Creepy Uncle-Type encroached on my personal space the other night. He brought with him a pocketful of misdemeanors, twitching mustache, and drug store aftershave aroma.

“When you gonna come have a beer with us?” he asked.

“I don’t drink beer,” I replied. I notice that I always use a snotty tone when conversing with him. I think he likes that, so I should stop that.

This gave him invitation to attempt to entice me with hard liquor. I smiled and said, “Wow, that sounds great” a few times, you know, to humor him.

“Yeah, you should come party with me,” he reiterated, and I noted that he had dropped the “group-hang” pretenses. “I got keys to the club.” He began rummaging in his pocket, for what I could only imagine was the lollipop he was about to use to lure me out to his truck.

He seemed to be waiting for me to deepen my inquiry on the matter, so I obliged by asking what kind of club he meant.

“The Yacht Club!” he exclaimed, his predatory eyes gleaming like he was about to go in for the kill. I found myself scooting back a little in my seat.

“Oh cool, and can we listen to yacht rock?” I asked with faux-enthusiasm. If he picked up on that, he chose to ignore it.

By now, he had found the object he was fishing for and pulled out a barrel key from his coat pocket. “See that? The key to the YACHT CLUB. I can go in there ANY TIME I WANT.”

“Yes, I imagine with a key, you could,” I said,  letting him have his moment in the spotlight.

“You should come party at the yacht club, with me at the yacht club, me and you, partying at the yacht club, I have a key to the yacht club so we can party at the yacht club. Wait, you ARE 21, ain’t you?”

I think he was asking me out?

I guess he doesn’t know that in order to be my work boyfriend, he has to call me The Lovely Erin, cutie pie, and doll; notice that I’m wearing a headband; and ask with utmost sincerity if I need anything from the store. And sorry Creepy Uncle-Type, but that role is filled from approximately 6pm-9pm, three days a week, by my music friend Bill.

I finished the training phase of my job a few weeks ago, so they have me working alone now. One of the reasons they hired me was because three of the billers were looking to take a leave – they all work full-time jobs on top of this one – so now it’s just me and this woman Diane. She works 1-2 nights a week and I work the rest, which is great because now my evenings are a little more flexible and I have more time to get other shit done.  Basically, it’s the job I’ve been pining for all my adult years.

Since I work alone now, I can listen to music outright instead of pissing around with headphones. And my boss doesn’t mind if I’m playing screamo or hardcore. (I think he’s the best boss I’ve ever had.)  So since I’m bringing actual CDs to work and not my mp3 player (CDs –  OMG remember those??), it’s turned my work station into a conversation starter. Last week, one of the night drivers was walking past and paused when he heard Chiodos playing. He came over and inspected the CD, then started asking me questions about them. Then he commented, with raised eyebrows, that he had seen the types of music I had listed on that dumb diversity sign.

“You were surprised, I take it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I would have taken you for the bubblegum type.” And this is what I’m used to so I laughed heartily and admitted that under my blonde hair and friendly smile (I really AM friendly sometimes!), I’m all aggro and breeding hate.

I had never really talked to this particular driver before at length, but that night we bullshitted for about thirty minutes, about how we miss Nick’s Fat City (a local venue that closed a few years ago) and how we’ve probably been at the same shows at the same time and just never knew it. He kind of looks like a pirate and wears big hoop earrings and he’s totally my new best work friend. My boss commented later that he’s never seen me so lit up, to which I responded, “You’ve never talked to me about music!”

There’s another driver that I see every day; he’s one of the daylight drivers so he’s always finishing his day while I’m there billing. Diane had mentioned off-handedly a few weeks ago that he’s the only person there who creeps her out, and my boss Dave once wondered aloud if this guy jacks off in the truck while watching women in parking lots, but I never thought much of it until I started working alone.  He’s like the predatory uncle that you avoid at family reunions; he’s that kind of creepy.

So now for whatever reason he tries to bait me with his awkward jokes and he teases me like a CREEPY UNCLE TEASES A LITTLE GIRL BEFORE STICKING HIS HAND UP HER PINK PARTY DRESS OMG EW. I usually stay out of the dispatch room when I hear his voice in there, and I am thankful that there are always twenty five million men around me at all times. I end each altercation with him by turning my back and pantomiming the kind of projectile vomiting I imagine would follow up a molestation session.

Every one else is awesome. I mean, I got a paper cut the other day and I thought one of the drivers was going to fly to the nearest shaman and come back with a piece of rare medicinal fabric woven with magic and the pubes of Elvis to wrap around my wound. THAT is how concerned this dude was. Last night, I overheard him sayng that when he comes home from work early, he hides in the basement so his wife doesn’t know he’s home. “It’s like when you play hookie from school,” he said. I hope that someday, Henry harbors enough resentment to put him in hiding, too. Only then will I feel success as a woman.

There are two Republican drivers who don’t really bother with me because they know they can’t tell racist Obama jokes and refer to those of us who voted for him as “whackjobs,” and there are a few other guys who get nervous around me, like I’m the new class pet that they desperately want to poke with a stick but are afraid of getting paddled. But mostly, I’ve been accepted there and have slowly been revealing facets of my personality. Soon they’ll know I really AM a whackjob, I guess.

The best part is that, unlike my last job, I actually enjoy the work I do and I’m consistently busy. It makes the nights go so fast and it’s also rewarding to know that they’re counting on me to get this shit done. I didn’t feel like I mattered at my last job, which made me hate it that much more.

I hope this is one long-lasting honeymoon, that’s all I’m sayin’.

One day last week, the day manager accosted me as I walked into work.

“Do you have artistic skills?” he asked earnestly, eyebrows cocked slightly in anticipation of the Right Answer.

I hesitated. I stuttered. I backed up a little into my work area. “I don’t know, sort of. It depends. Is my life on the line? Then I can draw a fine set of tits if pressed to. No really, I suck.”

“Great, here’s some Sharpies and poster board.” And that is how (more or less) I walked right into the great important task of birthing a Diversity Chart for the company.

I had briefly pissed around with it earlier in the week, but then my cat Marcy and her fat ass slept on it and maimed the poster board with irreversible crinkles and war wounds. Hoping that avoidance and a dark corner would remedy it, I stowed the sheets behind my dresser and forgot about it. Until 10pm Sunday night, a day before it was due. and Henry was chased out the door by a lashing tongue to procure fresh poster board. An hour later, five desecrated sheets of poster board were strewn carelessly onto the floor, mingling with clumps of my hair; and the feelings of Henry sobbed in the shower, post-rape. But there was one mighty fine diveristy-in-the-workplace project – in the stylings of Erin – to show for it.

When I took it to work on Monday, my manager was already gone for the day. But my boss, Dave, stopped me as I walked through dispatch, the poster banging off my knees like a sandwich board.

“What the fuck is that?” Dave asked, pulling up the poster to read it.

“It’s that thing Vince asked me to do,” I explained.

Dave laughed and rolled his eyes. “Vince is so gay. I can’t believe he got you to do this.”

“Oh, but how I love to make magic with Sharpies,” I mumbled, moving the poster into the office. The A/P lady and the other biller who was scheduled to work with me that night (my favorite one, Diane) gathered around to extoll the virtues of my grade school science fair knock off.

I stood there awkwardly, confused and slightly embarrassed. It was a sign. It said “Getting To Know You: Diversity Week 2008” along the top, with a list of employee names going down the left hand side, and a few personality-defining questions along the top under the title. It wasn’t some magnificant pie chart made of edible ink and sprinkled with crack cocaine. It was a poster. It was blue, black and green. It had lines. Oooh, the ingenuity of it all.

“This must have taken you HOURS!” Diane exclaimed.

“No, not really.” Please stop talking about it. You’re embarrassing yourself.

The sign stayed on my desk all night, therefore managing to stay out of any ensuing limelight. But before we left, I pleaded with Diane to fill out her answers. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the only dork on here.

” She laughed and filled out the answers to questions like “Favorite food,” “Favorite music” (you can imagine mine) and “Hobbies and Interests.” I played it sage and put writing, horror movies and going to concerts. I’ve only been there a month. They don’t need to know that I fill empty chunks of my life with stalking my neighbors and making serial killer Christmas cards. Please. I like this job. Keeping it would be great.

By yesterday, Vince had unveiled it to most of the employees. I noticed, as I walked through the breakroom at the start of my shift, that several other people had added their survey answers.

An hour later, I heard one man say to another, “Hey, I didn’t know you went to South Park High School!”, leading into a heartfelt bonding session of shared memories.

But then a few minutes late, I heard raucous laughter from the breakroom.

“You like JAZZ?” one of the drivers instigated.

“Who the fuck would put SUSHI as their favorite food? That’s disgusting,” a dock worker barked.

One of the dock workers came up to me when I was chilling in the dispatch room and yelled, very quizically, “What the fuck is an INDIE ROCK?

” while a driver (who also happened to see me at the flea market on Sunday, how fabulous) felt a bond with me because my favorite vacation spot is the same place he goes every summer. (I played it safe and put Wildwood NJ instead of Morocco because it’s too early for my co-workers to know that I’m a pretentious snob.)

But by the end of the night, as more drivers returned from their routes, my poor poster had become a breeding ground for judgemental finger-wagging and insincere answers. Someone put “San Francisco” as his favorite vacation spot and then paraded around saying, “You know why, DON’T YOU?” because for some lame reason, he tries to make the other drivers (firmly planted in their hetero heels) uncomfortable by pretending to be gay. Oh, how I missed working around truck drivers.

“This poster isn’t bringing any diversity into THIS workplace,” I laughed to Diane as I returned to my desk.

“Oh, I know! It’s just giving them new ways to make fun of each other.”

Dave said he was surprised that the first eight people actually filled it out appropriately. “Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I didn’t think Pauls’ favorite food was ‘geese’.”

“No, I think it really is,” he said, and we laughed. “That’s why I’m not filling it out. I just can’t take it seriously.”

And why my manager ever thought that a bunch of men in the transportation industry WOULD take it seriously is beyond me. But it sure is funny watching grown men wheedle away at each other’s dignity. Maybe next month, Vince can have them all write an essay about their feelings.

My favorite security guard Earon (I just learned how to spell his name tonight so I guess he’s not THAT much of a favorite) just came over to say goodbye to me and I AM SO SAD.

So here I am, my last night at work, and I’m feeling alright. Everything has been pretty anti-climactic. When Eleanore left at 6, our big farewell-for-ever consisted of her tossing a "be a good girl" over her shoulder as she trudged away. Not even a hug. Really, Eleanore? We’ve sat together for a YEAR AND A HALF and not even a hug?

No really, I didn’t want one.

Joe left me with two peach Swisher Sweets, which made me happy. Thanks Joe! And Jenn, who used to work at night but has been on dayshift for the past year, left me a note in my mailbox and that made me smile. Thanks Jenn!

Tina decided she was leaving at 7:30 instead of toughing it out until midnight. This may be my last night here forever, but this is also the last night of evening shift (which is the main reason I resigned); you’d think we’d have had a party or something, the three of us. Maybe have a kegger in the parking lot, who the fuck knows. But apparently not.

As she walked past me, she paused and wished me luck and said that she wants me to send her occasional photos of Chooch. I said of course I would, and then as I heard the door shut behind her, something WEIRD happened. I mean, some crazy ass fucking shit — legitimate sadness happened. I even whispered, "Aw, Tina" quietly to my monitor. Then promptly slapped my hand over my mouth. It kind of felt like I had just been touched by an uncle AND LIKED IT.

I ran into Kim’s cube and blurted out, "I THINK I’M GOING TO MISS HER!" Kim laughed the word, "What?!" Then she got a good look at my sniveling face and exclaimed, "Oh my god, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’re going to cry!"

AND I FEEL LIKE IT, TOO. Tina, of all people. Tina and her gooey scabs. Tina and her codpiece. Tina and her man-stance. TINA I’LL MISS YOU.

DEAR BLOG,

Tonight I had planned on writing about my great time at Warped Tour / Henry’s terrible time at Warped Tour. But then I decided to tell my boss that tomorrow will be my last night here at my job, so instead of plastering photos of scene kids (I am so enchanted by them, in fact, that I think I’m going to do a photographical study) all along the Internet, I’ve been sitting at my desk & staring blankly at the computer screen.

The end.

Kim just brought this in for me from her garden. Someone’s getting fucked tonight! Look out, Henry; better lube up.

And I just heard Kim tell Tina, "I like all food. Well, except for anything that Erin would eat."

WTF?

Making my desk prettier, with a side of bacon and eggs. Too bad my address is so blurry, was hoping to get new stalkers. Oh well. Maybe for Xmasz0rz.

EDIT: Oh Jesus Christ. Hang in there, Craigery. Fuck.

Was just outside on break, having Tina lecture me about how someday I’ll have to grow up (gasp) and that my thirtieth birthday is really going to hit me hard. I stamped my foot and was all, "Whatev! I want to wear Volcom hoodies and Draven shoes and cut out my heart to screamo music forev and ev."

Kim, on the other hand, prefers to perpetuate my immaturity and had me teaching her various Internet-spawned slang to give her vocab that added obnoxious touch. Basically, I just recounted all the things Christina and I say that started out satirically but now I think we say them in srs-ness; things that make Henry turn up the volume on the TV when she’s visiting.

We went through the regs: OMG, WTF, BTW. Sounding out LOL instead of saying L-O-L.  Adding z0rz to words to give a veritable face-punch of immaturity. Owellz0rz!

Tina kept grinding her teeth and groaning, "Oh Jesus Christ," proving the validity to my lesson. "Who talks like that?" she demanded in disgust, her weener likely growing more flaccid by the second. She’s probably hunkered down over her desk as I type this, ripping open more of her "bug bites" in Erin-induced agitation.

"Erin does," Kim said cheerfully, flipping her hair in mockery. "Now I know why she’s so quiet in our meetings — no one would know what the fuck she’s saying."

Walking back inside, I said, "You can also add -sies to the end of things for that extra ridic boost of cuteness. Lolsies!" They started ignoring me after that. It’s just as well — anything beyond that would likely be too advanced for them. Whatevelyn.

Tina’s on a diet. To prevent herself from inhaling a bag of popcorn every night, she stocked up on economy-sized boxes of "healthy" snacks. I’m not sure if she knows that Quakes cease being a good diet food when the entire multi-serving bag is gorged in one sitting.

Eleanore’s on a diet too, so Tina is sharing her stash with her. Since I didn’t join the diet club, I don’t get any.

I DON’T WANT IT ANYWAY.

Except one pack of those Morning Minis.

We got to leave work early and finish the last two hours of the shift from home. I can’t remember the last time I felt so happy at work, as I did at that moment the news was dropped by our manager, like my heart was full of gumdrops while watching viking porn.

This couldn’t have happened at a better time either, because Eleanore was tossing objects around in her desk, seemingly from great distances, like she was trying to win a giant Spongebob on a carnival midway  And Tina has been enduring some kind of marital strife and has been wanting to talk about it, which is not in my job description.

So now I’m at home, gloating because Collin had to stay there all by himself. He’s probably cowering in his cubicle, hiding from all the big scary rapists and missing me.

Now I’m going to take off my bra, put on some Days of Our Lives and smoke some crack. While I’m working. Maybe pistol-whip some bitches too. While I’m working.

In the process of getting a cup of tea, I zoned out and ended up pouring coffee over top of the tea bag. It was my last tea bag, and I didn’t feel like making the perilous trek to the other side of the dark building to steal another, so I dumped out the coffee and refilled with water. The damage had already been done, though; the tea bag was bloated with coffee.

Returning my seat, I alerted Eleanore to my screw-up; a little self-deprecation usually goes a long way with her, makes her feel superior. I let her make fun of me while the tea was steeping, happy that my roast had rendered her scissor-hands inactive.

"Mmmm, this is delicious," I said after taking a tentative sip.

Not picking up on my sarcasm, Eleanore said, "Oh thank God, babe! I was worried you’d waste the tea bag."

As she was saying that, I had started to get up from my seat, planning to dump the cup of java tea and rinse my mouth with a good acid wash. But see, she’s been talking to me all night, like the good old days, initiating conversation all on her own. I didn’t want to risk compromising our newfound friendship by correcting her. Eleanore hates to be corrected. Oh, how my ennui loves a good dilemma. To dump or to drink.

One of my polarizing personalities is People Pleaser, which always inspires a chuckle or two since I really don’t like people much at all. So I kept it. I’m drinking a muddied cup of tea. My tongue just touched a swarm of coffee grinds. I’m drinking tea and coffee from the same cup. It’s disgusting. And I think I’m beginning to acquire a taste for it.

Tina and Eleanore have a perpetual email chain going during the shift. They will laugh out loud, completely over-the-top Jello-bellied guffaws, as they read each other’s latest (lame, I’m betting) quip. So last night, Kim intercepted me as I left the restroom and, in hushed tones, proposed that we give them a taste of their own medicine.

“Make them think we’re talking about them,” she said, deviously.

“But we really do that,” I reminded.

She ignored me and continued whispering. “When you go back to your desk, laugh, and then I’ll laugh.”

Not one to decline a foray into junior high shenanigans, I accepted the mission. “Just let me steal some tea bags first, and then I’ll do it,” I promised.

In my travels to the other side of the building to forage for tea, I began to overthink my assignment. I wanted my tittering to sound as realistic as possible but pressure was preventing me from remembering how I regularly laughed. I at least knew it wasn’t a sleazy snortle a la Tina.

I felt like I should have given myself a practice test, laughed out loud a few times while walking back from my tea journey. But it’s already bad enough that I have a rap for stalking the cleaning crew with my camera phone; I didn’t want to add schizo chuckler to my reputation.

By the time I returned to my area, my palms were coated with a clammy glaze. Nervous and guilty, I stomped past a book-reading Eleanore and, in the skittish falsetto of someone who just partied with an eight ball, I shouted, “IS THAT BOOK GOOD?” A normal, non-suspicious person might have first asked her what the fuck book she was even reading, but I was too busy being squashed under an anvil of pressure.

 Eleanore seemed startled at my near-accusatory inquiry, and replied with a confused, “Uh, yeah, babe.

I’m only on page 100 though.” I shouted “THAT’S GOOD” and sat down clumsily at my desk.

And then I did it.

Try to remember back to 1988 when you snuffed that fisherman down on the docks, behind the tower of cargo, and you heard him suck in his last pitiful breath: all raspy and wet-sounding from choking on the blood corked in his throat, and you’ll have a good idea of what my forced laugh sounded like. Strangulated and weak. Pathetic. Painful. A soul drifting off into the ether.

Kim didn’t even hear it from her cube. If Eleanore heard, and I don’t think she did, she probably just thought I had indigestion.

I emailed Kim and apologized for single-handedly fucking her plan in the ass.

“Idiot.” That was her reply. Succinct, honest, deserved.

Ever since Tina came back to night shift, she has, as I’ve previously mentioned, been the proverbial dingleberry to Eleanore’s ass. They are absolutely inseparable, which is confusingly funny to me considering the amount of bitching and moaning Eleanore did upon discovery of Tina’s eventual return.

Last Friday, Tina was mad at Kim; a lingering anger from the fight the two of them had the night before. (Basically, it all stemmed from Tina having Know-It-All Syndrome which comes with that nasty side effect of Must-Have-Last-Word — which I hear really leaves a nasty coating on your tongue and makes you sound like you’re coughing up phlegm every time you laugh — and Kim telling her she can’t stand her.) Knowing that we were all supposed to order Chinese food together, Tina brought in her own, and was ever so kind enough to bring Eleanore some too. Fuck, she sucks on Eleanore’s ass so hard it makes you wonder if she gurgles with her shit, too. But for real Tina: way to stick it to Kim. God forbid Kim and I had to order food all by ourselves. I bet Kim couldn’t tell if her food just had too much soy sauce on it or if she was eating the tears she had shed from being excluded from the cool club.

A few moments ago, we all had to go outside and move our cars to the valet area because people are surveying the lot. I walked back in with Kim and Tina and we bumped into Eleanore, who was talking to another employee. Kim, growing impatient of holding the door for Tina, turned and said, “Aren’t you coming?” Seeing that Tina had fallen back and firmly lodged herself inside Eleanore’s asshole, Kim answered her own question. “Oh I forgot, you have to hold Eleanore’s hand.”

It’s the proudest I’ve ever been of my boss.

One of the security guards broke the coffee maker and couldn’t get it to stop flowing. In a panic, he did what anyone else here at MSA would do, I guess, and fetched Eleanore. Her puppy Tina followed close behind. And then I followed too because things like this are endlessly entertaining to me.

When Tina procured a Halloween treat basket from beneath the sink to catch overspill, I knew it was picture time.

"Erin, you MUST be bored if you’re taking pictures of THIS," Eleanore hissed, annoyed.

Little things like this excite me.