The Intelligence Estimate

I recently and completely by accident created a form of haiku that speaks only about workplace behavior. I hope to do to haikus what Scott Adams did to cartoons...that is make them torturously abstract and condescending.

To that end I unleash upon the unsuspecting world cubicle haikus, or CUBIKUS!

Meetings are a chance
For lonely execs to waste
The time of their staff

Make a decision
I don't even care which one
Make one already

Redundant. Also
Superfluous and a scosh
Repetitive too

Your small ideas
Are nothing when compared to
My master's degree

Your stupidity
Does not make me want to
Work any harder

Work, break, work, lunch, work.
Wash, rinse, repeat forever.
Drive home. Lay down. Die.

I am almost done.
Project is coming along
More rewrites Judy?

Achieving nothing.
Dig a hole then fill it in.
Collect a paycheck.

Choking back my rage.
Incompetants all around.
Middle management.

Here are some from my friend Shelia....

Workday has ended
It never comes soon enough
Tomorrow's too soon

Don't think for yourself!
Be a good corporate clone.
Sit. Lay down. Beg. Heel.

System's not working.
Information out of date.
We're state of the art.

Herculean tasks
for such a little paycheck?
Why do I bother?

Do this, then do that.
Then find out that both were wrong.
Incompetance rules.

Co-workers talking
Irritatingly stupid.
Wish I'd brought a gun.

Repetitive work
Numbs my brain and will to live.
Repeating again.

Take THAT Dilbert! I've made hating your job fun again!

I've seen her a bunch of times and I always find it impossible not to stare. There is a small Asain woman who occasionally gets on the same bus at the same stop as me in the mornings. She comes out of her house and down to the sidewalk. I watched her do it dozens of times. When she gets to the sidewalk she'll stand there and watch the traffic for a few minutes while rolling her shoulders in big exaggerated circles. Then a whole host of other increasingly larger and more obvious exercises emerge and the whole thing culminates with about 20 deep knee bends. I applaude her commitment to healthy living, but her choice of gyms confuses me. I'm just happy that it ends before she makes me toss the medicine ball with her.

Riding the bus is a good way to meet a lot of people. Not people you want to know, mind you, just a LOT of people. I've been exposed to a fight between a welfare mom and two people going back to their rooms in a half way house as well as the most hilarious drug deal to ever take place outside of a Cheech and Chong movie.

"If you want more call me this weekend on my cell phone, but only after five on Friday. I have free weekends so I don't answer before five on Fridays and after 9 on Sundays. So don't call me unless it's between those two times. Ok? Do you understand me? I'll only answer on the weekends. Got it? I don't think you do. What times can you call me?"

"Huh?"

But the most fun I ever had in public transportation started out with a slow motion altercation between a drunk Asian man and a small black man.

I was waiting for the 6 p.m. bus. Because I live in Des Moines where the streets are rolled up at 10 p.m., the buses start coming once an hour at 6. So when the buses meet downtown at 6 for their final stop before heading into the hinterlands, they wait longer than usual.

This Asian man, who, for the sake of this story we'll call Bill, is standing to my left. He's stumbling around and mumbling something to himself. I don't pay any attention to it. My run in with Cheech and Chong taught me that if I waste time attending to every rediculous person public transportation has to offer that my nervous system would shut down in fright.

Bill begins stumbling my way but I stare straight ahead and make no eye contact. Even when the alcohol vapor rolls off of him and hits me in the face nearly burning off my eyebrows, I make no noise. He walks past me to the black man, who we'll call Neil. After awhile I start to hear raised voices so I begin paying attention. Bill is now within inches of Neil, right in his face, and he just keeps repeating this phrase over and over again: "I ain't afraid of you." Well, after enough prodding Neil politely offers to hand Bill's ass to him and Bill turned around and walked away saying, "I don't wanna fight you, I don't wanna fight you."

Bill walks right past me, back to his "thinking corner" where he stands for awhile, pacing nervously. He then gathers his courage, walks back up to Neil, looks him right in the eye and says, "I ain't afaid of you."

It's like Bill's brain had time to reset itself on his walk past me. His head was like an Etcha-Sketch that had been shaken clean and Neil was once again getting ready to draw bloody murder all over it for him. But then Bill's well-pickled sense of self preservation kicks in and he let's loose his rallying cry, "I don't wanna fight you, I don't wanna fight you." And he shuffles back past me again.

This same mobius strip of stupidity passes by me three or four more times before the bus finally shows up to take me to smarter lands. I usually like to sit in the back of the bus. This is a technique I picked up on very early on. If you sit in the back you can keep an eye on all the riff raff. However, on this day the back of the bus was full so I took one half way back a few seats ahead of the back door. I figured I could just dive into my book and stay out of history's way on my 15 minute ride back home. I was wrong.

No sooner had I opened by book than two guys stumble onto the bus and sit directly behind me. I knew they were trouble. I could smell it on them. Literally. If it were physically possible to smoke Milwaukee's Finest, the resulting ashes mixed with a hint of skunk's spray would smell like these two guys.

Now Beavis and Butthead sit down behind me and start discussing the pressing issues of the day.

"We got beer at home?"

"Yeah, and we got pizza too. Have we got enough beer?"

"I don't know, we better get more. Have we got enough pizza?"

"Probably not, we should get some more. Have we got any money?"

"There's always money for beer...."

"And pizza...."

So I think it's safe to say that these two guys daily routine could be placed into three categories: beer time, pizza time and beer AND pizza time. Clearly bath time was not a priority. I guess carrying the stench of alcohol with them wherever they went was the next best thing to actually drinking in public. They had no trouble BEING drunk in public, just actually drinking in public apparently was the hang up. I could tell that the "No beverages" sign in the front of the bus was the only thing standing between them and total enjoyment of the public transportation experience. Damned MTA Nazis!

"Beer, beer, beer. Pizza, pizza, pizza. Beer, pizza, beer, pizza. Pizza, pizza, Beer beer."

Walking home was starting to cross my mind when I noticed the bus driver yelling something out the door.

"What?" he yelled.

An unintelligible reply came from beyond the door.

"What?" he replied again, more aggitated this time.

The slurred response came back, "I'm sorry, I'm a little bit drunk. Is this the bus that takes me to..." and then I heard him mention two streets that I'm reasonably certain only exist in his head.

It was Bill, and "A little bit drunk" is a "little bit" of an understatement.

Beavis and Butthead saw Bill. And with an air of disdain and disgust usually reserved for open sewers Beavis point to Bill, "Fucking drunk."

So you see, there's a heirarchy to everything. Sure Beavis and Butthead were falling down drunk, but they weren't Bill. At least they were on the bus!

There was a fire last week at the building next door to mine. I'm not sure the cause of it, but there was an arrest this week, so apparently it was intentionally set. And I can't say I am surprised.

I have lived in my current apartment for almost three years. It is owned by the same people that own the now burnt building next door. The quality of tennants in these buidlings have steadily declined over the course of those three years. And they were never GOOD.

My first Christmas there I was approached by the lady in apartment 2 and she asked me for money because, as she so eloquently stated "the banks are closed and we're stuck like chuck." I gave her ten dollars and as collatoral she gave me two Steven Segal movies. Who got the better deal there? Well, they've moved and never returned my ten dollars and I'm stuck with two movies so bad that they barely stick to film.

After we got burned by those tennants, my wife and I shied away from talking to people in the hallways. Not because we didn't have the money but because we have standards in films. So we were a bit taken aback when recently our neighbor in apartment 3 introduced herself by inquiring, "Are you the ones that called the cops on me? I don't smoke marijuana!" Let me stress that this is the first conversation we ever had with this woman. Just to put it into perspective, try to think of the last conversation you had that STARTED OFF with the accusation that you were a narc. Sure, plenty of conversations end up there but very few start there, especially with strangers. And in her defense, she clearly doesn't smoke marijuana. Not the good stuff anyway, because that ditchweed will make you paranoid.

But at least the stoned are quiet. The people who replaced her in apartment 3 will not shut up. All hours, all days. They will not shut up. No matter what they do, party, listen to music, whisper, they do it loudly. One morning I was woken up to one of their conversations. Luckily one of them had a fleeting moment of clarity due to the fact that the landlord had talked to them the night before.

"Shut up, people are sleeping," the man said.

Not to be overcome by the power of his logic she shot back, "We'll those people need to get their asses up!"

So what could I do? I got up.

These people all lived in my building, but they are also the caliber of people who were being displaced by the fire next door. So when all the neighbors were asking, "Where will they go? What will they do?" I thought, "Well, I guess they'll just be annoying somehwere else."

And I was right. They were all moved into our building.