Giddy'Up

Sunday, March 30, 2008

I'm almost afraid to write this, because you may begin to think (given a few earlier posts) that I don't do any actual work. I can produce evidence if needed that I actually do something productive for my employer, but I'm not quite dumb enough to reveal on the WWW too much about what I do (in the interests of both keeping my job and not losing your interest). That said, I do get to take an occasional time-out from the daily grind (i.e. sitting in a cubicle all day) for activities ostensibly intended to build team unity and increase morale. Usually, this means attending some sort of sporting event or participating in something highly athletic like bowling, laser tag, or pool, but in this case, it meant pretending to be a cowboy.

I must confess that I didn't grow up dreaming of being a cowboy. In fact, I don't think the idea ever even crossed my mind. Even though I grew up in the country, it was mining country and not cowboy country (meaning that there were a few horses and cows running around but many, many, many more wild burros). I think prior to last Thursday, I'd been on a horse once about 20 years ago, and all I remember of that was being really sore.

Despite that, when I had the option in this team-builder of either herding cattle or following along on a hayride, I picked the horse option. In the end, I'm glad I did for two reasons. First, only two people of about 30 rode on the truck, so they looked pretty lonely and bored most of the time. Second, I haven't had too many "Arizona" experiences since we moved here (haven't been to the Grand Canyon yet, etc.), and this definitely felt like an authentic Arizona experience.

Now, I'm not saying this was a highly challenging cattle herd. Since there was roughly a 1:1 human-bovine ratio, the cattle were pretty much surrounded, and we weren't exactly moving too quickly (in fact, it was tricky enough to keep the horses and cows from stopping all the time to eat anything remotely green in their path). Really, the only hard part was figuring out how to talk to the cows without sounding like either a moron or a complete city slicker. Here are a few other clues that this wasn't completely real.

• I snapped this picture partway through the ride. I'm pretty sure real cowboys don't take pictures with camera phones (maybe I'm wrong - maybe now they all have Blackberries and MySpace pages).

• About halfway through, we stopped for a break and all got handed little Aquafina bottles from the hayride truck. I try to avoid watching old John Wayne movies (it's a little difficult, though, thanks to AMC showing them late at night when I can't sleep), but I don't think I've ever seen the Duke or any other cowboy chugging bottled water, particularly the little 4 oz. variety.
• The cows ended up in the same corral in which they started, so it was really more like taking them for a walk.
• Half the time, we'd get ahead of the cows and have to wait for them all to catch up. I'm fairly certain that's not how it's supposed to work.

Ignoring all of that, though, I was fine pretending that I was actually driving cattle and had a pretty good time. I figure that the horses probably had the least fun through this whole experience. You don't realize how big horses are until you're sitting on one, and mine gave me the eye every time I pulled on the bridle a little too hard during an unannounced bathroom break or a nice weed snack. The real cowboys (you could tell by the boots) kept telling me to kick him harder when he slowed down and that it "doesn't hurt them," but I'm not sure I buy that. The fact is that my horse could have made me go away any time he wanted (we had to sign a disclaimer acknowledging that horseback riding can cause death and promising not to sue), so I was fine being a little cautious about slamming my Sketchers into his kidneys.

It's OK To Take a Break Once in a While (If You Can)

Monday, March 24, 2008

I recently underwent my annual review at work. For any of you who are still in school and looking forward to being free of things like homework and grades, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Once you enter the working world, you may have homework, and you will still get grades (they will just give them names rather than letters, which are evidently intended to avoid bruising your apparently fragile psyches with labels like "Below Expectations" or "Underperforming"). There are other things that probably won't change all that much, either - I had a co-worker in my previous government life who wouldn't participate in "Bring Your Child to Work" day for fear that this his kids would find out that a desk, some books, and Microsoft Word are all there is at the end of the tunnel and lose all motivation.

Fortunately, I wasn't tagged "Needs Improvement" or "Memorize www.careerbuilder.com" or anything like that, so I should be gainfully employed for yet another year, something which I don't take for granted. I feel like I had a decent year, and it was nice to be rewarded for it. That said, there are people at my office who I know are working harder than I am and deserve at least the raise I received.

The hardest thing to do in my building is to find an open bathroom. It isn't that there are only a few of them; there is one located just around the corner from my desk, and others directly above and below that and within reasonable walking distance on my floor. The reason it's so difficult is that the cleaning people we employ are the probably the most diligent cleaning people anywhere in the world. Literally half the time, I pop around the corner to find myself suddenly stopped cold by a yellow bar. I'm not joking - this probably happens more than once a day. I snapped this today on my phone, in fact.



Once you actually find an available lavatory, your problems aren't really over. Again literally about 50% of the time, there is a knock on the door accompanied by a call of "Housekeeping!" I have to admit, I've come to dread this. First of all, you have to say something to prevent them from just walking in, and I'm not sure what the right response is to that. Second, suddenly there is time pressure.

I'm not sure what the goal is here. The manufacture of our products requires an absolutely clean environment, so the company is pretty obsessive about that. Maybe we're prepping the bathrooms as additional clean-room space. I'm not sure. The company is also committed to good corporate citizenship. Maybe we're trying to end disease. If the cleaning people end disease, they definitely deserve a raise.

Of course, one result of getting a raise at work is that you are expected to do more (take on more "scope," as they call it at my company). Well, these people clearly can handle more scope. I think we can solve a number of problems (in addition to capacity constraints and the common cold) by giving them a bit of added responsibility. I suggest we trade about half of their bathroom cleaning time to local gas stations in exchange for a better selection of junk food for our employee store. People wouldn't have to hold it as long on long trips, and I would have better luck at work finding both a bathroom and a decent snack.

Guilty as Charged

Thursday, March 20, 2008

As I start this, I'm somewhere high in the air over the Grand Canyon. That's what I'm told, anyway; I'm in an aisle seat directly in line with the wing. I should probably consider getting a window seat next time, but I'm generally a big fan of the aisle when traveling on my own since you don't have to climb over anyone to get out. It's bad enough that you have to either make your whole row get up or practically sit in their laps, but even on a short flight you can get one of those instant sleepers (I envy those people) who you have to wake up. I hate waking up people I know, let alone complete strangers who could be dreaming that they're being attacked and claw at me in self defense.

If I were not on this plane, it's quite possible that I'd just be finishing up deliberations in a DUI trial. Yesterday morning I did my civic duty and traveled about an hour southeast to Florence, AZ, to report for jury duty. That part wasn't as bad as it sounds, since there was no traffic (I really need to find a job in the middle of nowhere - I'm a big fan, it turns out, of solo commuting), and at one point I passed through a small rocky canyon filled with saguaro and wildflowers that made me wish I had a camera.

Florence itself was sort of what I expected, having grown up in a similarly remote, similarly small desert town (sans McDonald's, though), but the courthouse was actually much nicer than anticipated. It's not like I was expecting to run into Barney Fife or anything, but I was surprised by the modernity, given the locale. Now I know to where they've been funneling my property taxes. The facility lost a little luster, though, when I noticed that it was surrounded on several sides by a prison. That probably doesn't help property values too much, but Florence is probably a convenient place to live if you are a criminal. If you were to rob the McDonald's literally across the street and get caught, without going more than about 100 yards, you could go to court, jail, and back to McDonald's to get a job after getting out. I think the people who put this set-up together could probably end our dependence on oil and global warming if we put them in charge.

[More places should adopt this approach, I think. For example, last week I ate at In-N-Out and Claim Jumper. Why aren't those built next to hospitals rather than around shopping malls?]

The jury selection process was actually pretty interesting. I knew going in I probably wouldn't be selected since I had to catch a flight the next afternoon, but they still put me through my paces before letting me go. Much like traffic school, you get quite a cross-section of society when you put together a group of people randomly selected from a list, and I became pretty interested in seeing who would make the cut. Instead, the experience was a bit like the 15 minutes I saw of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water - I watched enough to get a feel for the strange cast of characters but never found out what happened after that. I did get a decent reimbursement check for the mileage, which wasn't bad considering a juror in Arizona apparently gets a per diem of $12 a day. Maybe they saw one of those Sally Struthers commercials and thought they were being generous.

Unfortunately, jury duty was the fun part of my day. I followed that up with a trip to the dentist, which isn't actually as bad as it sounds since the people there are pretty decent (when they are not driving a little metal spike into my gums) and have satellite TV (although I started on Sportscenter or something on ESPN, and pretty soon I found myself watching - with no way to change the channel - a small guy in an ugly vest doing pool tricks). Although probably no one enjoys a tooth cleaning, the part of the dentist visit I actually dislike the most is afterward when they ask me if I floss. For probably the past 15 years, I have been telling various dentists that I know I should floss but don't and that I'll try to do a better job. Obviously I've been lying to myself and the medical community, but maybe this time I'll come through.

Doing Lines

Sunday, March 16, 2008

I was a lifeguard for three summers in high school. In theory, I was trained to save people's lives. Every year in May or so we'd show up for a week after school to pull pretend victims out of chlorinated ice water and give CPR to a plastic doll. In reality, nothing ever happened, so most of the time I was just a babysitter with a whistle (the only drama was when the other lifeguards turned off my R.E.M. CD and switched it to Garth Brooks). Still, I liked to think that I could have saved someone had it come down to it.

Well, Saturday I found out that it's a good thing nothing ever did actually happen. I was at a Spring Training game standing in the second-slowest concession line of all time (I detailed the first in a post last year). Despite the fact that there were only about 6 items on the menu, it was somehow taking about 5 minutes per customer, and in the 20 minutes or so while I waited for 4 of the 6 people in front of me to get their nachos and hot dogs, my mind began to wander. Particularly, I began to wonder if I was going to be the first person to ever get a 3rd-degree sunburn while standing in line to get a soda. I'm only slightly joking.

It's not surprising, then, that I didn't react right away when I felt something hit me in the leg. Things slowly came back into focus, and I looked down to find that the girl in front of me had actually passed out from standing in this line for so long. The lady in front of her, who had evidently borne the brunt of this girl's collapse and therefore snapped out of her Aramark-induced coma a bit before I did, tried to help the girl up and was yelling for someone to go get help. Me... I basically froze. I don't think I was worried about keeping my place in line, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about finding someone capable of providing assistance. Actually, I figured I didn't need to do anything when I saw a guy in a "STAFF" shirt feeding her ice, but it turns out he was just a guy in line who wears "STAFF" shirts all the time (or maybe just stayed in a Holiday Inn Express).

Meanwhile, the lady at the front had completely taken control, so much so that when the real medical staff member showed up (no thanks to me), they had a little tiff over whether the semi-conscious girl should stand up or stay sitting down. The girl made it through, and I got both a grossly overpriced soda and confirmation that I will never be a superhero. I guess standing in place for so long had wiped out whatever humanity I had left after my parking experience three days earlier at the same stadium.

That day, I made the mistake of showing up at 12:55 for a 1:05 game, and I literally didn't get into the stadium until 2:00. Sometimes when you find yourself stuck in an interminable line, you make the mistake of thinking there is a better line and ending up in a worse one. Well, I should have made that mistake, because after waiting 45 minutes in the first one, I got to the entrance of a full parking lot and was told to park at the zoo instead. It seems like in the information age we could come up with a way of solving this kind of problem, but if women haven't found a way of solving the wait in public bathrooms, there is probably no hope for men running a parking lot.

Still, I have no room to complain about anything, since at least I didn't pass out in public and fall on complete strangers (or go out in my first Spring Training game and give up 8 runs in the first inning before getting yanked, which the Giants pitcher did on Saturday and then promptly put his resume on Monster). I got two spend two beautiful Arizona afternoons watching Major League baseball close up, and I even got to see some kindness by a Type-A lady who - if she worked for my company - probably would have gotten a Goodie Drawer exchangeable for movie tickets or a Chile's gift card.

Speaking of Goodie Drawers (or "kudos" or a "shout outs" or "attaboys" or whatever the equivalent award is in your world), my best friend from high school, Paul Genesse, deserves all of the above and more for the upcoming publication of his first full-length novel, The Golden Cord (you can pre-order on Amazon). Paul is one of those rare people who is actually doing what he said he wanted to do growing up, but I know that it hasn't come without many years of figurative blood, sweat, and tears, since I read his first draft probably 8 or 9 years ago. No one could deserve success more. Incidentally, Paul is a nurse, so think he might also react a bit better if someone passed out in front of him.