Work Yarns

Here’s a recap of some things that have happened at work over the last month or so.

• The Pumpkin of International Candy Horrors is still in full effect around here. Actually, I haven’t filled it up in a while but that’s OK because there’s still stuff in there that people keep picking around and maybe I should just not refill it until they eat all the bad stuff too, right? For example, the pouch of prunes.
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    The last fill-up was from Lotus Foods, which I sometimes walk to on my lunch break. I was mad because there were a bunch of white assholes in the candy aisle, loudly mocking all the candy that my work friends and I have come to cherish. Sorry if your palates aren’t refined enough, dumbos. I grabbed a bag of “assorted ham” but I think it was mislabeled because it was definitely that “haw” candy I bought before which tastes like thick fruit roll-ups. They’re super good. I meant to try and get some candy when we were in Chicago but when I searched “weird candy Chicago” the only thing that stood out was this place that’s supposed to be “famous” in Chicago (what isn’t though, really) but when I went to the website, it was ALL OF THAT GROSS CANDY I bought from  the Mexican store near my house (and also some of the good candy I bought from the Mexican store near my house, but if I wanted more of that, I would just take a walk when I’m home, you know?).

  • Speaking of that Mexican store, there is this guy who works the taco cart in front (it’s wildly popular and brings ALL THE HIPSTERS and FOODIES to my town, so gross). Anyway, this guy is my secret boyfriend. I walk past him everyday because I’m, you know, always walking, and he always says hello to me in his super-flirty accent and I’m always like, “Hehehehe, hello” and he has his eyebrow pierced which normally I wouldn’t like, but you know—accent. If Henry is with me, he won’t say hello though.
    • Hi Henry.
  • Um, back to the subject of candy. One day last month, someone found a dollar on the floor and it ended up being Lauren’s. Instead of pocketing it, she said, “You know, put this aside for the candy refill,” and she gave it to me! I thought that was really nice and also , why am I not collecting money from EVERYONE.
• One day, I was standing in line at Crazy Mocha, minding my own business like I do, when a man next to me leaned over and said, “Apologies in advance if I smell a little….musty.” Oh wow, not the pick-up line I was expecting, but OK. “I spent ALL DAY in the University of Pittsburgh library archives.” THERE IT IS. “Oh wow, ok. I don’t smell anything, don’t worry,” I said with faux-reassurance and then used my back as a conversation stopper. But no, he wasn’t done. “I never thought working in a library would leave me so smelly,” he said with absolute dryness to his voice. He wouldn’t look at me while he was speaking, either, but instead he kept his head tilted up slightly toward the ceiling, almost in a boastful stance. I nodded and then went back to scrolling through pictures of G-Dragon on Instagram because #life. “Pitt hired me because I’m fluent in French. I know the French bibliographer there,” he continued after about a minute of silence passed AND IT STILL WASNT MY TURN TO ORDER. I vaguely heard him reference Raiders of the Lost Ark but I had fucking shut down at this point. OK cool story guy, you get to work with dusty books all day. “I felt really bad for the people I sat near on the bus yesterday, having to smell me,” he said and I seriously thought he was going to press his body into my face and make me smell him, he was so obsessed!
  • The weirdest part is that while this guy didn’t smell at all, I had stormed into work the day before bitching about the old guy who was sitting next to me on the trolley and how musty he smelled, and then I had one of those weird moments where the word “musty” didn’t sound right and had I been using a fake word all these years? But I googled it and it’s a real word, so there.
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• On another episode of Erin Gets Taken For a Ride, I had just left the office one day for my lunch time stroll, when some old woman stopped me in front of our building. Something about just having taken her insulin, needs a dollar to buy some food so she doesn’t pass out…I don’t know. It all happened so fast, but she reminded me of Henry’s mom and I was like, “OK OK OK, I will get you a dollar!” I told her to stay there and I went all the way back up to the tenth floor, got a dollar out of my desk, and went back out to give it to her. But when I got there, she was talking to two young women with a baby stroller (I think there was a baby in there? I didn’t look, because babies, meh). The women were REALLY ORANGE-IN-THE-NEW-BLACK-LOOKING, you guys.
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  Totally rough and clad in wife beaters, one had a half-shaved head, the other had barbed wire tattooed around her bicep. Just, you know…intimidating. I handed the lady a dollar and she looked at me like she didn’t know what I was doing, but that didn’t stop her from clamping onto the bill. “Oh, these are my friends,” she said, nodding at the two women, and all three of them just looked at me blankly and I was petrified because were they going to shake me down for more money?! I kind of wanted to renege and pull back my dollar but the lady was already taking out of my fingers and oh, what to do?! I know, turn and run. You guys, the way she thanked me, it was like I was PAYING HER BACK A DOLLAR THAT I OWED HER.

  • When I went back in after my break, I was telling Lauren what went down and she was like, “THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULDN’T GIVE MONEY TO PEOPLE ON THE STREET” and this was just the start of a long-winded lecture about how I shouldn’t be gullible and how that lady probably had enough ones to buy 87 orders of fries now.
  • That’s OK because it was actually LAUREN’S DOLLAR I GAVE THAT LADY, OH LOL LOL LOL!
    • I actually just saw that broad again last week, right after some businessman gave her money and a hug and I watched that con-artist wipe away her fake tears and wanted to trip her, oxygen tank and all!
• I had a nightmare about Catherine. She was yelling at me from her office because I handed her a stack of folders and papers that I had hand-written and she hated my handwriting and felt that it was time to let me know because she just couldn’t take it anymore. So the next morning, IRL, I remembered the dream and found myself labeling a folder for her very slowly and as neat as possible. I told Glenn about this and he muttered, “Did you use your best crayon?” Ugh. I finally told Catherine about my dream later that afternoon and she exclaimed, “OMG I LOVE your handwriting though! I always have!” and I was like, “Yeah I know, my handwriting is awesome, duh.” *nail painting emoji*
• I made Todd watch the new BTS video and he said he liked it but he doesn’t like that there are 7 of them in the group. “It’s just too many. One of them is going to end up starting a fight and then it’s all over,” he said and I was like, “Yeah, if they were AMERICAN.” I don’t let Glenn watch my Kpop videos anymore because he’s a hater and the one day I was so mad because he was mocking the boy groups again and calling G-Dragon a pretty little girl and I was about ready to blow a gasket but then Carrie came over and distracted me long enough for my heart rate to come down. SORRY I’M NOT STANNING JETHRO TULL, GLENN.
• The day before I left for my lame Brookline vacation, Lori was like, “I want tacos. Do you want to go get tacos?” Whoever says no to tacos? Probably Trump supporters, of which I am not one so I said YES and we went to Condado and I didn’t fuck up my tacos this time  (last time I added the wrong sauce or something to my BBQ jackfruit creation and it just curb-stomped the whole flavor profile) and we also got the guac of the day which had raspberry puree in it and I never knew how much guacamole needed raspberries until that day and now I can never not eat it with raspberries. I’m just that fancy.

• One of the new perks that come along with Friday late shifts is that we have the option to work them from home. I mean, they’re still a drag but whatever. Anyway, Amber was all, “Make sure you have Jabber set up so you can take calls” and I was like, “OK but isn’t the REAL PERK of working from home that you get to miss all of your work phone calls? No? Ok. I put it off the first several times I was working from home but then I finally decided I better get that shit straightened out even though hardly anyone ever calls me at work. I logged on, threw on my headset and called my office phone from my cell phone. Nothing. Not even white noise. Just dead silence. So I’m sitting here at work, alternating saying hello into my headset and into my phone before eventually giving up and performing a traditional Angry Erin swear-stuffed screamo song. Then I called Henry and started yelling at him too because this was somehow his fault since he’s the one who plugged the headset in for me. While I was on the phone with him, my stupid Jabber notification popped up, saying that I had an incoming call from Lauren. OH GREAT A CALL I CAN’T ANSWER! I emailed her back immediately and said, “Jabber difficulties” and then after I finished verbally castrating Henry, I called Lauren back from my cell phone and started complaining right off the bat about my dead Jabber connection. “Erin,” she interrupted me solemnly. “Something happened….” She was scaring me. Was she calling to tell me that someone knocked over my Fiji mermaid?! Did Glenn deface my G-Dragon pictures? WHA’ HAPPENED?!!? Oh, I’ll tell you what happened. When I called myself, it somehow connected to my actual desk phone at work, put itself on SPEAKER, and broadcast me saying, “hello? hello?” to the whole quadrant. Lauren said she heard my voice coming from my desk and slowly turned around, and saw that Glenn and Todd were also blankly staring at my desk. And then Ethan was all, “Isn’t Erin working from home today?” She said it was so creepy and made her instantly yearn for Season 2 of Stranger Things. “Oh my god, like I was trapped in my phone or something?” I said, and then we had a hearty laugh, but really I was half-embarrassed that happened and also super thankful that I hung up before anyone could hear the explosive cursing that followed the hellos. “I wish they had heard,” Henry sighed. “Then they’d finally know the Erin I know.”
  • I’m working from home again this Friday and still haven’t figured it out. Please don’t call me. Email only.