i sent post-its to chicago today

i am realllllllly anal about my office supplies. not like the guy in officespace who had his special stapler (though not much better), but more like the types of pens i'll use (gel!), the type of sticky pads i'll use (the little ones, and the medium ones, but not the square ones and certainly never the big rectangular ones), and so on.

I lost my last gel pen on friday, and gave in to some piece of crap plastic crapola pen that i had laying around. it was in my shirt, per usual, when one of my coworkers on the cool floor stopped me and told me that she liked it in company of another coworker. i gave it to her. the other coworker, of japanese descent, told me she liked it and wanted one too, so i went to my floor and interofficed it. she, being excruciatingly proper, sent me an email yesterday that she loved it and thank you, etc. i am anal about my pens, so her gratitude didn't seem all that off.

but then it occurred to me: if i could make one coworker happy by interofficing supplies i hate and of which i want to get rid anyway, why couldn't i clean my desk the eco-friendly way and interoffice people in our offices around the world my unwanted supplies? my own little u.n. happy campaign, if you will.

so i did.

japan got more pens like the one i sent to my japanese-descendended coworker. if one japanese lady liked them, i'm taking the odds that another will. i picked a random name out of the directory, in a low level position, and won't she be thrilled!

a half-used pad of those post-its that fit into a dispenser (which we don't have, as it's not in the big brother approved supply catalogue, but the refills are, go figure, and i got duped into taking them from the supply closet, so i've been using two stickies everytime i go to pull one, grr, piss me off will you sticky pad, pack your bags!) went to a bitch i really don't like in chicago. with two blunt-tipped pencils. there isn't one pencil sharpener on my floor, hopefully they have one in chicago. who knows, but sooo not my problem any longer.

a cool mechanical pencil to a guy who had a cool name in germany. (i don't use pencils. period.) auf veitizen.

thank you notes bequeathed from a former coworker to someone with an annoying name in houston. yee haw, write 'em, cowboy.

and blue ink cheap ball-points to a porter in london. (i don't use blue ink, either. period.) cheerio, matey.

all were carefully wrapped so they wouldn't feel like what they are (and not like the guys in the mailroom give a shit, really), i dropped two of these off in the cool floor's outgoing mailbox, two in the beige floor of doom that makes mine look like a rainbow of fruit flavors / kaleidoscope, and two in the executive floor's outgoing mailbox. all interoffice envelopes were new ('use until all spaces are filled.' DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!) so there was no 'who was the last name in the space above ours' about which to worry. the recipient will just know it as a shipment of from new york, and isn't it his or her lucky day!

starving for stimulation at work, can you tell? :-D

general rule of thumb: forwards piss me off

but this is fun, from a like-minded coworker. don't think for a second i'm not doing this...

HOW TO STAY AWAKE IN MEETINGS: OFFERED AS A PUBLIC SERVICE...

Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? MAYBE Staff Development Meetings? What about those long and boring conference calls? Here's a way to change all of that.

1. Before (or during) your next meeting, STAFF DEVELOPMENT, seminar, or conference call, prepare yourself by drawing a square. I find that 5" x 5" is a good size.

Divide the card into columns-five across and five down. That will give you 25 one-inch blocks.

2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:

* Synergy

* Strategic fit

* Core competencies

* Best practice

* Bottom line

* Revisit

* Expeditious

* To tell you the truth (or "the truth is")

* 24/7

* Out of the loop

* Benchmark

* Value-added

* Proactive

* Win-win

* Think outside the box

* Fast track

* Result-driven

* Empower (or empowerment)

* Knowledge base

* At the end of the day

* Touch base

* Mindset

* Client focus(Ed)

* Paradigm

* Game plan

* Leverage

* Going forward

3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.

4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSH!T!"

TESTIMONIALS from satisfied "Bullsh!t Bingo" players:

"I had been in the meeting for only five minutes when I won." Adam W., Atlanta

"My attention span at meetings has improved dramatically." David T., Florida

"What a gas, meetings will never be the same for me after my first win."- Dan J., New York City

"The atmosphere was tense in the last process meeting as 14 of us waited for the fifth box." - Ben G., Denver

"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed 'BULLSH!T!' for the third time in two hours."

i always feel just a little bit like a pervert...

...in the deodorant aisle at duane reade.

for years and years and years, since i hit puberty like a brick wall, i have been using right guard. after too many years to mention, i've been experimenting with deodorants a bit... first, i bought into that bullshit ad campaign for axe, but it smells feminine. (REALLY feminine.) tried tag, same thing, and the scents had irksome names. then i went to right guard's version of body spray in this bullet / dildo shaped can (maybe that's why... hmm... paging dr. freud...) but it's oil based, i'd think, and after slipping in my undershirt and scrubbing my pit hair in the shower, i ended that affair. hit up adidas, all three scents (which smell, essentially, the same), and thought i was there.... brand loyal to the shoes, why not the anti-stink potions that stank pretty good themselves? well, i was wet and stinky by noon. (but had a great burning feeling i kind of dug. kept me going back initially.) i even tried the new old-spice-for-the-under-seventy-set body spray, but it IS old spice... i'm not old enough to buy any old spice anything, and i couldn't get past that. so, tonight i dropped the f-bomb repeatedly when i realized it was time to head to this exercise in odoriferousness that is duane reade.

i get there and see right guard abandoned their dildo line and launched a new body spray with ambiguous 'masculine' names like all the others. immediately, i started spraying the air and moved my head in to smell the contents. i did this several times before i realize it's pointless and it makes me look kind of weird. then i spray my fingers and smell them. now i really do feel like a pervert. don't quite know why, but i do. first i'm bobbing my head like an over-eager prostitute, then i start smelling my fingers. i looked like a freak. and it's all for naught, really, as with every other deodorant line, all the differences are subtle at best. (should i travel with coffee beans on such trips?) i felt dirty like i was doing something wrong, like i was a dirty pervert getting off on scents in duane reade, like i was taking something so intimate and blasting it into the public's view, akin to jerking off. when a hipster looked at me like i was the freak, and when a japanese family booked out of the deodorant aisle when i finished my antics, i turned purple and grabbed two different bottles (surely not the ones i used as testers) and proceeded to check out. the pleasant and attentive checker, who watched my little auto-pleasuring, starts in:

'these ain't the ones you sprayed.'
'debit.'
'i said, these aint...'
'yes, i have my club card. oh look, found it.'
[bleep]
'next time, you take the ones you spray.'

i felt like my dirty little secret was about to be broadcasted for all to hear. i was on surveillance tapes smelling the air and my fingers, people saw me, i feel like that dirty that just won't wash off, like paying too much at morton-williams. and after all that, i will let you know how the right guard non-dildo line works. let's hope for the best, i can't go through this again.