Bring Your Pet (Goat) To Work Day

I have nothing against animals.  I really don’t.  I like dogs, cats, snakes, rats, and just about any other creature that anyone has, at one time or another, turned into a pet.  Heck, I like the animals that aren’t pets as well.

But there’s a time and place for everything, am I right?  There’s a place to pet your dog, and that’s usually at home.  There’s a place for feeding a giraffe, and that’s at the zoo.  And there’s a time for milking a goat, and I’m pretty sure it’s not in the office.

They didn’t agree at Advantage Marketing.  In fact, on their official company ‘Bring Your Pet To Work Day’, I witnessed an inside zoo of sorts, and I left the building just a little more afraid of pets than I ever was before.

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Office Pranks and Grave Consequences

I wish I could go back exactly 24 hours and redo the whole thing.  If I could, I’d erase that tiny span of three seconds, where I had agreed to go to Bevelin Corporation to work on a copier.  I’d have told my dispatcher that I had too many calls, and that they should send someone else.  And then the events that I’m about to describe would have been witnessed by someone else (anyone else) instead of me.

I hadn’t been there long when the fireworks started.  I was just testing the machine (I hadn’t even opened my toolbox yet) when I heard a loud voice from the back of the room say, “HEY EVERYBODY, I’M LOOKING AT PORNOGRAPHY!”

Of course, everyone (including myself) looked up at the where the voice was coming from.  A small man, who was prematurely bald on the top and post-BigMac large on the bottom, sat at his desk (there were no cubicles here—just rows of desks, each set up with its own computer and printer) jabbing at his keyboard.

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Someone In That Office Has a Bandaid On Their Butt

So I walk into this office (kind of a small one--maybe five people working there), and they have a broken glass.  Generally, I just assume that some idiot put a book in there and then pressed real hard to try to copy the entire page.  But I don't think that's what happened this time.  One of the pieces of glass had blood on it.

"Sure," says the young office worker.  "That's because I tried to clean it up and I got cut."  He held up his index finger to show me the bandaid.

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First Week On The Job

Oh boy--they told me a lot of things about the field.  They told me all sorts of tricks to use to make sure the customer agrees the machine is working (whether it is or it isn't) and how to get them to 'sign off' (whether they want to or not).  They told me how to jiggle my time around so that my numbers look good at the end of the year.  They even told me how to find the best spots to take an afternoon nap.

But they sure didn't warn me about the office boss.  No, I don't mean the guy in charge of everything.  I mean the girl right under him... the one who actually runs the show.  I've found out that every single office has one.  And I've also found out that she (meaning any single one of them) has one of two things about her: she will love you or she will hate you.  And she'll make up her mind about you within the first ten seconds of your first meeting with her.

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