Guys who drive BMW motorcycles. There’s a guy in the office that needs to let everyone know that he drives a BMW motorcycle, indicative by the way he’s always wearing his fluorescent green BMW “air shell” jacket in the office, despite the fact that it’s 87 degrees in the City of Atlanta right now. And the way he perches his fluorescent green BMW helmet on the edge of his desk, so that everyone who walks by or looks down the corridor can see it, like a beacon of douchiness in the office. I have to imagine that when he’s in his full autocross get-up, he looks like a fucking lightning bug humping a football, or at least, like someone who ate something radioactive.
Needless to say, having been here for the last two months, I’ve got a fairly good grasp of the people who work here, and most importantly for the sake of conversation, the people I don’t really care for, and are capable of griping about in brog format. Furthermore, I’ve been here long enough to where I now feel entitled to gripe about my job, more so than when I was here, greener than Lex Luger.
For like the second time in as many weeks, I wouldn’t say “reprimanded,” but I’ve been “informed,” that me having a Gmail window open is frowned upon by the higher ups. But “they understand,” because “everyone does it anyway,” but I should “keep that in mind.” As a freelancer, my Gmail account is where I keep communication open through the agency in the first place, for when they have questions or status about my assignment(s), and for all intents and purposes, I have to let them know as well when I’m not working, so there’s no question if there are any gaps in days in my weekly timesheets. But for the most part, I’m being reminded to ease off the web surfing so much…
So with that in mind, what the fuck pray tell, should I be doing with my downtime?
Lord knows this place has plenty of work, but most certainly not enough to keep the likes of an efficient work horse like me busy for eight straight hours. I’ve seen every single person here on the internet at some point or another, looking at anything from Facebook, news websites, to their own personal emails, so I have to wonder if they’re getting “reminders,” as often as I am? I’d be willing to bet that such is not the case, mostly for the fact that I’m a lowly freelancer who lives and dies by the hours, and therefore I should be unlike human beings and be working for eight straight hours a day. With such sentiments in mind, I sit here brogging, because I can do that in the vanilla confines of Word, while Outlook is open, so that when nosy micromanager passerbys shuffle past and look at my screen, it just looks I’m writing out the worlds’ longest emails several times a day.
Which brings me to yet another office personality that I find quite fascinating, which is the guy I simply like to refer to as “micromanager.” As I’ve been informed about his status within the company, he’s been demoted from a director’s position, to god knows what, but the bottom line is that he’s still got his own office, and wanders to and from the print room about a hundred times a day, and loves to steal glances in my direction to see what I’m doing. If I’m a betting man, I have this guy pegged as someone who’s mentioned my web surfing tendencies when the company is unable to keep me occupied long enough to where I can’t be doing such.
He’s such a pathetic guy. Think part Monopoly man, and part Perdue chicken guy, with a perpetually reddish hue to his skin. I can see in my peripheral vision every time he shuffles past me that his head is glancing at what’s on my screen to make sure that I’m working. I’ve gotten to the point where I can fairly successfully predict his patterns of spying, because he’s always printing shit to the color printer, which he has to walk past me in order to get to. I can hear the printer spooling, and then I quickly task out of any browsers, and go back to whatever dummy Illustrator document I have open at the moment to make it look like I’m diligently working hard for when he shuffles by.
Definition micromanager who feels that I’m an extravagant luxury on the department that the company would be financially better off not having. Never mind the cost of all his fake print jobs he prints just so he has an excuse to come spy on what I’m doing. Never mind the fact that my presence has taken a huge burden off the two other designers here who suddenly have a lot more time on their hands to be more administrative, and actually do their own work, instead of the menial bullshit that this place is so adept at having in order to justify paying me to do it for them instead.
Overall, I guess if he’s truly the only person here I couldn’t give two shits about, this place isn’t that bad at all. The suspected gay guy that sits behind me and that is always glancing at me with his beady eyes behind his horned-rim glasses is kind of annoying with his constant Jew change-counting habits, and his loud yawns, and as hypocritical of me to say it since I love them too, but he also loves to loudly crunch on Corn Nuts on a fairly regular basis. He’s kind of obnoxious, but I’ve worked with way worse. And then there’s the BMW-biker-tool-guy, who’s more just sad and ironically funny, than worth disliking.
Now that I think about it, this place is kind of ideal for a place with little distractions; there is not a single person here that I’m aware has anything in common with me, and there is not a single female in this entire company that I find remotely attractive to get that vibe of awkward crush sexual tension with. In fact, there’s really nobody at all that’s really attractive here at all. From a professional standpoint of me coming in here and getting work done, this place really couldn’t be any better. Very little distractions, and a good hourly rate means that I should stay here as long as I can. And from what I can tell, I’m here at least until the start of July.
