The Law Of The Anus And The Blue Box Blues Redux--"Shakin' Down The Box"

 
Well, I am trying to stay out of the lower notions on my blog, trying to keep my thoughts on such lofty planes as political pandering, human frailty, and midget hating...

But I was just reading Hammer's blog and in typical guy fashion, I have been corrupted easily.

We have a new guy at work. His name is Sol. Which is short for "SawzAll" according to me, but he claims its biblical. We also have a blue box special, as you can see in the photo, which, I must say, I may loathe until I need it, and then it is a rather convenient tool and invention, if you ask me.

And I could go on and on about the great strides in human developement this simple box has enabled man (and you girl's too) to take in the evolutionary scheme of things. You can now have music festivals in vineyards (I often lined up and arranged the blue boxes myself-- never make an alley between boxes. The doors face each other, the lines collide, and antsy folks start arguing about whose line was whose and the smell gets trapped in the tiny little peopled valley and it is just not good to line them up in opposition like that. It is better to make a subtle arc out of the boxes, with the doors facing toward the outside of the arc, so lines radiate out and away from each other...

You can now pee in a parking lot after a football or baseball game without worrying about rent-a-cops.

You can now pull over in construction zones on highways and evacuate your road tripping coffee while giving the thumbs up to the dirty guy on the jack-hammer.

You can poop on construction sites.

Which brings me to this tiny tale to get the Law Of The Anus back under the covers...

Our new guy Sol.

When he first started I yelled at him. Yes, on the first day. I got frustrated and raised my voice becase he had no clue what I was trying to describe to him and he had no skills to tell me he had no clue.

After six or ten minutes of describing the same simple thing, three pieces of plywood cut to wrap a beam, I put a pencil in his hand and held out a scrap of plywood and told him to draw the fucking thing down the way he understood it and I would try to help him see it.

I said it in the way a big guy who gets frustrated might say it, and I think I scared the shit out of him.

(He was taken aside and told that I may bark but I never bite, but I don't think he was completely sure...)

So when I told him it was the new guys' job to shake down the box, he took this very seriously and shook down the box almost every time he passed it, maybe four times a day.

In the bottom of those blue boxes there is a blue liquid that smells like bazooka bubble gum. Why they use that particular masking smell is beyond me? I sit in there and want to blow bubbles. Weird. And after awhile, after the box has been used by the plumbers and electricians and heating guys and all the carpenters, a cone forms in the middle of this blue bubble gum water, and starts to break the surface like an iceburg or an oceanic volcano. Needless to say, what sits atop the cone does not smell like bubble gum.

So, I decided to assign someone the task of shaking the box everyday to prevent the cone from forming to begin with. That's where Sol comes in. A big bear hug on the back of the box, much side to side motion, a front and back tipping motion. No more cone.

The thing of it is, it doesn't work. The box is too heavy and the contents too sticky. But our new guy didn't know this, and the old guys had never seen someone talked into shaking a blue box everyday before, so while Sol would shake the box obediently in fear of the guy that yelled at him on the first day, the old carpenters would gather at the windows and watch.

"Shake it good, Sol!"

"Shake it, baby, shake it!"

You can imagine...


Boys will be boys--


A JOKE WORTH PASSING--Every day, a male co-worker walks up very close to a lady
at the coffee machine, inhales a big breath of air,
and tells her that her hair smells nice.

After a week of this, she can't stand it anymore,
takes her complaint
to a supervisor in the personnel department and asks to
file a sexual harassment grievance against him.
The Human Resources supervisor is puzzled and asks:
"What's sexually threatening about a co-worker telling you your hair
smells nice?"


The woman replies, "It's Keith, the midget...."