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?!