Crazypants

People are crazy. Everyone I know and everyone you know is at least a little crazy. It's what makes life interesting and entertaining! Watching people try and convince others that they are, in fact, perfectly sane and normal is what keeps us alive. I worked for a crazy person once. Well, I have worked for many crazy people as I believe a prerequisite for being in charge of something demands a particular level of insanity. My crazy employer is best known as Crazypants. Lets call him Captain Crazypants because it sounds good.

Doorstops.

The first time I realized that Crazypants was actually Captain Crazypants happened late one week night. I share an office with three co-workers, one of which was off and another was missing when Captain Crazypants needed him...RIGHT NOW! Captain Crazypants looked everywhere, all four floors of our fine facility and just could not find him and it made him MAD! The missing co-worker was one of our very few bilingual employees and we needed to translate for some potential clients at that very moment. Mostly because Captain Crazypants couldn't figure out that these particular clients were no longer interested in our product and very much wanted to leave. Unfortunately for them they bumped into the Captain on their way out and craziness ensued. The clients managed to slip out whilst an increasingly maddening Captain Crazypants frantically searched our facility for our missing, bilingual co-worker. The missing co-worker finally turned up (moments after Captain Crazypants declared, "He had better turn up or he'll be out of a job!") and calmed the good Captain down.

However, Captain Crazypants was still rather redfaced and needed to expend this negative energy someway so he decided it was time to randomly dictate a task to myself.

"I need you to go around the whole facility and collect all the door stops, wipe them down,s curb them really good and then put them all in one of the drawers in your storage area so that they all will be in one place. be sure to leave a note for the secretary so she can make a note indicating that this is where all the doorstops go."

I looked at him rather blankly.

"You see, you never know when you we will suddenly have a special event and we will need to prop open all the doors in the facility at once. Don't forget to leave a note for the secretary and wipe them down real good."

And so it was...I collected all the doorstops and placed them in the appropriate drawer and left the note for the secretary. I did not scrub them real good though. I am such a rebel.

Asians.

It was early on a Friday and Captain Crazypants strolls into our office:

"You know what we really need?"

He looked at me as if I should already know the answer to this random and subject less question.

"More Asians! How can we get more Asians in here?"

Again, he looked to me as if I had a plan in place and I only needed his approval to initiate 'Operation get More Asians.' I simply shrugged and said, "Uhhh...I don't know?" By coincidence an Asian person happened to walk by the window.

"Ah, there goes one now! Get him! (Ha HA) Seriously though, we really ought to have more Asians here, don't you think? How can we get more Asians?! I KNOW! I have an Asian friend that works in a bank, I'll go call him and see what he thinks! Later guys!"

He left and I have never heard another word about getting more Asians.

Dirty Chair Wheels.

Last winter we had new computers delivered and installed. Well, I should say that we had new computers delivered and myself and a couple of other co-workers had to unload the truck and help with the installation. This to save Captain Crazypants all the trouble of hiring people that know what they are doing. Captain was sure that we would be able to install some eighty new computers (and remove the eighty old ones) in a single weekend. Naturally, the project dragged on for two weeks. Consultants were hired for the networking but they only did the wiring they did not do any of the actual physical work of installing the machines. So, the whole process was messy and stupid from the get-go however the best part didn't happen until the very end of the process.

I was manning the store front while my co-workers were busy re-arranging one of the offices that contained some twenty or so of the new machines. They had to take out all the old machines, fix up all the desks and chairs in the room then put in the new machines. Lucky for me, I had nothing to do with that project until right when I was putting on my jacket to leave for the day...Enter Captain Crazypants:

"Oh you're not leaving already are you? Can you do me a favor? I need you to go up and help the security guard move some leftover chairs into the storage room behind your office, ok?"

Seemed reasonable enough, moving chairs only takes a few minutes, no problem! So, I go upstairs to find that there are twelve chairs left and the security guard informed me that he already cleaned them so all we have to do is cover them with garbage bags and roll them on down to my storage room. Not a problem. So, I proceed to cover the twelve chairs (which were stacked in pairs) with garbage bags and the security guard and I were just about to roll the chairs down to the freight elevator approximately thirty feet away. Captain Crazypants intervened:

"No, no I want those chairs completely covered."

Blank look from me, "Well, they are?"

"No, the bottoms are still exposed. I don't want those wheels to get dirty while you bring them down to the storage room. You see, I want those cleaned real good and covered so that if one of the chairs in the office happens to break we can just run down and grab a new one and drop in there without having to clean the wheels again!"

I stifled a laugh. The Captain pointed knowingly at his head,

"See! I'm always thinking ahead, saves us work down the road!"

So, we turned over all the stacks of covered chairs and tied off the garbage bags so that the wheels on the chairs would not get dirty. We then had to carry the chairs down to the freight elevator and up into my storage room. This five minute job then became a thirty minute job which I got overtime for.

Thinking ahead indeed.

Paranoid Suspicions.

A little while ago our organization was under review by a group of peers from our field. Captain Crazypants had spent the better part of the year being obsessed with passing this review. For whatever reason, the Good Captain was certain the presentation of our facility was paramount to passing this review. So he spent large amounts of time cleaning, making others clean and ordering new furniture and fussing over the colors of said new furniture. He even had painters in to re-paint walls that hardly needed a paint job. Though that was worth it to see a regular old plain yellow be converted to a neon yellow one might only see in a juice box. As the date of our review loomed ever closer Captain Crazypants became more frantic culminating in this:

"I need you to close the facility down an hour early on Saturday."

Again, I gave what had become a trademark blank look of non-understanding.

"See, the chairperson of the review committee is flying in at about 12:30 on Saturday and I know that he is coming early to get a jumpstart on our review over the rest of the Committee. Ya see, one of the other committee members is also a Captain just like me and the chairperson isn't a captain. So, he is probably worried that this other captain is going to run roughshod all over his chairmanship so he is going to want to bone up on Saturday. The rules state that the committee must review together so we can't have that. So, I need you to close this place up tight, lock it up like a drum and get out of here no later than 1 pm. I would pick him up myself but then he will twist my arm and get int here anyways...So we can't have that so I sent another co-worker to pick him with specific instructions to STALL! He will act sick, or act like he is starving and has to get something to eat..Anything to keep that Chairperson away from the facility on Saturday. I don't want him to even see the exhaust from your car when he gets here, ok?"

This is funny for several reasons: Number one is that I am closing down an entire business during regular Saturday hours based simply on Captain Crazypant's paranoid suspicion that this other Captain is planning to somehow 'run roughshod' all over this chairperson's honorary authority. Not because it is actually going to happen or because the chairperson actually wants to get in early to bone up on our documentation. It is also a good time to point out that all the documentation they are set to review has already been mailed to the chairperson, the other Captain, the rest of the review committee and most of the Organization's staff. Essentially, Captain Crazypants is going through this ridiculous plan is so that he can avoid having to come in on Saturday.

The real surprise is that we passed that review with flying colors leading me to believe that everyone in this field must be as crazy and full of shit as we are.