Shoot me now, please. The following “motivational message” just arrived in my Inbox:

A man was lost while driving through the country. As he tried to read a map, he accidentally drove off the road into a ditch. Though he wasn’t injured, his car was stuck deep in the mud. So the man walked to a nearby farm to ask for help.

The farmer grinned and said, “Old Warwick is just about blind. As long as he believes he’s part of a team, he doesn’t mind pulling.”

Wow. What a story. Doesn’t it make you just want to jump chest-deep into mud and pull your heart out for a stranger? Me too! Who knew that lying and manipulating the handicapped could be so darned inspirational???

I’m reminded of Inigo’s comment to Vizzini in The Princess Bride about his repeated use of the word “Inconceivable!” — “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

And this shit’s going to be going on aaaallll weeeeekkkk looooonnnnggggg.

Oh good Lord. Our Customer Support Department is running amok and has declared this week to be “Customer Service Week.” Which apparently means annoying the fuck out of me.

The office is festooned with balloons (one obnoxious display is right next to my cube — I think I’ll pop a few before the day is over) and my Inbox is overflowing with emails about how fabulous we all are, how fabulous the celebration is going to be, and how fabulous it is to be fabulous.

Ack.

Via email, this is today’s agenda for the Customer Service Week bullshit:

We’re off to an excellent start! We hope that everyone enjoyed the kick-off breakfast, decorations, and festivities. This was only the first day of the weeklong celebration of (Company Name) excellence!

Special notes:
Have you guessed ?who?s-who? in Customer Support?s Baby Picture game yet? Visit the ?main isle? of Customer Support!

This week looks like an excellent time to use any and all vacation time I have saved up.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Elvis tattoo has left the building!

Morons. All of them.

When configuring the computers we deliver to the sites using our software, there is one section where the install instructions show a path as being //ServerName/Traffic. “ServerName” is supposed to mean “enter the server name here, you fucking tool.” So how is the path configured here? //ServerName/Traffic. Morons.

Calling the tech support line of a fellow vendor whose software ours interfaces with, I routinely get people who have no idea what I’m talking about, but in prime tech support fashion are convinced they know more than I do about my issue. I just spent 45 minutes on the line with one of these nippleheads. He resolutely refused to listen when I told him which computer on the network was causing the problem, then he ignored me when I gave him the correct path while setting up the wrong machine, then he put me on hold while PC Anywhere’d into the system and industriously fucked everything up while I sat on the line watching powerlessly and unable to tell him he was fucking everything up because he had me on hold. When he finally did come back on the line to tell me that “Uh, I’m having a problem here” I told him what the problem was, hung up on him, and went and fixed it myself. Moron.

Two more days. Home in two more days…

My company sends out a little “thank you” box of Mrs. Fields cookies to the stations to recognize all their hard work. These deliveries have gone “missing” in the past (hungry delivery drivers, maybe?), so now we usually send out a global email to everyone on the conversion team when they arrive confirming that “The cookies have landed.” The following thread is from today’s email:

Co-worker:
New Orleans has received their cookies, and the TMs were quite pleased. They dove into the box like kids in a swimming pool.

Me:
Do NOT eat the cookies! You know what kids do in swimming pools…

Co-worker Gavin:
If they’re at Tommy Lee’s house, they drown.

Ooh, good one, I wish I’d said that! That was a perfect joke! I’ll take consolation in having given him the setup.

Fort Smith, AR went “Live” on my company’s software at 00:00 today and we’re still on the air. Woo-hoo, go me.

Back in the early days of our software, back when it was a minefield of “undocumented features”, it wasn’t unheard of for stations’ on-air systems to completely lock up when they hit our log and to start broadcasting “dead air.” Dead air is death in the radio industry. It’s not a Good Thing.

That never happens now that we’ve worked most of the “features” out of the software, but Go-Live mornings are still a little dicey for me. I always listen to “our” stations when I get up in the morning to make sure we’re still on the air. I’m not sure what I’d do if we weren’t — maybe just head for the airport and get the fuck out of town, I dunno.

We’re still on the air today, though. My job for the rest of the week? Babysitter.

A woman just came in to the radio station to pick up the tickets she won from the country station to tonight’s County Fair demolition derby. Short, gaunt, ragged clothes, stringy blonde hair, bad (and missing) teeth, bad skin, two dirty toddlers in tow. Spoke with a serious backwoods twang. Drove away in a battered pickup truck.

It was a very hillbilly moment.

I’ve spent most of every minute of the last two days at work running. They have my workspace set up in the absolute worst possible place — I’m in the corner furthest from everything in the office (and don’t think I’m not taking it personally) — so all day long I’m basically just lapping the building, going from Person A to Production Studio B to Office C, back to my laptop at Corner Z, then doing it all over again. I stop in each place for about 5 – 10 minutes, answer 49 questions ranging from not-dumb-at-all to holy-shit-you’re-a-fucking-moron, then move on to the next.

And all along the way, I’m farting. Oh yeah, I’m gassing the joint, big-time. I dunno what it is, but I’m a walking methane plant right now. Maybe it’s residual from Waffle House the other night, I dunno. Whatever, all the walking is working out okay since it lets me spread it around while on the move and not draw attention to myself (“Who farted?” is no doubt echoing 30 seconds behind me all day). The hard part is not, uh, venting when I’m standing next to someone’s desk showing them how to do something. Especially the stupid ones. Especially the stupid ones. I don’t think I’m going to be able to resist the temptation to just let one rip while I’m in a small office — I’ll blow the foghorn and say, “Oh gosh, I’m sorry.” And then give them the loooooong answer to their incredibly stupid question.

Poot.

An email I received from a co-worker this morning:

Hi Chuck,

Co-worker

About the error message: Duh.
About deleting the email: You got it.
About there being no written record of you owing me one: Dream on.

The missing mug is back at my desk, safe and sound. I put out an APB via company-wide email yesterday and had it back in my hands within five minutes. One of our lower echelon worker bees brought it over with a sheepish look on his face and said, “Sorry. It was so cool, I had to borrow it. I washed it out for you.”

The mug says Chuck. His name? Shane. Yeah, that’s cool. What a freak.

I washed it out for me too.