New Hobbies

I think I've strayed from the original purpose of this blog. I've seen it happen before too. When I wrote most of my notes on Facebook, they were spur of the moment, funny little tidbits that turned into self-loathing, morose pieces of trash. That's what this has turned into. I'm sad to say it too.

So let's violently thrust this thing back into that gray area between quirky and insane.


I've taken up a new hobby at work.

We have this PA system at Market Street. Whenever someone needs something from someone across the store (or in the case of several of our more lazy "team members", across a span of about ten feet), they pick up the nearest white phone, press the gray square button, and say one of a few things into it.

"Red line", not to be confused with the "red alert" system mentioned in an earlier post, means that someone across an undetermined distance from someone else wants to talk to that certain someone else without moving from their current position. So they'll say "Robert, Red Line please". Robert would go to the nearest white phone and, unless it was the same white phone that he was just called for on, pick it up and press another button to talk directly to the person who wanted to talk to him.

It's a private PA kinda thing, if you just skipped that block of text up there.

Then we have "I need a Carry out on Market Street", which is a code the checkers use to tell the sackers "Stop standing around at the front of the store with your thumb up your ass and help this "guest" at Market Street out to their car".

Now, confusingly enough, there is a section within Market Street called "Market Street". To a newcomer to the store, this can pose to be quite the confusing conundrum. If that call goes up, their first instinct is to pick up a white phone and say "Can you be a little more specific?" over the PA. I never did that when I was a sacker, since I was just so god damned good at it (apart from that whole "don't put Oxyclean in the same bag as sliced bread, you fucking moron" incident), but I'm sure somewhere along the line some smartass like me has done that.

Then there's "So-and-so has a call parked on 11(number ranging from 0 to 9)". So-and-so Jones has been with the company for years as the resident Call Parked For "Team Member". It's a prestigious position within the United family, and ingeniously it's all code for something that no one would expect.

Whenever you hear this in our store, it means that So-and-so has done something truly spectacular. "Call" is code for "6-foot tall stack of pineapples and pancake mix", "Parked" means "stacked precariously on top of", and the various "11-somethings" are different spots on the roof of the building. My personal favorite is 117, where So-and-so "Parks" a "Call" on the edge of the roof overlooking the exit of the "Market Street" area of "Market Street". It has a tendency to fall on certain "team members" when they're helping our "guests" to their "transportation vehicles" before "hustling" back into the "workplace" so they can continue their "team member positions" as "convenience clerks".

Any time you hear that over the PA, start clapping and cheering. It's truly an amazing sight.

The last thing that gets put over the PA is nothing. I mean, sure, there's the bell-sounding thing letting people know that someone wants something before they say it, but then after that no one says anything. It's just the bell thing. This happens sometimes two, three times in a row. Around so many knives, I classify this as a workplace hazard for the criminally insane. Suddenly my work experience turns into an Edgar Allen Poe poem (which I've just discovered sounds amazing, and is why people say 'a poem by Edgar Allen Poe' rather than 'a Poe poem'. One sounds scholarly, the other one sounds like a speech impediment).

But none of these are my hobbies. Sure, I've wanted to pick up a white phone and start making Chimp noises, but that sort of thing gets you "terminated" from Market Street (sidenote, I would love to get "terminated" just so I can say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is my boss).

My hobby is replying to the calls over the intercom. Whenever someone says "Robert red line please", I repeat it in a bastardized mix of a southern and Afro-American (which until recently I thought meant 'American citizen with an Afro'). If Robert or whoever it may be is near me when they get called, I move towards them, arms waving in slow motion shouting "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" or alternatively just shout "DON'T DO IT ROBERT! IT'S A TRAP!"



Whenever So-and-so "Parks" a "Call", I do what I suggested and clap uproariously.

Whenever someone says "I need a carry out on Market Street", I say "Yeah, I bet you do".

Whenever someone makes the bell thing and only the bell thing, I roll up my sleeves, take a knife out of its sheath, and carve another tally into my forearm, steadily feeding raw mystery meat down my throat.

Fun hobby.

Harry didn't think that he did a very good job, so he grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which just so happened to be a 15 inch black rubber cock, and proceeded to beat poor old Smithy to death with. And that was seen as a nice way to go. Now, that, is why you pay Hatchet Harry, when you owe.