reads them has an office elsewhere. So he probably just had a few over there that he hadn't put back yet. I get this question at roughly the same frequency I get the other one, but usually on different nights. It's a sure sign that he's going to do something odd during his shift when I get both questions on the same night.

• Despite the nagging feeling that I require medical attention, I continued to leave the symptoms of schizophrenia untreated after the management of Pixar awarded me with yet another raise for the facility and inventiveness with which I anthropomorphize inanimate objects.

• I met a woman on the SkyTrain (and on the bus after that) one night that started up a conversation concerning the pseudomagical (my choice of word) properties of certain fruit-based drinks. She had some sort of concoction made from blueberries and, I think, asparagus that she said saved her life. She was depressed, unable to even get out of bed following some sort of injury she said. She did the physio, had the operations, and took the prescribed drugs. Nothing helped. Until someone turned her on to "alternative" medicine. (I should hasten to point out that I'm totally uninterested in hearing someone tell me about alternative medicine. It's less about the hearing of some unlikely miraculous results that bugs me, and more about people raving about the results of anything that hasn't been verified in clinical trials.) A week of drinking this stuff and she was out of bed and getting her life back together. That's wonderful. The conversation, except for the magical fruit juice was relatively normal. Then she told me about the medical imaging and treatment system than some guy had invented back in the 1930's that was more precise than anything they have even today (according to her, it could see smaller particles than even physicists admitted exist) and would cure people of cancer. The inventor, she went on to say, we killed by the American Medical Association. Even today, the fragments of his notes that still exist seem to promise technology that could cure practically any medical condition. She wrote down a website (from memory!) that I'm trying to find, but I'm defeated by the sheer volume of paper laying around my desk. I'm guessing that I put it aside so I wouldn't lose it and could post it in the blog, but I have no idea where that place of safety would be. So screw it. And no, before you ask, she didn't grope me in the elevator.

• I've trained a guy to do weekend afternoon shifts at the site. He's crazy. He doesn't understand the concept of a magnetic card (although we use a fob). Watching him hold it against various surfaces (rarely the right ones) was enough to make me despair.
• He's Zoroastrian. He hates all things Islamic. This came out during the training shift, where he would refer to, I think, mullahs as "diaper-wearing devil-beared evil murderers". All without pausing in his narrative of whatever he was talking about. The guard he relieves is Muslim. So far, I've heard of no problems in that area.
• On his first shift alone, he brought a camera to work and took pictures of the inside of the site. That includes of employees and having employees take pictures of him against various backgrounds. That was fun to explain to the client, since they're currently frantically paranoid about employees leaving and taking confidential and proprietary information to the competition. There are lawsuits out against employees for doing just that, and now they hear about someone taking pictures?
• He refuses to wear his uniform. He'll wear the shirt and pants, but not the jacket. He won't carry a notebook. He wears a blue derby from the 1950's, and plans to sew a company patch on it. I've instructed him otherwise, but I know from sureptitious investigation that he just keeps on doing it.
• He doesn't like to touch things, so he wears a pair of white cotton gloves. This, combined with the loose grey vest he affects to wear, kind of makes him look like the shifty older bellhop in some sweaty country in an Indiana Jones movie.
• He doesn't patrol, but says he does. I thought at first that maybe he'd forgotten his training, but when I showed up during his shift and asked him to convey me around, he knew the place well enough. He's just not doing it.
• He called me up at 2200 one Saturday (the same one I had him tour me around the site) to describe his sister's daughter to me. He told me about her education, what she does, that she's intelligent and very good, et cetera. This went on for a considerable length of time. He finally said "If you like what you've heard, I can buy you a five or ten dollar phone card from 7-11 and you could give her a call in Tehran." Yeah, let me jump all over that action.

• Speaking of which, the Philippino couple that clean the second floor of my site have been talking about their daughter coming to Canada. They're nice people, and have invited me out to various parties over the months they've known me. Usually ones when I'm working, but it's the thought that counts. Anyway, the mother especially has been mentioning this daughter with increasing frequency, promising that once she's here I'll meet here. I started to get an uneasy feeling about this when they started bringing in pictures of her, professionally done pictures of a woman that could be a professional model. I'm all for immigration, but I don't think I want to be involved as an anchor point.

• My NationStates country managed to be #1 for "Most out of control youth" out of some 119, 503 nations. A dubious honour, but once again I was flooded by fan mail. This happens on occasion, sometimes from people asking how to get a particular rating in a category, or telling me how awesome I am, or inviting me to their region. That last type is mostly generic, but I often get them personally addressed with particulars about my description in them, often mispelled, so they seem to be individually written. I think I've got some street cred because I've been playing so long, my population is easily within the top 100, and possibly much closer to #1 than that. Check out my nation.

• The client has asked me to remove Yumpin' Yiminy from the site. Far too many complaints about that door, and a few about him being "kind of creepy". I passed that on to Cookie Monster, and he said the client has to talk to him directly about it (which the client won't, since they consider him to be an ineffectual idiot) or else we could be hit with a discrimination suit. "Why" I asked, "because he's from Czechoslovakia?" There was a pause, then "Yeah, maybe because of that." Say WHAT?! That was weeks ago, and there's been no response from Cookie Monster, or any indication he's looked into the matter. I hate him.

You know, this point format just isn't doing it for me. So I'm going to knock it off.

This past Friday, I saw a fair number of police cars around my site. Not actually at my building, but at the ones across the street. They were doing fairly worrying things like zooming around with the lights flashing but not running the siren. Shortly thereafter I got a call from South Park Goth Kid.

"Hey, have you seen any police around the site?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. What's going on?"

"I don't know, I was walking around and suddenly I was told to FREEZE. I looked and there was a cop with a big dog. He told me not to move because of the dog, then when he went past he told me to leave the area. So I'm coming back to your building."

"Did you ask him what was going on?"

"No, he kept going and went around a corner."

And that, my friends, was the end of it as far as that guard was concerned. Want to know what happened?

Some guy with a gun was being chased by the police. He eventually came to our little area and apparently smashed open a door on one of the buildings (not mine) in a bid for a place to hide, but doesn't appear to have actually entered. The police never caught the guy, but apparently flushed him out and away from our area.

The broken door wasn't spotted by South Park Goth Kid for the rest of his shift, which was about ten more hours. Way to do your job!

Well, at least nobody was hurt. Although in retrospect I kind of wish I'd met up with the guy. Not to be a hero or anything, but just so he could have threatened me a bit with his weapon before running away. Not that he would have actually hurt me. This is Canada, after all. And here's why I'd want that:

Now, my experience of near-death situations - that experience being, as most of you know, more than copious - is that once your adrenaline settles, and you realize you've actually lived through it, you undergo the most incredible high. You're in love with the world, with life itself. All malice flies from your spirit. You want to write, personally, to everyone who was ever slightly mean to you and forgive them. You want to swim with dolphins. You want to run naked on beaches. You want to frolic naked in heather. You want to throw back your head and laugh for forty minutes out of every hour. You want to make love through the night, every night, and you don't care who or what with. You want to be reckless. You want to parachute in blizzards, naked. Fly unpowered gliders, blindfolded and naked. You want to ski down sheer glaciers, blindfolded and naked and without skis. You want to ride untamed horses, possibly blindfolded though probably not naked, and definitely without skis. You're high, but you're not insane. You want to get together all the world leaders, possibly naked, and bang their silly old heads together until they agree that war is a stupid thing and they're definitely going to stop doing it. You're so giddy, you actually think you might pull it off, too.

I'm guessing everyone's experience is reasonably similar, although I'll accept maybe my reaction is overly focused on excessive nakedness. I've no idea why that is.

And I could have used a moment like that. Trying to balance the wants and needs of the client against the hostile apathy of my superior's (bad word that, have to find an alternative) ostrich style of management is wearing me down. I haven't even smiled in far too long. I think I'm going to print up some business cards and hand them to whoever causes me grief.

THIS MAN HAS NO SHORT TERM MEMORY.

PLEASE TRY NOT TO CONFUSE HIM.

Creamy Goodness, M.D.

(Canadian Medical Association)