Category: Job, My Stupid

Spammers are getting desperate, it would seem. That or just more fucking fiendish; I’m part of a couple of my workplace’s group mailing lists for the cancer committees I work on: lymphomas and gynecological cancers, to be specific. So today I was sitting at my computer with one of my bosses hanging out, because I was showing him some programming errors I’d found (this is a large part of my job too–the programmers build an incredibly sophisticated program for us, and I sit there and flail away at it like an angry caveman until it breaks), when I got a new email. “Hang on a sec,” I said, and opened it, noticing that it was addressed to “gynquestion@whereskotworks,” and thinking that hey, someone out there has a question about one of my protocols.

WANT TO TRADE PIXXX? HOTTEST ON THE NET!

“I say we check it out,” I told my supervisor, “I’m kind of horny.” In my mind I said that, anyway.

The spam-bastards had obviously keyed into the “gyn” part of the email and decided, hey, anyone who has to deal with at least the abstract idea of female crotches all day long probably is in need of some grounding in the topic, so have some beaver shots, my friend!

Work overall is getting kind of eerie and fearsome these days. Tomorrow, unbelievably, we have picture day. This is because there is some whacking great meeting coming up where all the doctors and nurses and research associates and us get together and glad-hand and confer and wither slowly during PowerPoint presentations and assure each other that we still have good jobs because nobody’s cured cancer yet. And for some reason, this involves taking everybody’s picture in our office, just like in sixth grade, and then displaying them all over the place, like we’re Wal-Mart employees and our field researchers are in need of cheap toilet paper. I don’t get it. I know for a fact that nobody out there gives a technicolor fuck what I look like, and I fervently reciprocate this feeling. “Hi, Skot, it’s Jodie from University of Rochester.” “Oh? Describe yourself to me.” “Uh, well, I’m a part-time cocktail waitress with an interest in adult modeling . . . “

Doubtful. Let me just assure you that there is a reason you don’t see a lot of cheese- or beefcake calendars that say anything like “Bikini Oncologists.” Unless you’re talking about me, of course, because I’m hotter than fucking acetylene. Want to trade pixxx? Hottest on the net.

One of the projects I’ve been working on at the ol’ clinical trials statistical lab is a little thing called “Specimen Tracking.”

No, I am not stalking piss-bearing nurses around making sure that they’re delivering the little warm bottles to the right places, though that sounds fun. For many of our cancer research trials, we require certain specimens (blood, bone marrow, eyeballs) to be sent from the patient’s hospital to various labs, where they will do mysterious things, like pathological verification of the disease, or some genetic assay mumbo-jumbo, or whatever. For all I know, they play hacky-sack with the fucking things and then make up outrageous lies. “I need the path review results for patient number 1150062!” “Uh . . . right, I’ll look that up. Here it is. Yeah, this patient was confirmed with scalar cell fuctating baloonganoma.(Sounds of muffled laughter, bong hit.)”

Anyway, the specimen tracking project is a web-based system of logging where all the little damn hunks of people are going and when; sort of like the USPS tracking system, only hopefully better, as recently the USPS tracking system informed me that a package of mine from Amazon had “left Fernley NV” and had “entered US.” What a relief. I hope there’s a commenting system for humorous outlet. Like the time a nurse shipped me several glass slides by slipping them into a normal business envelope and then tossing it into the mailbox. It would be helpful to note little gaffes like that: “Specimen inadequate due to vast, jaw-dropping institutional incompetence. Recommend napalm strike.”

Institutions are required to send lots of stuff various places, so it’s actually understandable that occasionally there’s a mixup. Not that the mixups aren’t frequently horrible and scarring. For a long time, I was in charge of receiving RT materials: that is, x-ray and CT scan films, which were actually pretty interesting. Cross-sections of the human body can look awfully cool, provided they aren’t, you know, yours. What wasn’t cool the day an institution sent along a bunch of films and also enclosed the poloroids that they often take of the patients to show where the fields of radiation therapy are on the body. This was a rectal cancer study. I held in my hands many photos of afflicted, radiation-treated, angry asses, and I thought, “If this is all a part of someone’s grand universal plan, I’d like to have a word with them.”

SEATTLE (AP)– In a stunning reversal of fortune today, local cubicle ape Skot Kurruk emerged victorious in an ongoing battle over his server-based Citrix platform. At approximately 10:48 AM, the awful, Chiclet-shaped Citrix terminal was removed from his desktop, melted into slag, and then cast into Gehenna. The Citrix terminal was unavailable for quotation due to eternal damnation.

Earlier in the day, Kurruk had been working on his Citrix terminal, and was told by one supervisor to switch to his PC. This command was immediately countermanded by another supervisor, causing Skot to slash at his own face with a lemon zester. A third supervisor was reportedly “probably off murdering old people or something,” according to Kurruk. It was an impasse.

Details become hazy here, with Kurruk reportedly seeking refuge under his desk with a whiskey bottle while a battle raged between his supervisors. While Kurruk drank the smoky nectar, the skies cracked as the Elder Check-Signers fought a pitched battle; finally, when things had quieted, Skot looked out to discover the corpse of one supervisor lying on the thin carpet, with the other waving a PC dongle to the heavens. Skot dropped to one knee and pledged fealty to the victor, who cried out, “I AM UNFUCKABLE-WITH!” Network printers fell into a respectful silence, and the water cooler gurgled not.

Kurruk then returned to his work station, accompanied by a twitchy functionary-imp dispatched by compserv. “How can I serve thee?” the worthless beast reportedly hissed, and Kurruk thundered, “Get this fucking thing off my desk.” The tiny being scampered to do Skot’s bidding, pausing only to bow several times in a piteous display of humility.

After the entire affair was concluded, Kurruk remained reflective about the experience. “The Darkness has been expunged. I am cleansed with divine light,” explained Kurruk. He then crashed his browser by attempting to use it on the “Internet.” “Home, I’m home,” he whispered as tears rolled down his cheeks.

An ergonomist is coming to our office today. I can’t tell you how non-excited I am about this. Well, I guess I can try. So: I am fully unstoked and highly nonmotivated to have this yutz jabber about “micro-exercising” and “living our breaks.”

This bologna-head has visited us before. In fact, I was the poor bastard who got to be the object of his demo; I sat at a workstation and typed while he grinned through an unfortunate moustache and made pithy comments re: my life-draining work habits. “Watch your wrists! You’re causing micro-pressure on your capillaries!” Jesus, so fucking what? I drink and smoke. Oh heavens, my capillaries! “See his posture? Let’s adjust your lumbar bulge.” I panicked for a moment, thinking I was living some hallucinatory pornographic film script, but then he pulled a lever on my chair and wedged something terrible into my lower back. Maybe I was in a porn film. “HANH!” I yelled. “Isn’t that better? Now you’re sitting up.” Of course I’m sitting up, you dick; it feels like there’s a medicine ball pressing on my ass. You’d sit up too.

The thing is, there is no such thing as an ergonomist. It’s just a bullshit term for people who are manically and unnaturally interested in things like chairs. Basically, they are people who just want to tell you what to do, even if they (and we) know that once they leave, we will immediately forget everything they just told us. Because people like this never tell us anything that makes a fucking lick of sense. “You have to remember to take breaks from your workstation to avoid strain.” Let me get this straight: you get paid to instruct office workers to take breaks? I want a job like this. Maybe in the porn industry. I’ll wander around to film sets. “You have to remember to perform fellatio on me.” Or they ask inane questions: “Do you use a wrist pad with your keyboard?” “Yes.” “What’s it made of?” Oh, the usual: badgers. Yes, live badgers. Connie over there prefers a bar of white-hot metal, herself, but I favor the gentle touch that you can only get from live badgers.

Feh. The ergonomist will be here soon, and I’ll probably be the show ape for the damn circus again. “You’re striking the keys way too hard, pal!” he’ll croon, and I’ll be forced to breezily reply, “Oh, I’m just sublimating my desire to fuck my mother and kill my father!” And then I’ll tear my eyes out. “Eyestrain is a very common problem in the workplace,” he’ll observe. And the rest of the office staff will numbly nod their heads in agreement, not listening, just waiting for their next break.

I understand the lame irony of being a smoker while working for a cancer research facility. How could I not? But the building management has just gone off its onion about this. I just can’t fucking stand it. Bear with me.

We used to be able to smoke downstairs–outside–kind of around the corner, where we were nicely out of sight, so nobody might get the terrible idea that some deranged people actually smoke in the outside world. This evidently wasn’t good enough, so the management, at God knows what dumb expense, built us a brand-new smoking gulag downstairs in the parking basement. I think their next step will be to put us all in a pit, and then while we’re nonchalantly puffing away, they will suddenly bury us with a bulldozer while children point and laugh.

But it gets better. Since my building was evidently designed by dribbling cretins, this now means I have to take three elevators to get down to smoke central. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Skot, you are a lying sack. Also, you smoke, so fuck you, you lying sack. You lying sack!” I understand. But hear me out. I work on the 20th floor. There are three banks of elevators in the lobby: one goes from the lobby down to the parking garage, one services floors 2-11, and the other services floors 12-19. See the tiny math problem? So, yes, I take the elevator up to 19, where I then take another elevator that is dedicated to traveling between floor 19 and floor 20. WHAT? Who designed this system, Rube Goldberg? I half-expect that there is an elaborate mouse/cannonball/ramp/pulley system underlying the whole fucking thing.

So now you see. When I get a break, I zip over to floor 20’s rickety-ass dedicated elevator and squeal with delight as I bonk down to 19. Then I listen to my cells die while I wait for the elevator to get up to 19 and ride it down to the lobby. Then I dejectedly plod over to the other set of depressavators for it to take me down to the parking garage, and I cross over the blind corner where I will almost certainly be mowed down one day by a blank-eyed commuter, and enter the roomlet with one chain-link fence wall that overlooks a grimy, howling freeway all so I can just smoke a fucking cigarette. The whole thing is like living in a Robbe-Grillet novel.

Say, Skot, now that you mention it, being way up there on the 20th floor, don’t they have a balcony? Why, yes. Yes they do. There is a beautiful balcony. There is fresh air. There is a commanding view. And there are many “NO SMOKING” signs.

Part of my job is doing software and applications testing. You may have noticed how I sling complicated computer jargon around with terrifying efficiency. Now of course I don’t know a damn thing about computers, or programming, or “environments,” or “anything,” which is, sadly, kind of the point. Since I work with people who, against all reason, actually know even less than I do about these things, I get to be the liaison between the compserv staff and the other pasteheads in my department. That’s a grand thing to realize: my office is full of fumbling morons, and I am their leader. I’m the Alpha Moron.

Anyway, since compserv is staffed by cruel, vicious Torquemadas, they immediately implemented a sweeping plan to break my spirit, which I must say was incredibly effective. The first thing they did was take away my PC.

WHAT? I need that! “No you don’t,” they cooed. “You can use this.” “This” is a fucking plastic do-funny that looks like a big Chiclet. It has one malevolent green eye next to a single power button. It says “Wyse Winterm.” I dolefully surveyed this . . . toy . . . while the compserv staff dumped my old PC into the garbage, which they then set ablaze. They stood around, warming themselves, while cracking open bottles of malt liquor.

“We got tired of dealing with you retards,” said one of them laconically. “So we’re not going to any more. That little guy connects you to a single server that runs all of your applications on something called Citrix.”

“Wha . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about. How does it work?”

“Basically, it means that we can just dump all the shit that used to live in your PC onto the server, and that’s that. Any changes or fixes are now done centrally on the server. And you access them all there as well.”

“Oh. Does that work all right?”

“Oh, no, it’s terrible. Christ, it’s a fucking debacle. For you, anyway.”

“What?”

“Some of these apps were built in-house, some were contracted out years ago, and frankly, there’s some we don’t even know how they run or what they do. Anyway, they all work terribly on Citrix from a user standpoint. Oh, and by the way, your monitor resolution is going to suffer a bit.”

“How much is ‘a bit’?”

“A lot.”

“Oh. Uh . . . why are you doing this to me?”

“We hate you and don’t want to see your ratlike faces any more. That’s actually how Citrix markets their product: TORTURE PARASITIC END USERS WITH CITRIX! So now we can sit around and drink beer and still get paid! Haw! Isn’t that a crotch-twister? Anyway, get cracking. You’re going to have to explain to your co-workers how miserable their lives are going to become!”

“I, uh, see. Okay. Listen . . . is there like . . . instructions . . . or a tutorial or anything? Don’t leave me totally ass-out here. Please?”

“Ooooh, of course. We wouldn’t leave you dry like that.” There were broad smiles all around. My old PC emitted noxious fumes as it burned. One of them leaned in close and leered. “There’s a tutorial. Just access it through the server.”

Working as I do for a cancer research facility, I see a lot of medical charts. Now of course due to confidentiality laws, I cannot actually reveal any information that would identify anyone, or anything about the research itself. But I can say that reviewing those charts (1) quickly instills within one an abiding taste for gallows humor and (2) ordinary people can be and frequently are total heroes and (3) ordinary people can be and frequently are total wackjobs.

There are the chart notes. “Physical exam unremarkable. Patient has no testicles.” I would guess that the fellow in question would not use the term “unremarkable” to describe the state of things. “Pussy wound.” I stared at this for a long time before I realized that “pussy” is perhaps not the best term for “producing pus.” And then there’s the simple mistakes. “Patient suffers from dyspnea. Grade 5.” The first thing you should know is that in the system used to grade toxicities, a grade 5 means it was fatal. The second thing you should know is that dyspnea means “shortness of breath.” I guess your breath doesn’t get much shorter than that.

There is also the treatments themselves, some of which seemed to have been invented purely to test a human’s capacity for mind-shattering horror. One patient I remember evidently wasn’t consented thoroughly enough, or was too flipped out to pay attention to the definition of “intrathecal delivery.” So she was a bit put off when she came to realize on the first day of treatment that it means “a large needle is put into your spinal column.” She politely refused treatment by screaming the medical staff to death. Many patients feel their gumption wane ever so slightly as well when presented with the joyous prospect of a bone marrow biopsy. “Do you mind terribly if we insert this large-bore needle into your (pause for sinister emphasis) pelvic bone? You know, the thick excruciating part. We sometimes have to get a Samoan to jump on it to force it in properly.”

And naturally there’s just the inexplicable. One woman sailed through her diagnosis, agreed to a clinical trial, signed the consent form, and then promptly moved. To Iceland. This was thoroughly successful in terms of putting off treatment. Another dry chart note told the story of a person thusly: “Patient is nonsmoker, nondrinker. Unremarkable exam. Patient occasionally participates in blood sharing rituals.” “Unremarkable” is a favorite term in medical charts. I just guess I don’t know what it actually means.