A side birthday present or at least a reminder of my mortality has been going on at the work front.

Since I got in my wagon and headed west and found myself employed, my experience hasn’t sucked entirely. Yeah, in truth I would so much prefer being rich to working, and, like, if a winning lottery ticket materialized in my hand, that Johnny Paycheck job shoving moment would taste hella sweet. But, it ain’t all bad.

Wait, I thought of one thing that’s crazy bad about the sweat shop at which I perspire. Huggling. Fucking hugging. Hello, goodbye, haven’t seen you in a while, thanks for the good meeting, hugging. Touching in an affection manner. I made it through about 20 years of career working untouched in the work force, except for a couple of awkward cuddles post some collegial beer-drinking. It’s a hostile work environment for me now with air kisses and squeezes.

Apart from the hug abomination, there’s only been one other issue. The chick that embodied everything I don’t miss from working in various hallowed, East-Coast-located halls. It was that certain snark that the natives in California just can’t do, probably because of the sweet Humboldt weed and hot tubs keeping things mellow. I think a classic example was a nice sliding lowball comment on the occasion of our house-buying in an off-the-beaten track community. Something like, “I figured out where you’re moving; I saw the sign off the highway near the airport, right?”

Yeah, that’s exactly where we moved, right there on the bypass under the bridge, sleeping to the sounds of traffic and the hum of the air traffic controllers. It’s a brand new trailer park, just opened.

Not sure if it translates well in print-like story telling, but pretty much there was a big game afoot of making sure I knew my place and that place was lower than the shoe beneath your feet. Hard sole putting down. Pointless parrying. Yeah, I get it, either you’re radically insecure or so much better than me.

And, now she’s gone. Like the wind. Like the sun that drops into the ocean that I actually do live near rather than the airport. Like my youth. Gone away leaving only memories and the path left that I got to sweep clean now. It’s a weird feeling, particularly the part where I have to clean up a bit in her wake.

One great thing is that whole count your blessings thing, where only one person was hassling me. Better, though, is cleaning up reminded me of a crazy thing in a job faraway in a galaxy long ago.

I used to have to do a lot of cleaning up of computer files and scrubbing down hard drives back to a pristine state suitable to passing off to another worker bee. In that role, I contended with a hard drive packed with Christian rock from the woman who in the wake of her leaving, so ended the the mysterious toilet-paper thieving from our office suite’s john. I’m not saying the Christian stole all the paper, I’m just saying you never saw her in the same room as the paper-grabbing villain.

All time favorite and unsolved mystery was the porno-packed cache and history files on the internet browser. Begging the question, how much do you gotta dig porn that you’re dialing it up on the computer meant for entering data about dead cancer patients? The mysteriouso part was the owner of the ‘puter with the dirty, dirty history. She was a quiet, quiet woman, probably an ancient age like I am now in the post-40 hugging middle-aged hard years. Not only did she never say “boo” to anyone, she wore pastel cardigans, sported the kind of hair that called for hair pins and had kitty pictures or maybe puppies on her desk.

When she left she presented me with a five year thick file of identical FedEx slips to prove that she only used the corporate FedEx for mailing the data files to a central repository that was actually the kind of mailing that was a required part of the gig. She also had binders of notes on every protocol and exact steps for her research and data managing work. Getting laid wasn’t something this chick’s demeanor suggested, in any way, unless it was a required part of the employment protocol, was in the binder and could be done scientifically replicated and data driven.

And she left me a whole lot of links to a whole lot of things I didn’t want to know about. Clearly, she had a penchant for the oral. People. You just never can fucking tell.

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