The Topper

Talking loudly in the hallway:

Montreal is awesome.

They're al like "bonjour hello".

The food is ridonkulous.

The girls are all pretty.

Oh the best brunch is this parisian cafe in Highland Park.

It's good. I used to walk to it from the trail.

Oh but Uptowns like all Caviar bars, Russian models.

The best tappas place is Knox-Henderson, obviously.

The M-streets are nice, obviously

There's only one bar left that's decent though.

The great thing about NY is everyone stumbles into the street.

No one is driving.

Why My Boss is Dwight Schrute

Cristobal walks into the office late today:

Cristobal: "Birthdays are made to cause trouble."
Me: "What?"

Cristobal: "They are trouble."

Me: "Who's birthday is it?"

Cristobal: "It was my wife's yesterday."

Me: "Oh my gosh."

Cristobal: "Don't worry, I remembered and I did everything that was asked of me. Somehow I'm still in trouble."

Me: "I'm not surprised."

(walks off mumbling)

Cristobal: "Birthdays should be banned"

Just Call Me Clay Aiken

Because I'm invisible. (non-chart-topper song found on youtube here. Which is, btw, the creepiest song ever.)

I have been moved out of the dungeon (windowless office) and back to the secretary desk. Where I first began over 3 years ago. My magazine clippings of nature scenes are still here, which make me happy.

Anyway, It was like the Koreans all over again. (Korean fiasco can be found in a previous post here). Anytime guests come, Cristobal goes into extreme manic mode. He kept walking past the techies whispering "RELAX". He buys oranges and cranberry bread from whole foods and paces up and down the hallway peeling oranges. He had me windex the windows twice.

So there are 6+ guests in the hallway hovering around my desk, some even lounging on my desk, you know the half sit half stand gag, so awkward. Just talking to each other and joking. Cristobal gives me the eye which could either mean "engage" or "don't say a word" so I go with the latter. Sometimes Cristobal introduces me to important guests and other times I am Clay Aiken. I can never know which its going to be when guests come. He's introduced me to quite refined guests (read: wealthy shareholder from France). And other times I don't even get an introduction to the office supply representative. Whatevs. Now I have this creepy song stuck in my head.

xoxo,

Emily "Clay Aiken" McClenagan

Who's Who in the Office

It's time for our first annual Who's Who.

Due to recent additions to the staff by a hasty maniac who is hiring every person that walks in this door, I have decided to make a list of everyone's nicknames.

Cristobal: The boss man. A hybrid of Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott.

Tomas: The other boss man. Likes to send forwards and give trinkets as gifts.

Jorge: The squatter. Jorge just uses one of our offices but doesn't work for us. No one really knows what he does. Somewhat like Creed in that regard.

Diego: No longer with us, rest his soul. Quit and moved to a different company in January.

Juan: Works from another State, occasionally shows up. Hearts Dragoncon and Starwars/trek/galactic galaxy.

Marni: The other author of this blog. Also no longer works here, but I won't let her memory die. (I recently told PK he was only using Marni's desk and not to get too comfortable).

TDF: Tour de France. TDF is like Kevin from the office, minus the pervert stuff. A gentle giant.

New Guy: The first new guy, name rhymes with Heff. Nicest of the new guys.

PK: Residing in Marni's office. Self-proclaimed Doctor. Keeps name plate on desk that says "Dr. PK". Similiar to Andy Bernard. Loves to talk about his alma mater as if it is the greatest school in the history of the world.

Ann: Ann is actually a man. Another new hire. I named him Ann for his similarity to Ann from Arrested Development. You get the picture.

Topper: Newest of the hires. The name reflects the personality. Always has a "topper" story.

"Topper" Another New Guy

So Cristobal's hiring frenzy continues. I will name him "Topper".

Topper lived in NYC for a short period of time. Like 2 years.

He's been in this office for four hours.

And I've lost count of the number of times he's said:

"Well, the _________ in New York City is so much better."

(blocks, food, cars, elevators, offices, paper, oxygen, ENTER EVERY WORD IN THE DICTIONARY)

I'd like to make an important note that Topper isn't even from New York. He's from Texas. So he can just cool it with the Everything-Is-Better-In-New-York-City-Schtick. You aren't fooling anyone here pal!

How I Make It Through Friday

Cristobal's Birthday... sort of...

Oh goodness gracious how do I even start this post.

Wednesday, January 18th, Tomas comes into my office and is like

"Psst, Emily, I got a reminder that it's Cristobal's birthday today. Do me a favor eh and buy him a cake."

Tomas is in full-on mob mode and at this point has slipped me $30 secretly. He actually did dealings with the mob in NYC in the '70s. 

Cristobal doesn't celebrate birthdays. Or any holiday really. He thinks they are superfluous and American propaganda. So I knew a traditional birthday cake would be nothing short of offensive, so I called for a seasonal fruit tart. 

Family lunch (which can be read about here), was on Cristobal's birthday, so I alerted the techhies to keep conversation flowing while I snuck out to get the cake about 20 minutes into lunch. A normal lunch is about 30 minutes max, and that includes 3-4 minute stretches of absolute silence. I knew this would be a risk to leave them unattended but I had to go. 

I returned 20 minutes later empty handed because the cake wasn't ready so they said they would deliver it. I walk into the room and all eyes are on me, panick across everyone's face, and Tomas gives me his best "whatsdamattawithya" mob look. 

The next few minutes were painful for everyone. The techhies didn't know if we should keep talking. Tom started sweating. Cristobal was gleefully happy everyone was still sitting down after the 30-minute mark. Think happy Michael Scott when The Office actually goes along with whatever ridiculous idea he has. 

Anyway. Cristobal stepped out for a moment and I told everyone to "Be Cool the cake is on its way" which resulted in a roar of laughter, I'm still not sure why. Finally a few minutes later the fruit tart cake arrived, to which we all said:

Happy Birthday Cristobal!!!

To which he replied, "My birthday is next Wednesday."

Tomas is shuffling around on his phone and admits "Oh, it was the week in advance reminder....."

So, we ate Fruit Tart cake and celebrated Cristobal's non-birthday and went back to our offices. A week later no one said a word on Cristobal's actual birthday and NG's (his intro here) birthday was today,  which no one was aware of, so I went scrambling for another cake hoping it was actually his birthday.

New Guy (Newer than other New Guy)

Cristobol hired someone new. Don't know his name yet. So we'll call him Ann (like Ann from Arrested Development)

Ann: "There's no badges or employee ID's?"

Cristobol: "Those are forthcoming." (yeah right)

Ann: "What is the dress code?"

Cristobol: "Professional dress. What you're comfortable with." (read: ratty shirt and jeans, or hawaiin shirt if you are TDF)

Ann: "I heard there is a lunch schedule?"

Cristobol: "Once a week, Diego's last day is Friday, so he's cooked us pork tacos this week." (jury is still out on that)

Ann: "These are big monitors!"

Cristobol: "Yeah.... we take care of our employees!!!" (I'd like to beg to differ from the dungeon.)

Ann: "Apple does everything so pretty." (is this your first apple newbie?? and you call yourself a programmer?!!?)

Ann: "I figured today would be mostly configuration."

Cristobol: "Take whatever chair you want!!" (except mine, because I stole Tom's bc my back was hurting in the cheap chairs of the dungeon.)

Ann: "I may have some newbie-ish sounding questions regarding programming." (good hire, Cristobol)

Cristobol: "The next person I hire the first day will run much smoother I'll have it all automated, I'm sorry about all the paper work." (hahahah, sure Cristobol, sure).

Simply Stunning

The Office is running off their customers because we are shutting the business down  and starting a new business. We had one customer who would refuse to authorize a cancellation and Cristobal did all but beg (ok he begged too) and these were their final two email exchanges.

-----------------------------

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 5:09 PM,

wrote:

Send the refund.  I already told you once to do whatever you want, since obviously I had no choice in the matter.

And for the record, Company A and Company B were higher than almost anyone else I checked with.   Something called "Elephant Company" seems to be the cheapest, but being a start up I guess they'd probably fail and bail out on me like your company did.

I may not be driving much longer anyway.

Customer

Cristobal chris@theoffice.com	9:32 AM (1 minute ago)
to Customer, bcc: me

Thank you, Mr. Customer.  You are a gentleman and a scholar.

The full refund will go in the mail today.  Your policy will be

effective through midnight 31 January 2012.

Sincerely,

Cristobal

-----------------------------

A gentleman and a scholar!?!?!??! Who actually says that?!?!

Diego is leaving The Office

This is how the most-awkward-announcement-in-the-history-of-the-world went down:

at lunch Cristobal out of no where says:

Cristobal: "It's with much regret that I have to inform you...."

(Cristobal: turns bright red)

Cristobal: "Diego is leaving The Office."

(alll eyes on Diego)

Cristobal: "Diego helped build this company, and he's moving on to smaller things."

(awkward laughter from Diego).

Cristobal: "He's leaving on a good note. Diego the floor is yours."

(eyes back to Diego)

Diego: "I'm going to work for a larger company."

(silence)

(silence)

Cristobal: "He wants to work from home."

(some laughter)

Diego: "Yah, they have great flexibility...and I'm headed back to South Caro...."

(Cristobal: interrupts)

Cristobal: "His boys are in South Carolina."

Diego: "Yep."

(silence)

Cristobal: "Well.... thanks for all your hard work Diego. Engineers get as much knowledge out of him as you can."

Good Bye Diego