corporate lunch

8/26/99

After all my moaning and analyzing my miserable time at work, today I had a blast. And, to balance the good time I had, the work I'm doing suddenly became boring and tedious.

One of the men in our office is switching places with a guy from upstairs. Someone decided that made a good excuse to use the company Visa for lunch, even though we'll still see the guy every day. Eight of us went out to a fairly decent restaurant and spent lots of money that wasn't ours to begin with. Great fun.

Before I get too far into this story, I should stop and explain a little of the dynamic in our office. There are eight people, one of whom is on vacation. One anal guy, one young married sweet guy, one older Southern blonde, one middle-aged gossip lady, middle-aged quiet guy, who's leaving, and the younger Southern blonde. Also vacation guy and myself. A couple people from upstairs joined us today, also.

Like I said before, Tara, the young blonde, is very cute and her switch seems to be jammed in permanent flirt-mode. She and Mike, the anal guy, are constantly bickering. He thinks she's irresponsible and yells at her all the time. She thinks he's an asshole, but she constantly picks at him and nags him to be nicer to her. The result is like two children fighting for alpha dog status.

This morning the office staff got on the subject of sex toys, for some reason. Talking about vibrators and anal beads and funky condoms, don't ask me. Mostly it was Tara and the others joking around, but Mike put in his two cents' worth: "I'm just gonna say one thing: I don't need any of that stuff."

When we went to lunch, the four women ended up in one car and the men took two separate cars. Four of us squished into Tara's Mustang and tooled out toward Warner Robins. We mostly stuck to friendly conversation, lots of dissing on the men and Mike in particular. We arrived at the restaurant and sat in two booths, the women in one, the men behind us. Interesting. Every now and then some comment would make it from one table to the other, but we mostly kept quiet.

It was one of those restaurants where they sing to you on your birthday. I hate that. We hooted while the waitstaff clapped and yelled with fake enthusiasm on the other side of the room. When the waitress came by to refill our sweet tea (and my diet soda,) Tara leaned over and said, "You see that guy over by the wall?" She gestured at Mike. "It's his birthday."

For the next five minutes we snorted and snickered, trying not to give away the massive prank that was about to take place. Obviously, it was NOT Mike's birthday. While we waited, Mike got up and went to the restroom. And when he came back, he sat on the outside of the booth. He'd been on the inside. So the sundae and the noisy waitstaff tortured the wrong guy.

The wind was let from our sails, but it was still fun. The guy who received the attention was the one who's leaving, so it looked like we'd given him a sundae to celebrate. Our dirty trick turned into a really nice thing. We felt guilty for not thinking of it.

Anyway. When we left, all four of us clambered into the Mustang and left town. We took a detour so the guys wouldn't see us pulling into the parking lot of the Luv Boutique—the plan was to buy a vibrator and plant it in Mike's desk drawer. Tara was devastated when the place was still closed.

As we waited in the driveway to get back on the road, someone spotted a familiar truck barreling toward us. The two in the front seats shrieked and ducked down, as if anyone could mistake Tara's cherry red Mustang. The two of us in the back were squeezed in so tightly that we couldn't scootch down, so we sat there like it was perfectly normal to sit in the back seat of a car with no driver. Our boss whizzed by, and if he saw us he gave no notice.

Then we cruised around for a while. They gave me a little tour of the county roads. We got back around 1:30, completing a two-hour lunch, and proceeded to do very little for the rest of the afternoon. I did get to hear Tara in action, buttering up the radio announcer to play her favorite song before 5:30. Thursday is the last day of the week for most of them—three of the sales people rotate Fridays, and I'm the only other person in the office.

On the way home today, I broke down and programmed a country station in my presets. Ever since my first college roommate, I've had a passable affection for country music. John hates it, and I don't really listen to it much, but whenever I'm in a bad bad mood, or sometimes a great mood, nothing else will do. The only catch is that I need to hear country music I recognize. After a couple years of listening sporadically, there was nothing I recognized, so I never listened anymore.

Guess what. I hear it for ten straight hours, four days a week. I'm starting to recognize songs again. John's going to hate me when he gets home from Europe.

A helpful member of our studio audience contributed this comment on my entry from yesterday:

can't find anything about "scuppanum" - BUT. there is a scuppernong. "a cultivated variety of the muscadine grape with sweet yellowish fruit." named for the scuppernong river in northeast north carolina....

Thanks, Dan.