You Must Present
I like this image. No disrespect to Pankaj Ghemawat or the Eight Percent is intended.
These days, if you decide to come after Twitter, you had best bring your A-game. You gotta have cred. Because, when the shit hits the fan, you have a grand total of .42 seconds to capture the attention of that potential follower or lose ’em forever.
You get one chance. One!!
Strike while the iron is hot. Seize the day. Squeeze lemonade out of their lemons. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.
That’s where I come in. My latest business idea will give you insta-playa status. Make the jump for our special presentation or choose the path that leads to dying alone.
Workplace Barflies
This image, just like this post, does not cut the mustard.
There’s really no point to this post. Leave. Now. -Ed.
Feed. It’s what’s for dinner. Mmm. That sounds good. I’ll have that! Yeah, I’m a hundred and six years old, and I still make my own bread! (Prideful braggart.)
Well, what do you want to eat? Mmm. Do you have biscuit with a little bit of mustard on it? Mmm.
I don’t know about your family but in my family we have this tradition. Any time we assemble to break break together (or biscuit or whatever) there’s one thing we’ll do for sure: Discuss and speculate about the next meal a comin’.
It’s pretty much the exact opposite of being mindful and appreciative. Someone went to a lot of effort and bother to put this food before us. First, they had to have a vision and plan the damn thing, and that may be the hardest part of all. Then they went to a grocery store and spent money on stuff and brought it home. Then, using recipes and their own skills, prepared, assembled and cooked it all together while we sat on our lazy asses.
Yeah, I think they deserve more appreciation than us talking about the next meal we plan to shove in our face holes.
That said, where do you wanna go? To eat? That’s the conversation my wife and I had last night.
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Master Debater
The first presidential debate. The tie situation is secure.
Right after watching the third and final presidential debate I turned to my wife and said, “Just you wait. Both sides will claim victory.”
And that was before I’d heard even a single pundit tell me how to think. Yeah, I did it all by my own self.
That establishes my cred. You may now read the rest of this post with confidence. I have dubbed myself the Master Debater and I’m going to share it all with you. You’ll see.
This is my insightful analysis of the debates and I promise it will be my own style of unique coverage. I’ll cover the angles that the rest of the so-called “experts” somehow missed. Let’s get right to it.
I’d like to thank WordPress for hosting this post and myself for inviting me. The Abyss is a lovely place. It’s a pleasure to be here.
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The Winning Sinning
Unlikely amoebas.
What is winning? What is risk? What is glory?
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
— Pierre Corneille (1606 – 1684), ‘The Cid,’ 1636
Tough questions when it’s early on a Monday morning. Too tough. But I can tell you this much with 100 percent certainty: The continued existence of Charlie Sheen has absolutely ruined the internet for the term “winning.”
Out of the first 31 results in a Google Image Search for “winning” a whopping 28 of them had something to do with ye olde whack nut. On the highway of life Charlie Sheen is a single-vehicle accident.
I guess we could say he’s a winner when it comes to publicity.
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Abyss Vacation Planning
Julie is my alter ego. See Isaac for a paloma then let’s have a talk. I’ll show you how to plan a vacation right, motherfucker.
Even an guru gets days off once in a while. Unpaid, of course.
Back in the day, in The Other Life (as I now call it) I had a real job. It had a real salary. It had real benefits like paid sick days, paid holidays, 401k, medical, and dental. Hell, it was almost enough to keep my negativity on the back burner. It was almost like someone gave a shit about me.
Oh yeah, I had FOUR (count ’em motherfucker) paid weeks of vacation, too.
Fast-forward to the Decade of Despair ™ and a lot has changed. True, the Decade of Despair officially ended in 2011, but it has been extended indefinitely in what I’ve come to know as The Bonus Round.
My pay is about the same as I earned in the mid-80s. I shit you not. And I haven’t had a paid day off since the year 2001. Vacation, sick, holiday – whatever. None. Diddly squat. Goose egg. Bupkis.
Health insurance? I only work full time, ya know? Why the fuck would I be worthy of insurance. Don’t make me laugh. If I do I’ll exceed the stress capabilities of my truss and then, well, I’ll need a doctor. Trust me on this. I don’t have $200 on me to see an asshole who will spend three minutes with me giving me bad advice.
But I digress. Since ending The Other Life vacations have been few and far between. Hell, even when I hitched up with Mrs. Abyss the wedding ceremony and honeymoon had to be crammed into a three-day weekend. Monday morning I was right back at it in the shithole.
Someone must have told all of my bosses than an employee stressed to the point of daydreaming 24/7 about swallowing razor blades was the optimal path to productivity, right? It’s the only explanation that makes sense. (That or the universe hates me for daring to exist.)
One time since then I took nine days off in a row. That’s five days “vacation” from work with weekend bookends. Utterly unpaid. It’s a world record that has stood for years. No, I doubt I’ll be able to break it. Not in this lifetime.
But I’m about to tie the record. Yeah, nine more unpaid days off in a row for me. And, since I obviously have so much vacation experience under my belt, I’m going to share a few vacation planning tips with ya. It’s time for me to don my Julie hat. Come aboard, I’m expecting you. I’ll set a course for adventure! If we’re super lucky maybe Doc will even hit on my wife.
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When customers foam
Yet another Friday bonus post.
Let’s play this post like a round of Jeopardy, shall we? Remember, all answers must be phrased in the form of a question.
Category: Potent Foamables
$500 Clue: “Five”
[buzzer]
Alex: Tom?
Tom: The number of minutes customers are willing to wait for a response after sending an email before they foam at the mouth?
Alex: Correct! You are today’s winner!
This is how it works. You arrive at work and go through your emails. You have some from bosses, some from co-workers and some from customers. I have a routine for handling them which mainly involves getting the low-hanging fruit (quickies) out of my inbox as fast as possible. If a customer has a quick question, I might just pound my keyboard like a monkey and get them a response at that instant and be done with it. If it is more involved, however, I jot them down on a list so I can research, do the legwork, and so forth before calling them back.
Organization is good.
Of course, this all goes out the window as soon as the phones roll over because ALL of them simply pick up the phone, dial our number, then pound the redial button repeatedly until they get a human. Don’t forget to wear your handy yellow containment suit to avoid the foam spittle.
Today at 9:05am we had been open for a grand total of five minutes. The customer service primary was already on the phone. I was already neck deep in the shit on the floor with an obliviot customer (who was actually a pretty decent guy). Meanwhile all of the phone lines were ringing off the hook like it was the invasion of motherfucking Normandy beach. Apparently there were a lot of people who needed apologies. (We’re pretty much in the professional apologizing business. They’re all calling to complain about things we screwed up because we suck.)
“Eek. Hello?”
“This is so-and-so! I’m calling about order XYZ! I ordered two widgets and only received one.”
“Yes, I am aware of that. I did receive and read your email. Unfortunately you’re not the only customer in the universe and amazingly I haven’t had a chance to work on your problem yet. Sadly no miraculous knowledge has yet spontaneously jumped via telepathy into my brain. It’s beginning to look more and more like I’ll actually have to be given some time to work the problem before I’ll learn anything new. And phone calls like yours only delay that process, which, in turn, creates a snowball effect and consumes 110% of the time I have in my day. Take the square root of -1 and multiply that by 42. I’ll probably be able to call you back in that many minutes. But please know that I am very, very sorry about this problem.”
Hmm. Looks like another customer problem just got pushed back to Monday. Gee, I hope you weren’t in a hurry. Too bad, so sad! Loser, loser, whatever!!!
Shouts from the Abyss 
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