We had a new kid start in the Plumbing Department at work the other day. This is his first job out of school so he's all precocious and full of wonderment, which just means he doesn't know shit. I don't want that to sound like I'm selling him short or that he's an idiot because he's not; he's actually a pretty quick study. It's just a fact that he went to engineering school for 4 years, didn't learn a lick of applicable knowledge, and now he's out in the work force just riled up and ready to make a difference. So it's my job to squash all his dreams and ambitions.
It's been pretty funny having him around because I see a lot of myself in him. I mean, not physically - I'm much taller, more handsome, built like a fucking freight train - but it wasn't that long ago that I was in his exact position. So I'm going to do my best to bring him along and show him the ropes.
I started today by teaching him a lesson that you need to lock your computer every time you step away from it for more than a few minutes. When he got up to go to the bathroom, I got on his e-mail and changed the Spellcheck language from English to French. It'll take him a week to figure out why every time he tries to send me an e-mail, Spellcheck wants to change my name to Jacques. Then, next time he forgets to lock his computer I'll get on there and send an e-mail from him to the boss asking if he can take the afternoon off because of excessive flatulence. Then if he's lucky, I'll get him a date with the cute girl in the electrical department he's been eyeing.
Oh, I hear what you're saying - "That's so mean. He's just a poor kid who doesn't know any better. You should be nice to him."
Grow up. I am in fact taking care of this kid, teaching him everything he needs to know to survive and prosper in the work force. I'm like the mother bird to his fledgling; keeping him warm and safe from danger. Shit, I'm practically regurgitating food into his wanting mouth, if by "food" I mean "knowledge" and by "mouth" I mean "mind" and by "regurgitating" I mean "regurgitating." So the least he can expect from me is some good old-fashioned office hazing during his neophyte phase.
I would have been lucky to have me as a mentor when I started working. Instead I had Jean.
Jean was an older woman who was pretty much just a drafter, which is a nice way of saying she didn't know shit about shit. She was very nice but it would be an understatement to say that Jean and I came from different walks of life. One day Jean took me to lunch (at Wendy's), were she told me her life's story. She was several times married and divorced. Her last divorce took a turn for the worst when her ex broke into her trailer and shot her. Yeah, you read that correctly. He broke into her trailer, not her house, and shot her. Fortunately the bullet only struck her in the arm and he damage wasn’t too severe. Still, he shot her.
So just imagine me, 22 years-old, don't know shit about shit, having lunch with the woman who is supposed to teach me some shit about shit, and the first thing I learn is you don't want to get shot by your estranged ex-spouse. Holy. Shit.
It turned out Jean wasn't shy about sharing that bit of information with everyone she met. I once attended a work-sponsored fitness class with Jean (holy shit, that sounds really weird and there's no possible way I can explain that to make any sense of it so I'm just going to leave it at that). The instructor tried to use her for a demonstration in front of 30 people on how to do a proper bicep curl but good ol' Jean was like, "I can't do that - I was shot!" The instructor had a look on his face like someone had just farted in his mouth and you could hear an audible murmur run through the crowd like the cool Autumn breeze blowing through the forest trees. You could tell his mind was calculating all the different reasons why someone would be shot and none of them were good so he was just at a loss, as were the 30 other people in the room. In fact, I was the only one not at a loss because even though that happened 6 years ago and I didn’t even know what a blog was back then, I knew if I tucked that story away in the back of my mind, it’d see the light of day again some time.
A tout à l'heure.
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