Monday (Wives and Girlfriends and Everything In-Between)

My desk at work is in a high traffic area.  I produce industrial netting samples in a small corner area out on the production floor, but in a space right by the door leading to the offices and bathrooms.  And I don't have a cubicle.  What I do have, however, are two little comfortable looking chairs and a small coffee table sitting in front of my desk, an eccentric addition to my workspace courtesy of my boss, who thought it was cute to dress up the sample area in the fake décor of a small office.  I also have a couple of cracked paintings of wine glasses hanging above my desk.  Sometimes I look at those paintings and think…

God I could use a couple of glasses of you.

Thanks to my faux office set-up, my area is a popular hang-out for my co-workers looking to kill a minute or thirty while waiting for their shift to end.  Or for their lunch break to begin.  Or right after their lunch break.  Or while walking to the bathroom.  Or while walking to the snack machine.  Or when it's 4:43 pm on a Monday afternoon, and for absolutely no reason Paul is sitting in one of my "office" chairs and talking to me about…things.

It's Paul's birthday today.  It is also my mom's birthday today, and we manage a two minute conversation marveling over that coincidence.  Paul has a shaved head and a face that looks suspiciously like the face on He-Man's home, Castle Grayskull.  Despite his outward appearances, Paul is actually a very nice guy.  Or maybe he just seems like a nice guy compared to his outward appearances, because his outward appearance is that of someone that would cheerfully slice off your limbs and use your torso as a hood ornament.

Nah, he's a nice guy.

Paul has just finished entertaining me with a story about his previous year's birthday, during which he apparently got his wife drunk to the point of unconsciousness and then engaged in sexual intercourse with her.  Those aren't the words he uses, of course; I'm paraphrasing.  But it was something along those lines.  I always thought getting married meant you didn't have to get girls drunk to have sex with them anymore, but then again, what would I know?  I'm a child of divorce.

At some point our conversation moves to the area of love in general.  Paul tells me about the one time he was heartbroken.  After dating a certain woman for two years, she left him, telling him she was going back to her husband.  An expression of genuine loss crosses Paul's face.

I am unexpectedly touched.  "Wow, that's really too bad.  You were with her for two years, and she never told you she had a husband?"

"Oh no, I knew," Paul tells me.  "Hell, I was with my wife at the time."

Um…

Ahhhhh…

Okay.

And just like that, a beautiful story of unrequited love turns into a wildly uncomfortable tale of infidelity, booze, and sexual position I was not previously familiar with, but apparently requires a non-slick horizontal surface and a whole lot of stretching.

As I said before, my area is in a corner of the production area.  Meaning, I am up against a wall.  Meaning, when someone wants to talk to me…

…and God help me, everyone seems to want to talk to me…

…I have no where to go.  No escape.  No reason or cause to get up, leave, or do anything else.  At my work desk, I am, for all intents and purposes, a sitting duck.  An innocent bystander, helpless to defend myself from having conversations with co-workers I don't want to talk to, about things I'd rather not hear.

"Now let me tell you about my son and his girlfriend," Paul continues.  "This girl's pregnant, right?  With some other guys kid, and, you know, I'll let my son see her, but she's got to get rid of the kid, you know what I'm saying?..."

Sitting duck.

Tuesday (Tiger Woods and the Mexican Prison Gang)

"I can't go to jail.  All the jails are run by Mexican gangs."

This is the matter-of-fact declaration made to me by Jerry, who as usual has me cornered at my desk.  I continue gluing netting samples to cardboard backers, trying to stay uninterested, thinking that will make him leave.  It doesn't.

Jerry is one of those guys.  You know the guys I am talking about.  One of those guys who…um…he's not retarded…but he's not not retarded, either.  Jerry is, by my best guess pieced together from information gathered from other coworkers, in his late to mid forties.  He still lives with is mother, a fact which he bitches about daily, and he has worked for the company for the past twenty years.  From what I have been told, Jerry always has worked on the same machine, because it is too difficult to teach him to do anything else.  He has a round face that, despite his being nearly twice my age, is closer to resembling that of a twelve year old.  It is a face of someone who has had few worries in his life, because he either isn't smart enough to worry, or the people around him have shielded him from worry because they believed he wasn't smart enough to take care of himself.  Either way, I sort of envy him.

But not really.

So, the Mexican gangs have taken over all the prisons?  "Yeah.  People think it's the Blacks, or even the Whites, but it's not.  It's the Mexicans that run all the prisons."

And how do you know this, Jerry?

"It was on the…the news people…with the cameras…they went out and interviewed.  People.  All the people.  They say it's the Mexicans."

I'm feeling cheeky.  "Well, I guess if you ever go to prison, Jerry, you better get in good with the Mexicans, huh?"

"Oh no.  You have to join the gang of your race," Jerry patiently explains to me.  "So, if you are white, you join the white gang.  And black, the black gang.  And Mexican…"

The Mexican gang?

Jerry nods solemnly.

I'm a smart-ass, I can't help it.  So I say, "What if Tiger Woods went to jail?  What gang would he join?"

I'm joking, obviously, because Tiger Woods is a big sports star and therefore could never be convicted of a crime in our country.  But Jerry has an immediate and dead serious answer for me:

"Oh, he'd be screwed."

Wednesday (Rodney King is Weeping)

George is a guy I don't talk to very often.  He's short, and is always wearing baseball caps that relate to either NASCAR or hunting.  He has a mustache, and unless you are Tom Selleck, mustaches just don't work.  And he constantly walks like he just finished a six hour horse ride.

I've never seen him on a horse.

  George is spending these last couple minutes to give us a little sermon, which opens with the following line:

"I won't work with the black guys."

We have several "black guys" working at the company, but I've never seen any of them breaking their necks trying to work with George, so I'm not really sure why he feels he needs to verbalize this rule.  But he does.  He then explains his rationale for this stance:

"I don't have anything in common with them.  I told Dan that, flat out.  I said, 'I don't have anything to talk about with those guys.  We have nothing in common.  What would we talk about?"

There is an uncomfortable silence in the room.  None of the infamous "black guys" are currently here, obviously, but…

Do I say something?

Is there a point?

And most importantly, why doesn't anyone in this damn place just want to talk about the TV show "Scrubs."  Now, that's a conversation I can get excited about.  I fucking love that show.  It's hilarious.  And I love reliving funny lines and scenes with other "Scrubs" fans.  I do NOT like talking about black people and how this piece of white trash in front of me has nothing in common with them.

What really kills me about this guys statement isn't so much the fact that he just assumes he knows what his African-American coworkers would be interested, because they're black, but that he assumes that he WILL have stuff in common with someone like me, because I'm white.  Here's the deal: I am not interested in NASCAR, professional wrestling, shooting animals, beer, or smacking my wife…so what exactly does George think him and I will be talking about if we work together.  I have a JD from "Scrubs"-like fantasy, imagining that scene…

Tim and George Working Together Fantasy

George: So…I see you're white.

Me: Yes.  Yes I am.

George: I, too, have a white skin color.  We have a lot in common.  Let's talk about it.  Tell me, what would you say is your favorite thing about being white?

Me: Gee, I don't know.  I guess I would probably say the whole, "Not having our ancestors brought over to this country by force and having to work as slaves causing hundreds of years of deep-seated imbedded oppression against me" thing.

George: Yeah.  My favorite thing is the chicks.  Chicks love white guys.

Thursday (Hot Coffee)

When I take my lunch break at work, I usually go very late, so that no one else is in the break room.  This may sound stuck up, but I really just like to relax, read a book, and be alone on my break.  And I know if anyone else is in there, they will attempt to engage me in conversation.

On this Thursday, I have the break room to myself.  For a while.  Until Glen comes in.  Glen is the company maintenance man, and I have estimated his age at roughly 4,638 years old.  Roughly.  That would mean he's been around since before Jesus, folks.  And if you're wondering when Jesus is coming back…my guess is it won't be until after this guy leaves, because he is annoying as fuck.

Glen's distinctive physical feature is that he has no ass.  Where his ass should be, it is concave, like a spoon.  Now, you may be saying to yourself, "Why would you be looking at a 4,638 year old man's ass?"  And you would be correct to ask…that is a little strange.  But people, it is hard not to notice.  HE HAS NO ASS!  How do his pants stay up?  He wears a belt, but it is cinched so tight around his waste it looks like a garbage bag twist tie.  And his pants sort of just hang loose where his ass is supposed to be, and then all of the sudden, there are legs!  Where do the legs come from?  How are they connected to his torso?  It's like an optical illusion.

So Glen and his mysterious non-ass are in the break room with me.  I am facing the wall at this point, with my face buried in a book.  Glen is screwing around with the coffee machine, which is situated on the counter on the opposite wall.  And he's talking to the coffee machine.  At first I can't really understand what he is saying, something about beans and dark roast and Tony Danza…I don't catch it all.  But soon it is apparent that the coffee machine isn't working, and he begins to question it:

"Why aren't you working?"

"What is going on here?"

"Who broke this thing?"

Is he talking to me?  That would be odd, since I am literally on the opposite side of the room as him, and facing in the complete opposite direction.  Also, I hate coffee and have never in my life been within ten feet of that coffee machine.  However, I am the only other person in the room, so if he isn't talking to me, that leaves as the only other possibility that he is having a conversation with the coffee machine.  And that is scary.

For the first, and probably last, time in my life…I feel bad for a coffee machine.

Friday (As in, "TGI…")

First thing in the morning, every morning, we have a meeting.  As I am waiting for the meeting to start, I am eating a sleeve of donuts I bought on the way to work this morning, because I missed breakfast.  Jared, a chubby guy about my age, is sitting at the next table.  He looks at me.  And at that instant, I know what is coming.  I don't want it, but it is inevitable.  He is going to try and have a conversation with me.  About the donuts.

"So," he says to me, "donuts, huh?"

If I were The Human Torch, this place would be cinders by now.

After the meeting, I go back to my desk for another eight hours of gluing and assembling plastic samples together.  As I sit down, Paul is walking by.  He veers off his course, starts towards my desk, and opens that draw bridge mouth of his, and…

…I'm a sitting duck.