The Emerald Rose

   I gotta get myself out of this “blue funk” shit!

  All right I’ll be honest, my boss is a total idiot, a 27 year old, too obsessed with his “warped priorities” as my wife calls them, i.e. “basketball with the guys this afternoon, gotta leave early”, severe attitude about getting bothersome e-mail on the weekends, “Shit, I’m 17 miles out fishing what the hell are you bothering me for, remind me Monday”, and this past week when we moved the company (another stupid decision,  see below!), was the first time I’ve seen him in the office before 10 a.m. in months!

     About the move, our current “office ” is pathetically small, poorly laid out, and you name it, oh and as you open the door and come in from the outside you are coming into the “conference room” ! (Oooow! A Rod Serling moment,…”imagine if you will, a Board of Directors seriously debating the merits of assessing each of thier homeowners an additional $2,000, due in 30 days, and in walks the sweaty old maintenance guy asking for an expense check to buy “the little ball thingy in the toilet that stops the water from overflowing”!) It was an ugly scene, the Board members scowling at the maintenance guy, the tactless receptionist yelling over to me to come and take care of things “Tom the guy from Green River Farms wants you for something,…he’s out here”. And the maintenance guy picking an itch on his thigh!

       But the new spaces are bigger, everyone has an office, in his effort to save money he’s screwed up a number of things in the past couple of weeks. The two line “Walmart” telephones we have do not have an intercom, so now you’ll never know if a call is for you or not unless the receptionist bellows like a wounded water buffalo, or gets her butt up and walks down to your office (that ain’t happening trust me on that!) to tell you. Let me see 6 employees, two telephone lines, service based business, yup that’s about right!

       Number two bitch, the new offices are on the second floor over a mattress store, and since it’s a retail store with the normally high ceilings it’s 20, yes I counted them, stairs straight up to our office, a six foot landing, and 20 more stairs down and out of the building. (Reminds me of climbing the Aztec Pyramids in Mexico and looking back down! Steep, and scary. And consider we manage Condominiums and large Homeowners Associations with an average age of 68 to 70 years old! (He damn well better have great hip and leg replacement insurance, they’ll sue the shit out of him the first time someone does a header.) Now when he was telling me about the space originally I told him “What, no elevator? The old farts on those Boards are never going to show up here, they don’t do stairs at that age.”

      Anyway we moved in over this weekend. I set up my computer, hung all my “credentials and certificates” on the wall, made sure the computer worked, and lo and behold, never did get the telephones working, at least no as late as Saturday night. Should be an interesting day tomorrow.

      And then the “capper of the day” he shares that instead of firing “the bookeeper from hell”, that we’ve lost two good accounts over, and at least three more are teetering. (She has the temperment of a pit bull with PMS, your wife finding you at dinner in a very expensive restaurant with your secretary, and Attila the Hun) Hell we’ve got some folks that will not even come in the office if her car is here, they’ll call me on my cell phone and ask me if I can come out to the parking lot!  I digress, but he announces he’s keeping her and putting her in a windowless office in the back of the building!! That is a deal breaker, as they say, resumes got updated this afternoon, cover letter re-vamped, and Willy Nelson is crooning…”On the road again…” If I had a damn penny for every time she screwed up something and when I bring it to her to correct she says “I’m sorry” with a tone that sounds like “fuck you”, well, I’d be wealthy beyond comprehension.

     Any way you slice it this is turning into a really funky upcoming week. Got a Board meeting tomorrow evening with an outfit whose insurances are all expiring next week, but the idiots are bugging me about writing “violation letters” to dozens of folks with “unkempt” lawns!  (Just a question here, but wouldn’t “unkempt” be purely a subjective measurement requirement, so maybe I should write them that “This letter serves as sort of, or kind of a possible, but then again maybe not violation, on your part, well maybe not you , but possibly your landscaper,..” )

       You know you have a lot of idiots to deal with when you actually contemplate a gun permit, but don’t because you couldn’t possibly afford all the bullets, and you sure as shit couldn’t stop at “just one”. The only “pro” in the argument is at 63 getting a “life” sentence ain’t all that long, and the average “convict” under the death penalty gets at least another fifteen years of appeals and all,….hmmmm with the death penalty I’d be at least 78, and with a “life” term it probably wouldn’t even be that long, plus three square meals a day, a nice room with no rent or mortgage,….I wonder how much bullets are these days. 🙂

       Have a nice day, ten minutes til Pub time.

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