Chapter 6 – Be On Our EAC
I found myself walking away from my desk, away from the customers, and away from, well everything. There were times in Corporate America where you had to say enough and this was one of those days. I walked out of the prison of cubicles and into the hall. Opposite me was the door that led to our customer service unit. Maybe Ankle wouldn’t be busy and I could relax at his desk for a while. I walked to the door and swiped my key card against the gray door pad. It beeped and the door clicked open. I walked in to a bright room. It was smaller by far than the one I was in and along its length were windows with a view of the parking lot. The cubes were a grayish cream white with low walls so you could take in the whole room unhindered. It was very noisy since customer service spent their days on the phone. And it’s not like people called to say thanks for billing me.
The people in customer service were always happy and fun to be around and I couldn’t help but wonder why. They took angry phone calls all day long. I walked to Ankle’s cube, third down in the row against the windows. He was finishing up a call and held a finger up to me. His desk was clean for the most part but there was always a ruler or something like that on it. His calls were recorded so it would be wrong of me to try to distract him, but I just couldn’t resist. I picked up a red ruler on his desk and poked his ear with it. He attempted to hold up his hand to push it away but he was on a cord and I wasn’t. The idea was simple: get him to mess up his call and enrage the customer, then do it some more. It was a great game and totally fun. By this point, he had turned himself so he was halfway facing me, trying to work the computer with his left hand and block with his right. I could hear the lady screaming on the phone. I picked up a big eraser and poked at his head with the ruler. He went grabbing for the ruler and I tossed the eraser at his groin…direct hit! I didn’t throw it hard but he lurched forward a bit trying not to make a sound. In his hesitation, I was able to get a few jabs in with the ruler. Finally, he was done with the call.
“You dick, I hate you! But that was a good move with the eraser. What’s up?”
“I can’t take it over there anymore.”
“That sucks. I feel ya.”
He paused as a large woman walked by the window outside, lighting a cigarette. It wasn’t that she was big like fat but tall and meaty. Her hair was a short dingy blonde and she was wearing a dark brown trench coat. I noticed Ankle writing on a peace of paper.
“What is that?”
“It’s the smoker log. We take turns with it”
“The what-er log?”
“We track how many smoke breaks people take. It gives us something to do. To make it more interesting, we came up with names for them. See like that one there is Hagrid.”
She did look like Hagrid with the coat and her immense size.
He went on, “Have you seen that lady who always wares tie-dye?”
“Sure.”
“Paintball Massacre.”
Then the list started. Ankle pointed to a tall thin woman who was rather cute, her name was Virginia Slim. Then there was a red-faced man that was named Sundance and his friend, a woman with short hair called Butch. There was a white SUV that got a coned off spot next to the door. Apparently her husband threatened to kill her like two years ago and she said that she needed a close parking spot so she wouldn’t get hurt. She was outside smoking or talking every time I went by a window and so I thought she was full of crap. Her smoker name was Handicap. When she wasn’t in the office, we still weren’t allowed to take the parking spot; it was reserved. But when she wasn’t in, her friend parked there. It’s not like she was going to rat out her friend. Handicap’s friend was called Lo Jack, and she sometimes hung out with a guy named Sure-cusses-a-lot. In total, the list of names was two full pages. It was impressive.
I left Ankle to his sightseeing and went back to my desk. There was an email waiting for me letting me know that I was to attend the EAC meeting later that afternoon. The EAC was the Employee Activity Committee and was in charge of arranging birthday treats, setting up nacho days, and things like that. I didn’t know much about it, but I knew that Adrian was on it. I decided to send her an IM asking her for some info. I thought about what I was doing: she was just four feet away. Why not just walk over? I opened my IM despite common sense and looked for her.
Bmorisson “hey you’re on the EAC right?”
HorseChick “yeah why? If your going to complain about the pot luck last week I don’t want to hear it; wasn’t my idea”
Bmorisson “chill. I wasn’t going to say anything about that. I’m supposed to be in the meeting this week; does that mean I’m on the committee? Oh and pot lucks are dumb.”
Horsechick “lol don’t make me walk over there! Yeah you’re probably on the committee. Star Wars hit his year mark last month so it looks like you’re his replacement. welcome aboard ;-).”
Bmorisson “wow thanks, I’m honored. What do you mean his year mark and what do we do in the meetings?”
Horsechick “you should be. you can only stay in for a year. We normally get naked and have at it. JK, we talk about activities you dork!”
Bmorisson “lol well I don’t want to get in between you and Star Wars’ light saber so…”
Horsechick “I will kill you!”
Bmorisson “lol what?”
Horsechick “Bill that was messed up. no more IM for you today. If you make me think about Star Wars’ light saber again I will kill you.”
I laughed but she was serious. She didn’t IM me until it was time for the meeting. We walked together to the conference room and when we slipped through the door we found Ankle, Yoda, and Manager-lady there waiting for us. Yoda and Manager-lady were giving Ankle a hard time, saying something about him trying to make up for something with the sports car.
“Good you guys are here so we can get started,” Manager-lady said.
I sat down. “So what are we doing?”
“Well as you may know, we have our company picnic coming up soon and…”
Moleth walked in the door and sat down next to Yoda. “Sorry I’m late.”
Manager-lady looked disappointed. “That’s ok Mol-”
“What are we meeting about?” Moleth asked cutting off Manager-lady.
“We ar-”
“Because I didn’t see an agenda in the meeting invite so…”
“Yeah, well were meeting abou—”
“In most companies it’s considered common courtesy to at least hint at what the meeting is about. I mean, how am I supposed to prepare?”
Manager-lady was slowly turning a nice shade of scarlet and gritted her teeth when she spoke. “We are meeting about the picnic.”
“Oh, well I have lots of ideas for that,” Moleth started in.
I wondered just how long it would take Manager-lady to rein her in. I wondered if they used Moleth to test potential managers to see if they could handle anything or anybody. My thoughts were interrupted when I heard Moleth say something about fire.
Manager-lady was talking now. “Moleth, we can not do a spirit fire, whatever that is. We can’t do anything with fire at all.”
“Well why not? I thought that we were going to—”
Yoda cut in. “—not have a fire at our company picnic nor will the company allow us to cook anything on a spit or anything else that in anyway has a risk of burning anything down.”
Moleth looked irritated. “Well if you don’t want my input…”
“It’s not that, Moleth. We just need to remember that we work for an insurance company,” Manager-lady said, sounding tired.
I contented myself doodling as Manager-lady and Yoda vainly attempted to reel Moleth in. After thirty minutes Manager-lady announced that the allotted time was over and that there was a meeting after the EAC so the room was booked. Moleth stood up and walked out back stiff, not even twitching that much. I started to gather my things.
Adrian looked at me. “What are you doing?”
“I thought
there was a meeting booked?”
Manager spoke, “No, it’s still the EAC meeting. We just tell Moleth that there are other meetings.”
“Isn’t she on the committee?”
“Yes, but only because she went to HR saying that we don’t include her in anything. HR understood why we didn’t and just told us to schedule two meetings instead.”
I stopped what I was doing. “Oh, ok. So what now?”
Yoda started talking as if Moleth had never been there. “I still think that we should go to Funplex and forgo the usual picnic fuss.”
Ankle piped up. “That’s cool with me. It’s next to my house and Bill’s.”
“But not for anyone else,” Adrian pointed out.
We bickered about where to go for the picnic for some time. I suggested BW2’s and Ankle sided with me. After some work, Yoda was with me on wings as well and I knew that Manager-lady and Adrian would be forced into BW2’s.
Manager-lady finally harrumphed. “Fine, we can do that but it’s up to Larry to clear it. All we can do is make suggestions anyways.”
Larry seemed like a wing kind of guy so I was confident in our choice of venue for the picnic. One hour later an email popped up telling me that we would be going to a park next to the building and that the picnic was a pot luck.
My computer chirped and I looked at the monitor.
Horsechick “Glad we had the meeting?”
I laughed and hoped that 3 o’clock would hurry up..