Over the years, I've had some amazing experiences as a member of the 'work force'. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, and i've always worked to make some extra cash on the side, usually helping the old ladies in the neighborhood to move boxes to the attic, or cut the lawn, shovel snow..whatever. Having a dollar or two in my pocket was the greatest feeling in the world. We'd plan and plot how we would spend that money once the job was over. I could go off for hours with my imagination, thinking about how many things that dollar or two could actually get me. Back when i was a kid, of course, everything was much cheaper. A dollar? You couldn't even hope to spend the whole thing at the candy store. You didn't have to look far to find a place to spend this either. We had a "penny candy store" on just about every other block in my neighborhood. They also had a bar on every block, but that's another story.

In middle school, my Mom decided that we needed to have some remodeling done on the house, and things got a lot tougher when I was recruited to help the contractor dig out the cellar floor, which was covered in a thick, heavy cement/ concrete mixture. This all had to be broken up with a pick axe, then hauled out, bucket by 5 gallon bucket. Since it was one of those old cellars, the ceiling was only around 5'6" tall. Since my older brother was away in the Army at this time, and my younger brother was a big too small, guess who got to do this job? Me. I guess it was supposed to build character. I just thought it sucked, and I resented watching all my friends running around the neighborhood, with nothing but fun and adventure on their agenda.

By the time I got to high school, my mom had enrolled me in some government summer jobs program for less fortunate kids like myself, and there I met a band of nit wits, knuckle heads and simpletons who made up our 'speedy participants' work team. We'd get up early while everyone else got to sleep in, and head on down to the high school during the summer months, obstensibly to assist the maintenance men with getting everything in order for the coming school year. I think the wage was $2.20 and hour, and we didn't get our first paycheck for well over a month, due to the proficiency of this "Government Program". By this time, employee morale had long sunken to the deepest depths of despair, and the only thing we really wanted to do was raise holy fucking hell with these numbskull janitors, after which we'd regroup at some point in the day to compare notes, laugh and talk about how we'd managed to torment the be-jesus out of the powers that be.

During the 80's, I worked for my buddy Bob installing marble and granite floors, walls, ceilings, vanities, cabinets, and any other stuff you wanted encased in luxury. It was a good opportunity to get out of my home town, and see New York City, Philadelphia, and lots of very 'high end' offices, homes and condos of the rich and famous. I also learned some interesting things about installing marble, tile and granite. Once, while working at a particularly large job outside Philadelphia, Bob somehow managed to lose the keys to the truck, in about three feet of piled up snow, just as we were finishing up a job that had taken us over 2 months to complete. I found the keys at the bottom of a snow bank on the path towards the house.

The best story however, has got to be the time we were working for a known 'criminal type', installing marble floors for his girlfriend's house. He kept making these threatening statements about who he was gonna 'kill' and 'take care of', and shit. So I came up with the bright idea to secretly tape record his next conversation. Well, we did. I used one of my neil young bootlegs to tape over, and set it up in the 'boombox' right there on the kitchen counter, just before the guy was set to arrive and start his latest tirade. Bob knew he was gonna start in, bacause he'd been going off on the phone before heading up to see us. As the tape was rolling, we were shitting bricks hoping he wouldn't notice the red light on, thinking we'd get caught any moment. After he left, we sat outside reviewing his incriminating statements and laughing our asses off.

My most recent job, however, has got to take the cake for sheer lunacy, incompetence, and seemingly endless assininity. It was like the people at the top were bent on keeping things as fucked up as possible, and if you tried to raise a voice against what you saw around you, they'd freak out and turn on you like savage dogs. Fear and their impending all important retirement came first, and competence, fairness and doing the right thing were a distant runner up. Allow me to share a few tales, now that i'm no longer employed by these folks.

My first supervisor on the job, we'll call "Joni Cochran". Joni was one of these upwardly mobile, black, professional (buppie)women with a college degree she thought gave her cart blanche to treat everyone around her like shit. No, worse than shit. She treated those underneath her as truly beneath her. Insecure, vain, with an obvious hatred towards white people, I'd never before experienced this sort of outwardly racist behavior before. She took over as manager just after the O.J. Simpson murders, and openly sided with "the Juice", pronouncing his wife, whose head he nearly severed, as 'promiscuous', as though this somehow made it ok. She showed clear and open favoritism towards her black employees and clients, while reserving her harshest criticism for the whites in her employ.

What Joni Cochran lacked in management and people skills, she more than made up for in deception, underhandedness and sneaky assed "Supervisory" methods. For instance, if you had Q.A. coming to look over your particular records, she would sneak in the night before, take out several important peices of the record, then replace them right after Q.A. left, leaving you puzzled as to why they reported those files missing.

Incapable of admitting a mistake, no matter how small, Joni would argue with you over the simplest, provable matters, such as who sang that song, or what color hair someone has. When given the evidence to the contrary, Joni would simply refuse to admit error, or point to the bias of the evidence gathering, or her perceived inconsistency in exactly what you meant about who sang that song. It was pointless to argue with her, because she was cleary fucking nuts.

One on One meetings with Joni were pure hell. She'd continually hammer home a seemingly meaningless point, knowing that you'd disagree with her, until finally, you'd just throw your hands up and say, "I give up, you're right!", in a desperate attempt to get it OVER with. I once had a 1:1 meeting with her, which typically should last about 1/2 hour, for FOUR HOURS straight. She wanted to tape record the meeting, but I refused. I pointed out a medication error that she'd committed, but she denied it. When i pointed out her own initials in the wrong place, she refused to see look, pretending that it didn't exist. This nut case would take anything you said and twist it to fit her 'racist conspiracy' theories. They finally transferred her away, but she continued to file greivance after complaint after lawsuit, each of which was thrown out, one after the other. Still, the woman couldn't admit defeat. Finally, she was forced to pay off the legal fees we'd incurred, for wasting everyone's time with these lawsuits. She also called us all in to testify at a 'civil service commission' trial. Again, Miss nutcase lost, but not before making a total ass of herself in front of all her 'friends' and 'supporters', 98% of whom were outsiders from her church and sorority groups, and who all happened to be black. I can still hear her imitating Johnny Cochran with her "People ask me why" speech. "People ask me why? Why would they do this to me? And I say for one reason; (runs her fingers down one arm) "For the color of my skin." Oy Vey. I have no idea what this lunatic is doing today, but I'm sure she's tormenting someone with her assinine conspiracy theories. Message to "Joni"- sometimes, even if you happen to be black, YOU'RE STILL A FUCKING ASSHOLE!

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Next up, we have perhaps the nuttiest of past coworkers, a truly complicated and disturbed individual we'll call Delilah Jones. Ok, this one had a lonnnng history of bullshit well before I ever encountered her, but that didn't stop her from continuing her frivolous lawsuits, bullshit complaints, incoherent ramblings, false accusations and out and out goofiness on a daily basis.

Once, I got a letter written by her incompetent 'boyfriend' who fashioned himself as a lawyer, but in reality was a modern day Cliff Clavin' know it all. After spelling his own name three different ways, (i'm assuming one of them was correct), he proceeded to list a long litany of illigitimate, job related complaints and second hand stories he'd heard from "Delilah" while living in her basement. The crux of the biscuit was that he wanted, no, demanded that both the head of our agency, (more on him later) and yours truly be fired, and that the above demands are Non-Negotiable!! What a fuckin' dickhead. Of course this complaint went nowhere, even though he did c.c. the letter to.. get this.. the U.S. Department of Justice! Talk about self delusion.

Later, after Delilah was fired (again) from the Agency, she filed another lawsuit and had us all brought before her stupid assed attorneys, who looked like she'd found their listings on the back of a chewing gum wrapper, or in the back pages of "conspiracy now" magazine. These two jokers took about 3 hours to grill me on every stupid form and letter and log entry i'd written for over 18 months, in some bizarre attempt to get me to admit.. um.. i still don't know what i was supposed to admit to. Anyway, it all ended up leading to a whole bunch of nothing. Even the court stenographer was laughing at the her legal team. It was that bad. Last I heard, these screwballs had moved to Florida.

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One of Delilah's former co-workers was a dangerously insane, intentionally bald white guy (never trust intentionally bald white guys) by the name of Dick Cranium. This guy had already been hauled away from his job site for being the paranoid, lunatic, life threatening mental case he was/is, only to be given his job back after threatening our mostly chicken shit Agency with yet another lawsuit. Plus, he blamed everything on Delilah, whom the folks at the Main Office had nothing but disdain for, so this gave them a convenient excuse to hire him back. But guess what? Instead of just keeping him on as "the nutty employee over at sector 6", they went ahead and PROMOTED his ass, making him... yep, you guessed it- MY manager!! What the fuck??

Here's a guy who actually told me he could make the streetlights go on and off using his 'secret powers' hidden in his hands. The government knew all about these powers, don't you know, and that's why all those black helicopters were always watching him. I know- this is right out of central casting. He'd go as far as to take binoculars into work with him, to keep an eye on those black helicopters. Dick would tell these long winded, boring stories you knew were totally made up, (the guy who pulled a gun on him in traffic, the police chief who gets him off no matter what his crimes, the extremely hot co-worker who was 'all over him' at a staff meeting, the amazing model type indian chick who rented his basement, etc. etc.) all in an attempt to impress you with his imaginary life of intrique.

In between telling you all these bullshit fabrications, Dick would attempt to get you to open up to him, tell him your secrets, then use them against you. Fortunately, I'd already been tipped off by his former co-workers, so I never took the bait. But he also enjoyed pitting staff against one another, in an attempt to 'divide and conquer'. Some of the staff there were all too happy to lick his ass, and he was always willing to be a nice guy, provided you were female, and you were 'in love with him', like all the females were, according to Dick. He'd tell you that he could have you fired at any time, that the management at the office would back him no matter what he did, that he could set you up, make a call and have you fired, on and on. In between these shenanigans, Dicky boy would also accuse you of the most insane things, like eating or taking leftover food from the worksite, ("I know it was you, because i looked outside in the garbage cans, and it wasn't there!) or of intentionally riling up one of the residents (I know you got him going, cuz you KNEW I was going to take him out today!)

Dick was another one who'd deny what was staring him right in the face. I'd point out medications that were clearly marked as "AM MEDS" and he'd say they were for the PM. Reality simply didn't matter. He'd ridicule your co-workers over the phone right in front of you, to show what a big man he was. He'd tell you not to trust anyone you work with because "they're ALL talking about you!" And he'd become extremely paranoid and threatened the minute he learned that you'd had an innocent conversation with someone at the main office, demanding to know what the conversation entailed.

Now imagine if you would, actually working under these insane conditions. What would you do? Tell his supervisor? Report him to upper management? Of course you would. And that's just what I did. Talk about a big fucking mistake. Once i got down there and began to lay all this shit on them, the idiots and incomptent fools that he'd warned me would 'take his side' did just that. Instead of looking into these observations, and taking my report seriously, these incompetent fools actually stated to me that "he's not going to like this, when we show him what you've said, so WE'RE GOING TO TRANSFER YOU! Sez WHAAAAATS???? Yeah, you heard right. Since Dick Cranium wasn't going to like this, it was already decided by Bonita Fender and Bathsheba Killjoy that 'I' was the problem, and that in order to solve it, 'I' would be removed! Pretty simple isn't it? Well, if you got one look at this "Bonita Fender", you'd quickly realize that simplicity is her stock in trade. The woman couldn't possibly possess an IQ over 90, and I'm being generous. Despite being inexplicably employed in a position of high authority, this woman still uses words like 'ax', and 'percific', as in 'Let me ax you a percific question'. How this woman rose to the heights of management is beyond me. They must truly be desperate down there.

So anyway, both Miss Fender and Bathsheba Killjoy were very interested in my employee record, going through it with a fine tooth comb, all because I'd reported this known madman to the higher ups. And yet, when it came time for looking into Dick Cranium's record, suddenly the women were suffering from a deplorable lack of curiosity. Not once did they acknowledge checking into his record, and Miss Fender flat out lied to my face saying she knew nothing about his past, or that she'd ever heard anything about his former problems, many of which I was now reporting (again). Finally, I just told them to get me the fuck out of there, transfer me to any other spot, but there was no fucking WAY I was ever going back to work for that fucking asshole again. I was rewarded with a totally unworkable schedule, doing 2 16 hour days, plus a Saturday 8 hour shift, so I'd be completely exhausted at all times. To the people at this lunatic asylum who continue to enable sick, corrupt, lying, incompetent assholes, while covering up for each other and kissing ass, all I can say is FUCK YOU.

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After working for 10 long years at that place, I got a job working as a bartender at a very nice ski resort in the Shenandoah Mountains. This lasted for about 4 or 5 months, I think. The wildest thing was, I'd never held a job bartending in my life, and had to figure things out on the fly. There were some cool people there, and some of the customers were actually pretty nice too, though there were a few snobbish types who could be a bit overbearing at times. I also encountered some real losers, who were hung up on their own percieved self-importance, which was quite a joke, if you ever got a look at these folks. The owners were a married couple who ran the place like it was their own personal Irish pub, and they were truly their own best customers. The principle owner (with whom I got along quite well) would lose his keys at least once a week. The place was practically begging to be robbed, since people left the coolers open outside, keys were lost or misplaced, and there was very little supervision. I remember coming in several times where the money drawer was just sitting in the back room, with no count, full of cash left there by the previous night's bartender, who'd usually turn up to be the manager.

The Staff would hang out after hours, talking gossip and getting shit face drunk until the late hours. The money drawers were NEVER correct, and employees would leave things uncounted for all the time. It was insane, yet so much more fun than the previous job I'd held working for the Government. Here, you could actually interact with people from all different walks of life, and there was very little pressure, even when we got 'slammed' at times. The best stories came from a guy named "Dan", who filled our afternoons with stories of his wild adventures all over the world. He had amazing tales of his time spent at 'Hedonist' and "Hedonist II", whereby Dan would engage in any number of sexual encounters with countless free spirited ladies. Dan never missed a shift, and since there were three different bars at this resort, it didn't matter which one I'd be assigned to, Dan would always show up to regale us with his amazing tales of adventure.

After working for a few months at the resort, I needed to buckle down and get a 'real job', so I took a position with an Agency located near the West Virginia border. That's when the real fun began. I will save this for another day, since I'm still employed by this Agency.

Incredibly Insane Stories of On the Job Madness!