Office Etiquette and Life: Part 1

This is just some observations on my introduction into corporate office life and adjusting to it. But first, a bit of history. I start off from when I left the Army. Please, enjoy!

I officially entered the corporate world in February of 2002. After having been on what is called "terminal leave" for about 2 months (November 31, 2001 - January 31, 2002) and living in California mooching off my last two paychecks from the government, the time came to get a job.

Let me just say that those 2 months were some of the best I've ever had. My roommate was jobless and was living off the government's checks as well! Except it was called "unemployment" instead of "terminal leave." Anyway, those days were spent in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hollywood, Santa Monica, cruising the town and being perpetual bums with a little extra cash in our pockets. Nights consisted of LOTS of online PC gaming and we would stay up till the wee hours of the morning killing each other or other people.

But the time came where we both knew that my credit card couldn't feed us forever. We had enough money pooled to pay for one more month of rent. My last military paycheck had just been deposited and I knew unemployment alone couldn't pay for my extravagant lifestyle. The thought of buying cheap, 99 cent toilet paper made my sphincter pucker. Jason (no, I'm not referring to myself in the third-person, his name is Jason, jeeeez) and I hit the wanted sections in the newspaper and online. We hoofed it to several different job opportunities, but most were scams. One of the earlier jobs he and I interviewed for was door-to-door salesman - except we didn't know it was door-to-door until the day we showed up for our supposed "2nd round" of interviews. Hoofing it around town to local ghetto's, knocking on people's doors, and meeting the disdain of said occupants put me off. How could I do a job like this when I empathized with the poor people we were annoying? I wanted to kick my own ass for knocking on those doors!

Anyway, I was desperate. I always got the impression that Jason wasn't that desperate. Afterall he still had an unemployment and disability check coming in from the VA. You see Jason was hit in the head several times during his military stint which caused severe retardation. Curiously enough, the government only said he was 30% percent disabled which makes you wonder about the people who get full disability. They must be vegetables! I kid of course. Jason isn't that much of a tard. But he did manage to get a job first through a temp agency and wound up in the mail room of a pretty large corporation. I think this was when he realized he was truly mentally deficient because he started complaining that a monkey with a cigar and top hat could do what he did. I was inspired of course and immediately applied at the temp agency he sneaked through. A week later, I wound up at the same company as he, except I was in some admin position and the douche was bringing ME the mail. HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh man, he is going to be so pissed when he reads this.

To be continued...