The workplace; comedy’s best source of material

Dude, I’m tellin’ ya……………

I’ve acknowledged before that I’ve been out of work for a number of months. Or to use the politically correct format of NFL announcers, I’ve been “in-between jobs” for a while. Isn’t that so much nicer? This seems to give me a lot of time to watch sitcom reruns like The Office or Spin City.

When I watch these shows, it makes me reflect on what a zoo the typical office setting in America is really like. Or the warehouse. Or the plant. Just your colleagues in general. It’s a miracle that most US companies ever make a single dollar. I think we can all relate to this in some fashion. I’d really like to get back to some gainful employment. If not for the money and feeling of self-worth, then just for the comedy material and the life-long memories.

When I was working at the local liquor store in high school (imagine that?), we used to hide in the beer cooler and drink cans of beer at a pace that would make “Stone Cold” Steve Austin jealous. We’d crush the cans with our foot and toss them far into the roofing of the ceiling. There was a hole in the ceiling where you could stand on a keg and just wing them far into the darkness. One day I came in to work and my buddy pulled me aside. He said that the ceiling collapsed in the storeroom and about 5,000 smashed beer cans fell to the floor. We’re talking there were collectible cans up there like the old Old Style cans with the ’78 Pittsburgh Steelers on ’em. Hilarious. One stock boy had passed the secret stash on to another for at least 10 years.

After that, we started throwing our smashed cans behind a burnt-out ice cooler that was in the storeroom. We figured we ourselves would be long gone before they did anything with that. A few months later I reported to work and the same buddy walks up to me laughing. He said that earlier that afternoon some guy showed up and said, “Yeah….I’m here to take out the dead ice cooler machine.”

Apparently he moved it out of there and left behind about 500 smashed beer cans.

I once worked for a family-owned business where two brothers did most of the administrative work. One was the President and his brother did insurance replacement. The matriarch of the company was their mother—-and an elegant, high-society woman at that. I recall one of the funniest damn days of my life when the brothers had one of their notorious, explosive blowouts. The Prez picked up an old-fashioned dial-up telephone that offices used to have, ripped it from the wall, and threw it at his brother. The younger brother ducked and the phone smacked their 68 year old mother square in the head. Holy shit, was that funny. She walked it off. After all, they were southern folk. They called chickens “yard walkers”. Tough group.

At the same place, we hired a kid to work in the warehouse. He sold himself to the boss as a straight-and-narrow kind of kid and someone we could rely on. Within a week, he wanted to leave early one day. When asked why, he told the God’s-honest truth. He had to go and see “his fuckin’ parole officer.” If I remember correctly, we let him leave early. He didn’t last long, however.

Another guy got fired for being late about 4 out of every 5 days. When told he was expected to show up on-time like all the other employees, he stormed out of the office shouting, “He says I have to be here on time ! That’s f’n bullshit ! ”

Where do these people come from? I do thank them for the laughs, though.

At my last place of employment, we had another kid who didn’t show up for three days. When he got back, obviously we asked him what the hell happened? He said his mother had passed away. Wow. We accepted that excuse and everyone told him how sorry we were. The next morning at arrival time out in the parking lot, there were six or eight of us saying “good morning”. And who pulls up? The kid with his mother behind the wheel dropping him off ! He didn’t seem to last too long after that.

Another guy somehow got our forklift tipsy inside the back of a delivery truck. It tipped over sideways and there was absolutely no way to unwedge that forklift without taking out the side panel of the delivery truck. Luckily, no one was hurt. But believe me, there was half of the office laughing their ass off at such stupidity.

I once worked at a collections office where every phone call was an adventure. I got my buddy a job there and, like the rest of us, he adopted a pseudonym for himself so he didn’t get his head blown off by an angry customer. No kidding. He called himself Mr. Long. I’ll never forget the day he spent fifteen minutes trying to help someone spell MR. LONG. After a while, he was standing beside his desk, pulling his hands thru his hair like a beleaguered NFL coach screaming, “L-O-N-G !”

The rest of us were laughing our asses off.

At the same place, we once caught up to a guy who had fled back to Mexico and was now in a Mexico City hospital bed dying. My supervisor got the hospital information from a relative and called the guy on his (alleged) death bed. We knew we weren’t going to ever see another car payment. He just wanted to harass the guy and make him squirm. We’re all laughing as he grills the guy on the phone from 3000 miles away. {Hey ! The guy had made our life miserable by not paying his bill. Our career advancement was being hindered by this bum. So shut the hell up ! }

But whether someone is turning out the lights in the plant crew’s bathroom with a full house, or someone fouls up the boss’ lunch order and it’s a major catastrophe, or a warehouse guy bends over and splits his pants……..the office is such a treasure chest of laughs.

I think my all-time favorite is when the smart-ass warehouse foreman used to come into the office and right in front of the boss ask me,

“Where’s sissy tits at?”

I used to laugh my ass off every time he did it. Right up until the very day he got fired.