Move over Jerry Springer...

The loud secretary is just full of drama. Her kid's father died the other day. I was able to hear the entire conversation where she found out clearly. It's constant drama around here. I can only imagine what will happen next week.

Speaking of names...

I was recently reading a post on Gwen's blog which referenced having the same name as someone else on campus. Growing up with Kate Avenarius as my name, I cannot relate. My dad, Dan Avenarius, however, gets phone calls for the other Dan Avenarius in Dubuque all the time. The funny part is, I think the other Dan might get arrested a lot. I wonder if my dad has ever arrested him. That would be cool.

Then I read a comment from Megs that prompted me to remember a story I thought deserved sharing.

Since arriving at the Milwaukee office, I have been receiving phone calls for someone who handles unagreed cases. I'm not exactly sure what they're asking for, other than that I am not the person they are looking for. Every time they ask me to transfer them to someone who has any idea what's going on and then seem quite upset when I tell them I'm new and I don't even know who to transfer them to.

So yesterday I decided to take a proactive approach to solving the problem. The woman on the phone (who's voice became more irritated as time went on), trying to help me out, asked if "Barb" is in my office. I know the name of about 3 people here, and "Barb" is not one of them, so I was not surprisingly no help.

So after we got off the phone, off I went to find "Barb". I first stopped at my secretary's desk. I waited my turn patiently while she finished a conversation and then politely asked if she knew someone named "Barb".

Both the secretary and other guy's faces turned bright red. At this point, I realized I had done something, but no idea what.

Turns out, an older woman had retired from our office in March. She died the day before yesterday. And guess what. Her name is "Barb".

So now at least I can attest to whether I know if "Barb" works in this office. She does not.

This morning, I was running late. Molly was being a pain in my rear. I was out of clean clothes. I filled my new Nalgene (not the normal wide mouth ones, but a special one I bought yesterday that has a flip top so I don't spill all over myself while drinking in the car) with water from our new water cooler. I added some delicious tropical punch kool-aid mix. I put the top on. I shook the red kool-aid filled Nalgene. I put the lid on. I started to shake the Nalgene. Red kool-aid everywhere. On the wall, on the carpet, on my bag, on my shirt, on my face, on the table, on Molly. Apparently the flip top was not on tight. So much for preventing myself from spilling all over. I now have red hair.

Big Bird and Elmo

two of my favorite people at work -

1) the nice woman sitting behind me with bright red hair. like elmo. and she always wears red tops, as if to really drive her point, whatever that is, home.
2) the older woman with yellow hair. not blond, not light, but flat out yellow. every time i see her i think of big bird. except she's short.

these are the things that keep me entertained all day every day.

it also seems that the meaning of business casual is a little different here. apparently gym pants, stretch leggings, and black jeans all constitute business casual. oh yeah, t-shirts are ok with any of the above.

crazy in a good way

so i've officially transferred over to the milwaukee office. generally, i like it better. sure, i don't get to hang out with my madison friends much anymore, but hey, they put up cubicle walls between us so we couldn't talk anymore anyways. and my desk here, get this, has a motor that raises and lowers the part my computer on so that i don't have to hunch over because they made the desk for short people. i think someday i'll even be able to move my chair up so that i'm not sitting on the floor!
the people here are....different. first off, we have a business casual dress code. i would say 30% of people are wearing jeans every day. and 10% are wearing gym pants. not exactly business casual.
in the past 4 days, i have been privy to 2 loud conversations that have no place in the workplace. the first was a woman (i have no idea who she is) who was VERY upset with her boyfriend/husband because he did not finish tilling the backyard. she was yelling. phrases such as "i don't want to hear it", "i'm sick of this s%*t", and various other strongly worded phrases came out of her mouth and clearly traveled the distance from her cubicle to mine, nearly 4 cubes away. after her final yelling match, she walked to the next aisle over to ask if anyone would be willing to house her boyfriend/husband. as if we did not already know what was going on. i know nothing about this woman, other than her boyfriend/husband is named Rocky and she feels strongly about her backyard being tilled.
yesterday, one of the secretarys (we still call them that here) was on the phone. she is on the phone at least 6 hours a day. never to anyone at work, always to friends and family. one of the remaining hours is lunch. i suspect she works for maybe 1 hour a day. she was having a loud conversation with someone. she asked this person where they found the money to purchase "smack" (i am not up on the linguistics of this, maybe EK can hook me up?) and she inquired how this person could afford "smack" and not afford to pay her back. she was very concerned about getting her money from this person. she has attended 1 funeral, 1 wedding shower that all the guests had to contribute money to, and one graduation in the last week. i could not pick her out of a crowded room, but i do know all this.
so these are the people i work with here in milwaukee. just keeping things interesting. it's almost like having a TV on all day long....