Tag Archives: work

Sunday Snippet, Flash Fiction, Pissing in a Cup by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H2O, or mineral water, or saki. Zazen is drinking it.

—-Taisen Deshimaru

Trinity River Bottoms Dallas, Texas

Pissing in a Cup

Craig would start his new job in ten days – today was the day for that new traditional pre-work-related task, the drug test. It was all set up by the Talent Aquisition Department with an appointment at a specialized drug testing clinic in a strip mall in a slightly shady industrial area. Craig drove by a day ahead of time to be sure he could find it. He could leave nothing to chance – he needed this job.

He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to pee on demand, that there wouldn’t be enough to fill the plastic cup. So he avoided the toilet when he woke up and before Craig drove to the clinic he chugged two generous tumblers of ice water – so he could be sure to perform on cue.

Of course they only needed forty-five milliliters, which he easily provided. The drug-test bathroom was a little bizarre, no trash can, only a wooden box and chain-of-custody tape on the toilet. Craig decided not to use that weird toilet because he was planning on going to a big warehouse electronics store afterward to pick up a switch for his new scanner and a couple programming books – a slight celebration for his impending gainful employment. He knew that place had a big bathroom – he had been there many times. It even had a changing table in the men’s room – a rarity. He had changed each of his son’s diapers more than once. That was nice – Craig hated most men’s rooms where he had to lay his infant son – one or the other – down on the floor in a stall. He was no germaphobe… but still.

Unfortunately, when he arrived, the men’s room was being cleaned. A well-mustachioed cleaning lady was dutifully mopping and had a sign propping the door open that said, “Bathroom closed for cleaning, sorry, five minutes.”

Craig started walking around the store. He tried to stop and look at the kiosk of books on sale to pick out the ones he wanted but he couldn’t concentrate. He had to pee so bad by then he had to keep walking.

His only recourse was to continually circle the huge store, going from music CD’s into the washers and driers, cruising through the high definition and projection televisions (they were all showing A Bug’s Life) through the laptop computers, passing down the mouse and video card aisle into the electronic gadgets, finally walking through software and past the bathroom to see if she was still mopping.

It took her a lot longer than the advertised five minutes. Craig couldn’t stand still and had to keep moving. He considered walking out to my car and driving to a nearby fast food place to use their bathroom, but decided it would be probably quicker to simply wait her out.

Finally, on his fifth circuit of the store he saw her putting the mops and buckets back into the janitor’s closet. A herd of men at that point converged and rushed the bathroom; Craig must not have been alone.

Flash Fiction of the day, Thoughts on the Train Ride Home, by Hayley Carr

Posted on by Bill Chance

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

― Alan Watts

Bike rider on the DART train.

From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Saturday, December 12, 1998

Too Early

Seven o’clock is too early to be at work on a Saturday. Setting that alarm on a Friday night for five the next morning was not a pleasant task.

I had to go in, I really did. We had a training course on some safety related stuff and I was supposed to attend so I could judge if everything was being done properly. I had to take a test, it was impossible for me to concentrate, to think about what I was doing. It was amazing that I passed.

I was home by one and had plenty of things to do. I had big plans, really did. Candy went out to run errands and the kids were being behaved; Lee working on his K’nex and some drawings, Nicholas practicing how to skip rope (he made his own skipping rope from a heavy string, cutting a bunch of drinking straws up and stringing them along the cord) so I stretched out on the couch with a book.

In a blink it was three hours later, I was woozy and my back curled and painful from sleeping on the too short sofa.

Another day, another spin of the world. Another afternoon on the couch.

And today’s flash fiction – Thoughts on the Train Ride Home, by Hayley Carr

from Flash Fiction Magazine

Meetings

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.”
― Dave Barry

PATHS by Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir at HALL Arts, Dallas, Texas

There has been a lot of “talk” about meetings… about Zoom meetings and on and on. I was thinking about this and, as is my wont, writing down notes as a way to discover what I really thought. From my notes:

In my almost half century of working life I have been to… involved with… thousands of meetings. How many have been useful? Thinking hard… the answer is somewhere around six.

Now when I say useful, I know that differs between me and many (most? almost all?) of the others involved – especially the ones setting up the meetings. To me a successful meeting is one that actually accomplishes something… anything. I have been paying attention lately to what most of the folks that schedule these things actually want. They want one (or more, or all) of three things:

  • Butt Covering
  • Blame Shifting
  • Virtue Signalling

Zoom meetings kick this dysfunction up to a new level. I am required to attend a half dozen Zoom meetings a day – from my desk actually at work – where a large number of the attendees are in their living rooms, presumably in their underwear. These meetings can have up to well over a hundred attendees and most are regularly scheduled, repeating meetings. The same four or five people say the same things every time. I can predict the contents and outcome before they begin. It is a frustrating broken Kabuki theater masquerading as work. I end the call unenlightened, de-motivated and angry,.

There are folks that recognize this and are trying to fix it – but I don’t think it is a process problem… it is a people problem.

Sorry for the rant – but I’m sure a lot of people agree with me.

Sunday Snippet, Poem, Dust Crew by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“All happiness depends on courage and work.”

― Honoré de Balzac

Heat
Heat

Dust Crew

Six men sleep is a star pattern
feet, boots in against the tree
heads out
the only way
to pull a little shade from the mesquite
tree, thin green lacy thing
hats pulled down over eyes

What rough dreams stream
from such meager shelter?

A pickup brakes up
throwing dust
dirt stringing streaming out
brims tilt for a peek

Everyone jumps
at the boss
“OK, off yer asses, y’all’s ten minutes up!”
one yells
in a futile excuse

The Dizziness of Freedom

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
― Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

Artwork in the Braindead Brewing Company, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Today I finished a difficult work project. The culmination was six straight uninterrupted hours – from noon to six – staring at multiple computer monitors with spreadsheets, database reports, pages of notes, online forms and an ancient light-powered calculator in my palm.

What surprised me was how I felt when I finished. I felt like someone had hit me in the back of the head. I was tired, sure, but very dizzy and innervated.

Does thinking really take energy? Was my noggin out of oxygen? Does gray matter get worn out like a muscle?

At home I ate a little, stumbled into bed and fell into the sleep of the dead. For four hours.

At least it is done. The world can go on.

Sunday Snippet, Flash Fiction, Zoom by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Rest Area
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.

Zoom

It had been a week since the company had issued new rules saying that employees working from home were required to have their cameras on during Zoom meetings. In addition, everyone was expected to wear AOA – “appropriate office attire.” Since Craig was an Assistant Associate Vice President for Corporate Policies and Procedures that meant a coat and tie. He did not wear pants, of course, and in invisible protest of the new rules he even stopped wearing even the boxer shorts he used to – sitting there in a gray suit and striped tie, naked below the waist.

A typical Zoom call would have fifty or more attendees but only four or five, the same four or five every time, would actually talk. Craig used to leave the meetings and go out for a beer, a walk in the park, or a beer and a walk in the park. He used a mouse jigger – a little USB dongle that would simulate a mouse movement every few minutes – to keep his status light green. If anything important came up he knew the meeting was recorded and he could revisit the content. He never had to.

But now, with the new camera policy he had to actually sit through the things. It was driving him crazy – hours and hours every day of the same farrago of virtue signaling, ass covering, and sucking up to superiors was mind numbing. No work was getting done. Craig had risen to his executive position because of his finely-tuned ability to avoid doing anything – getting credit for other people’s work – and dodging any blame for anything going wrong. Still, these remote working Zoom calls was throwing his uselessness back into his face and he didn’t like it. He preferred honestly goofing off over pretending to be useful

He spent the hours of the camera calls thinking of a way out and finally came up with a plan. A department store near his house was going out of business and selling everything. On a hunch, he drove over there and was able to buy a display dummy from the men’s department. He began to wear sunglasses and a ballcap on the meetings and tried to think about an excuse for this – but nobody ever asked – he doubted anyone even noticed. He stopped shaving and grew out his ragged beard.

A friend of his from college had gone to Mortuary school. He remembered watching the guy learn how to do makeup on model heads, learning how to make a corpse look like life. It creeped Craig out but after all these years it was useful to him. He dropped off the dummy, some photos of himself, and a wad of cash. It only took a few days and the work was done.

Craig lugged the dummy home and dressed in a suit and tie, cap and glasses, and propped in the desk chair – after a tiny bit of blur (a thin streak of Vaseline on the camera lens) the illusion was complete.

As a gift to himself Craig stopped by the big liquor store and bought a half-fridge worth of various craft beers. It would be fun to walk down to the park during meetings and figure out which ones were actually good and which were pretentious shit.

This went perfectly for a few weeks. He developed a route – a walk to a favorite picnic table – where he would sit and sip his brew. The only downside was a homeless guy that would sit at another table a hundred yards away. The guy was wrapped in a dirty blanket, no matter how hot the day was. He was there before Craig arrived and never left while Craig was there. Craig figured the guy would walk up every day from the encampment down where the creek ran into the thick scrub of the river floodplain. Usually they were the only two in this obscure part of the park. The guy never moved or said anything but it still bothered Craig – but even so, this was the most isolated spot, so he grudgingly shared his isolation.

Then one day the guy wasn’t there. Craig looked over and saw him on the ground beside the picnic table. At first Craig thought he must be sleeping, but his position looked uncomfortable – like he had just fallen like that. After he finished sipping his beer, Craig decided he’d better take a look. Sure enough the guy was dead. Cold and stiff. Up close, Craig was shocked at how young he was. What disaster or terrible personal flaw had led someone like that to this ignominious end?

The big question was what to do now? Craig had a vision of a newspaper article, maybe even a short section on a news program about how a dead man was discovered in a public park. Craig was afraid he might be interviewed, photographed, word would get out. He was, after all, supposed to be sitting in from of his camera on a Zoom call – not sipping beer discovering dead homeless guys in a park a short walk from his house. This probably wouldn’t happen, but could he take the risk?

Craig knew right away he couldn’t. He gathered his stuff together and walked home, a little quicker than usual. He dressed (and undressed) and, pausing his camera for a second, switched places with the dummy. As the Zoom meeting droned on, he sat there aggravated.

For the life of him, he couldn’t think of another spot to walk and sip his beer as good as this one, which he would definitely have to give up now.

What I learned this week, Jan 07, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance
Design District Dallas, Texas

The Waste Age

Recognizing that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future

French Quarter New Orleans, Louisiana Halloween

The feeling of ‘flow’ is surprisingly scientific

It’s like being in the zone, but more intense.

Bike rider on the DART train.

Understanding Freedom And Work

As an American, I’m convinced that the United States is the greatest nation on Earth. Obviously, I’m biased as hell and, frankly, I’m not interested in apologizing for it.

We’re not perfect, but I see remarkably little from other countries that look attractive enough to me to make me want to relocate. Especially when you understand what some of the ramifications are of certain policies.

McKinney Avenue Trolley Dallas, Texas

The ‘Woke’ Got What They Wanted — And Then What? 

The new church across the street.

Feeling anxious about work tomorrow? Here’s why having a tidy could help

If you’re someone who struggles with Sunday night anxiety, chances are you get a little restless as the weekend comes to a close. Indeed, with the weekends feeling that little bit shorter now the nights are drawing in, it can almost feel like the time is slipping away from you.

Unraveling the Enigma of Reason

Map Bag
My Not-A-Purse. What is strange is that I found this image floating around on the internet – I don’t know where it originally came from. But if you look, there is an Alphasmart Neo sticking up in the bag. I can’t believe other people out there have Neos in their bags, exactly like mine.

Podcast: The Unclaimed Baggage Center

What I learned this week, February 26, 2021

Posted on by Bill Chance

Zen-like Christmas decorations, Waxahachie, Texas

The Zen rule for becoming happier: Change one thing

1. Start very small.
2. Do only one change at a time.
3. Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).
4. Be grateful for every step you take.

Crepe Myrtle trunk in the snow

Train Your Body to Work Out—or Just Hang Out—in Colder Weather

So you hate the cold.

With coronavirus surging, restaurants and bars closed and the homes of even friends and family off-limits, does that mean your winter social life is doomed?

No, according to a host of scientists, professors and trainers who are experts on the physiological impact of frigid weather on humans. Adapting to cold isn’t fun— who loves to shiver?—but it’s possible, scientists say. And as a bonus: Cold, like exercise, makes you healthier.

Window washing job I couldn’t do
Downtown Dallas, Texas

The computers rejecting your job application

A professional journalist, I had recently applied for a new job, and for the first part of the recruitment process the publisher made me play a number of simple online games from the comfort of my own home.

These included having to quickly count the number of dots in two boxes, inflating a balloon before it burst to win money, and matching emotions to facial expressions. Then an artificial intelligence (AI) software system assessed my personality, and either passed or failed me. No human had a look-in.

I wondered: is it fair for a computer alone to accept or reject your job application?

Welcome to the fast-growing world of AI recruitment.

The Window at Molly’s, the street (Decatur) unusually quiet, with notebook, vintage Esterbrook pen, and Molly’s frozen Irish Coffee

How to Write a Novel, According to 10 Really Good Novelists

Take notes everywhere, embrace Wikipedia wormholes and other handy tips

Morning Dallashenge from the triple underpass in Dealey Plaza.

The Six Morning Routines that Will Make You Happier, Healthier and More Productive

Of all the different things you can try to improve your productivity, a morning routine is one of the most effective.

There are a few reasons why morning routines are so useful. The first is obvious to anyone who has ever procrastinated, just getting started is often the hardest part. If you can start out with the right momentum towards your goals, you’ll avoid wrestling with yourself in the morning to get started.

Mojo Coffee, Magazine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana
(click to enlarge)

Our 14 favorite gadgets and hacks for working at home

From mesh networks to lap desks, here’s how The Verge’s staffers create their workspaces

Display at main Half-Price Books, Dallas, Texas

The Use and Abuse of ‘They’

Journalists and essayists in recent years somehow formed the impression that the academic study of English grammar is partitioned into two mutually hostile tribes: descriptivists and prescriptivists. Both are portrayed in cartoonish stereotypes.

The descriptivists allegedly think that anything uttered by English speakers is ipso facto good English and can never be erroneous. So if people sometimes say, “It’s in the, the . . . the hall closet,” we must deem that correct, and posit noun phrases with three definite articles in a row. This insane view is purportedly associated with the political Left.

But the other tribe seems just as deranged. Its members won’t change their minds about the sacred edicts of grammar regardless of evidence. No matter how many great writers may have committed some solecism, they say, it’s still wrong if the rules of correct grammar say it is. This view gets tagged as conservative.

Sunday Snippet, Flash Fiction, Collision by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

Wrecked Car waiting for the decision – scrap or repair – like there is a question

Collision

He had a nice townhouse in the city, but Brian Newman spent every weekend at his girlfriend’s apartment, driving a hundred miles after work on Friday and back Monday morning before work. He would leave at five to be sure and beat the traffic. Brian was never a morning person and the Monday drive was difficult, but he had done it so many times over the last couple of years it became a familiar blur.

He was waiting at an ordinary red light with his left blinker on and his mind somewhere far away, but an oncoming truck still caught his eye. It was the middle of the summer and the sun was above the horizon. The truck was a big dump truck, red, faded, peeling, patched with rust. The massive front bumper, painted black, was an angry scowl. It was coming fast. Too fast. Much too fast.

It shot through the red light as if it wasn’t there. Brian felt his heart jump and wondered if the truck would swerve and hit him. He knew that there wasn’t anything he could do if it did.

Right then, a small white car moved in from the left, with its green light, and was hit broadside by the onrushing dump truck. The truck came on as if nothing was in its way. With a horrific sound of tinkling safety glass and rending sheet metal the car was pushed along until it was smashed between the heavy dump truck bumper and the stout light pole in the center median.

The pole snapped off and fell over but not before it brought the massive truck to a final halt. All that kinetic energy reduced the car into a wad of compressed metal like the foil left after a wrapped sandwich, ready to toss in the bin. Brian was in the left hand lane and as he looked out his side window the driver was only a few feet away across the hood and in clear view through the windshield as the light pole came through the side tearing him apart. Brian had a clear view of the man’s panicked face right before the collision crushed his skull, sending bone, blood, and brains in all directions.

The police interviewed Brian at the crash site and at the local office. Over the next week a parade of lawyers asked him the same questions over and over… “Did you hear brakes?” “Did the truck swerve at all?” “How long had the light been red?” “Did the truck sound its horn.”

It seems the driver claimed his brakes had failed. The suspicion was that the driver was on his phone and hadn’t seen the red light. It would be the difference in damages and possible murder charges.

“It happened so fast,” Brian said. “I don’t really know, I don’t know what happened.” He didn’t understand how nobody cared about what had happened to him. Just because he hadn’t been hit didn’t mean he wasn’t affected. The look on the driver’s face in that split second before he died haunted Brian. He thought they made eye contact. Brian was the last person he had seen, a complete stranger, before he died. There was not a scratch on Brian’s car but he had to go to the car wash and scrub off some of what looked like blood and a bit of what might have been skull bone.

Brian called his girlfriend and told her that he had to take some time off and stay at his place for work. She said she understood. He called his work and said he had to take some time off and was going to stay at his girlfriend’s. They said they understood and would sign him up for a workplace disability program.

The lawyers paid for a hotel in the town where the accident happened. Brian figured it was so that he would be available if the case, civil or criminal, ever went to trial. He wasn’t sure which lawyers paid for the room; the defense, or the truck driver, or the dead man’s estate, or the truck manufacturer, or the company that owned the dump truck. They all called him all the time, asking him the same questions over and over. They would always end with saying how lucky Brian was, to have so much violence and horror so close to him and yet to be unaffected. The truck did miss him completely, of course – even if only by inches.

He spent the time binge watching old crime shows in his hotel room or taking long walks around the perfectly ordinary town he was now living in.

As the weeks went by his girlfriend decided to make the man she had been seeing, cheating on him, for a year during the week while Brian was in the city at work her full-time partner. The man proposed and Brian’s old girlfriend accepted. She sent Brian a thoughtful and carefully-worded letter to say goodbye but Brian never opened the envelope. Though he didn’t know exactly what had happened he guessed the main thrust of things and didn’t care much about it.

His work eventually promoted the temporary replacement to take over Brian’s full-time job. Then, as the various cases were settled the lawyers told Brian that he would have to move out of the hotel. They were glad, however, to help him sell his city townhouse and buy a place in the town. Property values were less and he was able to get a small bungalow with a big yard and still have some money left over.

He didn’t need much and was able to find a simple, thoughtless position near his house with the town government and that was enough. Ironically, the job was vacant because it had been held by the man killed in the accident. Brian’s years passed in quiet, lonely peace. He never married, never left the town.

And never drove or rode in a car for the rest of his life.

Flash Fiction of the day, Invisible Ones by A. C. Spahn

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Rest Area
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.

Invisible Ones by A. C. Spahn