I’m off work today and yet here I am, writing about work. Here are a few Reporting From Work moments that I want to remember, because these things always help remind me that at the end of the day, office life is alright. Except for…
The Great, Horrible G-Dragon Kidnapping
Late Wednesday afternoon, Wendy and Sue were talking to me at my desk, probably about how fantastic I am, or maybe that’s what I was talking about, when Sue noticed my BIGBANG coffee cup. Wendy said, “Yeah, show Sue that other G-Dragon thing you have on your desk,” referring to the vinyl thingie that I bought at H-Mart and once adorned the G-Dragon Countdown calendar that Lori made:
I used to have him taped to the side of my computer monitor, but then he kept falling so now I just leave him to the left of my keyboard. I instinctively reached for him to show Sue, but my hand GRASPED NOTHING BUT EMPTY DESK-TOP. That was weird, I thought. I never move him from that spot. So I started shuffling things around, yanking drawers open, moving bottles of fake blood out of the way, tossing fake fingers over my shoulder…I even checked in my Fiji Mermaid’s fishbowl.
I immediately accused Wendy of this because she thinks G-Dragon is dumb and was it just a coincidence that she brought up that G-Dragon keepsake? I THINK NOT.
Sue backed away slowly, clearly not wanting to implicate herself in whatever Great American Crime Story I was writing up in my head. Wendy profusely swore that it wasn’t her, and by now word was spreading that G-Dragon was missing mostly because my voice was getting louder and more hysterical by the minute. Todd walked past to go to the refrigerator and I cried, “TODD DO YOU KNOW WHERE MY G-DRAGON IS!?” and he was all, “What G-Dragon?” because now people were conveniently playing dumb and acting like they had NO IDEA what G-Dragon relic I was talking about.
“IT’S THAT VINYL THINGIE OF HIM! FROM WHEN HE WAS AT THE CHANEL FASHION SHOW LAST YEAR!” I kept using this as the clue that was really going to drive it home, jog that person’s memory. Like someone was going to exclaim, “Oh yes! The one of him in that confusing not-quite-beret!” But every single person I said that to just looked at me like I was a crazy person.
Naturally, my next guess was Glenn. I didn’t see it on his desk and I didn’t want to go through his stuff EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE APPARENTLY HAVE NO PROBLEM GOING THROUGH MINE so I started searching in shared areas, like the supply closet, expecting to see GD’s beautiful, shining face peering down at me but NOTHING.
This continued on when I got back to work yesterday. I immediately confronted Glenn and he was actually scared a little, I think. I think he knows better than to ever, EVER, move any G-Dragon artifact from my desk. He swore profusely that it wasn’t him and the fear in his eyes made me believe him. Lauren suggested that maybe it was Aaron, and I started to consider this and then without any evidence at all, I had him pegged as the perp. When I came back from getting water in the kitchen, I noticed that the supply cabinet door was left ajar – a notorious indicator that Aaron had been creeping around. He never shuts that door all the way! So I flung it open and started digging through things again, thinking that maybe I had actually overlooked GD when I was searching that cabinet the day before, and Aaron had come over to see if his work was still in play.
I still didn’t see anything, but I did find some soft Cars-themed balls on the bottom shelf, and Lauren excitedly asked me to throw her one. I thought we were going to have an impromptu game of Monkey in the Middle since this happened near Glenn’s desk, but then she never threw it back to me. I think she wanted it for her dog.
ANYWAY. I went back to my desk and moments later, I could feel Aaron’s presence nearby, so I spun around and hysterically asked, “AARON DID YOU TAKE SOMETHING OF MINE.” He seemed shocked at first but then coyly said, “Maybe…” but he was just playing along and actually had no idea what I was talking about so then I had to describe the missing GD and once again the Chanel fashion show did nothing to help.
“What did it look like again?” Lauren asked me a few minutes later, and I cried, “WHY ARE YOU GOING TO SEND OUT AN EMAIL!?” and she was like, “Um, no, I was just going to ask anyone who walks by….”
Anyway, I never did find him and I’m honestly beginning to think that I probably accidentally moved him somewhere, threw him out (Lord help me) or maybe he was stuck to my purse or something one day when I was leaving and I dropped him outside I AM THE WORST KEEPER OF G-DRAGON. But! At least I can just easily get another one (all the Kpop shops sell those things) and I’m thankful that it wasn’t the GD doll my mom got me, or the GD keychain Maya made me! Those ones are not replaceable.
“Erin’s Not Going to Know.”
Wednesday, while I was running around with my hands in my hair, interrogating people about the whereabouts of G-Dragon, I overheard Wendy say to Jeannie, “Maybe Erin Kelly knows” and Jeannie responded with, “Erin is NOT going to know!” This stopped me in my tracks. Challenge accepted! I called out, “Wait — I might know!” and immediately prayed it wasn’t something work-related that was going to illuminate my dumbness.
So Wendy started with, “Do you know that toy with the ring that goes around your ankle—-”
“SKIP IT!” I cried.
“Yeah! That’s what it is!” Wendy laughed, and I guess Jeannie was looking for one for her niece for Xmas but couldn’t remember what it was called, so then Jeannie and I looked at all of the options on Amazon and I was feeling so sad because I loved my Skip-It unconditionally, and even had one in my early-20s, but it wasn’t as good as the original one from the 80s.
“If it’s something an 11-year-old girl would like, of course Erin would know what it is,” Wendy said and then everyone within earshot got a great laugh out of that WOW SO SOON AFTER G-DRAGON WENT MISSING, EVEN.
Anyway, I kept going on and on about how much I loved Skip-It and how great I was at it, and finally Jeannie was like, “Oh my god, do you want me to buy you one, too?!” and I immediately said yes so I hope she wasn’t joking because I’m going to be waiting for this to appear on my desk every day from now until Christmas.
Secret Santa Reveal
We did our Secret Santa Reveal event yesterday and I am now safe to scream from the hilltops that I was Amber’s Secret Santa! And Wendy was mine! What a perfect scenario!
Of course as luck would have it, neither Amber nor Wendy were in the office yesterday, so Carrie gave me my gift from Wendy and then someone Facetimed Amber and made me open her gift while she watched through the phone and it was pretty awkward like being on a stage except we were standing in an empty hallway.
Amber had coffee/tea, Qdoba, and plants written on her idea list, and I decided to go the tea route because my childhood friend Chris (not of Chronica fame) is a beekeeper and I have been meaning to buy some of his sweet honey (literally!) for some time now. So one of the gifts I put together was tea-themed, with some type of loose-leaf tea blend from India because she likes Indian things, a tall tea cup thing and these little cuties:
Honestly, we got to do a honey sampling and I was like, “Can I move in here? I’ll help you bottle this stuff all day long.”
And then for the last gift, I wanted to combine all three things on her list into one, at which point Chooch suggested getting a tortilla and filling it with dead plant parts and tea bags. I went with my own idea though, sorry Chooch. Maybe if I was BARB’S Secret Santa, I would have used his idea, though.
I topped it off with some of the TOPSHELF, $8.99 a pound mystery candy from the weird international market by my house.
Eastern European Candy PSA
Speaking of weird mystery candy, I also filled up a bag from the $4.99 shelf for the rest of my co-workers to “enjoy” out of the Plastic Pumpkin of International Horrors. I got several that were large and had some generic Disney prince and princess on the wrapper. For some reason, I want to believe that the bigger the better, not sure where I could possibly be getting that from, so I had high expectations for these ones. I treated myself to one yesterday afternoon and immediately turned to Glenn, making the HAVE I BEEN POISONED??? face.
“This might be the WORST candy out of the whole bunch!” I cried. And Lauren just brought back durian toffee from Thailand, so this is a huge statement on my part. Let me try to describe it:
The base looks like a peppermint patty. Just a chocolate circle thing. The top has four small mounds of what I later learned was “cookie biscuit” when Lori read the wrapper out loud. An interesting structure that I was excited to bite into! But inside the chocolate, which by the way was one of the worst attempts at chocolate I’ve ever had, was that awful firm jelly shit that masochistic confectioners like to slip inside candy sometimes. I don’t even know what flavor the jelly was supposed to be. Raspberry perfume? But when shit really got deep was when the notes of the “cookie biscuit” swam to the forefront of my palate. I couldn’t imagine what I was tasting, but it was familiar. And not a flavor you want in your mouth when you’re eating something sweet. I was standing up at this point, unsure if I should spit it out, google the Poison Control number, write a letter to the President of the Ukraine and demand that the inventor of this candy be incarcerated.
And that’s when I realized that the taste in my mouth WAS BLEU CHEESE.
Chocolate candy with a bleu cheese aftertaste!!! NO, UKRAINE. GO FUCK YOURSELF.
***
Well, that was going to be the end of my work update, but then I was getting ready to leave the house to walk to the post office, I put my hand in my coat pocket and wondered what the strangely-shaped object was that my hand had grazed, and this is what I pulled out:
BUT HOW!? Either I did this by accident (but I honestly don’t remember and there was nothing else in that pocket that could have potentially been next to it on my desk that I would have intentionally grabbed while accidentally grabbing G-Dragon at the same time) or SOMEONE IS SABOTAGING MY SANITY. I’m off work today but you can believe that this investigation is far from over.
(Also thank god he turned up because I couldn’t remember what these figures are called when I was trying to find one online to buy.)