Two Ounces of Common Cents

We have a new coffee machine and cups to not go with it.

Here's the drill. You choose from the assortment of descriptive coffee packets ranging from "richly complex" to "buttery" to "I dare you". Insert the coffee packet and choose either four, six, eight, or a 10 ounce cup of coffee. Newbies can be spotted a mile away when their choice is greater than or equal to eight ounces.

As a cost-cutting measure and an effort to save the planet, our company recently has decided to replace our normal eight ounce styrofoam cups with six ounce cups. It's an insidious change that everyone has to recognize through baptism by fire.

The newbie picks up the six ounce cup and stares at it quizzically thinking, "My hands are swollen today". The cup is placed under the machine, eight ounces is selected, and the java begins to take a pee. Estimated time to completion, approximately 30 seconds.

"Yes, the coffee machine is that way. The cups are tiny."

0-15 seconds - newbie whistles, dumps his lunch into the refrigerator and/or checks out the contents of the vending machine.

15-20 seconds - newbie checks the status of the coffee and the whistling goes out of tune.

20-25 seconds - first stage of panic, the newbie's eyes widen as the rapidly rising tide of coffee approaches the brink of the cup.

25-30 seconds - "Oh cryin' won't help you prayin' won't do you no good. Whenever the levee breaks mom you got to lose."

The only choice for the newbie is to watch, wait, and clean up as the two ounces overflow the limited volume allowed. A laconic but spirited acknowledgement arrives in three possible ways, 1) "Oh Goodness!", 2) "Holy Shit!", or 3) "Mother Fucker!".

I prefer, "Holy Shit".

Think of all the coffee being wasted in order to save on styrofoam. Maybe they make two ounce styrofoam cups? I think that's what I get my butter in when I go to Outback curbside takeout. I can use those to collect all the spilled coffee, consolidate it into one big pot, boil it, then pour it on the crotch of the executive who saved the company a few bucks.

Sex and the Pity

I couldn't help but hear two female workers giddily exclaim the return of "Sex and the City", this time, to the bigscreen. How cute. The show premiered in 1998 and by my calculations, both of you were 14. A time when Alanis Morissette was at the top of the charts, Clinton was being impeached, and Sarah Jessica Parker had a horse face.

O.K., so some things have changed. However, the draw of the show has not. Females are pumped up in their slingback pumps about this movie event. For those who live in Siberia the show centered around a tight-knit group of fashionable women with drinking problems who sleep around. Which is strange since HBO already had a documentary about those same issues called Atlantic City Hookers.

"Do I get naked now? Or wait 5 seconds?"

I find it sad that Giddy 1 and Giddy 2 are stretching their limited experiences of womanhood in order to relate to the ensemble cast. Then again, they find it sad when I'm digging through the loose change slot on the Coke machine. Ladies, that's not sad, that's cheap....big difference.

Attitude About My Latitude

On my first day of orientation I received a Dell Latitude laptop. That was in the Spring of 2004. Several years later and I still have the same piece of equipment. I am in desperate need of a new one since mine is now showing its age through various symptoms that include but are not limited to:

Logging In
I timed it today...13 minutes 42 seconds to log-in. I come into work, power up my computer, go to the restroom, go get coffee, say my hello's and by the time I'm back to my desk I'm still waiting to punch in my user id and password. I need to ask our accounting department to generate a charge code for logging in.

Mr. Van Winkle, we're ready for your user id.

The F'in F Key
The "F" key ejects when my fingers prestadigitatiously spell certain words and terms. The faster I type, the more likely it is to happen. Particularly with words I use in business emails like "Fuck", "Fuck you", "Fuck me", "Fuck Off", etc. My digits come to a screeching halt when it happens and everything immediately turns to slow motion when the "F" key goes airborne and flips end over end as it struggles to find its rip cord. After it crashes onto my desk, I jam it back between the "D" and "G" keys with my thumb only to look back at my screen and see, "ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff". Yeah, F you F key.

Crumbs
My keyboard has approximately 1/2 pound of food in it. I eat at my desk for lunch, often. This involves perusing the internet while scarfing down a foot-long Blimpie's sub and some Cheeto's. This event repeated continuously over a three year timeframe has resulted in an obscene accumulation of crumbs nesting under my keys. I actually saw mites in there the other day with their own Blimpie's. They were making a killing.

Where does the line start? This place is packed.

The Fan
The fan that cools down my laptop runs continuously and voluminously. I could be on an Antarctic expedition with my laptop and the fan would keep humming with sub-zero temperatures. Why I would have my laptop on an Antarctic expedition is rather odd. But I'd bring it just to prove my point. And the noise the fan projects is impressive. It sounds like a chopper preparing for liftoff. I keep waiting for propellers to jut out from the USB ports and start spinning to elevate my laptop out of the cubicle. Bye-bye laptop, safe travels.

Told you the fan would still be on.

I might pull a Filbert. Next thing you know, I got a brand new laptop with keys that don't pop out and quick access to the internet.

As for the mites, well, they're going to have to franchise because I'm opening up a new store.

Watch Your Tone

In the busy world of consulting, a landline is not enough. Most consultants have to be strapped with a cellphone at a minimum, while others of a higher pay grade carry a Blackberry. Either way, it's another line on your business card and email signature indicating that there's no way in hell your dodging the client.

I understand the necessary evil of mobile phones in the world of consulting. It is a mobile industry; cubicles, metro, cars, airports, strip clubs. Consultants can be anywhere at any time when the client needs to reach them. But these devices should serve as a backup to the landline. Several co-workers in my immediate vicinity don't understand this. And the futile ritual begins with a simple yet annoying ringtone. Here are some of the samples I've heard firsthand in the past few days:

• Snoop Dogg's "Drop it like it's hot" - Princess, the only thing you know how to drop is your daddy's Amex Gold Card at The Banana Republic. Quit trying to be so urban and go back to your one bedroom rented townhouse behind Quizno's.
  
• Classic Telephone - Wait, I hear a ringer from an old telephone. Oh, it's just the ringer on your cellphone you say? What a crazy shenanigan! You got some attention doing that. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Kill yourself.
  
• (Operator's Voice) "YOU have an incoming call" - I'd rather listen to Tiny Tim sing "Loving You" by Minnie Ripperton than that smug operator and her condescending voice. Although I'm sure Tiny Tim has some righteous ringtones of his own.
  
• The default ring - The fact that someone is either too stupid or too lazy to figure out the variety of ringtones on their cell is more annoying than the default ring itself.

Yes, Miffy, I am dropping it like it's hot.

The rings are just the beginning since my building is a deadzone of cell coverage. Over the course of a day, my battery drains faster than a strip club's ATM since it constantly struggles to find a signal. Some co-workers still try to pick up a call within the building despite the years of dropped calls haunting the ether of our workspace. Insanity is repeating the same behavior but expecting different results. And trust me, they look insane.

The volume in their voice immediately increases exponentially peppered with the words "Hello" and "Can you hear me now?" as they frantically pace for a pocket of coverage. It's almost as if they are in a shuttle run with no fixed points. Someone witnessing this with no prior knowledge of human behavior might mistake it for a cryptic mating ritual.

Your powers are useless in my building, four eyes.

The rare but enjoyable scene is when two employees in close proximity answer separate cellphone calls at the same time. If you close your eyes you can pretend that two half-deaf retards are trying to talk to each other.

HALF-DEAF RETARD 1
Hello?

HALF-DEAF RETARD 2
What? Pardon? I CAN'T HEAR YOU?

HALF-DEAF RETARD 1
Can you hear me now?

HALF-DEAF RETARD 2
HELLO?

The two half-deaf retards hang up their phones and get their retarded lunches.

Oh sorry, my eyes were still closed.

Here are two ideas 1) put the cellphone on vibrate so you won't wake everyone up from being bitch-slapped with excessive calls from the client and 2) look at the phone number and call it back on a landline. What a psychologically exhausting solution. But it's hard to think above the din of a thousand rings.