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.