(no subject)
I thought it was time for you guys to
I log my im conversations. I also report almost all of the hilarious happenings in my office to my roommate Julie as they happen. The following are snippets of things I've sent her that I thought might amuse and/or titillate. =D A little backup info: Mike is my boss and only eats chicken (no veggies, no beef, nada nothing besides chiken), Martin is British, and Lauren is...Lauren. You'll see what I mean. Also mentioned is Neil, who is the General Manager of the US office (he is also British), and Molly, who is the company mascot. She's a sheep.
--mike is telling me that he takes calcium pills because he's afraid of ostrich-paralysis
--this is mike's new song - "you are my black cloud, my only black cloud/you make me angry, when skies are blue" ...there's more but i can't remember it right now...suffice to say, it ends with "get the --- away from me"
--martin gave mike a scone and mike said he'd never seen one before and started flying it around like an airplane while making engine noises. martin then apologized for thinking he was a grownup when he in fact is a small child.
--lol julie - this was our lunch conversation today: Mike -"kai wal se!" (in a really terrible high pitched chinese accent)....Martin (deadpanning) "You sound like a cow giving birth." .... Mike "Yeah, that's actually what it means! A cow giving birth!".....Lauren "Martin speaks really good chinese"....Mike "So Martin, how many calves have you birthed before, exactly?"
--they were discussing that old saying, "if a tree falls in the forest....." and martin kept saying, "why would the tree fall in the first place?"
--haha neil did it again, martin beat him at foosball and before martin could get back to his desk to gloat about it neil called our department and shouted "don't listen to him!" and hung up. and martin keeps going around saying "I crushed him!" in this redneck american accent.
--Lauren: "Mike, do you remember the blizzard of 78?"....Mike "I wasn't born yet."...Lauren "Oh, when were you born?"...Mike "1982"...."The year before I graduated high school...huh. You could be my child, if I'd gotten knocked up at a young age."
--a;sdfja!!!!!!!! one of the tech guys just came in and threw snow balls at everyone!! real live snowballs in the office!! LOL. now there's snow all over my desk.
--Neil and Lauren were just discussing some checks that needed to go out, and Lauren was asking about getting a signature next Tuesday and Neil goes, "Christmas is Tuesday."...Martin butts in: "So that's a no, then?"...Neil to Lauren, "Christmas is on the 25th this year."....Lauren, "Oh, okay then."
--(FIVE MINUTES LATER) She still doesn't get it. Martin is still laughing and she's going, "What?"
--*headdesk* lauren just called an envelope a folder and nobody knew what she meant until she found one and held it up. she was like, I need an Abcam folder! oh, here's one...and mike and i just looked at each other like oh.my.god.
--check out this email i got from Neil this morning:
"On the evening of Dec 20th, at 19:08, an historic event occurred in the offices of Abcam Inc.
It was snowing outside, and most of the staff had left. In a lonely corner of the Abcam office, a foosball game was played between old rivals. In a dramatic turns of events...Michael lost. His crown is now shattered, and his position in dispute. Will he ever return to his elevated position in the rankings, or has his confidence melted, like the snow?"
he sent it to the whole company, lmao, even the UK office.
--mike just sent a response:
"The true Story……after 10 hours of being at work…..this is what happened.
Neil -want a game?
Michael- Perhaps tomorrow? I'm trying to finish something and not really feeling too good.
Neil- ok
Neil -are you ill?
Michael- i don't know, i feel like i have a head coldish thing.
Neil- oh - that's bad
Neil- hope it doesn't get any worse
Michael- I just need some rest. I think i'm just a bit run down.
Neil- maybe Foosball will cure you ??
Finally I gave in….fell down 6-0 while not really being able to get into it….and then decided I can’t let Neil beat me this bad and started trying harder and lost 10-8. Everyone should know how this really went down! Taking advantage of a sick cripple and then bragging! Shame on Neil!!!!"
--lauren is being exceptionally strange today. we turn off the lights in the office, and she blurts out "I look younger!" She says it's better lighting, and we say, well, technically there's no lighting and she got really huffy. and then i had thrown away my scone because it was blueberry and banana, which i didn't know when i bought it, and then she said she wanted it so i made to get it, and she got really grossed out - but it was still in the bag, it wasn't even touching the trash bag (which was empty, anyway)...so i get up to get some coffee and when i come back i see her bending over my trash bin picking it out with the tips of her fingers. and she's like, "shhh dont' say anything". and she keeps asking me if she looks strange. she says everyone keeps staring at her.
--yesterday at lunch someone said all things are good in moderation and Lauren goes, "Like heroin!" (she says everything with exclaimation points) and we were all "......." so she had to backtrack and be like, "I mean, not like heroin!"
--lauren just popped over the cubicle and said: i had a lot of stuck up friends in high school. i always used to stick up for the nerds. and then she sat back down. does that mean she thinks i'm a nerd? i dont' get it. maybe she's on meds that make her loopy, cause i haven't been talking to her for about 15 minutes now.
--i swear right now i am going to die laughing. i have a story for you if you have a moment. it's about alligators:
Pspotlight22 (9:44:56 AM): so this kid james comes in today
Pspotlight22 (9:45:21 AM): and he's got a huge black duffle bag with him, but it's not stuffed full, it looks kinda saggy
Pspotlight22 (9:45:42 AM): he works in customer service, which is sectioned off in it's own area behind a glass partition
Pspotlight22 (9:46:20 AM): so this girl kristine, who works two cubicles down from me in marketing and is good friends with mike, asks mike, "do you know what's with the bag?"
Pspotlight22 (9:46:40 AM): and mike goes, deadpanned, "it's an alligator."
Pspotlight22 (9:46:52 AM): and kristine says, "noooo. c'mon."
Pspotlight22 (9:47:16 AM): mike: "no, really. he said he was gonna. you can buy baby ones online for about $150."
Pspotlight22 (9:47:34 AM): and kristine goes, "what?? that's horrible!!"
Pspotlight22 (9:47:48 AM): mike: "i know! i don't know why he brought it in"
Pspotlight22 (9:48:18 AM): kristine: gets up and walks down the hall a bit and through the door into the service area and goes to james' desk
Pspotlight22 (9:48:36 AM): and she's looking around on the floor and peering under his desk, and james is like "....can i help you?"
Pspotlight22 (9:48:44 AM): and she goes, "where's the alligator?"
Pspotlight22 (9:49:01 AM): and james is like "......? what?"
Pspotlight22 (9:49:48 AM): and she goes, "the alligator! where is it?" and starts looking around at other people's desks in the cust service area
Pspotlight22 (9:51:39 AM): and everyone is like starting to stand up and stare at her and james is looking around at everyone like, "wtf?" and kristine finally comes back to the door and bangs on the partition to get mike's attention, which actually ends up in the entire accounts department going, "What is she doing?" and she yells through the glass "it's not here, i can't find it"
Pspotlight22 (9:57:34 AM): so yes
Pspotlight22 (9:57:46 AM): i've been dying dying DYING for the last 45 minutes
Pspotlight22 (9:57:59 AM): mike and i can't stop giggling
Pspotlight22 (9:58:11 AM): and kristine is REALLY pissed off
Pspotlight22 (9:58:14 AM): at mike, anyway
Pspotlight22 (10:05:32 AM): WOW kristine is pissed. she's yelling at mike from across the office
Pspotlight22 (10:05:47 AM): but it's just making mike giggle harder
--Lauren: "I have this fake virus that won't let me do anything." Martin: "That sounds like a real virus, not a fake virus."
--this guy that i've only met once, and he's very very flamboyantly gay, just came up to my desk and said in this amazing tone of voice: "Everybody else in the office gets XP but I get Vista, which is like the retarded inbred child of Windows. Gah!" and then he walked into a conference room and slammed the door
--lulz julie that was the most ridiculous meeting i've ever been to. the first half hour our conversation went something like this: getting up on the right side of the bed, sleeping, restless sleeping, cats, english bulldogs, pugs, breathing problems, restless sleeping, hospital beds, being tied up to beds, catheters, unmentionable parts, david blaine. and then for another half hour mike and paul had this discussion that sounded like this: Paul: "Merck is being allowed to commit an injustice!!111!!!^&$!!!" (they are making us do the work of their accounts payable department) Mike: "But they're a $300,000 customer. It's not like we can cut them off because we're going to spend an extra $2500/year on accounting time." Paul: "But they're committing an injustice!!^&%^#!!!@!$%%$!!!!!!" Mike: "But we can't lose them as a customer." Paul: INJUSTICE!!!*^)*&%*&$!!!!!" Mike: "We still can't lose them." And on and on and on. we were in there for hours and the only note i took was "Merck sucks."
--julie even our vendors are bizarre here. a vendor came in and gave us toys. it's this little plastic italian guy with a pipe and a bag full of tiny little cardboard cigarettes that you can actually light.
--lol lauren couldn't finish this equation: e=mc*2. she got as far as e=
--there's this guy dean who works in HR and he's kind of obnoxious, in that way that nonfunny people like to crack jokes continuously that aren't very amusing. and he comes down every single day to mangle british sayings to martin, usually in the form of "tally ho!" but yesterday he thought he was on a roll and just kept going and going, and was like, "Where's your red coat?" "The submarines have gone barney!" and on and on, and lauren was cracking up but mike and martin and i were like "....feel free to go back to your desk". and i forget now exactly what he said but after like ten minutes martin was just "i'm going to snackman" and when he got back dean was gone and martin was ranting for a while and i was terrified. lol. not really, but he's intimidating when pissed.
--(IN ADDITION) but oh - in the middle of dean getting out these one liners, lauren apparently feels like she needs to contribute and yells out "bollocks!" which of course, means she yelled out "Balls!" into the middle of the office, but she didn't know what it meant, lol. everyone just got really silent and she was like "..what?"
--so mike and martin and i were naming names that are both girls and boys names, like Jordan and Taylor and Kyle and Sam and Jesse and so on, and lauren goes: "Stephanie!" and martin goes "uhm, how many boys do you know named stephanie??" and she was like "...oh. yeah. Stephan, maybe?"
--so lauren was talking to martin and every three or four words she would start giggling uncontrollably, so of course mike and i are looking at each other going "wtf??" and martin doesn't know what's going on either. so lauren sees that we're confused and she giggles, "it's martin's face, he keeps making funny faces at me" and martin goes: "??? this is my face. it's just my normal face." and she was off laughing madly again thinking he was joking. but he wasn't.
--*headdesk* every single time we have a quiet day in the office (usually when mike and/or martin is gone) lauren pipes up every half hour or so "Can you all settle down please? I'm trying to work here!"
--yay we just had another fire drill. cept we didn't know it was a drill. neil and roderick were like: "Should we save the foosball table????!!!" you have someone named roderick??? they call him the Iron Rod of Foosball. i'm not sure what it means. i assume it's because he (according to Martin) KRUSHES everyone he plays against.
--lauren just said that her favorite genre is the roman empire. i didn't know the roman empire was a genre.
--lauren: "how old would lincoln be today?"
--hahaha martin says that every valentines day he goes through the phone book and picks a random girl to send a vday card to anonymously. not because he's a romantic guy, but because he likes to imagine them trying to hunt down their secret admirer.
--four people over the last hour have come down to our desks and said "top of the mornin to ya!" in an english accent and martin is getting so annoyed, lol. everytime he just waspishly informs them that that's an irish saying, not an english one.
--dean (ANNOYING HR GUY) just came down and sang an irish song.
--oh and hey, i made a work vingette. it goes like this:
"Lauren's donating $350 to the new foosball table," Martin yells out.
Mike looks gleeful. "Peggy said she had a hundred pennies."
"$3.50 maybe!" Lauren butts in. "I'm not eating frozen food for nothing you know!" She hoists up her Lean Cuisine and looks mournful.
Mike contradicts, "That's not frozen. Didn't you just heat it up?"
Martin looks up from his desk and goggles at Mike. "Are you on crack?"
--martin: "It's like a furnace in here!" mike: "It's like a furnace! touched for the very first time! like a furnace!"
--lauren called over our it person, eric. she said her outlook was broken. so he pulls it up and it's working fine and so he asks what the problem is. she tells him her inbox is empty. and he's like, is it supposed to be umpty? you usually have things in there? and she's like, yes, i don't know where all the other things are. so he has martin email something to lauren to see if it's working, which it is. so he clicks on another folder to see if there's anything in there. and it's her trash. and everything is in there, lol. so he's like, have you been pressing buttons? and she goes, no, i just pressed one button and everything disappeared. and he was like - was it this button? pointing to her delete button. and she's like ...yeah!
--i got this email:
"Dear foosballers,
I went to the site to check the table that our former commissioner found for the office, and after reading the reviews that were posted I'm concerned about its size and durability; I'm not sure it can handle the massive striking power we churn out here at Abcam, inc."
--at lunch we were telling stories about high school and lauren said that she was the nice one and she didn't name call, she only shot spit balls. mike and i were like...that's so nice of you.
--i told mike that my only symptom of withdrawal from quitting smoking was sleeplessness and he told me to go move to seattle. lauren didn't get it. she just offered that she got cranky.
--mike and i have started having movie wars. one of us will randomly take a word from a conversation and name a movie that's somehow related and other other person has to name the actors. lauren said somehting about spaghettios, so i said "overboard" and he said kurt douglass and goldie hawn, lol. i didn't expect him to know that one.
--lauren was just insisting her state quarters were counterfeit because she'd never heard of them before. she showed me one from 1989 and three state quarters and told me someone had given her fake quarters. she was like, "just look at the differences!"
--lauren was whispering something to me, and mike asked me what she was saying and it wasn't really important so i went to say it, but she interrupted me and was like, "Hello! I was whispering!" so i stopped. and mike said, "So? Weeping willows whisper in the wind."
--uhm lauren went out to her car to feed the meter and when she got back mike told her ben affleck had come in accidentally, he meant to go to the office next door and she asked him if he was serious about six times and he said yes and then she got super exicted, jumped up and down, and ran down the hall to talk to her friend sherry. (LATER) ahahahah, she ran back just now and punched mike in the arm
--this guy tom is really odd. he eats an orange every day with lunch, then comes down to our area and rates it. today he ate the 3rd best orange that he'd ever eaten.
--mike and i and this kid eric just spent twenty minutes trying to convince everyone else in the office that the purpose of a leap year was the correct the fact that the year is actually 365 days and 6 hours or so long. apparently there was an article in the metro about how the leap year was created by the government to make more money. we won everybody over except kristine, the alligator girl, who keeps saying, "i don't get it. i don't understand. where do the extra six hours come from?"
--uhm this conversation mike and martin just had (we're trying out a new restaurant): mike "okay, we're leaving in ten minutes"....martin "what, we're going?"....mike "yeah, ten minutes. i'm looking forward to it. trying new things, spreading my wings--"....martin (sounding absolutely baffled) "buffalo wings?"....mike "--being a world traveler, discovering stuff."...martin "what, like new ways to eat chicken?"
--i told lauren my "a man walks into a bar and says 'ow'" joke and she kept saying it didn't make any sense and that i should change it to "a man walked on a bar and said 'ow'"
--lauren has a crush on this guy named tom (the crazy guy who rates his oranges and tells us about them) and his mother died last week. he just got back to the office today. anyways, we came back from the meeting and lauren has these dried roses on her desk that she'd pulled out of the garbage a couple weeks ago. she just said, "I should give these roses to Tom" and martin was like, "oh yes, that's a brilliant idea, you could say, "here, tom, i got you some dead roses to go with your dead mother"" and lauren was like, "okay, i guess they're not really appropriate"
--Weekly Update Email included this blurb:
Panic briefly ensued in the Abcam Inc offices this week, as a crocodile was located in the Goods In area. Health and safety experts later confirmed that large, aquatic, man-eating organisms probably shouldn't be living in such areas. However, normality (at least as we know it) was restored after fact-finding interviews with the goods in team. Meron was quite happy with her new reptilian friend "he's just having fun" she said. The animal was last spotted on Sasha's desk, sunbathing (albeit with a large fish in his mouth). Sasha has been looking after him during the afternoons - he likes listening in on the customer service calls. According to Dan, the crocodile has a name - Little Patty Foam Face. Suzanne revealed the secret behind the lack of attacks on staff, and told this reporter that Patty was made from polystyrene foam, and thus quite harmless (she has no digestive organs) - she's also only a foot long, which helps. Wendell wasn't impressed - he's concerned that the monster is secretly snacking on abs during the night!
--did you know that in england, Z is not pronounced Z it's pronounced ZED? martin was saying how when he was kid he got confused because big bird always got the alphabet wrong. lauren doesn't understand that's the just the letter that's pronounced differently. she keeps going "ZEDbra????? how is that right?"
--dean just said tally ho again. and lauren tried to say the thing that she always tries to say "chocks away biffo" or whatever and instead she said "chock one up for blimey" and martin was just - he put his head on the desk and was like, "noooooooooo". he corrected her once again and immediately afterward she said it wrong again.
--martin says he's going to call me a girly swot from now on, cause i keep getting way more payments than him, lol. (LATER) *hangs head* he keeps yelling out, "Hey Swot! How are you today?" "Oh Hi Swot! I didn't see you there!" "Oi! Swot! You just got another fax!"
--lol ken just came over asking for safety pins because the back of his pants "had airated"
--mike and i just had an evita sing along! we sang every other line to don't cry for me argentina. martin had to run away. pretty sure he now thinks we're insane.
--martin went to see the snackman and brought back an oatmeal creme cookie for general consumption, and mikey took it and was like, "god, you're making me so fat"
--LOL so neil just sent around a poll, because apparently a large number of people today are wearing horizontal stripes and he thought it was odd, so he wanted to get a total. then he sent around his findings, lol. eleven people out of approx. 30 are wearing horizontal stripes.
--mikey is probably the most adorable guy i've ever met. cindy from busdev was talking to her daughter, and mike took the phone and started singing kid songs to her like "someone's in the kitchen with dinah" and "when you're not happy, my skies are grey"
--i said, "this check's definitely not in our system, martin." martin said, "oh yeah? well have you looked at it with the magnifying glass?" lauren says, "what does that do?" and i blurted "the magnifying glass?!" and martin snorted so loudly he choked
--mike was singing to cindy's daughter again LOL and she started crying!!!!!!!!
--lmao we just had "a classic mikey moment" as martin puts it. we went down to the snackman and they're doing contruction in that building -- as we walked in mike noticed they'd torn down the ceiling to work on the wiring and he goes, "hey, if you were really tall you could go "arararaara!!!"" and made motions as if grabbing the wires and shaking them
--mikey took us all out for lunch today. and there was this kid at the table next to us who, when he laughed, sounded like he was neighing like a horse. and martin kept cracking all lunch long, "i think i'm getting a cold, my voice is really hoarse today" and "these waitresses must like it here, it seems like a really stable environment" and then mike and i had a long discussion about how you're supposed to share your warm and fuzzies lest the become cold and pricklies. no idea what he means. although i'm fairly sure he wasn't being as dirty as it sounds, seeing as he was telling a story about a whole village sharing their warm and fuzzies. and then mike said one of his friends was seven foot six and martin asked if all the guy's friends were nicknamed Tiny. and lauren fell out of her chair laughing. and then martin was telling us about a guy he used to work with whose name was Horst and he had a wooden leg and he'd answer the phone "Hello, Horse" (obviously saying Horst but sounding like Horse). Best Lunch Ever.
--oh my god. we were talking about movies and mike said he watched devil wears prada over the weekend. and he was like, "when my girlfriend suggested it i was sure i'd already seen it - it was about a guy who killed people and there was a train....but that wasn't it at all. i think there's another movie called devil wears prada." and i was like ".....do you mean v for vendetta?" and he went "Yeah! That one!"
--there are not enough elipses in the world to describe what just happened. lauren came back from the kitchen and did two handstands. i didn't see the first one. i just saw the funny look on martin's face as he went "....that was extraordinary", so when i turned around she did another one. she was like, "wow that espresso really got me"
--You can see my boss Mikey here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlPk7HkayrM
--we had our meeting and there was a molly cake. it's a cake with a sheep drawn on it in frosting. we thought it would be sheep shaped and were walking around the office seeing who could say "shorn sheep shaped cake" five times fast
--okay, so we just went out to lunch - lauren, mike, me, and our temp Charity (Martin's on vaca) - and as we were leaving lauren was like, "oooh, mike, lucky you - three girls!" and mike said, "What? Where?" and lauren got all flustered/insulted and was like, "Yeah, that reminds me, I used to be called Lawrence."
--we were talking about the likelihood (sp?) of giraffes pulling a jurassic park and escaping from their cages at the zoo if humans disappeared from the earth and no one paid the electric bills and Lauren butts in with "if my fly is ever down, make sure you tell me please?"
--martin: I'm starving! I feel like i haven't eaten for three months. mike: Well you were in canada (martin was in canada over the weekend) me: *shares a look with martin* Canadians eat, you know. Martin: Candadians eat big, mikey. Mike: Canadians eat geese? Martin: Well they might. Half of them think they're french.
--lauren just said "no one believes me that brad pitt is handsome until they see him"
--LAUREN'S INSANE. SHE'S CRACKED. GONE MAD. CRACKERS! someone emailed her a junk email and it was to her blahblahblah@aol.com and it had another email address blahblahblah@vmconnect.com and she flipped out and thought someone was stealing her identity. so she started calling AOL and vm connect saying that someone had stolen her identity and she wanted the email account cancelled and when the wouldn't do anything for her she emailed this other person saying "who the hell are you?" and it took mike and i like twenty minutes to try and explain to her that people are allowed to have similar email addresses on different servers and she still didn't understand. she wanted to call the cops!!!
--lauren came in today with curly hair and when i mentioned it she said "yeah, my hairdresser said i should lay off the straightening. so i curled it instead!"
--the printer was smoking today (steaming a bit, really) and so mike sent an email to tech support titled "our printer might be on fire...or maybe just an addict"
--shani brought her daughter into the office today and everyone's fawning, but martin said, "i've always said, babies are like canadians. what are they good for?"
--yaaay, someone just told me that i should get a gold star for awesomeness. (LATER) i just told mike and martin...martin called me a girly swot and mike banned me from the department because my shirt is pinkish.
--so we've been discussing altoids for the past few minutes and how they clear mike's sinuses. then paul says, "and they help regulate you, too."
--martin: "i used to date an albanian girl" lauren: "did she have red eyes?"
--i said "sweet beans" in reply to something mike told me a little while ago and he's just sent out an official email to the whole US office: The use of the Word “Sweet Beans” is now officially banned from the accounting department. Thank you!
So...what do you guys think? Could we carry a tv show?? =)
I log my im conversations. I also report almost all of the hilarious happenings in my office to my roommate Julie as they happen. The following are snippets of things I've sent her that I thought might amuse and/or titillate. =D A little backup info: Mike is my boss and only eats chicken (no veggies, no beef, nada nothing besides chiken), Martin is British, and Lauren is...Lauren. You'll see what I mean. Also mentioned is Neil, who is the General Manager of the US office (he is also British), and Molly, who is the company mascot. She's a sheep.
--mike is telling me that he takes calcium pills because he's afraid of ostrich-paralysis
--this is mike's new song - "you are my black cloud, my only black cloud/you make me angry, when skies are blue" ...there's more but i can't remember it right now...suffice to say, it ends with "get the --- away from me"
--martin gave mike a scone and mike said he'd never seen one before and started flying it around like an airplane while making engine noises. martin then apologized for thinking he was a grownup when he in fact is a small child.
--lol julie - this was our lunch conversation today: Mike -"kai wal se!" (in a really terrible high pitched chinese accent)....Martin (deadpanning) "You sound like a cow giving birth." .... Mike "Yeah, that's actually what it means! A cow giving birth!".....Lauren "Martin speaks really good chinese"....Mike "So Martin, how many calves have you birthed before, exactly?"
--they were discussing that old saying, "if a tree falls in the forest....." and martin kept saying, "why would the tree fall in the first place?"
--haha neil did it again, martin beat him at foosball and before martin could get back to his desk to gloat about it neil called our department and shouted "don't listen to him!" and hung up. and martin keeps going around saying "I crushed him!" in this redneck american accent.
--Lauren: "Mike, do you remember the blizzard of 78?"....Mike "I wasn't born yet."...Lauren "Oh, when were you born?"...Mike "1982"...."The year before I graduated high school...huh. You could be my child, if I'd gotten knocked up at a young age."
--a;sdfja!!!!!!!! one of the tech guys just came in and threw snow balls at everyone!! real live snowballs in the office!! LOL. now there's snow all over my desk.
--Neil and Lauren were just discussing some checks that needed to go out, and Lauren was asking about getting a signature next Tuesday and Neil goes, "Christmas is Tuesday."...Martin butts in: "So that's a no, then?"...Neil to Lauren, "Christmas is on the 25th this year."....Lauren, "Oh, okay then."
--(FIVE MINUTES LATER) She still doesn't get it. Martin is still laughing and she's going, "What?"
--*headdesk* lauren just called an envelope a folder and nobody knew what she meant until she found one and held it up. she was like, I need an Abcam folder! oh, here's one...and mike and i just looked at each other like oh.my.god.
--check out this email i got from Neil this morning:
"On the evening of Dec 20th, at 19:08, an historic event occurred in the offices of Abcam Inc.
It was snowing outside, and most of the staff had left. In a lonely corner of the Abcam office, a foosball game was played between old rivals. In a dramatic turns of events...Michael lost. His crown is now shattered, and his position in dispute. Will he ever return to his elevated position in the rankings, or has his confidence melted, like the snow?"
he sent it to the whole company, lmao, even the UK office.
--mike just sent a response:
"The true Story……after 10 hours of being at work…..this is what happened.
Neil -want a game?
Michael- Perhaps tomorrow? I'm trying to finish something and not really feeling too good.
Neil- ok
Neil -are you ill?
Michael- i don't know, i feel like i have a head coldish thing.
Neil- oh - that's bad
Neil- hope it doesn't get any worse
Michael- I just need some rest. I think i'm just a bit run down.
Neil- maybe Foosball will cure you ??
Finally I gave in….fell down 6-0 while not really being able to get into it….and then decided I can’t let Neil beat me this bad and started trying harder and lost 10-8. Everyone should know how this really went down! Taking advantage of a sick cripple and then bragging! Shame on Neil!!!!"
--lauren is being exceptionally strange today. we turn off the lights in the office, and she blurts out "I look younger!" She says it's better lighting, and we say, well, technically there's no lighting and she got really huffy. and then i had thrown away my scone because it was blueberry and banana, which i didn't know when i bought it, and then she said she wanted it so i made to get it, and she got really grossed out - but it was still in the bag, it wasn't even touching the trash bag (which was empty, anyway)...so i get up to get some coffee and when i come back i see her bending over my trash bin picking it out with the tips of her fingers. and she's like, "shhh dont' say anything". and she keeps asking me if she looks strange. she says everyone keeps staring at her.
--yesterday at lunch someone said all things are good in moderation and Lauren goes, "Like heroin!" (she says everything with exclaimation points) and we were all "......." so she had to backtrack and be like, "I mean, not like heroin!"
--lauren just popped over the cubicle and said: i had a lot of stuck up friends in high school. i always used to stick up for the nerds. and then she sat back down. does that mean she thinks i'm a nerd? i dont' get it. maybe she's on meds that make her loopy, cause i haven't been talking to her for about 15 minutes now.
--i swear right now i am going to die laughing. i have a story for you if you have a moment. it's about alligators:
Pspotlight22 (9:44:56 AM): so this kid james comes in today
Pspotlight22 (9:45:21 AM): and he's got a huge black duffle bag with him, but it's not stuffed full, it looks kinda saggy
Pspotlight22 (9:45:42 AM): he works in customer service, which is sectioned off in it's own area behind a glass partition
Pspotlight22 (9:46:20 AM): so this girl kristine, who works two cubicles down from me in marketing and is good friends with mike, asks mike, "do you know what's with the bag?"
Pspotlight22 (9:46:40 AM): and mike goes, deadpanned, "it's an alligator."
Pspotlight22 (9:46:52 AM): and kristine says, "noooo. c'mon."
Pspotlight22 (9:47:16 AM): mike: "no, really. he said he was gonna. you can buy baby ones online for about $150."
Pspotlight22 (9:47:34 AM): and kristine goes, "what?? that's horrible!!"
Pspotlight22 (9:47:48 AM): mike: "i know! i don't know why he brought it in"
Pspotlight22 (9:48:18 AM): kristine: gets up and walks down the hall a bit and through the door into the service area and goes to james' desk
Pspotlight22 (9:48:36 AM): and she's looking around on the floor and peering under his desk, and james is like "....can i help you?"
Pspotlight22 (9:48:44 AM): and she goes, "where's the alligator?"
Pspotlight22 (9:49:01 AM): and james is like "......? what?"
Pspotlight22 (9:49:48 AM): and she goes, "the alligator! where is it?" and starts looking around at other people's desks in the cust service area
Pspotlight22 (9:51:39 AM): and everyone is like starting to stand up and stare at her and james is looking around at everyone like, "wtf?" and kristine finally comes back to the door and bangs on the partition to get mike's attention, which actually ends up in the entire accounts department going, "What is she doing?" and she yells through the glass "it's not here, i can't find it"
Pspotlight22 (9:57:34 AM): so yes
Pspotlight22 (9:57:46 AM): i've been dying dying DYING for the last 45 minutes
Pspotlight22 (9:57:59 AM): mike and i can't stop giggling
Pspotlight22 (9:58:11 AM): and kristine is REALLY pissed off
Pspotlight22 (9:58:14 AM): at mike, anyway
Pspotlight22 (10:05:32 AM): WOW kristine is pissed. she's yelling at mike from across the office
Pspotlight22 (10:05:47 AM): but it's just making mike giggle harder
--Lauren: "I have this fake virus that won't let me do anything." Martin: "That sounds like a real virus, not a fake virus."
--this guy that i've only met once, and he's very very flamboyantly gay, just came up to my desk and said in this amazing tone of voice: "Everybody else in the office gets XP but I get Vista, which is like the retarded inbred child of Windows. Gah!" and then he walked into a conference room and slammed the door
--lulz julie that was the most ridiculous meeting i've ever been to. the first half hour our conversation went something like this: getting up on the right side of the bed, sleeping, restless sleeping, cats, english bulldogs, pugs, breathing problems, restless sleeping, hospital beds, being tied up to beds, catheters, unmentionable parts, david blaine. and then for another half hour mike and paul had this discussion that sounded like this: Paul: "Merck is being allowed to commit an injustice!!111!!!^&$!!!" (they are making us do the work of their accounts payable department) Mike: "But they're a $300,000 customer. It's not like we can cut them off because we're going to spend an extra $2500/year on accounting time." Paul: "But they're committing an injustice!!^&%^#!!!@!$%%$!!!!!!" Mike: "But we can't lose them as a customer." Paul: INJUSTICE!!!*^)*&%*&$!!!!!" Mike: "We still can't lose them." And on and on and on. we were in there for hours and the only note i took was "Merck sucks."
--julie even our vendors are bizarre here. a vendor came in and gave us toys. it's this little plastic italian guy with a pipe and a bag full of tiny little cardboard cigarettes that you can actually light.
--lol lauren couldn't finish this equation: e=mc*2. she got as far as e=
--there's this guy dean who works in HR and he's kind of obnoxious, in that way that nonfunny people like to crack jokes continuously that aren't very amusing. and he comes down every single day to mangle british sayings to martin, usually in the form of "tally ho!" but yesterday he thought he was on a roll and just kept going and going, and was like, "Where's your red coat?" "The submarines have gone barney!" and on and on, and lauren was cracking up but mike and martin and i were like "....feel free to go back to your desk". and i forget now exactly what he said but after like ten minutes martin was just "i'm going to snackman" and when he got back dean was gone and martin was ranting for a while and i was terrified. lol. not really, but he's intimidating when pissed.
--(IN ADDITION) but oh - in the middle of dean getting out these one liners, lauren apparently feels like she needs to contribute and yells out "bollocks!" which of course, means she yelled out "Balls!" into the middle of the office, but she didn't know what it meant, lol. everyone just got really silent and she was like "..what?"
--so mike and martin and i were naming names that are both girls and boys names, like Jordan and Taylor and Kyle and Sam and Jesse and so on, and lauren goes: "Stephanie!" and martin goes "uhm, how many boys do you know named stephanie??" and she was like "...oh. yeah. Stephan, maybe?"
--so lauren was talking to martin and every three or four words she would start giggling uncontrollably, so of course mike and i are looking at each other going "wtf??" and martin doesn't know what's going on either. so lauren sees that we're confused and she giggles, "it's martin's face, he keeps making funny faces at me" and martin goes: "??? this is my face. it's just my normal face." and she was off laughing madly again thinking he was joking. but he wasn't.
--*headdesk* every single time we have a quiet day in the office (usually when mike and/or martin is gone) lauren pipes up every half hour or so "Can you all settle down please? I'm trying to work here!"
--yay we just had another fire drill. cept we didn't know it was a drill. neil and roderick were like: "Should we save the foosball table????!!!" you have someone named roderick??? they call him the Iron Rod of Foosball. i'm not sure what it means. i assume it's because he (according to Martin) KRUSHES everyone he plays against.
--lauren just said that her favorite genre is the roman empire. i didn't know the roman empire was a genre.
--lauren: "how old would lincoln be today?"
--hahaha martin says that every valentines day he goes through the phone book and picks a random girl to send a vday card to anonymously. not because he's a romantic guy, but because he likes to imagine them trying to hunt down their secret admirer.
--four people over the last hour have come down to our desks and said "top of the mornin to ya!" in an english accent and martin is getting so annoyed, lol. everytime he just waspishly informs them that that's an irish saying, not an english one.
--dean (ANNOYING HR GUY) just came down and sang an irish song.
--oh and hey, i made a work vingette. it goes like this:
"Lauren's donating $350 to the new foosball table," Martin yells out.
Mike looks gleeful. "Peggy said she had a hundred pennies."
"$3.50 maybe!" Lauren butts in. "I'm not eating frozen food for nothing you know!" She hoists up her Lean Cuisine and looks mournful.
Mike contradicts, "That's not frozen. Didn't you just heat it up?"
Martin looks up from his desk and goggles at Mike. "Are you on crack?"
--martin: "It's like a furnace in here!" mike: "It's like a furnace! touched for the very first time! like a furnace!"
--lauren called over our it person, eric. she said her outlook was broken. so he pulls it up and it's working fine and so he asks what the problem is. she tells him her inbox is empty. and he's like, is it supposed to be umpty? you usually have things in there? and she's like, yes, i don't know where all the other things are. so he has martin email something to lauren to see if it's working, which it is. so he clicks on another folder to see if there's anything in there. and it's her trash. and everything is in there, lol. so he's like, have you been pressing buttons? and she goes, no, i just pressed one button and everything disappeared. and he was like - was it this button? pointing to her delete button. and she's like ...yeah!
--i got this email:
"Dear foosballers,
I went to the site to check the table that our former commissioner found for the office, and after reading the reviews that were posted I'm concerned about its size and durability; I'm not sure it can handle the massive striking power we churn out here at Abcam, inc."
--at lunch we were telling stories about high school and lauren said that she was the nice one and she didn't name call, she only shot spit balls. mike and i were like...that's so nice of you.
--i told mike that my only symptom of withdrawal from quitting smoking was sleeplessness and he told me to go move to seattle. lauren didn't get it. she just offered that she got cranky.
--mike and i have started having movie wars. one of us will randomly take a word from a conversation and name a movie that's somehow related and other other person has to name the actors. lauren said somehting about spaghettios, so i said "overboard" and he said kurt douglass and goldie hawn, lol. i didn't expect him to know that one.
--lauren was just insisting her state quarters were counterfeit because she'd never heard of them before. she showed me one from 1989 and three state quarters and told me someone had given her fake quarters. she was like, "just look at the differences!"
--lauren was whispering something to me, and mike asked me what she was saying and it wasn't really important so i went to say it, but she interrupted me and was like, "Hello! I was whispering!" so i stopped. and mike said, "So? Weeping willows whisper in the wind."
--uhm lauren went out to her car to feed the meter and when she got back mike told her ben affleck had come in accidentally, he meant to go to the office next door and she asked him if he was serious about six times and he said yes and then she got super exicted, jumped up and down, and ran down the hall to talk to her friend sherry. (LATER) ahahahah, she ran back just now and punched mike in the arm
--this guy tom is really odd. he eats an orange every day with lunch, then comes down to our area and rates it. today he ate the 3rd best orange that he'd ever eaten.
--mike and i and this kid eric just spent twenty minutes trying to convince everyone else in the office that the purpose of a leap year was the correct the fact that the year is actually 365 days and 6 hours or so long. apparently there was an article in the metro about how the leap year was created by the government to make more money. we won everybody over except kristine, the alligator girl, who keeps saying, "i don't get it. i don't understand. where do the extra six hours come from?"
--uhm this conversation mike and martin just had (we're trying out a new restaurant): mike "okay, we're leaving in ten minutes"....martin "what, we're going?"....mike "yeah, ten minutes. i'm looking forward to it. trying new things, spreading my wings--"....martin (sounding absolutely baffled) "buffalo wings?"....mike "--being a world traveler, discovering stuff."...martin "what, like new ways to eat chicken?"
--i told lauren my "a man walks into a bar and says 'ow'" joke and she kept saying it didn't make any sense and that i should change it to "a man walked on a bar and said 'ow'"
--lauren has a crush on this guy named tom (the crazy guy who rates his oranges and tells us about them) and his mother died last week. he just got back to the office today. anyways, we came back from the meeting and lauren has these dried roses on her desk that she'd pulled out of the garbage a couple weeks ago. she just said, "I should give these roses to Tom" and martin was like, "oh yes, that's a brilliant idea, you could say, "here, tom, i got you some dead roses to go with your dead mother"" and lauren was like, "okay, i guess they're not really appropriate"
--Weekly Update Email included this blurb:
Panic briefly ensued in the Abcam Inc offices this week, as a crocodile was located in the Goods In area. Health and safety experts later confirmed that large, aquatic, man-eating organisms probably shouldn't be living in such areas. However, normality (at least as we know it) was restored after fact-finding interviews with the goods in team. Meron was quite happy with her new reptilian friend "he's just having fun" she said. The animal was last spotted on Sasha's desk, sunbathing (albeit with a large fish in his mouth). Sasha has been looking after him during the afternoons - he likes listening in on the customer service calls. According to Dan, the crocodile has a name - Little Patty Foam Face. Suzanne revealed the secret behind the lack of attacks on staff, and told this reporter that Patty was made from polystyrene foam, and thus quite harmless (she has no digestive organs) - she's also only a foot long, which helps. Wendell wasn't impressed - he's concerned that the monster is secretly snacking on abs during the night!
--did you know that in england, Z is not pronounced Z it's pronounced ZED? martin was saying how when he was kid he got confused because big bird always got the alphabet wrong. lauren doesn't understand that's the just the letter that's pronounced differently. she keeps going "ZEDbra????? how is that right?"
--dean just said tally ho again. and lauren tried to say the thing that she always tries to say "chocks away biffo" or whatever and instead she said "chock one up for blimey" and martin was just - he put his head on the desk and was like, "noooooooooo". he corrected her once again and immediately afterward she said it wrong again.
--martin says he's going to call me a girly swot from now on, cause i keep getting way more payments than him, lol. (LATER) *hangs head* he keeps yelling out, "Hey Swot! How are you today?" "Oh Hi Swot! I didn't see you there!" "Oi! Swot! You just got another fax!"
--lol ken just came over asking for safety pins because the back of his pants "had airated"
--mike and i just had an evita sing along! we sang every other line to don't cry for me argentina. martin had to run away. pretty sure he now thinks we're insane.
--martin went to see the snackman and brought back an oatmeal creme cookie for general consumption, and mikey took it and was like, "god, you're making me so fat"
--LOL so neil just sent around a poll, because apparently a large number of people today are wearing horizontal stripes and he thought it was odd, so he wanted to get a total. then he sent around his findings, lol. eleven people out of approx. 30 are wearing horizontal stripes.
--mikey is probably the most adorable guy i've ever met. cindy from busdev was talking to her daughter, and mike took the phone and started singing kid songs to her like "someone's in the kitchen with dinah" and "when you're not happy, my skies are grey"
--i said, "this check's definitely not in our system, martin." martin said, "oh yeah? well have you looked at it with the magnifying glass?" lauren says, "what does that do?" and i blurted "the magnifying glass?!" and martin snorted so loudly he choked
--mike was singing to cindy's daughter again LOL and she started crying!!!!!!!!
--lmao we just had "a classic mikey moment" as martin puts it. we went down to the snackman and they're doing contruction in that building -- as we walked in mike noticed they'd torn down the ceiling to work on the wiring and he goes, "hey, if you were really tall you could go "arararaara!!!"" and made motions as if grabbing the wires and shaking them
--mikey took us all out for lunch today. and there was this kid at the table next to us who, when he laughed, sounded like he was neighing like a horse. and martin kept cracking all lunch long, "i think i'm getting a cold, my voice is really hoarse today" and "these waitresses must like it here, it seems like a really stable environment" and then mike and i had a long discussion about how you're supposed to share your warm and fuzzies lest the become cold and pricklies. no idea what he means. although i'm fairly sure he wasn't being as dirty as it sounds, seeing as he was telling a story about a whole village sharing their warm and fuzzies. and then mike said one of his friends was seven foot six and martin asked if all the guy's friends were nicknamed Tiny. and lauren fell out of her chair laughing. and then martin was telling us about a guy he used to work with whose name was Horst and he had a wooden leg and he'd answer the phone "Hello, Horse" (obviously saying Horst but sounding like Horse). Best Lunch Ever.
--oh my god. we were talking about movies and mike said he watched devil wears prada over the weekend. and he was like, "when my girlfriend suggested it i was sure i'd already seen it - it was about a guy who killed people and there was a train....but that wasn't it at all. i think there's another movie called devil wears prada." and i was like ".....do you mean v for vendetta?" and he went "Yeah! That one!"
--there are not enough elipses in the world to describe what just happened. lauren came back from the kitchen and did two handstands. i didn't see the first one. i just saw the funny look on martin's face as he went "....that was extraordinary", so when i turned around she did another one. she was like, "wow that espresso really got me"
--You can see my boss Mikey here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlPk7HkayrM
--we had our meeting and there was a molly cake. it's a cake with a sheep drawn on it in frosting. we thought it would be sheep shaped and were walking around the office seeing who could say "shorn sheep shaped cake" five times fast
--okay, so we just went out to lunch - lauren, mike, me, and our temp Charity (Martin's on vaca) - and as we were leaving lauren was like, "oooh, mike, lucky you - three girls!" and mike said, "What? Where?" and lauren got all flustered/insulted and was like, "Yeah, that reminds me, I used to be called Lawrence."
--we were talking about the likelihood (sp?) of giraffes pulling a jurassic park and escaping from their cages at the zoo if humans disappeared from the earth and no one paid the electric bills and Lauren butts in with "if my fly is ever down, make sure you tell me please?"
--martin: I'm starving! I feel like i haven't eaten for three months. mike: Well you were in canada (martin was in canada over the weekend) me: *shares a look with martin* Canadians eat, you know. Martin: Candadians eat big, mikey. Mike: Canadians eat geese? Martin: Well they might. Half of them think they're french.
--lauren just said "no one believes me that brad pitt is handsome until they see him"
--LAUREN'S INSANE. SHE'S CRACKED. GONE MAD. CRACKERS! someone emailed her a junk email and it was to her blahblahblah@aol.com and it had another email address blahblahblah@vmconnect.com and she flipped out and thought someone was stealing her identity. so she started calling AOL and vm connect saying that someone had stolen her identity and she wanted the email account cancelled and when the wouldn't do anything for her she emailed this other person saying "who the hell are you?" and it took mike and i like twenty minutes to try and explain to her that people are allowed to have similar email addresses on different servers and she still didn't understand. she wanted to call the cops!!!
--lauren came in today with curly hair and when i mentioned it she said "yeah, my hairdresser said i should lay off the straightening. so i curled it instead!"
--the printer was smoking today (steaming a bit, really) and so mike sent an email to tech support titled "our printer might be on fire...or maybe just an addict"
--shani brought her daughter into the office today and everyone's fawning, but martin said, "i've always said, babies are like canadians. what are they good for?"
--yaaay, someone just told me that i should get a gold star for awesomeness. (LATER) i just told mike and martin...martin called me a girly swot and mike banned me from the department because my shirt is pinkish.
--so we've been discussing altoids for the past few minutes and how they clear mike's sinuses. then paul says, "and they help regulate you, too."
--martin: "i used to date an albanian girl" lauren: "did she have red eyes?"
--i said "sweet beans" in reply to something mike told me a little while ago and he's just sent out an official email to the whole US office: The use of the Word “Sweet Beans” is now officially banned from the accounting department. Thank you!
So...what do you guys think? Could we carry a tv show?? =)