Monday, July 7, 2008

My green chair

Imagine an episode of The Office that goes something like this:

Michael Scott, to his dismay, finds that the employees in Accounting are sitting in green chairs instead of the normal purple chairs that everyone else sits in.  These chairs had been sitting down in storage, unused, and were more comfortable than the purple ones.  About a year ago, Angela discovered them and so did her colleagues.  

Michael, not realizing how long these green chairs had been around, orders that the chairs be returned to where they found them.  

Upset, Angela walks down to receiving and asks Darryl if he knows anything about the chairs.

"They're new chairs," he says.
"I don't understand," says Angela.  "I'm not giving up that chair."

Word gets to Michael about these new chairs, so he asks Darryl where the chairs came from.

"You ordered them," says Darryl.
"No I didn't."
Darryl pulls up the invoice.
"Ah, yes," replied Michael.  "They were for the new employees."
"What new employees?" asked Darryl.

Michael, not wanting to explain himself, rushes off.  "Gotta go!"  His branch was going to hire new employees before corporate decided to cut jobs.

For no apparent reason, Michael confiscates the green chairs and gives them to Goodwill.

The End.


A similar event actually happened today at work.

Boss visits our work area because it will be undergoing minor renovations.  She notices that several of us, including me, have green chairs (yes, they are green too!), accuses us of stealing the chairs from another department in the building, and orders them to be returned.  (We didn't steal the chairs, they were in our department storage area.  And yes, they are more comfortable - it actually helped to get rid of my lower back pain).  Our head custodian informs us (and her) that these are new chairs that she ordered.  Long story short, she realized that these chairs were never needed, and donates them to the other departments in the building, so that all of us can have matching purple (and painful) chairs.

"I'm sorry that I ruined everyone's day," she said later.  "Oh well, back to work."

Thanks boss.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Fireworks

Ever wonder how fireworks got their start, or how long people have been using fireworks? Check this out. I was contemplating this question during tonight's fireworks display, and am now informed.

Friday, July 4, 2008

4 day workweek

My life isn't really that interesting these days, but I thought I'd share some sort of update to tide you over until something more insightful comes along...

This week marked the first of 6 four-day workweeks. This week happened to be one of them because of our nation's 232nd birthday (thanks JR for the correction - I originally put 332), but the next 5 weeks I'll be condensing 5 days of work into 4. My work is doing this in a effort to save energy for both them and their employees.

I've never done this before, so I'm interested in how this is going to work out. Am I going to be so tired and burnt out after 4 days that I'll need an entire day to recover? Or am I going to have a relaxed, but productive day off?

The plan is to have this "trial" 5 week run and then everyone will give their feedback. If it turns out well, maybe next year they'll implement it for the whole summer.