My day job
isn’t all that exciting, which leaves me with quite a bit of time to observe
the people around me. For various reasons I can’t really come right out and
tell you what I do, or where I work, but suffice to say that I work in a
government facility and I’m in the minority when it comes to my job
description.
Over the
years I have experienced some truly spectacular examples of people’s ignorance,
or just plain stupidity. Were this a scientific study, I’m sure the fact that
the subjects described herein are government employees would be of particular
interest, though I’m sure, not very surprising.
The first
experience that comes to mind happened maybe a year or two ago. I was sitting
at my desk, doing what I do, when a rather large lady waddles up to me. I
wasn’t surprised that she was largish as pretty much all the women here are of
such rotund stature. I don’t normally associate lack of cranial capacity with
excess amounts of blubber, but most of these cases have made me rethink things
a time or two. Anyway Shamu says to me, “How do I get to the second floor of
that building?”
(My desk is situated inside of an enclosure that connects
two separate buildings.) I had never seen this person before, so I assumed that
she was a visitor and was asking where the elevators were. If only it was that
innocent…
I swiveled in my chair and pointed down the hall and said,
“Go straight down the hall and there are elevators on your left.” Simple,
clear, concise instructions wouldn’t you say? Remember my growing theory on
cranial capacity? Yup, here it comes:
This lady looks at me and says, referring to the elevators,
“And they go up?”
No, I didn’t make that up.
So after my
brain takes a second or two to decide if it really heard what my ears are
telling it, I slowly say, “Uhh yeah. They sure do…”
She says, “Thanks!” and rolls on down the hallway.
Ever
experienced a time like this when you literally have to force yourself to be
nice, and not utter the first response that comes to mind? It was all I could
do to keep from blurting out, “Why no, dollface. Those elevators only go up for
important people. I’m pretty sure for you they’re only going to go sideways.
Tell me…who ties your shoes for you in the morning?”
Look I realize that this is going
to come off as a “Heeere’s yer sign” rip off, but it wouldn’t be very original
of me if I were to throw these morsels in with that particular batch of redneck wit. Do the words
“redneck” and “wit” even belong in the same sentence? I don’t think so either.
Now for the “creatures of habit”
part of this entry. Again, same setting, same subjects.
The buildings in which I work have
these cleverly designed blocks of concrete or other material, arranged in
planes of 90 degree vertical angles which are met at regular intervals by
adjacent 0 degree horizontal angles, respectively, which together rise upwards
at a collective angle roughly 45 degrees, for the use of manual locomotion by
one or more persons at a time.
We call these modern marvels “stairs”. This explanation was
provided for those of you that may work for the government. (I kid! I kid! Unless you work in the same buildings I
do.)
Moving
along. In one of the buildings there are some of these “stairs” that terminate
into a narrow hallway. Well, for normal healthy people it’s not that narrow,
but for overweight people who will stop in the middle of it to hold long and
pointless conversations, i.e. the people I work with, it’s quite narrow.
So the door
that opens from the stairwell into the hallway swings pretty far into the
hallway, at least for fat people. So inevitably people are going to be struck
by the door on the rare occasion someone decides to walk on the wild side and take
the stairs. “Why don’t the people coming from the stairwell watch out for
people in the hallway?” You may ask, and you would be commended for your
courtesy. The answer, of course, is that the door is solid and has no little
window. Or I should say, had no window.
After many
complaints, and yes workplace injury claims (one lady actually filed a report
stating that it was not safe for her to walk down the hallway), a contractor
was called in to remove the doors on all stairwells, cut holes in them, place
glass in the holes, and replace said doors. This, I’m sure you can imagine, was
done with great expense to the American tax payer. Meaning YOUR money.
But that
didn’t fix the problem, oh nooo. Because people in general are creatures of
habit and don’t like to change anything especially if it’s in consideration for
anybody else, (see my entry entitled “The Oblivious Collective”) people just
thought that the little windows in the door were for a semi pleasing aesthetic
effect and not to be actually used.
So, after
more complaints and more injury filings, a contractor was brought in to…are you
ready for this? Install a red light on the ceiling above the door in the
hallway. This light is connected to a motion sensor in the stairwell, thereby
turning on the red light when anyone approaches and warning all to stay away
from the dangers of the door actually being opened. On top of that, at one
point they were considering installing a loud buzzer that would go off whenever
the door was opened. But I guess they decided that would be overkill. I have
yet to hear anyone say “Thank you so much for protecting us from ourselves!”,
by the way.
While I’m
writing about being protected from one’s own stupidity (which should be
illegal) I need to put this one in: There was, once again, a walking donut,
that decided to step onto a declining curb out in front of the building. The
curb slopes down to level with the ground, and is painted red, as it terminates
next to the dock driveway. Oopsie! The lady took a fall and hurt her ample
bottom. Now there is a metal railing there that is about three feet long, in
case some other dumbass wants to come along and step onto the red painted curb
and can’t handle the sudden change in their own center of gravity.
This brings
me to what happened yesterday, which is what prompted this admittedly mean
scrutiny of the people that occupy space around me at work.
The
buildings I work at, being a government installation, have computer controlled
doors with magnetic locks on them. Not even Rosie O’Donnell’s immense stupidity
is enough to force these things to disengage. Although were she to fling
herself bodily against one of these doors, it might cause it to shudder in
disgust and therefore release, but I think the most that would happen would be
that I’d get a big kick out of seeing Rosie O’Donnell flung into something.
Anyway, as
is guaranteed by the Constitution or something, the computer systems that
control these buildings rarely work flawlessly. And as such, most of the
building went offline. So the Marx brothers, along with the Three Stooges, were
sent out to try and repair it, which consisted of reloading the entire system.
This process takes roughly six hours. Doors that have magnetic locks on them
had to be propped open during this process, and signs were printed and attached
to the doors clearly telling employees to use the propped open door for entry,
rather than the normal means of entering the building.
I tried to
keep count of how many people, upon walking through the door, asked, “Are the
doors not working??” I really did try, but I lost count. Apparently it was just
too much for them to handle. “The doors are working fine, now get back out
there and try again! Who do you think you are just walking through an open
door, huh?!
Another
large sign was placed on the door normally used for exiting the building. This
sign said: DOOR INOPERABLE. PLEASE USE HANDICAP DOOR. SHOW I.D. WHEN ENTERING
THE BUILDING.
Pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you say? Yes you would, but
then again, chances are you don’t work where I do.
I again
lost track of how many people tried to show me their I.D. on their way OUT the
door. Apparently they couldn’t figure out that we don’t care who wants to leave the building.
But it was
all summed up by a particular person who wanted to leave the building. Remember
the giant signs I was talking about? They were placed OVER the key card readers
on the inoperable doors so that they would be clearly visible. (A person would
normally hold their key card up to the reader, which would disable the lock on
the door) But here’s what I get for assuming that people are more intelligent
than they really are:
This lady
walks up to the door and holds her keycard up to where the reader SHOULD be,
but where now is a large sign basically saying: DON’T USE THIS DOOR. What
happens? She stands there, waiting for the lock to disengage…looks at the
sign…tries to scan her card again…stands there waiting for the lock to
disengage.
At this
point I just wanted to let her stand there all freakin’ day. Lucky for her that
particular door came online right then and let her go through, otherwise she
really might have stood there all day until she demanded someone come and
install a red light so that people could be warned of the door, and also a
railing in case the bags of pork rinds she consumed for lunch shifted and she
needed something to keep her from toppling over.
I think it
goes without saying that, if you’re feeling badly about yourself, all you have
to do is take a minute and observe the people around you, and pretty soon
you’ll be feeling much much better about yourself.
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