Very minor rant, in the light of all that’s happened, but needs to be said.
To the denizens who use the break room next to my office:
Please read the instructions on your microwave food, or the convenient “Idiot-Graph” logos on the control panel!!
–Microwave popcorn, a favorite office snack, does not require time/temperature settings required to fuse nuclei.
A nuclear meltdown involving just one bag of Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Butter can take out a few rooms and many cublicles thanks to our enclosed, superefficient, climate-controlled building.
–Clean up the microwave, especially after you inadvertently set it on “Super-Heated Plasma Jet”-setting and explode you slimy Hot Pocket all over the inside of the chamber. After about eight to ten of these “China Syndrome”-meltdown incidents, the microwave looks like a scene from one of the Alien movies.
–Spilled liquids inside the microwave do not disappear, even after numerous nukings. They just mutate or evolve into a semi-intelligent form of goo that you wind up chipping out with a butter knife or jack hammer.
–If no one cares to clean up after themselves, and you’re really hungry on a tight budget, please stop by my office. I will be selling slices of bread that you can simply pop into the previously mentioned biological horror of a microwave. Set it on moderate “Stun”, and voila!, nutritious(?) microwave pizza, complete with a wide variety of flavors from items that imploded/exploded over the course of the previous few weeks. Todays special-- Jalapeno cocoa with pepperoni and blueberry muffin bits, yummy!
Yeah! And tell them to clean up the goddamn coffee pot that they drop on the floor leaving the shatterred bits lying about like so many sparkly, jagged diamonds of death. Jesus H. Fuck! You’d think we work with a bunch of 3 year olds.
Ooh, does that bring back memories. Once I took an accounting class at night. I was starving, having worked all day, so I nuked a bag of popcorn at the break. I was too busy reading the bulletin board in the breakroom, and scorched the popcorn. When I took it back to class (it was starting back up) that thing was literally smoking. I shiver when I recall the looks of horror and disgust on the faces of my fellow students, as well as the teacher.
Cartooniverse wanders in, contentedly sucking at teeth to dislodge last bits of his all-time champeen favorite snack food: Burned popcorn. Glance around. Yep. They’ve got it dead wrong. Strolls out…
Now, I must admit, to impose that most foul vapour uponst the nostrildamus of another is a vile deed indeed. Show some class, cocksocket !!! As for the nitwits who broke the glass, did they think it would decompose back into the floor tiling, leaving nary a shard?
Seriously though. Once I and everyone on my floor could smell this odd burning smell. We could not tell what it was or where it was coming from and we looked everywhere. We wound up with first the custodial crew, then the HVAC and electrical techs, and finally the fire department…
…and then we found out some wanker’d burnt some popcorn up on the second floor.
Oh, man, have I got stories. I used to be the office manager for a tech company - all spoiled twerps. Grr. Some assmunch would “grill” his Gardenburgers in the toaster oven - those of you who have had Gardenburgers know that they’re basically oatmeal and other grains held together with some cheese-like substance - so it would melt, drip and scald all over the bottom of the toaster oven and it REEKED. Or, the people who, in spite of the terribly clever Dr. Seuss-inspired signs I created, insisted on leaving 30 coffee cups in the dishwasher instead of putting them in the dishwasher two feet away. And they’d dump their coffee stirrers in the disposal. And they’d spill/break things and not clean it up. Or they’d leave eggshells in the sink. Or they’d hide - yes HIDE - old coffee cups in the conference rooms rather than put them in the kitchen, and then complain about the smell. They’d steal other people’s food from the fridge. They’d leave four-week-old leftovers in the fridge until mold came creeping out of the sides. In one grand instance, someone started a dishwasher with one coffee cup in it…someone later OPENED said dishwasher, and left a huge puddle on the floor…which someone half-assedly attempted to clean up with a single, presumably mighty, paper towel, left sodden in the middle of the floor.
I loathed each and every one of the buttnuggets that did that shit…and we knew who it was, too. Thank god I got laid off.
In my former place of employment, the worker bees were supposed to take turns cleaning the refrigerator. One day, it was the receptionist’s turn. A sweeter person you’ve never met. It must’ve taken a lot to set her off, but I have to admit being amused when I heard “*Will someone please remove the chemistry project from the refrigerator!” come over the office loudspeaker.
You know, I work for the U.S. Air Force, and I am constantly amazed. The building where I work must contain at least $20 mil worth of finely tuned mechanical marvels, a staff of a good thousand technogeeks charged with keeping said machines tweaked and torqued to within an inch of their electrical little lives, and there is not a single damn person in the building who has ever, ever, ever managed to cook the microwave popcorn without burning it.
Whether the microwaves are too strong or the directions are too weak, the popcorn (sold in convenient single-serve sizes in the vending machines downstairs) always winds up the unsuspecting victim of a nuclear holocaust. And it reeks. And the building’s ventilation system, superbly self-contained to superlative security standards, shares the stench with each and every one of us.
As per Cartooniverse’s wise words: Feh. Feh feh feh!!
I do admit I may have gone a little overboard on the alliteration in this post. It’s a rant with minimal editing. Sorry.
Guinastasia… I don’t know what to say. I’ve seen attitudes and opinions expressed on this board that I considered pretty dang deviant, and I thought I was open-minded enough to deal with anything. But burnt popcorn!?
::cringe::
Was a cop, Guanolad. I gave it up to work as a Department of Defense contractor, specifically information management.
The scary part is that these people here are all engineers, systems analysts, computer specialists and accountants. They can design and develop weapons, but cannot operate a microwave oven.
