so this guy, Mike, is the shipping manager…
he’s in his late 40s, which means there should be some level of maturity he is at. wrong. whenever there’s a problem that someone won’t take care of immediately, he runs like a little baby to his boss, the VP of Ops. the VP also happens to be my direct boss and when i don’t take care of his problems as soon as he says, he runs to my boss, who in turn comes to me and says, “take care of the problem.”
Mike has problems with printing. it’s always the same problem, and it took me the first two or three times to realize he doesn’t really have problems. he just doesn’t like to load the paper.
so i started ignoring his printer problems because i’m not a paper gopher. but once i started ignoring his problems, he would run to the VP and say i wasn’t doing my job. the VP would come to me to say, “do your job,” and i’d subsequently go load the paper.
last week, i got another call from Mike.
“i’m having problems printing again. you know, you never fix the problem entirely. you only band-aid it and never fix the source. i’m really getting angry about this. take care of it.”
with no lowered sense of propriety, i say, “did you load the paper?”
“i didn’t check. that’s what you do.”
“no it’s not. i fix computers. i don’t load paper. if i go over there and the printer’s out of paper, i’m going to wack you in the face with a ream of paper.”
pause… “haha, funny. just fix the printer.”
i walk to his office and check the printer. it’s out of paper. but Mike, not knowing if i was joking or not decided to err on the side of caution and wasn’t there to receive his wacking.
undeterred, i spent the next four hours ignoring other calls and searching through the three-storied, many-thousand-square-footed office building searching for the shipping manager. when i found him, he was berating Bob, a forklift driver, for bringing a palette to the dock adjacent to the correct dock rather than the right dock (though Mike had mistakenly wrote the wrong dock on the bill of lading). ream of paper in hand, i waited for ten minutes for the beratement to finish, but as the yelling wouldn’t stop, i decided to intervene.
i walked up, tapped the shipping manager on the shoulder. he turned around. mid-yell of “what?!” for me interrupting him, Mike received the healthiest backslap of a full, unopened paper ream across the side of his face.
as if the world moved in slow motion, Mike’s spit and blood flew through the air as the ream delivered sweet, sweet justice. the shipping manager was down for the count. i walked away to dump the blood spattered ream in some marketing office garbage can while Bob drove away.
waiting for my inevitable scolding from the VP, i sat in my office playing Battlefield, when the hot receptionist down the hall came into my office.
“did you hear?”
“hear what?” i asked, imagining her in other garments.
“Mike was taking a nap right on the dock floor and got run over by a forklift. someone accidentally left the key in the forklift, forgot to put it in park, and the shipping manager was right in the path. at least that’s what Bob said. Bob said it was too late to help Mike. the police say no foul play involved.”
“wow,” i say, with my best impression of surprise. turns out i actually did wack a guy with a ream of paper.