Larks and Thangs
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- kingjulien
I used to grade standardized tests for a this book publisher, which had to be the lamest job I ever had. First the pay was lame. Second I disagreed philosophically with the tests, mainly because these exams focus on conventional cookie cutter ideas of right and wrong, while punishing those kids who think abstractly and outside the box. Third, and i know this is awful pretentious of me, but I was recently single at the time, and this had to be the ugliest workface in the history of office work. I mean I know, who am I to talk shit about appearances, but compared to this collection of slobberers, hairy moles, and gimps, I was downright sexy.
The funny thing is, while looking back in reflection, this turned out to be the best place I could ever work at, just because I had hours to daydream while doing the monotonous work, and there were so many people to chronicle, so many strange accentricities to note.
My favorite character was Guyla, one of my supervisors. Guyla was this 68 year old woman who was six weeks removed from major hip replacement surgery. Since she was unable to walk further than a few yards, even with her cane, which was all because she was pushing 250 lbs, she had to do her job while riding in a Lark. This wasn't just some normal lark though, this was the Rascal 5000 Turbo. It was tricked out. If you looked at it in the proper light--preferably after two bowls at lunchtime-you could see her cruisin' Broadway on Sunday nights with 20 inch Daytons and 16 switches, dippin, with Too Short playing on the speakers.
After training us for whatever exam we were grading that week, which was an hour of listening to Guyla weeze through these little headphones, she would cruise back to her office. We would then begin scoring. Every hour, Guyla would roll back to report the numbers and give us a pep talk, while handing out candy canes to the "best" scorer .
The thing that always got me was Guyla had a hard time navigating through the small aisles. She would smack into somebody's desk, hit reverse and crash into a cubicle, then spin out and clip some confused wanderer returning from the bathroom. And even crazier to me was that nobody laughed, or even acknowledged that it had happened, except for me, who fell over in tears at my desk. When she returned each hour, there was this long corrider, and you could hear her crashing into walls and cubicles and cursing in Irish the whole way. Again, I couldn't contain myself.
I never got a candy cane, nor did I last long as this job, but that image of Guyla in her blue turtlekneck-- with fat rolls jiggling on the side- and her thick schoolteacher glasses and that mad Rascal on chrome, and those ugly muthaf**kas looking at me blankly every time I tried to bring it up as comic relief, will forever haunt me, and will continue to be justification for this absurd and amused perspective on life.
- designerror0
thank for a good read.. i have a weird and clear picture up in my head of that old gimp.
- mrdobolina0
are you blogging these yet? Id like to see them chronicled so I can send the link to friends.
- kingjulien0
what's up mrdobolina. thanks for your interest. i have a few of them posted and a bunch more ready to go soon. they can be found at
- designerror0
thanks for the link king
*bookmarked
- mrdobolina0
right on dude. lots of good reading on your site.