Last June I posted about a Shark and Gator that’d been seen hanging out around the parking lot where I work. Though she had nothing to do with the original appearance of Shark and Gator, my friend SS and her boyfriend took the plastic critters into their hearts and home. 

SS recently discovered Stillspinning and saw the post. She brought Shark and Gator to work today and gave them to me. 

I’m pleased as punch to have them.

Here’s a blast from the past, Dr. Jack Kevorkian (a.k.a. Dr. Death) is getting out of the pokey after doinig 8 years of a ten year stint.  For those of you who weren’t paying attention Dr. Jack was the guy who built a death machine (literally) in his basement with old soda bottles and some fishing line and started hooking people up to it.

Since Dr. Jack was pushing people into the hereafter in Michigan, where along with 49 other states its illegal, the doc was tossed in the slammer for his ‘assistance’.

Here’s the thing.  The “Right to Die” crowd couldn’t have made a worse choice for their poster child.  First of all the man is crazy.  Second, according to the picture below he’s a giant.  Those microphones are smaller than his index finger.  He’s got to be at least 30 feet tall.

Then there’s this. I actually used to own this record. It was less than great but the reactions people had to seeing it in the CD case was well worth the $2.00 I paid and the room it occupied in my CD wallet.

So Jack’s getting out.  I’m sure he’ll be up to his old antics again in no time.  Picking off the sick and old and screaming on CNN about how mean the government is for not letting him murder people.

How in the world can we have an employee named Trevelle and Trevellis and they not be twin brothers?  They’re not even related!

I’ve mentioned The Shins before.  They were on Austin City Limits this weekend - good show - and I’ve been playing the heck out of my CD.  This song is getting played over and over and over and… 

 Turn On Me

You can fake it for a while,
Bite your tongue and smile,
Like every mother does an ugly child.
But the stars are leaking out,
Like spittle from a cloud,
Amassed resentment counting ounce and pound.You’re entertaining any doubt,
Because you had to know that I was fond of you,
Fond of Y-O-U,
Though I knew you masked your disdain.
I can see that change was just too hard for us,
Hard for us.
You always had to hold the reigns,
But where I’m headed, you just don’t know the way.

My google homepage gives me an Ask Yahoo every day.  Today’s was the best question ever: “What is emo?”

The short answer is emo is best defined by looking at ‘emo kids.’  They have lots of weird hair, tight clothes and can be found at the mall looking sad and hungry.  They’re the kids you either want to hug or feed. 

If you’re interested in Emo music, bands like My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday seem to popular choices. 

My mom used to work for Weight Watchers.  One of the members in her classes had a rather insensitive family and, for her birthday, gave her a cookie-bouquet.  Their thoughts were that they’d get to eat the cookies and laugh at her because she couldn’t eat them.  This was not to be.  The cookies were delivered when no one else was home so the woman took them and had the entire bouquet shellacked - so it’d keep.

Nice.

House Minority Leader (that mean’s he’s a Republican for those keeping score at home) John Boehner was refreshingly candid when talking about the Immigration Bill currently up for a vote.  Speaking to a group of fellow republicans on Tuesday night, the Representative from Ohio said “I promised the President I wouldn’t talk bad about this piece of s***.”

The Bill in question allows for all the people who decided to break into our nation rather than wait in line to stay.

Since Bill promised George I guess he’s not going to make the talk show rounds to say it louder, but it was nice to hear someone who represents the people echo what the people are screaming at the top of their lungs.

I had to fire someone at work today.  The agent just lost it and unfortunately they lost it on a supervisor. It’s not the first this agent caused a scene.  Not too long ago my boss and I sat down with them to talk about how to air concerns or even anger in the workplace.

Call centers can be a high stress environment.  The calls never stop coming and some days they come faster than others.  We’ve had crazy call volume for weeks now and its taking its toll on the agents.  They’re tired and stressed and overworked.  It’s a perfect storm.

We found some problems with the way calls were being sent to us that may provide some relief.  Its too late for some.  They cracked under the pressure and quit or got fired.  Call centers aren’t for everyone.

This was in the Sunday comics a few weeks ago.  Click the image for the full strip.  Ever pane is funny.

My boss has been out of the office since last week.  Normally this would be a good thing as we get a lot of work done when he’s not around.  But this time he’s “working from home.”  What this basically means is that he emails us orders all day long demanding that we put out this fire or that.  What he doesn’t see is all the stuff we’re trying to get done in between his fits.

My job has become too much to take lately.  They keep asking for more and more of us and we’re all afraid that if we don’t give it we’ll be out on the streets.

Today an email came demanding that we each solicite overtime from our teams and if we fail to get enough we’ll have to come in and work in their place.  We need the overtime because we’re short staffed because we undercut ourselves on how many people it’d take to do the work correctly.  Now we’re constantly begging people to work over in the same breathe as we’re telling people they can’t take their lunch or breaks.  It’s a broken system and the bossman doesn’t seem to see it.

He’ll see soon.  He’s going to have a rebellion if he’s not careful.  Either that or we’ll all quit.  Quitting sounds nice.