Co-Worker Run Down

For those of you who have spent time on my blog you have probably read a few posts about my job and my co-workers like Mr. Hyde and my adventure with Bub in a much earlier but funny post.

I thought I would give you a rundown of the cast of characters I work with. I'm going to change the names so that I will know who they are and to protect any kind of privacy they have.

So first up is Picky Eater. He is the leadman of our shop. He eats nothing but the following: Ham, Cheese (including Cheetos), Vienna Sausages (including patty sausages and sausage pizza), Hot Dogs, Rib Eyes, Chicken Strips(including chicken wings but ONLY from Hooters), and Pepsi or Coors Light. That is it. Nothing else. No cake, donuts,
foreign foods including Chinese, Mexicanese, Frenchese, Japanese, Canadianese, or anything else that sounds vaguely not from America. He is hard headed and generally complains about being broke about 1-2 days after payday. Picky Eater is a good guy but he has his quirks that most everyone has, they are just specific to him. He will never try anything new.

Next is Inc.
He runs a business from our shop and works his salvage yard/body shop and ALWAYS has a plan to make new career out of something. To give you an idea of what Inc. has thought of lately and by lately I mean the past few weeks there have been such ideas as moving to Branson and buying a hotel to inventing a huge BBQ grill that looks like a (Insert fenders/hood assembly that is available in his salvage yard) and towing it to (X destination to clean up on cooking for people).

Inc. has more ideas than I could count on how to make a living doing something else but amazingly NEVER acts on any of them. His wife is currently about ready to take a course at the local vo-tec for accounting which will soon throw a huge wrench into my life. How so? Here is the story behind that.

His wife has been on workman's comp for about three years now due to a back injury at work. She can't vacuum without it hurting. So w/c is going to pay for her to learn a trade or skill which is good. I'm all for that. The problem comes up when I tell you that she home schools their three daughters and Inc. has his father in law working at his body shop during the day. To hear Inc. talk about him is a hysterical array of stories that could fill a blog in itself. So suffice it to say that Inc. doesn't want his daughters acting like his father in law. So the daughters would be at home alone since wifey isn't home to school them. So Inc. is going to have to exchange places with Captain Insaneo or Gambler Painterette from the night shift which means I will then have to work with one of them on days....sigh....36 years to retirement.

I have written about Captain Insaneo before so I'll skip him and move to Gambler Painterette. She can paint but usually only with a brush, give her a paint gun and it goes to total confusion from there on. She can work hard but those skills are very limited. It isn't like she doesn't have years on the job, she is coming up on about 9 years and her skills are dismal at best. She has zero leave since she calls in every time she has 8 hours to take off. I can't blame her since being around Captain Insaneo would drive me to the same behavior. I know that if she were to change with Inc. to days from nights I would be stuck with twice the work load. She goes to the Indian Casinos every chance she gets to play the abundant amount of slot machines and generally is broke about 3-4 days after payday. I can't fault her for playing the lottery since I am in her lottery pool, we all dream of hitting the jackpot and quitting, however I am realistic enough to believe that I probably should have a retirement account or two just in case we don't. The lottery is Plan A for her.

Next up we have Physical Feature. He picks up one physical feature of everyone he meets and from then on calls them that. For example there is a woman who happens to have a beauty mark, she is henceforth Wart Woman. He comes to our shop every morning to get the latest scandal involving our shop and asks where Picky Eater is since the scandal usually involves him getting in trouble with Mr. Hyde. If Picky Eater isn't around he will ask us if he is pooping and is always concerned about the toilet habits of everyone else for some bizarre reason.

Then we come to the 192 boys. They are the second half of our shop and generally work on the aircraft themselves as a whole instead of the parts like our shop does. There are five of them and we will start with Vainity. He is married to a rich wife and is so anal about everything that he once spent weeks polishing a transmission by hand. He wears a toupee that EVERYONE knows about and yet is surprised when someone notices it. Vanity complains about his wife because she tells him what he has to do with his money which goes to the mortgage, utilities, and insurance. He is allowed a small amount for gas and beer money from each paycheck. She doesn't work and never has and yet there is a pre-nup so he gets NOTHING if he ever divorces her. So he is all kinds of trapped.

Then we have My Life Ended When Vietnam Ended or Bad Temper for short. Bad Temper hasn't been laid for at least three decades. He is always mad and when he isn't mad you just don't know what will make him mad. When he is mad he refuses to talk to you. No kidding. Vanity once tried to set him up on a date with a waitress who actually wanted to go out with Bad Temper and it made him so mad he didn't talk to Vanity for SIX MONTHS!!!! I have nearly gotten into a fist fight with Bad Temper myself. Bad Temper is 6'4 and pushing 280 but he is about 20 years older and I think I could have taken him. What did I do? Well Bad Temper paints very slow and once we were painting a T-38 which is a fairly large aircraft for this base. We divide the aircraft into halves lengthwise. Well he paints so slowly that I was done with my side by the time he was at the wings which means he was getting dry overspray all over my shiny side making it look dull and gritty. So I thought I would help him out and go around the nose of the aircraft and meet him on his side. That really made him furious! He then proceeded to threaten me in which case I proceeded to get up and take it outside before another co-worker stepped between us and broke it up. Bad Temper later apologized and we have been fairly good since other than his extremely bizarre behavior.

There are two normal guys so I won't even mention them. But then there is Bob. he talks with a Mickey Mouse voice and is ALWAYS talking about penis. He is married but everyone feels that he is in the closet. He is in his mid-50's and always has an excuse for why he can't do something: Too hot, too cold, not my job, not my turn (which it is never his turn), too windy, too calm. Ask him to do anything and you will get one of those responses. No one likes Bob. He will never do anything but will be the first one to tell you how to do it since he knows everything. Ask anyone around a question and Bob will be the first to answer it especially if you aren't talking to Bob. He can get a better deal on anything than you got, he knows someone who got a better deal than you and you always spent too much money on practically everything you bought. He will drive across town for gas that is 1 cent cheaper. Being around Bob just plain sucks like it does to be around Mr. Hyde or Captain Insaneo.

Now those are the regulars at my job but I do not exaggerate when I tell you that nearly everyone is like that where I work. There are normal people and we tend to stick together. I know I have my quirks as well and document them all here for everyone to read and laugh at, like the fact that I just typed this huge post with a medicated cat on my lap.