Challenge Accepted!

By , October 19, 2012 8:55 am

Writing experiment time! No, I haven’t hired a pack of monkeys to read my writing, mostly because I’ve seen every Planet of the Apes movie and so the last thing I’d ever want to do is piss off a pack of monkeys. No, this experiment is in response to that storyish excerpt I posted earlier this week. On that one I got busted by coworkers both current and former for writing something that sure as hell seemed like it was, at the very least, strongly influenced by a certain employer of ours.

I disagreed with this assessment, but since these were two pretty bright people busting me on it, I couldn’t just say they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and move on to the next thing. So I decided to take a few bus trips and a meeting or two and try to bang out something that was directly influenced by a real life soul-sucking event. And I learned some important things.

I learned that, no matter what I may have been doing unconsciously the first time, it’s much harder to write a stupid short excerpt when more than half my brain is trying to remember what happened, what facts are necessary for the story, what should be cut out, what needs to be changed to protect the guilty, and if there’s any way to ensure that the character who gets the majority of my lines ends up being the good guy. As you can imagine if you’ve read any other fiction I’ve written, that’s way more thinking than I usually put into it. I also learned that it’s not that much fun to throw a thin veil over people and events if you’re gonna spend half your time wondering if that veil’s too thin. Couple that with my notoriously bad memory and you get, well, you get the following mess.

This…thing is based on an actual event from December 2011, a period that’s somewhere in my personal top 5 worst work experiences. I took the two characters from the original excerpt and ran them through the start of a grueling evening. It stops where it stops for two reasons. One, I was tired of the experiment. And two, it was headed into dangerous waters and in another couple of paragraphs that pathetically thin veil was going to be shredded. Best for all concerned if I protect myself from more bad writing and potential real life repercussions.

For now if I decide to write any more office-based stuff, I’ll do it the way I always have — I’ll run it through a filter of nearly a quarter century of office life. That way if you see something familiar, you can think you know what it’s based on or you can wonder if that same insanely stupid shit you lived through really also happened somewhere else. Trust me, most times it’s that second one. So if all this rambling hasn’t scared you off, I’ll have my assistant dim the lights and we’ll see just how much of a Frankenstein’s monster we’re dealing with here…

Ben scrolled through the endless list of emails in his inbox, wondering if he was ever going to figure out how to prioritize this stuff. Most of it was too new to him, so it all looked the same. Every one of these emails could’ve been equally worthless or equally important and so far he had no way of knowing the difference. The only thing Yank had told him about it was to ignore any email marked Urgent.
“Everyone uses that in every email, so the word has no meaning anymore,” Yank had said. “Ignore it enough times and maybe people will learn their lesson.”
Yank had a long list of lessons be wanted people to learn, and Ben was so far unable to figure out that list either.
Ben turned away from his emails to give his eyes a break and he noticed Yank walking toward his desk at a fast pace while looking over at the far end of the office where the conference rooms were located. He didn’t actually look in Ben’s direction until he dropped into the nearest empty chair.
“Hey, Ohio, you know all that good advice I’ve been giving you?” he asked.
“No,” Ben said.
“Well, I’m about to give you some of the most important advice I could ever pass along.”
“And what’s that?”
“Run like hell right now,” Yank said. “Run and don’t look back. See you tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s no time. Just get the hell out of here before it’s too late.” Yank jumped from the chair, turned his head to survey the whole office, and then started backing away. He got about three steps when the familiar voice of their tech manager called out from behind them.
“Yank, got a second?”
Yank stopped backing away and said something Ben couldn’t hear that was probably profanity of some sort.
“I’ve got about one second, Kevin. What’s up?”
Kevin nodded at Ben and slouched against a nearby pillar. “You work on that theme park job?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t ask me which theme park job.”
“Because I haven’t worked on any theme park jobs, so by definition I haven’t worked on whatever job you’re talking about.”
“This was one of Eric’s projects,” Kevin said.
“Eric who quit Eric?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t help you, Kevin. He didn’t let me work on his stuff.”
“You refused every request to help him out.”
“What can I say, we had a perfect working relationship,” Yank said. “I miss that guy already. You shouldn’t have let him go.”
“You were at a meeting for this one,” Kevin said. “I know you were.”
Yank cocked his head and appeared to be staring past Kevin as he considered this. Then he frowned.
“Oh, that meeting. I was only at that meeting because there were free sandwiches. I didn’t actually pay attention to anything.”
“Still puts you ahead of anyone else left here tonight,” Kevin said.
“Once again my love of a good sandwich comes back and screws me. Ohio, write that down.”
“Just duck your head in the conference room. See if you can help,” Kevin said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Site’s broken.”
“Which page?”
“All of them.”
“Of course all of them. Why do I even ask? What about Ohio here?”
“What about him? Ben, did you work on this site?”
“He spearheaded it,” Yank said before Ben could say anything.
“We started this site six months before we hired him,” Kevin said. “But an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt. Ben, do you mind sticking around?”
“No problem.” Ben left his chair and followed Yank across the office
“You just totally sold me out,” he said.
“Maybe that’ll teach you a lesson,” Yank said. “Run when I say run. At least you got asked.”
“Yeah, but it felt like one of those requests you can only say yes to.”
“Look at that, Ohio, you’re learning a new lesson every day.”
There were only two men seated in the conference room. Nate, their lead programmer, and Barney, the guy who owned the place. Ben barely knew either of them, but Barney scared the hell out of him. Not because he was some kind of imposing presence — Ben towered at least half a foot taller than him — but because Ben was not capable of relaxing around anyone who could, in theory, fire him on a whim. He appeared to be a perfectly pleasant man, but Ben steered clear just the same.
Yank pushed the glass doors open and looked at the website displayed on the big screen on the wall.
“All I wanna know is, who broke it?” he asked as he took a seat at the end of the table. Ben circled around and sat to his right.
Yank squinted up at the screen. “This thing looks fine. What’s the problem?”
“You know the name of the park, right?” Nate asked.
“Yep.”
“What’s the website say?”
After a moment’s pause, Yank’s eyes snapped open. “Well now, isn’t that interesting?”
“So interesting I’m screaming right now,” Barney said. “You can’t hear because I’m screaming in my head, but trust me. Screaming at the top of imaginary lungs.”
“Have we ever put up a website with the wrong company name on it, or is this virgin territory for us?” Yank asked.
“I think this is new,” Nate said.
“Then this is a proud moment,” Yank said. “Ohio, when you consider all of the many ways this company has fucked up over the years, I hope you can appreciate what an honor it is to be here when we’ve discovered a brand new way to fuck up. Anyone wanna pose for a picture to capture the moment?”
“Yank, that’s enough,” Barney said. “There’s problems on every page. Wrong artwork, updates that are missing. Who knows what else. We need to go through the whole thing and fix it all.”
“What about Eric’s replacement?” Yank asked. “She seemed like a nice woman. Just the kind of person you’d expect to jump at the chance to help out even if it wasn’t, oh, I don’t know, her fucking job. Where the hell is she right now?”
Nate averted his eyes and Barney shook his head. “She actually quit this morning,” he said.
“How did that happen?”
“She said she couldn’t deal with the late hours, so she walked.”
“Jesus,” Yank said. “She wasn’t here two weeks and she quit? We really need to do something about people like that. If they’re smart enough to quit after two weeks, we should immediately promote them to management, because they’re obviously smarter than the rest of us and probably know things.”
Ben didn’t like the way the vein on Barney’s left temple was pulsing. He wondered if Yank’s strategy was to get the boss to stroke out right here at the table. Then he remembered that Yank and strategy were two words not very well acquainted.
“Yank, seriously, shut up,” Barney said. “I want the next words out of your mouth to be something productive. If they’re not, you can go home and you can stay there until I tell you to come back in. Clear?”
Yank stared at Barney for a long moment, and Ben felt his stomach roll over. He didn’t want Yank to say anything because he was sure these next words would blow everything up. Then Yank turned to look up at the big screen, and he took this in for an uncomfortable minute. He looked back at Barney with a frown.
“I don’t know a goddamn thing about how this site is supposed to look,” he said. “I’m not learning in the next five minutes either. So what we’ll need is printouts of what we’ve got and printouts of everything we were told to do. I’ll compare ’em and I’ll tell Nate here what he has to fix. He’ll make the fixes and in the morning you’ll have something to test.”
“I can get you those screen shots,” Barney said as he rose from his chair. “You need anything else?”
“Ohio here is gonna need a snack in a little while,” Yank said. “He’s gonna be up past his bedtime and he gets cranky if he hasn’t had something to eat.”
Barney shook his head as he left the room.
“He’s not gonna be here the whole night, is he?” Yank asked.
Nate shrugged. “He told me he’d do whatever we need him to do.”
“We fucking need him to go home is what we need him to do. Does he honestly think he’s the lynchpin in this plan?”
“I told him we can handle this,” Nate said. “I don’t know if he’ll listen.”
“You told him too early,” Yank said. “There wasn’t a plan yet.”
“Now that the plan came from you, you think he’s just going to walk out of here?”
“You can’t tell him you can handle something before you can tell him how you’re gonna do it,” Yank said. “You know he gets paranoid. You’ve gotta back your bullshit up or you never get rid of him. Rookie mistake, Nate.”
Nate shrugged.
“Speaking of which, any idea how this got so fucked up?”
“Nope. Usual reasons, probably. It’s like nobody was in charge of the site since Eric left,” Nate said. “This is what happens when nobody’s in charge.”
“Dirty little secret of this place, Ohio, is this is also what happens when somebody’s in charge. Don’t be the somebody that fucks up this bad.”
Ben reached across the table to snag one of the sets of stapled printouts. It was a list of the errors on the site. It was nearly ten pages long. Yank didn’t look at one but he gestured toward the pile.
“I’ve said it before, this is what happens when we hire people who can’t write and people who can’t read and let them work together,” he said. “No one wants to hear that.”
“Charlie was the programmer on this,” Nate said.
“I don’t care. Didn’t Charlie spell his name wrong in his email signature and not notice for three weeks? He’s your example?”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Nate said. “I just wanna fix this and maybe get home while it’s still today.”
“That’s another problem,” Yank said. “No one ever wants to argue about this. Ohio, one of these days we’ll learn our lesson here. Maybe one of us will even be around to see it.”

Same As the Old Boss

By , October 17, 2012 12:03 pm

Not sure how many of you knew this, but yesterday, October 16, was Boss’s Day. You know, Boss’s Day, the only day of the year where your boss can ask you to work late with no extra pay and you have to do it. Yep, the only day of the year where the boss can do that. I promise. The only day. Did you celebrate Boss’s Day yesterday? Lots of people did, and you may have been one of them without even realizing it. How is that possible? You’ll find out when you check out…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways People Celebrated Boss’s Day:
10. Kept Facebook open on their work computer for only 6.5 hours instead of the usual 7
9. Scribbled a mustache or a penis onto boss’s picture, but not both
8. Told him he kicked ass at that debate last night even though he obviously did not
7. Refrained from tweeting new entries in popular Twitter feed shitmyidiotbosssaid
6. Left thank you note after looting cabinets of pens, staples and Rice Krispie treats
5. Laughed at all his jokes, even the one where a priest, a rabbi and Jerry Sandusky walk into a bar
4. Showed her how to take a screen shot for the 300th day in a row, because this time that knowledge is gonna stick for sure
3. Drank 4 extra beers in his honor at lunch, slept quietly through afternoon not bothering him
2. Waited until today to tell him about that math error that will cost the company $3 million
1. Did everything he asked, no matter how stupid, dangerous, off-putting, soul-crushing, idiotic, mean-spirited, evil, short-sighted, misspelled, petty, outrageous, mini-brained, repulsive, tiring, craptastic, illegal, unacceptable, poorly-conceived, Tebowmaniacal, like a scene out of a shitty Steven Segal movie, Steinbrenneresque, stabby, URGENT!!!, Nixon-like, rapacious, Canadian, daring, Linsane, long-winded, repetitive, like the punchline got buried under a pile of words 5 minutes ago, unfortunate or just plain old dumb it might be (sorry, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Things People Do Every Day To Pay The Rent)

And there you have it. If you found yourself doing any of those things yesterday, congratulations, you celebrated Boss’s Day. And if not, there’s always next year. On Boss’s Day, the only day of the year your boss can ask you to work extra hours for free. Only day. Yes, I’m sure of that.

T “if I say I was drunk when I wrote this and then immediately check into rehab they probably can’t fire me” green

But It’s Kept Me From Going Insane

By , October 15, 2012 7:04 pm

NaNoWriMo’s coming up in a couple of weeks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing a novel in a month, besides the fact that it’s a terrible idea to write a novel in a month, it’s that to survive National Novel Writing Month, you need to be a little bit crazy. But just a little bit. Start November too sane and you quit in four days. Start it too crazy and by December 1 you’re proudly mailing your 50,000-word manifesto to the authorities and before you know it you’re on the no-fly list. And so once mid-October rolls around I start getting my mind ready to be just a little bit crazy.

Which is where this post comes in. I’m trying to get some of the crappy writing out of my system now. I’ve actually got a project I’m trying to finish this month, but I’m not as far along with it as I should be. So in dull moments commuting and in meetings, I’ve been messing with a scene that’s not really part of anything, and not really meant to turn into anything. It’s just one of those scenes I get in my head from time to time that I need to write down just to move on to something else. So as I’m fine-tuning the crazy, this is what comes out. Figured I’d share. Some of you Facebook friends already saw the part I wrote on the bus. The part I wrote in the meeting came after.

This Yank character has turned up in a few other stories, most prominently The New Guy Starts Wednesday from the first Workers Write collection. I’ve dropped him in a few other stories since then, and he’s one of the stars of the late, great(?) Greetings from Shokanaw strip. Oddly enough, this is the second time I’ve written about him wanting to start a religion. I figure this means someday I’m either gonna write a book where he starts one, or I’m just gonna start one myself. It’s a win-win, right?

So here’s a little bit of nothing that I’m hoping is helping to fine-tune some crazy into my brain. Again, it was written on the bus and in a meeting, so have mercy. Maybe you’ll like it, and maybe you won’t…

“Okay, Ohio, it might be time for Plan B,” Yank said. He paged through the short stack of papers on the table and then dropped them with a dull thump in front of him. “Yeah, definitely Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?” Ben asked.
“The thing you do when Plan A doesn’t work out, obviously,” Yank said.
“I don’t think I have one,” Ben said.
“How can you not have a Plan B?”
“I didn’t think it would be necessary.”
“Plan B is always necessary,” Yank said. “Nothing stays good forever. In fact, the average shelf life of something good is about six days. Six days, Ohio. How can you walk through life without a Plan B when at any given moment you’re less than a week away from everything going to hell?”
“If that’s the case, then I’m even more screwed than I thought,” Ben said.
“How do you figure?”
“I don’t think I have a Plan A either.”
“Funny thing about life, Ohio. If you don’t choose a Plan A, one will be chosen for you,” Yank said. “Plan A never lasts, anyway. Plan B is what gets you where you’re going.”
“So you actually have a Plan B?”
“Of course I do.”
“Even though I haven’t seen any evidence that you’re capable of making any other kind of plan, you have a Plan B?”
“Exactly. Why waste my time on any other kind of plan when Plan B is the only one that counts?”
“Then what is it?” Ben asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Yank said. “But rest assured it involves at least one border crossing, a bag of unmarked bills, a case of good tequila and a tight red dress.”
“You’re not wearing the red dress in this plan, right?”
“God, I hope not,” Yank said.
Another small group walked past the conference room, deep in an animated discussion. Ben didn’t recognize any of them, and he was pretty sure Yank didn’t either. When Yank recognized someone he usually shared a nasty comment, so his silence spoke volumes. Ben looked down to the other end of the table where Scott sat engrossed in his smartphone. Ben had no idea if he’d even noticed how long they’d been left waiting.
“Does it always work like this?” Ben asked. “Do you always have to sit around just waiting for him to show up?”
“Not all the time, but mostly,” Yank said. “Sometimes he’s got better stuff to do in the afternoon so he makes sure he’s on time for us so he can get us out of the way.”
“Kind of insulting, isn’t it?”
“What’ve you heard about this guy, Ohio?”
“That he’s an idiot,” Ben said.
“Hurtful.”
“You’re the one who told me he’s an idiot.”
“Still hurtful,” Yank said. “But it’s true, this client is an idiot. I’m sure he means well, but he can’t help it, he’s an idiot. Drove everyone who ever had to work with him crazy. I’m like the fourth or fifth person in charge of this job. He ran all the others off.”
“They have problems with this guy and they put you in charge of him?” Ben asked.
“Hard to believe, huh? But that’s what they did. I think they did it because they wanted me to blow up the relationship so he’d drop us. They got sick of him but they can’t drop him, so they put me here to force the issue.”
“There’s no way that happened,” Scott said without looking up from his phone.
“You can’t prove I’m wrong,” Yank said.
“You can’t prove you’re right. Your theory would require everyone we work for to have no business sense whatsoever.”
“I thought you said I can’t prove I’m right,” Yank said. “You just did it for me.”
“I’ll admit, I can’t think of a single reason why they’d put you in front of a client,” Scott said. “But there’s no way they did it so you could drive him off.”
“Yeah, that makes no sense,” Ben said. He probably wouldn’t have said anything if it were just him and Yank here, but Scott’s presence and comment gave Ben some cover.
“Oh, please, it’s passive/aggressive leadership at its best, which is something we specialize in,” Yank said. “If I piss off the client, he drops us and we’ve broken free of a delusional gasbag without getting our hands dirty. We love not getting our hands dirty. And as a bonus, since it’s now officially my fault we lost this guy, I’ve got a huge target on my back if someone decides they need to cut some salary from somewhere.
“But for some reason me and this idiot get along, so not only do I not kill the relationship, I get him to throw three more projects our way. Which means I’ve now done the exact opposite of what my bosses wanted me to do, but they can’t touch me because of all the money I brought in.”
“Wow, I knew you lived in a fantasy world, Yank, but I never realized just how far from reality it is,” Scott said, his thumbs now typing something on his phone. “You could practically ride a unicorn to work at this rate.”
“At least look in my direction if you’re gonna insult me like that,” Yank said. “What’s so damn interesting on that phone?”
“Just Facebook.”
“Come on, I know for a fact you don’t have enough friends to spend that much time on Facebook.”
“You’d be surprised,” Scott said.
“I’d be surprised if this idiot showed before noon.”
“If he’s this much of an idiot, why didn’t you just kill the relationship?” Ben asked.
“Ohio, this guy is an idiot, but he’s an idiot with money, which makes him the best kind of idiot you can find,” Yank said. “I want to keep him around in case one of my plans ever makes it to the financing phase.”
“What plans?” Ben asked.
“Much as I love working for the mouth-breathers we work for, I’m not staying here forever. I’m always on the lookout for something better. So when I’m ready to spin off my own company or franchise or religion, I might need to grab for a piece of this idiot’s checkbook.”
“Religion? You can’t start your own religion,” Scott said.
“Sure you can. You need the right business plan and infrastructure and enough backers with deep pockets, but it can be done.”
“And maybe some theology for your members to believe in,” Scott said.
“Sure, I guess. After the money, of course.”
“Of course.”
“This isn’t your Plan B, is it?” Ben asked.
“Of course not,” Yank replied. “It’s way down there on the list. Like Plan N or O or one of those other letters you run together when you say the alphabet fast. I’ve got lots of details to figure out before I can seriously consider it.”
“At least you’re putting the right amount of thought into it,” Scott said. “I hope work isn’t getting in the way.”
“I will say, however, that Plan B and my religion may end up having tequila in common,” Yank said, ignoring Scott.
“Now you’re talking,” Scott said, ignoring the fact that he was being ignored.
Ben looked past Yank and saw that the hallway was empty. Almost creepy empty, like the kind of empty that exists right before the zombies show up. He realized it was time to start shuffling his calendar around. They weren’t leaving this room any time soon.
“I’ll tell you, the biggest problem I have with the whole religion plan is that I don’t actually believe in religion. Any religion,” Yank said. “So I’m thinking that the instant I start this religion, I’ll stop believing it.”
“Tell you what, Yank, I’m way out ahead of you on that,” Scott said.
“Heretic.” Yank turned to face Ben. “I’ll be in the market for a few good disciples, Ohio. Keep that in mind.”
“Do disciples get health benefits?”
“Do not encourage him, Ben,” Scott said. “He’ll never stop if you do.”
“Ye of little faith,” Yank said. “If you stopped to consider the sheer amount of money out there waiting to be dumped into a new religion, you wouldn’t be talking like this. You’d be begging to get in on the ground floor.”
“The Book of Yank, chapter 3, verse 14,” Scott said.
“I’ll clean it up for the bible,” Yank said. “Ohio, write that down. And maybe start transcribing my other bits of wisdom. You never know how much stuff you’ll need to fill the holy books.”
“As soon as I hear some wisdom, I promise I’ll write it down,” Ben said.
“Et tu, Ohio? Keep it up and I’ll make you run this meeting.”
“That’s cruel and unusual punishment,” Scott said. “Maybe you are ready to start a religion.”
“I learned from nuns,” Yank said. “I know how to go hard core.”

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