Front Yard Hair Salon

Senor 23 and I were sitting in my room overlooking the busy street below. As usual, we had been drinking some beers in the early afternoon since neither one of us had anything else better to do. I opened one of the large bay windows to get some fresh air into the house and I was periodically sitting on the edge of the window frame to get a better view down the street.

Heavy footsteps erupted from the front porch. Someone got to the front door and really abused the mechanical bell. Senor 23 went down there to see who it was, he came back a minute later with an old friend I hadn't seen for some time. His name was Jason Blore. Jason dropped by to say hello and see what was going on at the B Street house since he was in the neighborhood, he said. That was cool. It really had been a long time since I last saw him. We offered him some beer and made small talk about what he had been up to lately. That was when I saw the meter maid coming down the other side of B Street towards us. Senor 23's car was parked directly across from the house and he didn't have much time left on the meter.

The meter maid was driving one of those stupid three wheeled carts that seem popular with most cities these days. As the henchman of evil-parking-oppression moved in near Senor 23's ride, I pointed out the window at it and asked him how much time he had left. Instead of answering me, he pushed past me, hopped out the second floor window, literally ran head first down the roof, and then jumped onto the roof of the hair salon in our front yard. He landed squarely on both feet and like a crazed maniac he slithered in between our roof and the edge of the hair salon's building to drop down on our front porch. I could hear him running down the porch to the gravel driveway and then like a shot from a gun he bolted across the street (without looking for oncoming traffic). He made it to the meter next to his parked car just as the servant of Satan pulled up in her three wheeled shit heap.

Jason and I were laughing hysterically at Senor 23. The meter maid saw him running out to the meter and put some change in it, so she must have been aggrivated at not being able to write a ticket. They live for that sort of thing you know. Because we were laughing so loudly the meter maid looked up at my window. Just as she did so Jason yelled at her, "Everybody hates meter maids!" At that outburst I really lost it and was laughing so hard I was on the verge of tears. The meter maid definetly heard Jason's insult and merely waved hello at us. Then things got ugly.

All of the women in the hair salon had come out of the portable building and had been standing in the middle of the street watching us. We hadn't noticed them. One of them yelled in her empty headed housewife voice, "Are you guys jumping on our roof?" I stopped laughing. Uh oh. I might be in trouble with the property manager again on this one. Shit. I didn't have much time to think of a good lie or a witty response so I did what any sensible guy would do. I yelled back "Nope." I could tell by the look on their faces my response was not the correct one. No matter. We had a poor relationship as neighbors anyway. The dingbats in the hair salon were always blocking our driveway with their cars, and they haven't forgotten about the flood damage my empty beer bottles caused. They couldn't prove anything though so we didn't have to pay for the water damage. Heh.

Jason took it upon himself to yell shit at the ladies in the street. Their faces turned red when he was through with them. We had just crossed a line and there was no turning back now. I was expecting a phone call from the property manager any minute. Shortly after the hairdresser idiots went back inside their hole, the phone did indeed ring. I told Jason to shut up for a minute and I took the call. On the other end of the line was a flustered sounding property manager. She told me she just received a complaint about someone jumping on the roof of the hair salon and that the hit to their roof was so strong that it caused their track lighting to break free from the ceiling mounts and drop down on it's wires about a foot and a half.

One of their customers at the time was an old woman and the sudden noise and commotion practically caused her a heart attack, she said. Oops. I gave her my best honest business guy voice and said, "Hmmm. That's unusual. I wonder what could have caused that. Well, if I find anything out I'll let you know, OK?" The property manager lady wasn't having any of it and started threatening me. If there were any further problems with the hair salon we would all find ourselves thrown out on the street, she said. Uhuh. Whatever. I knew she wasn't going to do anything about it. Over time I've discovered that our property manager really couldn't be bothered with this kind of petty junk and she's all bark, no bite. I listened to her lecture and then put the phone down after she was finished filling my ear with hate.

B Street wins round 2. Hair salon, 0.

Senor Strange

Senor Strange is a guy I've known in passing. Just an acquaintance for the most part. Someone you recognize by face at a party but you don't really know much more about them than their name and that the person is friends with some people you know. He's been here with us at the B Street house for months and he's turned out to be an OK room mate. There's been some minor hassles but nothing that hasn't been worked out quickly and without any bad energy as a result.

I first got to really talk to Senor Strange at a politically incorrect Halloween party. In the crowd at the Halloween gig there was a guy dressed up as "Polly's Abductor", and a guy who was calling himself Reginald Denny. The Reginald Denny guy glued a styrofoam brick to the side of his head. One guy showed up as a goofy redneck complete with a jug under his arm marked "SHITFIRE XXX". He had loaded up the jug with some kind of foul smelling booze and drank off it all night.

Mr. Strange was dressed up as a bondage fairy, or something to that effect. He looked completely ridiculous. The outfit he wore consisted of black Frankenstein heeled bitch boots that were laced all the way up just below his knees. He was clad in fishnet stockings, black bra, fishnet t-shirt, black hot pants, there were black feathery angel wings strapped to his back, and he had a crystal tiara perched atop his noggin. Senor Strange resembles the actor that played Agent Smith in The Matrix, so if you imagine Agent Smith dressed in the above attire you'll have a pretty close idea what he looked like that night. Oh and he was also carrying around a riding crop and a fifth of Southern Comfort, which he was sharing with anyone who wanted a swig from the bottle. I decided that Southern Comfort tasted like shit.

We were yapping about nothing getting drunk on the front porch of the house when Senor Strange decided he needed to explore the neighborhood. It wasn't a really great idea since this was a bad part of town. And it was an even worse idea to go tromping through the bad side of town on a weekend evening dressed like a complete freak. He never returned to the Halloween party.

Months later I bumped into the guy and asked what happened to him that night. Strange said he wandered down the road until he came across a bum sitting in a large bush. The bum asked him if he wanted to smoke some yellow powder. So, he crawled into the bush and smoked some unidentifyable substance. Who knows what it was. For all he knew it could have been a crushed up yellow piece of chalk. No matter. They smoked it. Then he walked across town and passed out face down in a busy intersection in front of a Jack In The Box hamburger joint. The last thing he remembered, he told me, was that a crowd of Mexican gangsta girls were standing around him in the street laughing and kicking him.

What a way to finish off a Halloween shindig.

Busted Again

A few months have passed since the last investigation took place at TDS over the paperwork fiasco. Myself and about six other people were verbally reprimanded and written up again for something we were instructed to do by our superiors over a year ago. This was the last straw for me. After that day I was determined to get out of TDS. I began looking for work the very next morning and did so every day after that for two weeks. Before I knew it, I already had two interviews with other tech companies scheduled. One was at a fiber optics communication company, and the other was back at my former employer- Bill and Dave's company.

Here's what happened. Mid-1995 we were given permission by our management team to perform one aspect of a test procedure a certain way. The instructions were verbal. They were never formalized in writing of any sort. Since then we have been performing this job the same way ever since. While my supervisor was mired in a different, unrelated investigation, she discovered how we were performing a task. What we were instructed to do was never in the procedure, she said. She was of course correct, but I had bad news for her. She was the manager that had issued those verbal instructions originally over a year ago. She feigned no knowledge of being responsible and the next morning they launched a new investigation. I was furious. More Catch 22 bullshit on an even more extreme level was heading our way.

The only thing that saved my job was the fact that under questioning all the other employees backed up my statements- that we were verbally instructed to carry out the work in a particular manner by one specific manager. All of us were written up, including my boss. This shit was getting damn old real fast.

There are other things here at TDS that trouble me. We suffer from a serious lack of planning when it comes to the purchase of new equipment. For example, they bought us a paint mixer to save us the time of having to dunk a stick inside a can of paint and sit there for a half hour mixing the crap by hand. Problem is, the machine is not for use with flammable paints. Guess what we use? Flammable paint. So we're back to square one and the machine has been collecting dust underneath someone's desk for months. Then there's the automatic potting machine. We've had it for two years and our engineering team hasn't got it to work once. Our automated cleaning machine doesn't work, and what's worse is it actually damages parts. Chamber 2 on the ATP test set has never operated properly, so we have been at half capacity there.

Perhaps the biggest equipment joke of all is the Tri-axial Vibration machine. In October of 1995 TDS purchased this new-fangeled Tri-axial Vibration machine for the Environmental Lab. We already have one that works flawlessly, but you could only test a dozen units every 45 minutes or so. The new one is suppsed to do 24 units every 15 minutes, but it never has. In fact, they can't get it to work properly at all. I don't think the machine is defective, rather I suspect the engineers back east who selected it are defective. This particular piece of equipment can't do what they want it to. It's a situation of right application, wrong machine for the job. The engineering team back east already has this model but they use it for testing explosive bolts. Apparently no one has told them that micro-electronic devices are not explosive bolts. Thanks to their stupidity they've wasted eight months of our time and tens of thousands of dollars. Way to go, guys.

Bottom line is this. I don't have much faith in TDS ability to use good judgement. I resent being reprimanded for doing my job the way I was instructed to perform it. I'm frustrated that my job is made more difficult on a daily basis because the equipment I have to work with is breaking down or inadequate for the applications we need them for. I was determined to get out of TDS before it got shut down. If I am hired back in at Bill and Dave's, things are going to be very interesting. I sure hope they are treating their people better than they were when I left them the last time.

Operation: Good Riddance

Everything was ready. We were ready. All we had to do was be patient, and wait. Senor 23 and I sat in the middle livingroom waiting for our unwanted guest with beers in hand. Our gear was with us except for the large pieces of cardboard. Being the lazy soul that he is, Senor 23 never bothered to break down and throw out the box from his 32 inch TV. Luckily it was large enough for our purposes. I cut it in half and doubled one side back on itself. It was going to make a perfect blockade over the basement stairwell. For now, the cardboard was placed on top of the stairwell entrance, out of sight. The oven mitts, fire extinguisher, broom, and tall plastic garbage can were haphazardly located around the two of us. I'm certain that if a stranger or a policeman had seen us sitting there with such an odd collection of household items they would think we were tweaked out on meth.

The plan was simple. Possum shows up in the back room to freeload, as usual. We block the stairwell with the cardboard and then shut the kitchen door behind us. There's no other exits we could find so this means trapped. Nowhere to run. We do battle with the possum and get it placed inside the garbage can. Once inside the can, we transport the offending creature to somewhere else and be rid of it. The somewhere else was a bit of a problem though. We still hadn't worked that part out. Also, unlike the movies, we decided it would not be necessary to synchronize our watches. This could prove to be a fatal error, we knew. But what the hell, better to go out in a blaze of glory than to die of old age in a nursing home.

A couple of hours passed. No possum. Checking the inventory on our beer supply, things were getting low. We were buzzed. The conversation was becoming difficult to comprehend. Words sounded somewhat slurred.

Suddenly, an all too familiar sound came from the rear of the house. It was the crackling noises of cat kibble being snapped into pieces. Activity in the back room! The perimiter has been breached! Dirty V.C.! Get them!

The two of us were practically on top of each other trying to get through the kitchen door with our crap in both hands. It was a silly rush. With the lights off I was able to get the cardboard in place blocking the basement stairwell. Senor 23 shut the kitchen door behind us. Oh yeah. We in bizness. Click. The lights came on, a startled possum looked up at us humans with oven mitts and fire extinguisher... and freaked. It ran head on into the cardboard blockade and then hit the reverse gear and headed away from us towards some large boards we had stacked against the far wall. Damn. Now we're going to have to move shit to get at him. Both of us should have thought to move any obstacles out of the room, or at least get stuff out of there that a possum could hide behind. Doh!

The real brawl was about to begin. I started moving wood out of the way while Senor 23 stood next to me with the broom. The whole time we got hissed and growled at by the large, smelly possum. It sure was goofy looking. Huge damn thing with beady eyes, a long pink tail, and white fur. No matter. This punk was goin' down! Just as I got enough of the wood pile away from the wall for Senor 23 to try to poke at the possum with the broom, the bastard slipped between us and headed for the other side of the room. It ran behind the washer and dryer. Fuck. Those things were heavy. With a sigh we marched over to the appliances and started moving them out from the wall. Broom was applied with heavy hand and the possum decided to run for the wash basins. Luckily for us there wasn't much cover underneath them so Senor 23 scored a point for us. Possum got poked. Then it happened.

I've always heard of possums "playing dead." Never seen it though and I thought it was probably like housewife legend. Stuff that wasn't real, but it made a good story at a Tupperware party. Well, as soon as the broom was applied to our invader, it flopped over on the floor with it's mouth wide open. It didn't blink even once. The beady eyes stayed open the whole time and the possum didn't make a sound. All the hissing and growling stopped. Amazing. Senor 23 decided to put the "play dead" thing to the test. He started brushing the possum's fur with his broom in a gentle, caring way like he was combing out the possum's pelt. Awwww. So cute. Nothing happened. Then he lightly jabbed the possum with the broom and said "poke poke poke" each time he touched it. Nothing happened. Senor 23 then put the broom firmly down on the possum and began sweeping it all over the floor like it was a dust mop. He made figure 8's, went in circles, then actually began cleaning up some of the spilled cat kibble with it. Heh. Nothing happened.

We stood there for a few minutes talking about it. Senor 23 put the broom against the wall as we were yapping and laughing about how stupid a possum must be. We didn't notice that the punk faked us out and ran off to hide in another part of the room. By the time we did notice our corpse had vanished, it was too late, and we were the chumps. Outsmarted by a pest. I still have to hang my head in shame on that one. After a repeat of the first encounter by the wood pile we finally managed to get the possum back under the power of the broom and another "play dead" episode took place. This time we were through fucking around and I held the dust pan while Senor 23 swept the possum onto it. I dutifully placed it inside the garbage can where it belonged. Whew.

The fire extinguisher went unused during this operation.

Now that the ordeal was over. What to do with this critter? That's where Senor Random came to the rescue. He had just arrived home and we showed him who was eating all his pets' food. He thought about it for a moment and suggested we drive it to another part of the neighborhood and drop it off. The unfamiliar surroundings would be like a maze to the pea-sized brain of a possum he thought. So that was the solution. Drive it someplace else and drop it off like a taxi cab dropping off a bum at the town's only late night diner. Random and 23 took the can and hopped in his 1963 Mercury Monterey to do the task. Cool. I was left to tidy up the back room- and drink some victory beer.

Good Riddance, mangy pest.

It Got Away

Seeing both of the cats sitting there on the floor together made me realize there was a cat food thief in the darkness of the back room. I tiptoed through the kitchen to where the cats were and felt around on the other side of the wall for the light switch. As everything lit up, I saw the biggest god damned possum with it's face buried in dry kibble. Advancing toward it caused the smelly animal to bolt for the basement stairwell. It escaped me. I yelled down the stairwell at it. Miscreant! Carpetbagger! Too late, it was long gone. Obviously it must have found a way into the house through the foundation, then figured out a good route under the house to the basement. Weak. I hate possums.

I walked upstairs and went to the end of the hallway where Senor 23's tiny room is located. He's usually in there drinking beers and playing video games on his 32 inch TV which is positioned about two feet in front of his 1970s vintage La-Z-Boy recliners. I knocked on his door. Silence. Then, magically the door slowly opened. I told Senor 23 about what I had just encountered downstairs and he immediately agreed we had to do something with this stinky pest right away. We decided that the possum has been freeloading off of us for so many weeks now that it must feel fairly safe in the back room. A false sense of security is an easy thing to exploit, and we would definetly try to take advantage of it. We were planning to do battle tomorrow night with the ferocious North American Possum.

Over good microbrewed beers the two of us sat in La-Z-Boy style writing up a list of required equipment for the coming fight. The list included two large pieces of cardboard (preferably from a TV or refrigerator box), oven mitts, a fire extinguisher, one large plastic garbage can, a broom-dustpan combo, and at least twelve beers. We weren't taking any chances here. Possums are dangerous critters when cornered, especially when they "play dead." That's always the time they are most likely to strike...

Unwanted Guest

Senor Random set up a large self-loading cat food dumpster thing in the back room of the house for Emur and Shamus. Our one-eyed late night house beast comes out of the basement whenever he's hungry and happily munches away. Emur sneaks back there to chow down frequently as she never seems to get enough. All has been well for our little house pets until the last couple of weeks. At first I thought they were being extra weird so I didn't pay them much attention, but then things became more odd.

Munching at the dry cat food was becoming significantly louder at night. There was more of a "crack crack crack" sound coming from Emur and Shamus' back room dining hall. Then, I noticed either Shamus or Emur would not go anywhere near their food while the strange sounds were occuring. Being the dumb human that I am, I figured it was the other cat I didn't currently see at the time. A few nights passed. Walking through the back room one day I noticed the air smelled funny. It was a pungent, musky odor. "What the fuck caused that?" I thought. I kept walking out the back to my car and locked the house door behind me. More evenings passed. "Crack crack crackity snap" almost every night back there. It was loud enough you could easily hear it in the front living rooms. The smell was getting worse. Huh? What is this all about, anyway?

One night I came home and went into the bathroom to unload a processed six pack. In my rush to relieve myself I didn't bother to turn on the lights. As I was doing my business, I sniffed the air. What the hell? That same screwy smell from the back room was up here in the second floor bathroom now. I flushed and turned on the lights. I stepped back at what I saw. The trash can in the bathroom had been dumped over and it's contents were scattered all over the place. Ripped up fast food containers, shredded drink cups, food scraps, the works were everywhere. This was fucking weird. I had a mystery on my hands, the familiar stink somehow connected these happenings. But, as usual, when I passed out that night and woke up the next day I forgot all about it.

More nights passed. I was getting used to the incessant "crack crack crack" cat food noises. Finally, one evening as it was deadly still and quiet downstairs I heard the usual racket and Shamus who was sitting on the kitchen floor right around the corner from me leaked out a pathetic, almost sad sounding "meow." I was on the couch with my feet resting upon the coffee table drinking a beer and reading a book. I couldn't see him from where I was but I knew it was him. I quietly got up and looked around the corner to where I expected him to be. He would be sitting right outside the back entrance to the kitchen where he likes to watch me with his one glowing eye and scare the shit out of me late at night. As I poked my head around the corner and spotted him, I did a double-take. Emur was sitting right next to him and both of the cats looked like they were unhappy. Meanwhile the "crack crack crack" was coming from the darkness in the back room. Shit! Now I know what's going on! We have an invader!

Catch 22 Part Three

I showed all the multiple revisions of the procedures to my supervisor. She told me to go through our entire area and pull the old copies of documentation, tear them up and throw them away. I didn't have a solid method for weeding out the old paperwork. There wasn't anything concrete to go off of. I responded by saying that I wasn't comfortable with simply tossing away our documentation and on top of that I felt this wan't my job to be auditing our procedures. Isn't this why we have a documentation control department? I had enough to do already. Instead I suggested she remove the old stuff once someone could identify it all and put it in her office. Keep it as a reference, for backwards traceability like some branches of military service do. That way if a new procedure wasn't found to be a great improvement or a unforseen problem arose we could look back on the old way of doing the same job and figure out what we might be doing wrong. She thought about it for a few moments and agreed, this was a good idea.

I also asked that she add more checks and balances to the company's documentation control by giving copies of new revisions to key people in each area of production. Those key people would be responsible for replacing their older paperwork with the new and make sure all of the assemblers and test operators in their area were aware a new procedure was now on the shop floor. This seemed like a common sense approach to me, but my boss didn't like it at all. "I don't want people to have personal copies of procedures," she said. That wasn't what I was getting at. I tried to clarify what I was talking about but it didn't get through.

Back in the Closed Area I talked with Marty about this conversation with our manager. I told him in one case I used him as an example to her. If a new procedure was released for a test set in his area, it would go to him first. He would locate all the old copies in his room and then turn them in to our boss. The new procedure would immediately go into the master list binder located on his desk for all of us to reference if needed. Marty would also make sure each one of us sat down and read the new documents as soon as possible. He liked the plan, but when I told him our boss didn't dig it he said, "Then we will continue to have these problems." He's right. We will.

Catch 22 Part Two

I was and still am confident we built good units the whole time. When the new written procedures finally hit the production floor, they were already outdated. They appeared to be even older than the LRIP3 documentation we were previously working off of. So as far as accuracy was concerned the LRIP3 paperwork was more valid. They had to go back and re-update all of the LRIP4 procedures to make them look just like the LRIP3 stuff. To me this seemed like it would be a really easy job, all they had to do was practically cut and paste. But in some cases this took these losers weeks, even months. The document control department at TDS is seriously lacking.

New procedures as they are released need to be rewritten to bring them up to date. Since February I am finding things in the documents that are too vague, items that were completely omitted, or just plain incorrect. Every time I find one that's jacked up I send it back. Manufacturing continues throughout all of this mayhem even though Richard ordered us to stop production as these situations arise.

What really angers me about all this is no one in management cares that the procedures are first and foremost a training resource for all of us factory peasants. All they are focused on is being able to show some Government auditor that revision letter B is on the traveler and on the corresponding procedure. I doubt any of them care what the procedure actually says, really. Most of the documentation is so poorly written that after reading one you would not be able to perform the job. You have to rely on the experience of others to get the information you need to perform the work properly. This isn't the way things should be. The written instructions should be so good that if you had to, you could read them and then do the job without any assistance from a trainer. The whole situation is so frustrating to me.

So many copies of procedures have flooded into the Closed Area that another problem arose almost instantly. How do you know the copy of the procedure you have in your hand is the most updated version? You don't. Master lists of the documentation showing each current revision that should be on the shop floor haven't been created. Just until two weeks ago we had four binders full of the exact same test procedure. In one example I went to find a copy of a particular test procedure and I came up with five different versions of how to do the job. So which one was I supposed to use?

Catch 22

Catch-22 also catch-22 n.

1. a. A situation in which a desired outcome or solution is impossible to attain because of a set of inherently illogical rules or conditions: “In the Catch-22 of a closed repertoire, only music that is already familiar is thought to deserve familiarity” (Joseph McLennan).
b. The rules or conditions that create such a situation.
2. A situation or predicament characterized by absurdity or senselessness.

Things at TDS have been steadily going down hill since the first of the year. Besides the fact that I've been unhappy with my hourly pay rate since I was hired, there have been countless equipment problems, defective materials, and terrible mistakes made by bonehead employees. In my opinion all of those mistakes could have been easily prevented. The end result for me has been an unnecessary high level of stress for months on end.

During the Christmas season they worked us to the bone. For the second year in a row I worked straight through the holiday plant closure to try and ship units as quickly as possible. At the end of December we barely met our production goal for the Government contract. After it was all over I looked forward to getting back to a more reasonable level of work in January and February. My hope for a less stressful couple of months was not to last long though. The first two weeks of January were a needed improvement, but by the third week our entire department in the Closed Area was under heavy fire due to a technicality.

Because we work on military contracts, we have to accurately record how we build and test every single unit. Our documented procedures have to be up to date and reflect how each operator performs a particular process. As each assembly or test process is completed the operator who did the work must sign off on a routing sheet, or as we call them "travelers." A traveler is supplied with every lot of units we begin work on and stays with that lot until it ships out the door. In addition to signing off for job completion we have to fill in a revision letter that corresponds to the current revision of the documentation for each particular part of the process. These paperwork revisions come from engineering, I think. All of us are supposed to be aware of the latest versions of the procedures. Sometimes it's difficult to keep track of them though. Too much confusion around the shop floor on a daily basis.

So what happened in the middle of January is a Quality Insurance Inspector noticed that we as a department were filling out the incorrect revision letters on our travelers for a few months. This triggered a company investigation and a management uproar. We all thought we were filling out our paperwork properly. But when we changed from Low Rate Initial Production phase 3 (LRIP3) to LRIP4-PEP all of our documentation on the shop floor should have been updated. Not much changed in the new phase of production. There were some minor physical changes in how the product looked, but electronically they were almost the same design. For the most part all of our written procedures were still appropriate and accurate, but because of this technicality that we were on a new phase of production all of our documentation was wrong.

Management was really freaked out. We were hassled, yelled at, and in my case interrogated at length by various managers and company brass. The worst incident was with my supervisor's boss, Richard. He in particular went out of his way to make me feel real stupid. One afternoon after the management freak out began he came into my area while I was working and started asking me questions about the current job I was performing. At that moment I was running the ATP test set. It stands for "Acceptance Test Procedure" and it's damn near a fully automated environmental chamber that can provide us with a variety of electrical and optical data.

Richard asked me if I had read the procedure for LRIP4-PEP ATP testing. I told him that I didn't remember ever seeing one. Then he asked me in a stern sounding voice, "How can you test these units without having read the appropriate procedure?" I replied that I had been trained in the use of the ATP test set. With that, Richard said nothing more and left the room. A few days later Richard hand wrote a memo and jammed them into all of our in-boxes. Here's what he wrote:

"It is a policy in manufacturing that we operate to written procedures. The procedures must be an accurate statement of what the operator does. NO EXCEPTIONS. If the procedure is not correct the operator is to stop work until the procedure is corrected. The minimum correction is a red lined change approved by the team leader, Quality Engineering, or a product engineer and the manufacturing engineer. NO EXCEPTIONS. The procedure to be followed is the one listed on the traveler. NO EXCEPTIONS. A red line change is only valid for 30 days. It must be formally changed or at least resigned for an additional 30 days. NO EXCEPTIONS. Operators and their supervisors who allow these policies to be violated will be disciplined."

No exceptions was the recurring theme in Richard's diatribe. The thing was though, exceptions were being made on the production line all the time. In one case by Richard himself. This really irked me. I was being told to do one thing, observe something else at the same time, and I could be busted down for it whenever they felt like it. I mean, they wanted their parts and they wanted them yesterday regardless if the paperwork was correct or not. A few days after Richard's memo came out we were all written up, including my boss. I was even more angry after that took place. So I decided to put Richard to the test. I found Richard in the hallway and I told him I stopped production in the Closed Area. I told him I didn't have a current procedure for a test process and I shut the line down, just like he said to do. You know what he told me? "Go ahead and do the job." Oh, OK. What about NO EXCEPTIONS, you asshole? I knew that if he wanted to he could turn around and bust me again.

I will not tolerate this kind of Catch 22 bullshit from management.

Paranoia

I live in a paranoid world here at TDS. Well, some would call me paranoid, but I like to consider myself being in a constant state of "hightened awareness" rather than simply being paranoid.

Recently I've had a few incidents later in the evening around the parking lot and the building. I've spotted an individual sneaking around the building. Each time I've tried to catch up to the person they've done a quick job of ditching me. Seems very suspicious. I've talked to John about it after the third time and he was concerned. It could be nothing, but he doesn't want to take any chances. It could be someone trying to dig through the trash bins for a bit of something that might be useful to them, it could be someone casing the area and trying to gather information on employees. John also mentioned some of the swing shift ladies have noticed a person lurking around a few times and they've been worried about getting mugged or raped or some shit. John wants me to try and get a licensce plate from the individual's car, if I can. Of course that's if I happen to be lucky enough to follow the person to his car.

John's solution for the short term is to have me lock down the company parking lot each night. There's no need to freak everyone out that something devious may be going down so he sent out the following memo to everyone this week:

To: Swing Shift Employees
From: Facility Security Officer
Subject: Parking Lot Gate

The increased number of swing shift personnel necessitates a change in the closure time of the parking lot gate. Effective tonight, the gate will be secured at 7pm.

Using the paging system, Factory Peasant will make an announcement 10-15 minutes prior to the gate closing. Anyone wishing to move his/her vehicle out of the parking lot should do so at that time. Otherwise, the vehicles will remain inside the secured parking lot until the end of swing shift when Factory Peasant will unlock the gate.

In the case of an emergency when an employee must end their shift prior to their regularly designated end of shift, Factory Peasant or Mr. Janitor will unlock the gate.

Mr. Janitor has also volunteered to escort employees to their respective vehicles at night. If you wish to avail yourself of this service, please contact Mr. Janitor, but allow sufficient time for him to respond. Concurrently, it is recommended that you park your vehicle near the parking lot entrance to take advantage of the lighting on the west side of the building.

Please direct any questions or suggestions to Mr. Janitor, Factory Peasant, or the Security Office.

John

It's laughable that Mr. Janitor is going to protect the women as they leave the building each evening. That guy is so fat and so useless he'd probably get knocked out by a mugger in a split second. I mean, what's he gonna do, stop a criminal with his stink? More than likely all his stench is gonna do is piss off a mugger even more. Well, whatever. This is just one more thing I gotta do around here and still no raise. I've got to direct the swing shift, lock down the building, lock down the parking lot, and all for seven bucks an hour. What a drag.

Counterintelligence Briefing

THE THREAT

Spies do exist; and literally thousands of spies or Intelligence Officers, as they are officially known, and their agents are currently striving to collect intelligence data within the United States. The principal source of these Intelligence Officers is the Soviet Union, their allied nations in Eastern Europe, Cuba, the People's Republic of China, and smaller Asian communist nations such as North Korea and Vietnam.

The main objective of Intelligence Officers is the wholesale collection of data. The most prized type of intelligence data is a classified document, but unclassified material- even material which appears to be trivial- can also be of inestimable value. In their task of gathering intelligence data, the foreign intelligence services have a large array of tools. Satellites miles above the earth's surface gather photographic data. Aircraft and vessels gather electronic intelligence. But a further source of data, and potentially the most valuable to a hostile nation, is that acquired through the use of actual spies. The greatest achievement an intelligence organization can have is the placement or recruitment of an agent directly in a sensitive position in a company working on Department of Defense contracts.

Intelligence Officers employ various tactics to enlist what is known as "target employees." They may use a honeyed, seemigly guileless approach. They befriend targets, treat them to gifts and money, wine and dine them. Many Soviet and other communist agents believe that Americans are hopeless materialists and can easily be swayed by appeals to their alleged greed. In another maneuver, the Intelligence Officer misrepresents himself as a citizen of a country friendly to the United States. Thus, a targeted American may be duped into handing over sensitive information by being led to believe that he is aiding an ally to the U.S. In variation of this tactic, and Intelligence Officer will pose as a representative of a noncommunist country towards which a targeted American is particularly sympathetic. Also, if an Intelligence Officer believes that an individual has communist or similar sympathies, he may make an appeal for information based on ideology. A "pitch" for information may also be geared to take advantage of an American's desire for international harmony and world peace.

Another favored appeal exploits the American belief in freedom of speech and the free exchange of information. An Intelligence Officer in the role of a scientist may, for example, tell an American scientist that science has no political boundaries. Therefore, in the interest of science, the American is encouraged to share his knowledge with a fellow "member" of the international scientific community. Intelligence agents can also play rough in the quest for strategic information. To such people, espionage is a business. If they feel coercion and blackmail will serve their purpose, they will not hesitate to employ those methods. The honeyed approach can readily turn sour if an agent determines that a targeted employee has personal inadequacies which that employee does not wish to have exposed. Correspondingly, another tactic is the exploitation of a "hostage situation." If, for example, a foreign intelligence service learns that a target employee has relatives in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, or other communist countries, that employee is in an extremely vulnerable position. First will come gentle persuasion (an agent may produce "letters" from so-called relatives calling for the American to "cooperate"). If that doesn't work, the agent can suggest that harsh measures could be applied to the relatives.

RECOGNIZING THE APPROACH

Because you are engaged in national defense work, you should be wary of strangers who make an intensive effort at forming a friendship and then slowly but surely begin to use that friendship to learn where you work, the nature of your assignment, who you work with. Be wary of strangers who ask for information not related to their professed area of interest or do not seem to be particularly knowledgeable in their field. Thus if a "scientist" requests data not related to his field or does not seem to know much about his supposed area of expertise, then he could very well be an imposter.

The operative of a foreign intelligence service need not be a foreigner nor need the occasion of your encountering him be in any way extraordinary. He could be a fellow American who has been recruited as an agent by a hostile intelligence operation. He could be a "spotter" who reports to an intelligence service on persons he meets who appear to be susceptible to recruitment and, sometimes, arranges for Intelligence Officers to meet them. Do not expect an Intelligence Officer or agent to expose his role in any dramatic and sudden fashion. Usually, there is a long period of cultivation during which your conversations could be completely normal and innocuous. However, at any point where someone begins to inquire into aspects of your knowledge or activity which are classified or otherwise private, you should certainly stop to consider whether it might be the beginning of an attempt to secure intelligence information for the benefit of another country.

Calling To Win

We were all getting settled in for the shift. It was that time of the day when all of the dayshift folks had finally left. Each of us had got the lowdown on what needed to be done from our counterparts. The usual idle chit-chat hadn't begun yet. Things in the Closed Area were quiet, we were concentrating on the work in front of us at our test stations and work benches.

Richard is a mid-level manager at TDS. I don't deal with him much as he's my supervisor's boss. He is all business. To the point, no fuss no muss. I don't think I've ever seen him smile. Not once. To me, this makes him kind of spooky. I feel like whenever he's speaking with me he's constantly sizing me up. I've never had any problems with him but I know to stay clear of him when he's around. Just to be on the safe side.

Today, Richard let himself into the Closed Area through the main double doors and walked over to the middle of the line where most of us were working at the time. I was walking around the benches in the middle of the room with a couple boxes of parts. As I was headed out of the room to the Environmental Lab, Richard asked everyone to stop what they were doing. He had something he wanted to talk to us about.

He said, "Who has been calling the radio station?"

I put my boxes of parts down on a table close to me and thought, this was strange. Nobody said anything in the room. You could almost hear the crickets chirping from the silence. Richard continued.

"We have a computer system here that monitors every call into the plant. Who the call is coming from, which extension the call is going to. It also monitors every single call to the outside, which phone is being used in here and where the call is going to out there. Management and security get updates real-time and if a red flag goes up, we get notified. Someone in this room has been calling a local radio station about twenty times in the last half hour. Who was it?" Richard gazed across the room at all of us and then fixed his stare on me. What the fuck are you looking at me for, guy? I hate local radio. Wasn't me. Then Barney spoke up.

"Uh, it was me." Barney said.
Richard looked at him. "What were you trying to do, win some tickets or something?"
Barney replied, "Yeah, I was trying to win some tickets."
"OK well, don't be doing that anymore." Richard said. Then he smiled and left the room.

That was really weird. I didn't know we had the sneaky computer sniffing on all the calls here. Good to know. A few of us were laughing at Barney. He seemed a little embarrassed about the incident. I asked Barney, "So what were you trying to win, man?" He looked up at me from where he was sitting and said, "I wasn't trying to win anything. I just went with what Richard was talking about to make him go away. Actually I was trying to request a song." Heh. Screwball. At least Richard was cool and didn't bust Barney. I picked up my boxes of parts and got to work in the Lab.

Jennifer, The Manipulator

Lately Jennifer has been trying to turn up the heat to get me to move in with her. She lives a few blocks away from the B Street house. I'm happy here at B Street so I feel reluctant to leave. I have doubts about my relationship with Jennifer on a number of levels and I am concerned about her motives for wanting me to live with her. She's been leaving me lots of little notes about us living together... and getting married. Honestly, I have a bad feeling about it.

The main reason why I'm not too keen on cohabitating with her is because our sex life is so dull. It's not my speed at all. Jennifer always has excuses for why she doesn't want to have sex and it really bothers me. I figure that if our relationship is going to be strong we should have a healthy amount of intimacy between us. Rarely, if ever does it happen. It's extremely frustrating. I become angry and depressed the more I think about it. I dwell upon all of this too much. Sometimes I feel like I'm going insane thanks to her, and I wonder if anything would change for the better if Jennifer and I were living under the same roof together.

Over at Jennifer's place she has a room mate named Nikki. Nikki is a nice enough person. She seems to me to be fairly respectful of Jennifer's space. Not so if you listen to Jennifer talk about her. In recent weeks I get the feeling Jennifer has been trying to drive Nikki out of the house, so to speak. Instead of asking her up front to move out, Jennifer has been going out of her way to be rude, and annoying as possible to Nikki and her boyfriend Chris whenever they are around. I suspect Jennifer is plotting to have a vacant room soon so she can rope me into leaving B Street. I'm being painted into a corner and I know it.

There's a sinister twist to this whole developing situation. I caught Jennifer sabotaging Nikki's condoms with a sewing needle the other afternoon. I didn't know what to do or how to react. She was running the needle through the back of the condom wrappers where the directions are written. That way Nikki would be less likely to notice any holes, she said. I guess Jennifer figures if Nikki gets pregnant she will have to move out to be with Chris.

I am dealing with a girl that uses some seriously warped logic. It scares me. I'm also completely obsessed with her. I can't help it...

A Brad Song

Dave dislikes Brad even more than I do. He wrote a little song about him that I think accurately sums up Brad's life. Today, after I got settled in at the front of the production line Dave handed me a sheet of paper with his Brad song lyrics on it. As I started reading it I totally began laughing out loud.

Brad

His name is Bradley *****
And he thinks he's the best
Just ask him and he'll tell you
Along with the rest
Of his bullshit stories
And his stupid life
Don't ask him about his phone
Or his dumpy-ass wife

Fuck you and your "tight parameters"
You say you worked with engineers
When you really flipped hamburgers

His name is Bradley *****
And he is a boob
He is so square
That his head is a cube

Egghead freak
Who said you could speak?
You fuckin' geek
I'm gonna knock your ass into next week

You think you know it all
But you don't know shit
All mouth and no mind
I call you Bradley Tit
'Cause you're a boob
And a fucking braggart
You're a Jesus loving fool
And you pray to Jimmy Swaggart

USCG Lifer

Mr. Tit has told me practically everything about his entire life. I didn't ask.

Brad ended up here because the US Coast Guard has been shutting down all of it's LORAN stations and he was transferred to our neck of the woods. LORAN, if you haven't heard of it before is a way to navigate pre-GPS systems. It stands for LOng RAnge Navigation and relies heavily on radio frequencies broadcast from installations that often times were placed in very remote locations. Since satellite GPS has arrived, LORAN has been effectively rendered obsolete. These days Mr. Tit is just a desk jockey of some sort in the Coast Guard and he's been in for 13 years. His second job is working with us here at TDS. It sucks. I imagine that Brad must have been horrible to work with for months at a time in an isolated base messing with LORAN equipment all day and all night. It's a wonder no one killed him by now.

The thing that bothers everyone here about him is his arrogance. You can't teach him anything, because he already knows it all. Brad hasn't demonstrated much ability or skill at anything so far though. Some of our engineers have been put off by the nitwit due to his poor attitude. Joe, one of our guys on dayshift summed Brad up nicely. "He's a lifer. That's what they call people that make government service a career because they can't make it on the outside." Joe is absolutely right.

I suspected the reason TDS lost the BioControl contract was due in part to the temporary workers we had on the project. People like Brad. All of the temps were doing weird shit to the units. One night Brad even admitted to me that while he was working on the BioControl project he changed programs and parameters on some of our manufacturing equipment without approval or permission. He never told anyone about it. Who knows what he may have done that bungled the process, but I bet he was wrecking stuff constantly.

Camera Obscura

Inside the TDS building there's the room where I fill up liquid nitrogen tanks for use in the Environmental Lab. It's generally very dark, unless the roll up garage door is open. Somewhere in the wall next to one side of the roll up door frame there's a tiny hole. On a bright, sunny day light comes in through the hole and it casts a perfect upsidedown image of the parking lot on the opposite wall inside the room. Barney goes back there and checks it out for a few seconds before starting his shift almost every day. The only time I'm in there I have the roll up door open so there's too much daylight to see the Camera Obscura on the facing wall. Occassionally though when I use that room as a thoroughfare to get to the hallway or go upstairs to John's security office I can see the upsidedown world of the parking lot cast brightly on the wall. It's kind of a trip.

Brad Repellent

The only thing I've found to keep Brad away from me while we're working in the Closed Area is to start talking to him about subject matter he finds morally abhorrent. He's very religious. Nothing else would get him to stop jaw-jacking me to death so I went with stuff that would make him go away and do some work. I start talking about Satan, I sing him Mentors song lyrics, and talk about recent violent crimes against women. It works great, but unfortunately these are the only things that do the trick.

Brad walked up to where I was sitting and parked himself just off my right shoulder and stood there like he always does. He never says anything to get my attention. Instead he is content to wait until I notice him. I pretend he's not there and make him wait for as long as possible while listening to my walkman. If he was going to talk to me about something work related I wouldn't leave him standing there like an idiot. But I've learned the hard way that all he wants to do is talk about some mindless bit of tech stuff that has nothing to do with our job. Anyway Brad couldn't help himself after standing there for five minutes straight without my recognizing his presence so he decided to talk about some cell phone format junk without any prompting from me. I stopped what I was doing and swiveled my chair to face him. Then I started singing him a Mentors love song called "Rock 'em Sock 'em" in my best El Duce voice (El Duce is the lead singer and lyrical genius of this incredible band).

"I went out drinkin', drinkin' with the boys
I had to do it to get all my joys
I got drunk so high on some booze
Comin home baby to give you a bruise

Rock 'em Sock 'em it's a gas
Rock 'em Sock 'em gonna kick your ass
Rock 'em Sock 'em it's a gas
Gonna come home drunk
And kick your big fat ass

Seein' other guys
With the makeup all over your eyes
I had to learn her the law of the land
I showed her the power of my back hand

Rock 'em Sock 'em it's a gas
Rock 'em Sock 'em gonna kick your ass
Rock 'em Sock 'em it's a gas
Gonna come home drunk little woman
And kick your big slutty ass..."

With that, Brad was gone once again. I wish I could think of something that would be permanently Brad-repellent to keep him the fuck out of my hair during the whole shift. I tried everything. I asked him politely to not bother me unless it's work related numerous times. That didn't work. Then I got angry and yelled at him about it. That didn't work either. Talking offensive stuff to him is the only thing that makes him go away. Maybe I should get a squirt gun and when he comes over to bug me I could spray him in the face like people do with a misbehaving dog. Nah. That probably won't do anything. I should punch him, but I don't want the hassle with my boss over it. Oh well. I'll eventually think of something more effective.

Porn For Lunch

We usually go offsite for lunch together on swing shift. Sometimes there's six or seven of us, alot of the time it's just two or three. The town we work in is fairly small so all of us have become familiar with the good places to eat. Down the street from our building is a strip mall. A new Mexican joint opened up recently and we discovered it's pretty good. And cheap. The old guy that runs the restaurant knows us well enough because we've been in there a few times a week for about a month. He always treats us like we're kings. When we come through his front door he's all smiles and he puts in extra effort to make us feel welcome.

On a recent lunchtime visit Barney, Dave, and I walked in to find the old guy was playing with a new toy. He got a satellite dish and set it up in the front of the restaurant. As we walked in he was behind the front counter nervously fiddling with the remote control. He seemed a little strange to me but I dismissed it as his excitement over the satellite setup. Each of us put in our orders for lunch and then we sat down at a table that gave us a good view of the front doorway and the new T.V. We were the only customers in the place at the time. After we were all settled in and waiting for our grub the owner came out to our table and told us he wanted to watch porn, and were we OK with that? Hell yes we were OK with it! Fucking awesome. The old guy put the remote down on our table and showed us which button to hit to change the channel if any other customers came in. Cool. So we sat and ate our lunch while watching gorgeous naked women do unspeakable things to each other. Why aren't lunch breaks like this more often? This is the way it should be! I bet we will be eating lunch there almost every day from now on...

Babysitting Mr. Tit

The worst part of Brad Tit's re-hiring into TDS was the first two weeks. Brad was in our Closed Area with us on swingshift and he had to be escorted and baby sat the whole time. If you come into the Closed Area and you don't have a DoD security clearance, you must be escorted by someone with a clearance at all times. That was especially difficult for me. My boss I think wanted to get even with me for telling her I thought this guy was a real retard so she assigned him to me to train. The whole time Brad wouldn't shut up. He was constantly on me like a bad skin rash. Every time I gave him a task to do at a nearby desk or test station, he would constantly get up every few minutes and wander over to where I was. Then he would just stand there. I hate that. It makes me feel claustrophobic.

All the other guys on our shift were making fun of me. None of them like Brad either so they would laugh at me and make stupid faces at me while Brad wasn't looking. I got even with them though. I am sort of the swing shift lead for the area now so what I say goes. Dave was giving me an especially hard time one night so I gave Brad to him for the following two days to train with him on the middle of the line. Dave hated it. And I upped the amount of evil. Before I unleashed Brad upon Dave I mentioned to Brad that Dave really likes PC computers. I also instructed Brad to ask Dave plenty of questions about the work he does. During that two days I frequently went up to where Dave was sitting and asked him how Brad was doing so far, and if he was having loads of fun. Dave was not pleased.

Barney was also giving me a bad time while I was training Brad. So one night I told Brad that Barney was really interested in cellular phones. Barney apparently was shopping around for a good deal on a cell phone and he didn't know anything about them or where to go to buy one. Plus, he needed to know how cell phones work. It was all bullshit but Brad didn't know any better. His eyes lit up when I said those two words, cell phone. Brad took the very next opportunity he got to tell Barney all about it. He caught Barney in the back room and I eavesdropped.

"So I hear you're interested in buying a cellular phone." Brad said to Barney in his stupid Okie drawl.
"WHAT?" Barney yelled in Brad's face.

Brad proceeded to tell him all about cell phones for the next half hour. I was around the corner listening for the first few minutes and then I went back to my desk snickering the whole way. About a half hour later Barney cornered me at the front of the production line. He was pissed off. Brad told him I was the one who sent him back there to bug him. Barney was like, "Do that to me again and I'll knock the shit out of you." It was still amusing and those guys haven't made fun of me being stuck with Brad since. It's all good.

Brad Tit

I first met Brad when he was a temporary employee hired in to work on a commercial program for a company called BioControl. I disliked Brad immediately. He was the classic annoying geek that everyone beats up in grade school. Short, kinda dumpy, pudgy, and he wears those little wire-rimmed glasses. The only thing missing is the pen pocket protector in his shirt. What really kills me about the guy is his last name. It's a part of the female anatomy or a favorite cut of meat from a chicken. You get the idea. Anyway I always call him Brad Tit. He doesn't like it much so I make sure to call him Mr. Tit every opportunity I get.

Brad never shuts his mouth. He always talks about computers and technological advances as if he was the person who invented them. Most of all though, he rambles on and on about cellular phones. Once he gets a way to work cellular phones into a conversation you can't shut him up about them. God damn is it aggrivating. The sound of his voice angers me. He's a US Coast Guard guy and I suspect Brad came from Oklahoma. He speaks with that southern Okie kind of drawl that I hate hearing. The other thing about Brad I notice is he hasn't adjusted well to civilian life yet. Whenever he talks about something with numbers he keeps saying "tack" in between the number sequences. At first I thought he was being extra weird but after a few days of him talking like that I had to ask what it was all about. Brad said that in the military when you're talking over the radio about number sequences you are supposed to say "tack" instead of "dash". OK. Big deal. We aren't the military so start talking like a normal human being, I told him.

Fortunately for me at the time Brad was brought in, he worked on commercial products only so he wasn't allowed into my area. If he was following me around the building yapping endlessly about cell phones I could always be rid of him by walking through the Closed Area doors and wave bye-bye at him through the windows. After some time TDS lost the BioControl contract and they let all the temps go. Brad included. I was happy about it because most of the people they brought in were fucked up. My supervisor even confided in me shortly after they were let go that she had been unimpressed with all of the temps.

Months went by, and my supervisor tried unsuccessfully to hire more people for our programs in the Closed Area. Brad Tit was an unpleasant memory fading from view. First, she had only three open job positions. Then overnight it became six. I kept hearing rumors that people they tried to hire in either failed the drug test or had found better job offers. It's no wonder to me why they keep losing out on potential new hires. The salaries they offer are some of the weakest I've ever seen. In desperation, my boss went back to the temp agency and made some offers to bring in their people full time permanent. I found out about it almost right away.

I was in my boss' office with her one afternoon and she told me she hired someone new. She was excited. When I asked about the person, who they were and such, she said it was one of the temps we had on BioControl. I had a bad feeling about this. I guess I was visably disappointed. Then she really dropped the bomb on me and told me the new hire was Brad Tit. My eyes rolled back in my head and I choked. Then I said, "I know it doesn't matter now because you've already hired him, and you didn't ask for my opinion, but I think that guy is a knucklehead." My boss was irritated. She said Brad had come highly reccommended and that he already had a DoD security clearance. Aha, I thought. That's the real reason she's bringing him back, she can get him cleared for the Closed Area quickly. This was coming from the same woman that told me she was unimpressed with all the temps. Fuck me.

P.A. Poetry

Gabe almost got himself into a whole heap of trouble the other night.

As I mentioned before, later on in the swing shift we've been waiting for the women to leave for the night and then some of us use the building's P.A. system to insult each other. It's been great fun shouting all sorts of vicious cut downs and obscenities into the microphone at one another. Gabe, unfortunately was a little too eager to get things rolling and recited a long poem about me into the intercom's receiver before it was dark outside. He mentioned me by name many, many, times. All of us in the Closed Area stopped what we were doing and everyone was laughing. A few of the guys threw shit at me and were pointing at me while chuckling. I have to admit with this poem Gabe really had outdone himself. It was a clever rip on me.

Seconds after he was finished an agitated and stern voice bellowed over the P.A. "Whoever just did that on the building intercom come to my office immediately! That was totally inappropriate behavior and will not be tolerated here!" The intercom abruptly clicked off. Our phone extension started ringing off the hook so I got up and answered. It was Gabe and he sounded panicked.

"Dude I'm gonna get fired man! What am I gonna do?" He sounded really worried about it and I could have made it worse for him, being the great pal that I am but instead I chose to get him out of it.

"Do nothing." I said.
Gabe yelled back at me "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Calmly I said, "Look Gabe. Didn't you hear what that asshole said? He said 'WHOEVER just did that'. He didn't say 'Gabe come to my office immediately'. That means he doesn't know you. The guy didn't recognize your voice. None of us are going to fink on you so just lay low. If the dirtbag comes down here and asks about it we will play dumb. He'll never find out so don't sweat it. Barney might charge you ten bucks to keep his mouth shut though. You got any cash on ya?"
Gabe said, "Yeah, you're right." He sounded relieved.
"Next time fuckin' wait until after dark to start shit OK, stupid?" I hung up the phone.

The buzzer on the front door of the Closed Area began annoying us. I walked up and opened the door. Before me stood a little man wearing glasses with coke-bottle thick lenses. He was sporting a bushy jet black moustache and a tightly cut patch of solid black hair on his noggin. He was dressed in a suit and tie. His name was Bill and I knew he used to be a manager here or something but he had been going to school to become an engineer I think. I barely knew the guy. I don't know what he was doing in the building here so late in the day because he's a 9 to 5 shift worker. It was especially odd he was here this late on a weeknight, I thought. Bill knew who I was though and he started grilling me about the "offensive and rude" intercom message. I said "IDUNNO" at him and shrugged. Bill blinked once or twice at me and I could almost see the tiny gears churning away in his miniature skull. When the lightbulb went on upstairs and he realized I was not going to play stool pidgeon he yelled some stuff at me in frustration and walked away.

"Yeah, whatever and fuck you buddy," I thought to myself. I'd heard a rumor about that guy for months. He was having an affair with one of the secretaries in the cubicle maze. For an older woman she's actually pretty hot if it's the one I'm thinking of. She's very tall, got a great personality, and she wears short skirts and sheer nylons with black high heels all the time. She looks good. Hell, I'd even hit it if I had the chance. I stood there imagining this runt of a man with the tall secretary and I started laughing about it. I envisioned that poor bastard having to stand on top of an overturned milk crate to be tall enough to kiss the hot secretary. The more I thought about it the more I laughed. This place really is a menagerie of messed up people.

White Glove Award

I suppose one of the more stupid things management has come up with is their new "White Glove Award." Once every few weeks a general clean up of all the production areas ensues and then a team of inspectors from outside the work areas roll through and judge the areas against each other for organization and cleanliness. The manufacturing team that comes out the winner gets a lunch or dinner on the company dime, they all get a certificate of recognition (big deal), and their area is presented with a white glove in a plexiglass case. To make it even more surreal they had the glove stuffed so it looks like there's actually a real hand sitting upright inside the case. These glove trophies remind me of beanie caps in an old 1950's movie by Dr. Seuss called "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T." It's a strange movie but it's fun to watch. Check it out sometime if you've never seen it.

Yesterday evening I was walking down the main hallway heading back inside after a late night break. Something caught my eye inside a double doorway perched on top of an eight foot tall metal cabinet. It was one of the recent White Glove Award plexiglass trophies and someone had put it up on this cabinet right inside the doorway. It was angled so a person walking by might see it. As I got closer I noticed that the fingers had been unstitched and reformed to give me the middle finger. I was being flipped off by a stuffed hand under glass. I totally started laughing out loud. It was an awesome job.

Curious about it I walked into one of the commercial product areas to see if anyone was around. I wanted to ask who put that together. Wandering through three of the back rooms I finally found Army Guy working hard over some junk on a table. I asked him about the middle finger glove action and he started busting up. Army Guy copped to doing the rework on the glove and he said he's set up three more just like it around the building only in places Mr. Janitor should find them. He's trying to give Mr. Janitor the middle finger as much as possible. Most excellent. I wish I had thought of doing that.

ESS Testing

I spend a good amount of my time in the Environmental Lab freezing, frying, shocking, and vibrating the shit out of our products. The various procedures, equipment, and tests I run are all part of the Environmental Stress Screening (ESS) portion of our process. Most of the stress testing simulates real world conditions to ensure when the units get into the field they will work properly. I've never worked in an Environmental Lab before and all my training has come from just one person. That's Jerry.

Jerry is a technician that I kind of admire. He's a pure workaholic. I see him in the lab working long hours every day. He's here on almost every weekend too. I'm sure his home life must be suffering as a result but I'm glad to have him around to keep me from doing dumb shit. Jerry took the time to show me everything in the lab. He explained every station in detail and put in extra effort to make sure I knew how it all worked. I mean, he could have shown me just enough for me to get by but with the additional information I feel like I really know what I'm doing. Jerry is a fairly short man that came to TDS from the Air Force I believe. He's a hardcore 49'ers fan and his uniform every day at work consists of a 49'ers ball cap and the red and gold satin jacket. Rarely do I ever see him wearing one of our light blue lab coats.

Some people don't like Jerry too much. They think he has an attitude problem as if he goes out of his way to be rude and condescending to fellow employees. I haven't had a single problem with the guy. From what I have been able to gather most of the people that don't like Jerry did something stupid in the lab and he kicked them out because of it. To be honest from some of the stories he's told me if I was in his shoes I'd probably do the same thing and banish them from the E-lab too.

An example of this happened shortly before I was hired here. A test operator came back to the Environmental Lab to use a shock machine on a commercial product. To test this specific product line the operator has to solder the unit under test into a fixture. It's a little odd, but that's what you do. Then you hook up the test equipment, power it up, and start the shock machine. When the tests are finished obviously the operator has to de-solder the unit to remove it. Well, this one guy decided he could remove the units much faster by prying them out of the test fixture with a screwdriver and not bother to de-solder them.

Leads coming from the header in the units were being ripped downward inside the casing and destroyed the internal electronics. In final testing all of the units were dead and no one could figure out why because from the outside of the casings they looked normal enough. Engineering had to get involved and still the operator who was prying the units out of the shock machine didn't come forward and admit what he was doing. The company was losing alot of material and time. By accident, Jerry happened to catch the test operator in the screwdriver removal act and busted him for it. That guy has hated Jerry ever since. He was exiled from the lab and told never to set foot in it again. I'm surprised he wasn't fired for all the damage he caused.

I learned a valuable lesson from Jerry telling me this story that's stayed with me ever since. If you make a mistake on the job it's best to fess up to it right away. Be honest, and say you fucked up. In the short term it might be rough but the long term consequences could be much worse. By not being honest about doing something foolish the company might have to engage much more manpower to get to the bottom of the problem. By the time it catches up with you, you could be facing a whole lot more than just being yelled at.

A Memo From John

To: All Employees
From: Facility Security Officer
Subject: THEFT

We have a problem here at TDS- there are thefts occuring. Earlier this month, Nick, TDS Employees Association President distributed a memo alerting you to the fact that food and money has been stolen from the Employees Association. Unfortunately, the thefts go beyond that. In addition to equipment and tools; personal items like jewelry, small radios, tape players and sunglasses have been taken.

Now, the matter has become even more serious. Money has been stolen from the company's Petty Cash Fund. These thefts, on the surface, look like isolated incidents but collectively they are more serious than they appear. So, it is absolutely essential that each TDS employee fully understands the company's position regarding theft.

TDS will not tolerate theft of any kind.

A thief, at TDS, faces a variety of administrative and punitive sanctions:

-Company disciplinary actions which include dismissal.
-An Adverse Information Report to the Defense Investigative Service.
-FBI notification, if warranted.
-Civil suit action, under some circumstances.
-Criminal prosecution, both state and federal.

The idea is to make larceny (that's what this is) as "painful" as possible under the law. And, at least one of your fellow employees will experience that "pain" because TDS intends to take action against any thief. That includes any employee who knows who is responsible for the thefts and fails to report it. Anyone who protects a thief, becomes party to the theft.

It is obvious that some of our employees have knowledge about the thefts. So, if YOU have any information pertaining to any theft, now is your opportunity to come forward. You can do the right thing for yourself, your co-workers, and the company by sharing that information in confidence. Contact either the FSO or someone in your management chain - now!

Hunting For Thieves

Well, the search is on. Something turned up missing that was a big deal and now management and John are on the hunt. John takes his job pretty seriously. If he catches whoever is behind the rash of petty thefts there's gonna be hell to pay.

Working here is like serving two masters. You have to answer to your immediate boss and you are responsible to the company, but you are also responsible to the Government in some ways. You have to always be aware of it anyway. At a regular job if you get fired for stealing something you can pretty much just go out to get another job and no one will be the wiser of your crimes. When you're working in a classified environment though it's a whole different ball game. Let's say you get fired for stealing a wrench and you work for a defense contractor in a classified area. Not only do you lose your job, but the company then turns over the information to the Government. Now you're facing being barred from ever having a security clearance again, and the Defense Investigative Service (DIS) might hit you with even more criminal charges. Having a DoD security clearance is like having money in the bank. It can help you get jobs elsewhere in the industry. So if you lose that, you're screwed from doing Government work in the future.

John and I were talking about some of this the other afternoon and his take on the situation is that there's a bunch of spooky people working in Government agencies with three letter acronyms that you've never heard of. And when they show up to deal with an employee caught for theft or some other crime, it will not be pleasant.

Hate Crime Fridays

It's official, every Friday night is now "Hate Crime Friday." Our mission is to terrorize Mr. Janitor as punishment for his nasty habit of being a no good rat-fink, and also for trying to boss us all around. Gabe somehow obtained Mr. Janitor's photo ID badge and enlarged it on a copier so Mr. Janitor's big old goofy face almost fills up an entire 8x11 sheet of paper. Gabe was most creative. Over Mr. Janitor's picture it says in giant letters "Hate Crime Friday" and on either side of his face it says "1st Annual!" and "What's That Smell??" Gabe superimposed devil horns and put them on Mr. Janitor's forehead. At the very bottom of the page again in giant letters it says, "Clean It Up Mr. Janitor!!!!!" Gabe went around the building handing out copies of his flyer to all of us. It's very cool.

I'm now responsible for arming all the alarm systems and locking down the building at the end of swing shift on Friday nights and I have to use the P.A. system to announce to everyone it's time to leave. They have to hurry up to the front lobby or they're going to be stuck inside once I set the alarm. Since I started using the P.A. system I usually wait until all the ladies leave for the evening and then I get on the horn and start shouting cut-downs at Gabe and stuff. It's been pretty funny as everyone can hear it. Sometimes Gabe writes insulting poetry verses about me and recites them aloud over the P.A. back at me. They've actually been fairly ruthless, and it makes me smile. Anyway, this Friday night after I was sure the women had left for the night I got on the P.A. and announced to all "Hate Crime Friday is now underway!" Then the fun started.

Barney and I passed bottles of Isopropyl Alcohol back and forth delibrately spilling as much as we could on the floors and saying "oops" as we did it. More black rings will appear in Mr. Janitor's freshly waxed floors by the following Monday afternoon. We kept busting up laughing as we spilled the shit. Some of the guys went out into the hallways and dragged the heels of their work shoes along the ground. This creates huge black streaks in the flooring that looks like tire skid marks. The only way to remove them from the tiles is, you guessed it, a razor blade. Mr. Janitor is gonna love those when he sees them on Monday.

Army Guy and Dave mixed up a bowl of ketchup and hamburger meat and dunked tampons in it, then splattered them on the walls of the women's bathrooms. Neat. Turns out Army Guy is the trash-dumping phantom of the second floor cubicle maze and he's had some help up there for weeks. He takes Dave or someone else along with him on the run so they can dump all the trash cans on the floor much faster. He has a certain route all worked out too. I was wondering how the perpetrator was doing that so quickly. We also got into Mr. Janitor's utility room and I placed a couple of cans of deodorant on his tool shelf while Barney spit in Mr. Janitor's lab coat pockets. God damn, that made me laugh. Barney also gave him a couple bars of soap. I wonder if Mr. Janitor will finally get the hint he stinks? Probably not.

Free Grub

Here at TDS we have an Employee Association. It doesn't really do much for anyone except stock a refrigerator in the lunchroom with all sorts of goodies to grub down on. There's frozen cheeseburgers, bowls of soup, sandwiches, salads, desserts, and more. It's entirely an honor system and if you don't have the cash on hand to put in the locked box there's an I.O.U. list on the side of the 'fridge that you can put down your name and what you took. I'm so broke due to the low hourly wage I make here that I frequently use the I.O.U. list just to eat. It's like working for the company store in alot of ways.

Once every few weeks one of the secretaries grabs the I.O.U. list and tallies up everyone's bill. Thankfully this usually happens right after a payday so it's no trouble to get squared up with them. However lately they've been coming up so horribly short on the owed money scene that they've been threatening to shut it all down soon, which kinda sucks. There's also been numerous reports of thefts around the plant lately. That means the FSO is going to be aggrivated and if he's aggrivated everyone will be feeling it.

Victory

Five in the afternoon I walked through the side door employee entrance which led to the longest hallway on the first floor of the building. As I cruised down the hallway into the bowels of the production areas, I was paying close attention to the floor tiles. I wanted to survey my diabolical work from last Friday night. Scanning the ground in front of my feet I saw what I was hoping for. Filthy dark black circles were everywhere on the floor. Weeeehooooo! I started laughing to myself in a most evil sounding way. One of my fangs poked out between my lips due to my self-satisfied smirking and I could almost feel the devil horns rising through my forehead.

As I approached the main hallway intersection I stopped and peeked around both corners, first to my right then to my left. That's when I saw him. Mr. Janitor was on his hands and kees to my left. He was feverishly scraping away at the floor with a straight edge razor blade in one hand and he was covered in sweat. He's gonna be extra stinky tonight, I thought to myself. I was starting to laugh so hard that I broke right and took a rat-maze path through the commercial area and the chemical lab to get over to the Closed Area. I figured walking by Mr. Janitor and laughing insanely might be too incriminating and I wanted to avoid him completely. I was laughing so hard by then that I had tears in my eyes. My plan had worked beautifully and now I knew that every Friday night I could fuck him up so severely that he would be my de-facto bitch from now on. I was happy.

At lunch I went out with about a half dozen of the guys and told them what I had done. They really dug it since they've all been burned by Mr. Janitor at one time or another. A brainstorming session erupted over the restaurant table. What else could we do to Mr. Janitor to make his life even more miserable? The suggestions kept coming forward while we sat and ate. All of us were laughing and looking forward to this coming Friday when we could put together another round of hate crimes on dopey Mr. Janitor. This Friday is going to be fun! Next Monday will be a sad time for Mr. Janitor, guaranteed! I can hardly wait.

First Strike

This past Friday I put into motion my first planned attack against Mr. Janitor. It was truly glorious. Mr. Janitor worked a good part of the week on his floors like he always does. I watched him Monday through Thursday. I was waiting for Friday with anticipation as that's always Mr. Janitor's day off. Next week when he comes in to work I hope he finds himself in a living hell. A hell where he will be so busy cleaning, scrubbing, and scraping his floors that he will no longer have the time on his hands to cause trouble for other employees. I want him to be so busy doing his mindless job that he won't be a full time snitch anymore.

I took a full bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol and removed the safety lid. I walked up and down all of the first floor hallways that smelled of fresh floorwax and sprinkled healthy sized droplets of the Alcohol all over Mr. Janitor's pristine floors. I have to admit his floors are quite shiny. As I was walking around dispensing my liquid retribution on our beady-eyed custodial misfit I was laughing like a posessed maniac. Nobody saw what I was doing.

Right after refilling the bottle and putting it back on the workbench I got it from, I headed into one of the bathrooms and I took a nearly full bag of wet garbage. Scurrying upstairs undetected by anyone I went straight to Mr. Janitor's aluminum can collection bin in the lunchroom. Quickly emptying about half the crushed cans from the trash bin I dumped my sack of bathroom garbage into the bin. Then I covered it up with the other half of the cans. It was perfect. No one would suspect the cans were spiked with non-reuseable filthy trash. Mr. Janitor is going to look like a complete asshole at the recycling center when they weigh his stuff and then dump it to find other shit in there. He will have a good old time trying to explain himself. Too bad I won't be there to watch it happen.

The real test to see if this turns Mr. Janitor into my personal bitch will be when I come into work on Monday. Actually, there could be a delayed reaction though. An extra day of foot traffic might be needed for all of the black rings to appear in the floors. It's the dirt from our shoes that sticks to the dissolved floorwax and turns it jet black. I think. Anyway maybe by Tuesday everything will work according to plan. I'll have to be patient this weekend. I'll try not to think about it but it makes me giddy when I do.

In the meantime someone has still been tormenting Mr. Janitor by dumping all of the trash cans on the floor upstairs in the cubicle maze. No one has been caught in the act, and he's out to get the culprit with a vengeance. Nobody seems to know anything about it when being questioned. I've even been trying to find out who the stealthy mastermind is so I can buy the individual a beer and I can't get anyone to talk. Dammit! All I can say is, whoever the person is they are really fast at dumping all those cans out. Of course they've had alot of practice since this has been going on for weeks. Hopefully no one will get caught. Even though I have no idea who is responsible for the trash dumping prank, it's good to know I have an ally in my war against Mr. Janitor.

Evicted!

The Drunk Lady in the side apartment has been feeding what's essentially a stray cat for a long time now. It's a cute looking Calico that is friendly enough to everyone. Drunk Lady usually has an old pie tin out on her front doorsteps loaded with dry cat food for it. That's about all she can do for a pet since she can't even take care of herself.

I was fiddling around in the back yard and heard a bunch of meowing behind one of our cars. It was in the corner near the garage. It seemed unusual so I walked over to where all the racket was coming from and on the ground right up against the fence was the stray Calico and a whole litter of kittens. They looked really cute. I got close enough to pet one of them and discovered all the kittens were covered head to tail in fleas. They were being eaten alive. I felt really bad for them and I put two of them in a box and brought them across town to my parent's house. Mom and Dad already had two cats, one named Basil that my younger sister left behind when she moved, and a really old black one we had since we were kids. I figured my folks might like to have two of these pretty Calico cats and I knew they would take good care of them. Sure enough my parents wanted both cats and they got them to the vet right away to have them fixed up. I felt like I did a good thing.

Drunk Lady's Woman-Beating Man stopped me as I was leaving the house a few days after I donated two of the kittens to my parents. I had asked them about the kittens earlier in the week so they knew I was interested in them. They noticed two kittens went missing. White Trash Man suspected I had something to do with the disappearance of the kittens and wanted to brawl me about it in the driveway. He wanted it to come to blows over kittens and he was trying to get me to take a swing at him. The guy is definetly not a rocket scientist so I did a verbal tap-dance on him. He didn't know what to do or say when I was finished out-thinking him so he got in his orange white trash four wheel drive pickup and left. He's not supposed to park back there anyway and we've almost had fist fights over the parking situation behind the house many times. Fucker. I decided I had enough of both of these nitwits and made a phone call to the Propety Manager.

Our Property Manager was friends with Drunk Lady in high school. She let Drunk Lady move in because she felt sorry for her, and the Property Manager has been made very aware of all the times we've had to call the cops on the White Trash guy because he's been beating Drunk Lady to within an inch of her life. I told the Property Manager about this latest incident involving "allegedly" (hehe) stolen kittens and I asked her to get rid of Drunk Lady once and for all. She was hesitant at first but finally agreed it would be better for everyone. She wrote up the papers and mailed them out already. Drunk Lady got her notice and has no clue what happened. We have plans for that side apartment. Oh how we have plans! As soon as she's out of there we are going to move in Leaky Pete. With Leaky Pete here we will have complete control of the entire house. This is going to be cool shit. Just because I stole two kittens our whole living situation here at B Street is going to change for the better. Life sure is funny sometimes.

Ricky Rockanova Part Three

Years ago Ricky decided he wanted to be an FBI agent. He had been watching a TV show by David Lynch called "Twin Peaks". I don't watch much television but I knew one of the main characters in that show was an FBI agent. So Ricky decides from watching Twin Peaks that FBI agents are cool and their work must be alot like the TV show. He appears at the FBI office downtown and tells them how he wants to become one of them. When they ask why does he want to become a part of the FBI he tells them all about Twin Peaks. From that moment on I'm sure the agents in the office knew they had a borderline nutcase on their hands.

During their conversation Ricky decides that I would like to be an FBI agent as well. He called me up from their office and attempted to get me to drive over and sit down with these people. I imagined the audio tape was rolling and some chain-smoking FBI agent was sitting in a dimly lit room with headphones on listening intently to everything I said over the phone. It creeped me out. I told Ricky that those guys had better things to do with their time than talk to him about joining the FBI just because of a TV show he watched. I suggested it would be a good idea to leave them alone. Ricky eventually got my drift and he reluctantly left. Thanks to him I was probably put on some FBI watch list...

Here I am years later, still being a friend to this idiot. I had so many chances to walk away from Ricky and all his bullshit but for some reason I never did. Sure wish I had. After the US Air Force rejected Ricky and he lost a couple more jobs I felt sorry for him. I helped get him in here at TDS and he's done nothing but cause trouble since he was hired. I look like a fool as a result of it. Ricky eventually demanded Senor 23 and I give all of his stuff back. Too bad I sold all those CDs. I've been in trouble with him over that ever since. On a daily basis at work Ricky rings on the doorbell buzzer of the Closed Area and asks for me. When I show up to talk to him Ricky tries to get me into a mentally ill argument about buying him CDs that he never gave me. He also demands cash. Alot more cash than his stuff would have cost even if it was brand new. This daily routine has been going on for weeks and I'm so tired of it. I fucked up, I did a bad thing and I'll make restitution for it but in the process I'm not going to get roped into giving him more than what he actually had. I never should have taken anything from this guy. I should not have returned his call when he left that overly dramatic message on my machine. I should have just washed my hands of him.

Ricky has been working across the hall in the commercial department. He is supposed to be assembling micro electronic multiplexers. They are difficult to build and the equipment is sort of worn out. It takes alot of patience and skill to get these things put together without mangling them. Instead of paying attention and doing his job, Ricky wanders around the plant flapping his gums at anyone who will listen. He also spends a substantial part of his shift talking on the phone. Most of the time when I walk by the windows of the commercial area I can see him standing against the wall with the phone in his ear just yapping away. Hope he gets busted down and thrown out of here. As soon as he gets himself fired I'm definetly going to be done with him. I hope I am here when they can him. I want to watch them drag him through the lobby and toss him onto the street.

Ricky Rockanova Part Two

One night Ricky called me up and left a message on my answering machine asking me to come over to his place and help myself to whatever I wanted of his posessions. It was an awkward message. I called him back and asked what the hell he was talking about. He mentioned that he had nothing left going on for himself and that he was going to join the US Air Force. He was going to leave soon and he wanted to lighten his burden by getting rid of most of his stuff. Cool. I was all about taking advantage of the situation. I'd had it with the guy anyway and I got to the point where I hated him. I had been lukewarm towards him for almost a year. The novelty of his personality had worn off long ago. Now that he was at the end of his rope I was almost happy about it.

Senor 23 was lounging around doing nothing at the time and he didn't care for Ricky at all. I told him about the bizarre answering machine message and the phone conversation afterward. Senor 23 and I jumped into his Grey Beast and we headed over to where Ricky was currently living. The address was at a retirement mobile home park, which was odd since Ricky was in his mid-20s just like us. When we got to his door in the mobile home park Ricky was pleasant enough but to Senor 23 and I he seemed suicidal. After some idle chit-chat and a beer Senor 23 and I started loading up Ricky's things into the Grey Beast. Ricky told us to take just about everything he had except for an 8 disc JVC CD player. He gave us every single CD he owned so it didn't make any sense that he wanted the CD player anymore. Whatever. We were busy loading up his gold metal flake 1962 Ludwig drum set, about 150 CDs in a box (most of which were total crap), a space heater, one shoddy phone, a decent turntable, and a bunch of records (again, most of them were garbage). Ricky told me all of that stuff I could keep for good. It was a strange conversation and an even weirder scene.

Turns out Ricky was hiding out at his grandparent's place in the mobile home park while they were staying elsewhere. The neighbors caught on that a young guy was staying there much longer than the guest period allowed for and he was being thrown out by the park management. He had no job, and no place to live. His grandparents really loved him. They thought Ricky was someone special and they were very proud of him. They never knew about all his womanizing or all the jobs and friends he had lost over the years. He was a troubled person. Bad personality and he had a serious problem making good decisions in his life. They had no idea what their grandson was really like.

The Grey Beast took us swiftly away from where Ricky was staying and spirited us to a burger joint. Both Senor 23 and I didn't expect him to live through the night. We agreed he'd probably slit his wrists in the bathtub or shoot himself. Neither one of us cared to be perfectly honest. Over the past couple of years we had put up with so much drama and stupidity from him that it didn't matter anymore. As we sat down to eat some hamburgers we looked at each other and started laughing. What in the world had happened to that guy? Ricky's show that night was so over-dramatic it was comical. Senor 23 was looking forward to setting up the vintage drum kit in one of our livingrooms and I was going to rummage through all the CDs and then sell the rest of them. I could use the cash for all sorts of stuff. Beer was in the forefront of my mind. I could always use the extra beer money selling those CDs. We continued forming our plans for Ricky's stuff while munching on fries and cheeseburgers. the car was so loaded with stuff that it felt almost like Christmas...

Ricky Rockanova Part One

I first met Ricky Rockanova when I was hired in over at Bill and Dave's company. He seemed to have a friendly and generous enough personality so I started to hang out with the guy. Ricky looks alot like a rockabilly version of Jay Leno. Same facial appearance and jaw line, but Ricky has his hair pulled back into a sort of 1950s pompadour cut. His haircut is retarded actually but he seems to attract really good looking women anyway. I'm amazed at how he can bag them all the time when he acts like such a fucker to them and looks so goofy. He really treats the ladies bad.

Things started to go sour between us after I hooked him up with Gina in the PC board department at Bill and Dave's. He treated her like she was a sack of rocks and I felt really bad about it since I was the one that played matchmaker and got them set up. It made me look like an asshole. There's a saying that goes something like "people will judge you by the company you keep." I got lumped into the asshole bucket with Ricky and I really wasn't into it. I should have sat down and thought about it some more but like a dummy I made up excuses for him and kept our friendship going. What a huge mistake that turned out to be.

Ricky began having alot of problems with co-workers and various managers at Bill and Dave's. Most of his problems were entirely his fault. He ran his mouth too much and shot it off frequently at the wrong people. He wound up working in one of our clean room departments at another site and got into trouble with a fellow worker over missing tools. Apparently Ricky accused an old man of stealing tools from his toolbox on the opposing shift. He could never prove anything against the old guy but because he was so vocal about the incidents management started to think Ricky was some sort of a nutjob. The last thing I heard was all of a sudden he wasn't working there anymore. His excuse was that he got into a car accident in the company parking lot while in a company shuttle van. None of it made any sense. I smelled an elaborate lie and I am fairly certain he got fired for personality issues on his production line.

Feeling sorry for someone can cloud your judgement and make you do some stupid things. I did something very stupid recently. TDS is still hurting really bad for bodies and I know Ricky has been out of work since he got canned at Compumotor. Management here has been hitting me up for recommendations on anyone I personally know... so I threw Ricky's name into the hat. I shouldn't have done that. Just like playing matchmaker, playing job recruiter can also reflect negatively on the person making the recommendation and I didn't give that enough consideration. In the short time since they hired him in here he's been causing all kinds of trouble for people in the commercial department across the hall. He's turned into a large liability to me here and I don't know what to do about it. I suppose there is nothing I can do now. It's too late.