Southern Colloquialisms

I grew up in the north where for the most part figures of speech include similies and metaphors. I am amazed at some of the phrases I hear in this part of the country.

Girlfriend and I were just outside smoking when one of my employees drove by in a mule and she said,

Homeboy don't believe lard is greasy, does he?

Heh. I like that one.

The Phrase that Pays

So girlfriend was sitting in her office working away when a guy we'll call Stack steps into the doorway. I have an unobstructed view of her doorway and her. She was busy in a pile of papers and after a moment noticed someone standing in her door. She glanced up quickly and went back to work. After a moment of realization she looked up with what can only be described as an attempt to hide dumbstruck horror. She had received word this fellow was "sweet on her" and on a couple of occasions she and her friends had me point this fellow out to them. He's a typical construction worker. He's not that attractive, full of shit, and has the social skills of a 4th grader. After she came out of shock she said something along the lines of "What can I do for you?" in a very businesslike tone.

He replied that several people had told him he needed to get up with her. She asked who and he mentioned one of the guys that work for me. She noted that she had not sent for him and it was quite obvious she was very nervous about this whole ordeal. The office was growing very quiet quickly and at it's most silent point he said, "So are you seein' anybody?"

There was a pause of pregnancy that could have used an abortion clinic staffed to the hilt.

"Uhhh, on and off..." she stammered. She was so nervous I felt bad for her.

The conversation went on for about 15 minutes but I'm sure it felt like about 6 hours to girlfriend and she wasn't really any better off nerve-wise at the end than she was at the beginning. After 10 minutes I had to get up and head to another office or I would have started crying I was holding back the laughter so hard.

I immediately made certain that everyone knew the phrase that pays:

"So, are you seein' anybody?"

She won't forget that anytime soon, I feel quite certain. :)

Words

"He - Uh"
If you say that out loud and keep saying it until it runs together I will likely hunt you down and slap you. I'd say I'd slap you senseless but since you are saying the word "here" in such a manner the sense has already drained from your brain anyway.

Girlfriend...

There is this employee at work, we'll call her girlfriend. She is by no means my girlfriend. She spends at least as much time per day on personal calls as she does working. She is currently on the phone with her daughter. I missed most of the conversation until she raised her voice saying, "If you lie to me again I'll drive all the way to Byromville just to spank your ass!"

This person spends about 25% of her personal phone call time fighting with someone or another.

...and people think I'm high strung.

Opportunity missed.

If I had been born a female that wore glasses and was pretty in a sisterly way I would have become a librarian.

Alas, it was not to be.

It's easy to go over the top when you set your bar so low

Work just keeps getting better.
The top client representative just stopped by Humpty's desk and commended him on getting here so early this morning. I sprang out of my chair, those were fighting words. I arrive at least an hour before he does and I do at least 75% more work than he does. I walked into his shared office and just stood there mouth agape while the 5 or 6 people were all talking him up for being here so early this morning.

I said nothing, I just dropped my head, spun around and went out to smoke a cigarette. On my way out I resolved to take the rest of the day off but then I remembered I have to go to the damned auto parts store, buy a part with my own damned money (and then wait 5 weeks for the expense check to come back,) then go to the grocery store and buy 5 gallons of vegetable oil, once again my own money, my own wait to get the money back....

Fuck this place straight to hell.
Fuck everyone
Fuck everything
Fuck you
Fuck me.

Work sucks

In the last 4 weeks I have had 1 day off ( Sunday, Sepetmber 18th) and I'm very well into feeling the effects. I usually leave for work at 4:55 AM and typically make it home right at 8 PM. Tomorrow I have to leave home around 3:30 to go get 50 dozen donuts and get them to the jobsite. Goody. My online friends remark that I've fallen off the edge of the earth and I just tell them I'm on the 100 hour per week plan at work. I am about to enter the final week of this hell. This will be the most trying week though. I will have to lay most of our workers off this week so paperwork and stress will be high. I can't wait to have a couple days to just sleep whenever I want. I can't believe I'm not sick already.

A workmate just said, "Tell me, John, what exactly is a blog?"

I was certain I'd been caught. Not that I'm overly trying to hide that I'm blogging but I don't really need work people talking amongst themselves about what I really feel.

It's something in the water

Me: Did you get drunk last night?
Fellow employee: No, I went straight home, drank my beer in the shower and went straight to bed.

uhhh

Fat and happy != enjoyable to all

I had to do a half flip ( as close to flipping out as possible without actually doing it) on Humpty Dumpty this morning. I noted that I was tired of checking lunch boxes and I don't plan to have that responsibility in the future.

Some background info is appropriate, methinks. Humpty Dumpty has the same job as I do but he works for a different company. We often spend most of the day in similar situations and often in the same work area. He speaks highly of his days with the most loathsome construction company I can imagine, Halliburton's Brown and Root. I'm sure he was a model employee for them: fat, yes-man, and lazier than a cat on a sunny day. He is very enamored with me because I am the local computer helper among other reasons. He often pulls me over to his workstation to tell him (again) how to get his toolbars back in outlook or what he has done to his word document. He bought a laptop a few months back. He wasn't satisfied with something that would fit his knowledge of computers. He had to have the biggest and best so he got a 3 gigahertz with a 17" wide screen, dvd burner, premium sound, amazing video card and all this extra crap he'd never need. The best part, he HAD to have an external floppy drive because it's all he understands.

(I know, I'm on a tangent now, but I'll continue with the original story later. This is too fun to quit.)

After he purchased the unit he asked me to come to his apartment and help him get it set up. He had the cable guy install his cable modem and he was already online when I arrived. He had me make him an account with Yahoo so he could have yahoo mail and whatnot. He also wanted his isp's email (why do people use those?) and I recommended not using Outlook Express due to it's security being worse than a drunken guard. I downloaded Mozilla's Firefox for that purpose and put in his smtp and pop information. I noticed his version of Microsoft Office was but a 90 day trial and he was aghast. I told him I could download and install OpenOffice and it worked the same way and was free and legal. He thought that would be good so I did that. He worked with OpenOffice for maybe a week before he plopped down $400 for Microsoft Office. He said OpenOffice didn't display his documents the same way as Microsoft's Office did. I agree this is true, but is that worth $400? Not to me. I'd rather make the miniscule changes or just use OpenOffice at the office. Ah well, it's his money.
He told me he burned a cd after bugging me for about 3 days with questions about it. I asked him what he successfully burned. He replied, "A picture." heh. Good use of space Humpty. I have no idea if he's ventured back into the oh-so-difficult realm of cd burning again or not. I have no desire to ask.

Anyway, end of tangent, back to this morning...

I've had a lot of trouble lately keeping up. The work load on me is likely higher than it has ever been and I am as stressed as I've ever been. After I mentioned how I didn't like checking the lunchboxes he replied with one of his standard lines:

You brought it on yourself.

My blood pressure was likely visible through my eyeballs at that point. I mentioned that he has seen the load I have had as of late and if he were any kind of man he could have stepped up to the plate and offered some help. He continued on with the "it's all your fault" line. I loudly told him to shut up, I had heard enough.

I'm sooooooooooooooo looking forward to his next computer question. No matter the question the answer will be shouted across the office:

F1

It's not only power that corrupts

A few weeks ago there was a recordable injury on one of the other jobsites the client I indirectly work for. Their (the client's) corporate safety manager stopped by our jobsite en route to the jobsite with the injury and he said one of the lowest, most deplorable sentences I have ever heard in my life. I cannot seem to stop thinking about it. I think about it at least daily, usually several times a day. I know I will never forget it and I'm sure it will serve a valuable lesson in humility. I understand how recordable injuries happen. We all sometime "space out" or lose focus on our work when we are working on something that is mundane or we have performed that task countless times before. It does happen and when it does there is the potential for something to happen. A finger could get cut, an ankle sprained, or even something tragic could happen when we let down our guard. It is human nature and we must accept it. We need to proactively (sorry, I'm not big on buzzwords but that truly does fit) encourage people to keep their minds on their work. When something does happen we need to look at the situation from every angle to see how it can be avoided in the future. There is one exception to the angles we must look at it from. Do not, under any circumstances, look at an injury from a monetary standpoint. Feel free to look at the lack of injuries as a monetary gain if you like but don't treat people and their health in the converse light.

Quoth he:

There goes my bonus.

Theories are like asses. They're everywhere and they almost all stink.

I have a theory that stress forces person to think with the artistic side of their brain. I think all the stuff a person tries to get away with on the logical side forces the center to the other side to alleviate some of the stress and that's why the best artists are starving, drugged out, or otherwise messed up.

If I didn't like meat so much I could be a vegetarian

Bicycles haven't radically changed in like a hundred years or something. Sure, you can get them with Space Shuttle panel equipped frames and magic pixie dust holding the cranks together...

1. If you're not in the Tour de France weight should not matter.
2. Certainly they have the jigs and welders hooked up right by now. Lower the damned prices.
3. Sweat is good, quit wearing the $100 shirts that make you look like a maroon.
4. Take the headphones off so you can hear the redneck truck that's about to hit you.
5. Quit trying to peddle pixie dust to increase the price of your bikes.
6. The cost of your bike says nothing about your ability.
   

Rhetoric : Selfishness

Through much ado over many years I have finally come to the undeniable conclusion that I am a very selfish person. This is not to say I am not a giving person, the two things are not entirely related. I enjoy things such as bringing or making enough lunch for everyone in my office. I like to be able to give things to people that need them. I would think that many of my friends and work mates would disagree that I am selfish. The reason they would disagree is because they are looking at the idea of selfishness in the wrong light.

I do not give out of the goodness of my heart. This is not to say I have gains to be made from the person that is the recipient of my gift. One person at work calls it "building an emotional bank account" but it is not that either I don't suspect. I give because I enjoy the feeling of pleasing other people. I don't directly enjoy the feeling of pleasing others. I enjoy the feeling it gives me. Therefore when I give or share I am doing it to feel good myself and that makes it selfish.