The Scene: My office building, just outside the cafeteria.


The Crime: My boss, cradling his lunch, a muffin, and a Coke, reached the door to the hallway just as I, holding a plate of pizza, did. Unable to easily open the door himself, he said:


'I'm going to have to rely on the kindness of your one free hand.'


Unable to easily stop myself from being a smartass (but still opening the door for him), I said:


'Sir, if that means what I think it means, you'll be waiting a very long time.'


The Punishment: Who knows? He probably didn't even get the joke, thank goodness. And now I'm really happy I didn't go with:


'I bet you say that to all the guys, sir.'


How I stay gainfully employed is a mystery, even especially to me.

The dream is alive.


For months now, some jackass has been double-parking his Mitsubishi convertible in the basement of the garage at work. Every damned day, in the same damned spot-and-a-half, like he owns the damned joint.


(Yes, I'm assuming it's a 'he'. I've never seen the driver, but like I said, it's a ragtop convertible. Last time I checked, women don't drive cars that compensate for small penises.


And did you notice the car in the picture above? That's just a pic of a similar model I found online, not the chariot of the jackass in question. And still it's not parked between the lines.


I'm thinking there's either some sort of 'retarded parker' clause in the leases for these things, or the cars are causing brain damage. Someone should really look into it.)


Seeing the same car asininely parked every day -- especially when there are no other available spots in the basement -- gets old after a while. I've often walked past that car -- coming from a spot far further from the elevator -- with visions of sabotage dancing in my head. Soap on the rearview mirrors, field mice in the gas tank, replacing the spark plugs with cocktail weenies -- it's a little different every time. And I would never actually stoop to teaching the assbag a lesson like that.


Probably.


Still, every day I have the dream. But a few short hours ago, I thought the dream had died forever.


I left the office late tonight, as usual. On Fridays in particular, most people clear out pretty early, leaving my whole floor lonely, quiet, and empty.


(See? There's a good reason I stay late. I'm not just 'weird'.


Quiet, you.)


I closed down my computer, made my way to the lobby, and hopped onto the elevator going down to the garage basement. Just as the elevator doors were inching shut, a hand slipped between them and a person stepped in with me. It was the boss.


Not my boss. The big boss. The chief. The honcho majoro. El cheesus gigantus.


As we rode down in silence -- because it's tricky to have a conversation with someone who doesn't realize you exist -- I had an epiphany. I often leave the office late. Jackass double-parked car is often still there when I leave. Big honcho boss probably leaves late -- maybe even later than me.


Uh oh.


Clearly, if the boss owned the offending car, my dream of someday doling out a vehicular comeuppance would be dashed. I could conceivably, on a particularly vindictive day, send a message to a fellow peon by tinkering with his car. But I couldn't possibly risk fiddling with the big boss' ride. If he saw me, I'd be cooked. Quite possibly literally -- he's a powerful guy, and who knows what sort of perverted punishment he could get away with? I'm not saying he'd eat me or anything, but I wouldn't rule out being boiled in oil, or toasted in a chafing dish of some kind.


And even if he didn't see me, he's the boss. He's got minions. Hell, we're all his minions. If I actually keyed the guy's car or puked down his sunroof, I might even be contractually obligated to turn myself in. And that's some fine print I'm not interested in reading.


(And yes, I know I said it's a convertible, so it doesn't have a sunroof.


It's a figure of speech. I'm talking about puking down the boss' sunroof, euphemistically,


Not that way. Perv.)


Anyway, when the elevator doors opened, it was clear the game was on. There were only three cars left in the basement: my car straight ahead, the jackass two-space-filling tiny-peener-compensating convertible to the left, and an understated luxury sedan to the right. If the boss veered right, the dream was alive; if he turned left, I could never seriously consider rubbing Vaseline all over that car ever again.


Sure, I could laugh at his apparently underdeveloped penis and his obvious resulting inferiority complex. But only to myself. Minions, remember?


Luckily for my darker side, the boss wandered off to the right, hopped into his sedan, and drove off into the night. That left me alone with my car and the needledick convertible. I considered taking the opportunity to wreak some havoc, but all the excitement had tuckered me out, so I simply drove home. There will be other days to drain the jackass' transmission or bend his antenna into Slinky shapes.


And I don't mean euphemistically. Not this time.

I've just concocted the best office game ever.


Maybe you've already played this game. I didn't steal my idea from anyone, mind you, but this is the sort of thing that I can easily see being discovered independently in all sorts of industries. So perhaps the word has already gotten around. But in case it hasn't, here are the rules.


First, you need an office of some sort. I'd have thought that this would be an obvious prerequisite for an 'office game', but you never know what sort of loose interpretation people are going to take. So right up front, I'll mention it. Preferably you'd want a fairly large office, with lots of people. And a social one, too -- the more people you personally know in your office, the more fun you'll have.


You're also going to need one of those voice-activated auto-directory thingamabobs on the phone system in your office. You know, the function that lets you dial a number and speak someone's name into the phone to reach their extension. This directory service dealie is the heart of the game.


The rules for this game are very simple. Gather together an arbitrary number of players. Each person gets to come up with one word or phrase to say to the recorded auto-directory voice. The winner is the person, determined by popular vote, whose word returns the most appropriate person for whatever was spoken.


Needless to say, the words should be disparaging, insulting, and, if possible, dirty as all hell.


So, for instance, you might say into the phone, 'Needledick'. The disembodied directory voice might ask, 'Do you mean Stephen Glick?' At which point, you and your buddies have to decide how appropriate the answer is. Maybe Steve's a good guy; maybe he's even playing the game with you. But maybe, this Glick guy really is a needledick -- score! Laughs all 'round, and a shot at the grand prize.


There's some strategy involved, of course. Maybe only you remember that asshole down in accounting named Tucker or Rucker or Glasswipe. That would be a major find. But maybe he's pissed everybody off, so they're all gunning for him. You'd do well to look for a different insult that sounds like someone else's name, just to set yourself apart. Maybe 'dumbass' could be 'Thomas'. Or 'fathead' would sound enough like 'Fred' to work. Experiment. Try some combinations. Don't be afraid to cheat. This ain't the Olympics, folks.


Above all, have fun. See who 'incompetent boob' and 'waste of human flesh' bring up in your office. Even these old chestnuts are worth a giggle if the person served up by the directory is deserving enough. Just pray it's not your name coming up. This is just the sort of thing that could get a nickname stuck on you for life. You could be 'Dimwit Dixon' or 'Flighty Freddie' for years if you're not careful with this. Feel free to cut the directory bitch off if you hear your name started. That's your last line of defense before the gathered crowd turns on you. Choose wisely, and act fast. That's the only way to survive, 'The Directory of Doom' game.


And it beats the hell out of suffering through a staff meeting, eh? Dial it in.

I got called into the boss' office last week. The big man thinks I should be more assertive. Apparently, it's not enough to just show up to group meetings and sit in the back sighing loudly. He says it disturbs the others.


I asked whether it's any better when I crawl under the conference table and weep softly. He said that's better, but it's still not good enough. Clearly, he's not interested in meeting me halfway on this one. Damn.


So, I had to show some assertiveness. Our weekly meeting was this morning, and I had a lot to learn. You don't just wake up one morning and decide to assert yourself.


(I tried that once with the wife. It got me a sore jaw and a week sleeping on the futon. She gets awfully grumpy when someone asserts all over her first thing in the morning.


Evidently.


Moving right along, then.)


The point is, you can't just hitch up your petard and become assertive at the drop of a hat. I brought this up to the boss.


Okay, technically I whispered it to a coworker and asked her to bring it up to the boss for me. Seriously. Not so assertive.


He relayed back a useful bit of advice -- try a role model. Find someone who has their assertive mojo working, and emulate them. Study their moves. Learn their tricks. Use your role model to slingshot yourself into assertive nirvana.


Fair enough. So I did some thinking, and came up with someone who's the very epitome of 'assertive'. He's clear and direct, he isn't afraid to speak his mind, and he nearly always gets what he wants. In other words, a perfect role model. I chose Samuel L. Jackson.


With my sensei of assertion selected thusly, I began my studies. I rented Pulp Fiction. I went out and caught Snakes on a Plane. And I started watching Afro Samurai.


(I left out the Star Wars movies. Jedis are cool and all, but they're hardly 'assertive'. Yoda couldn't assert his way out of a big green alien paper bag.)


Over the course of these viewings, I think I learned a lot. I lived Samuel L. I breathed Samuel L. By meeting time this morning, I'd graduated from Samuel L. U., and I had become Samuel L. I was ready to assert the shit out of those fools.


Early on, I had my first opportunity. My coworker Sarah was giving a presentation on a new proposal. It's a project near to her heart, and the excitement was getting to her. She wanted so badly to get her idea approved, she was stammering and sweating through her talk. I decided to assert myself, and give her some friendly encouragement. Assertively.


So the next time she paused, flustered, to take a sip of water and collect her thoughts, I stood up, put a hand gently on her shoulder, and said:


'You need to ar-tic-ulate the business justifi-ca-tion. Opportunity cost, motherfucker, do you speak it?'


The stunned silence in the room -- and the water that Sarah spewed across the conference table -- told me I was on the right track. I was just saying -- nay, asserting -- what they were all thinking. My boss was right -- this was much better than sitting under the table crying.


Later, there was a spirited debate over a proposed improvement that someone suggested. The old me would have never gotten involved. I would have watched from the sidelines, and let the issue sort itself out. But not today. Not Mr. Assertive. I banged my fist on the table, stood up, and made my opinions known:


Me: People, people, peop-le. There is no reason to discuss this any further. This idea is crazy righteous, and it changes ev-erything. I'm talkin' 'bout a motherfucking shift of a motherfucking paradigm, here!
Coworker Stan: Um... what? We were just talking about whether to move the break room sofa to the other wall.

Me: That's what I'm talkin' about, bitches! A motherfucking shift!
Coworker Stan: What?

Me: Say 'what' again! I motherfucking dare you. Say 'what' one more goddamn time. Bitch, you will KNOW I am the LORD when I lay--
Coworker Stan: Oh, go to hell. You're probably the one who left that big greasy stain on the sofa, anyway.

Me: Well, check out the big brain on Stan!


I thought the meeting went well. But afterwards, the boss called me into his office again. Now he's decided he doesn't want me to be so assertive. Also, I have to apologize to Sarah. And if I quote Ezekiel to Stan again, it's going on my record. All that fuss, just for following supervisors' orders.


Sounds to me like some motherfuckers need to make up their damned minds. That's what I assert, bitches. Oh hell, yes.

We have a saying in our office:


'It's never the rocket science stuff.'


Meaning that it's not the complicated, convoluted, thinky sorts of things that we spend most of our time on, nor are those the sorts of things that cause us the most headaches. We're a code-writing group for the most part, and we do occasionally run into some sort of mondo scary algorithm or brain-melting logic to code. But those are not our biggest problems.


It's not like those things are simple, mind you. I, for one, am not the perkiest pair of nipples in the proverbial porno -- so these sorts of intellect-requiring projects can cause their share of hair-pulling days and fitful, sleepless nights.


(Well, it's either the projects, or those lunch-truck burritos I've been eating. I'm guessing it's a little from column A, and a little from column B.)


But for all of the 'hard' work we struggle through, it pales in comparison to the time spent tracking down the 'easy' stuff. Scanning thousands of lines of code for a rogue comma or semicolon. Troubleshooting a system top to bottom -- only to find that someone accidentally kicked the plug on the server. Trying desperately to understand the problem a user is seeing, and later discovering their video card was on the fritz. These are the most common issues -- the piddling little details that grind us to a halt every now and then. It's never the rocket science stuff.


Why do I bring this up? Because for me -- not the swingingest single at the orgy, remember -- this rule of 'easy stuff hard' seems to extend to my commute to the office, as well.


To be fair, there is some 'hard stuff' involved with driving to work, as well. Unsynchronized stop lights, speed traps, elderly Sunday-driving obstacles -- but I can usually find my way around or through these difficulties. My biggest problem lately has been the card reader at the office garage.


The reader panel is a flat plastic rectangle, about three inches wide by five inches tall. At the upper right corner is a little status light -- the sort of thing that lights green and bleeps reassuringly when you've been scanned properly, or flashes red and bleats at you like an angry goose when there's an error. For months -- months, I say! -- I believed that the 'status light' was also the card reader. Most of the card readers I've ever seen have a little optical dealie like that to recoqnize the card.


What I could never understand is why scanning the card was so damned difficult. I took great pains to shimmy the car close to the reader, and stretch my card up by the light. But often I'd have to wave it back and forth, turn it around, and waggle it up and down to get the stupid garage to let me in. I'd be sitting there, doing half the hokey pokey in my driver's seat, while cars piled up behind me waiting for their turn. Is that any way to start a day of being shackled to your cubicle? I think not.


So, on Friday I made the discovery that you must have seen coming by now. The status light is just that -- a light. A simple brainless LED, blind to the world and ignorant of any cards or raving idiots waving around in front of it. As it turns out, the whole rest of the panel is the card reader, and -- assuming you actually wave your card in front of it -- works quite nicely. All those times I sat, waving and swiping and cursing Henry Ford and Karl Benz for popularizing the production of the infernal machines that led to my garage fiasco, I was missing the card reader doohickey entirely. I might as well have waved my card at the garage wall, or in front of the attendant's face.


(I tried the latter once, actually. The guy let me into the garage, but I'm convinced he snuck over and peed on my wheels while I was at work. When I peel out, it still smells like asparagus.)


Anyway, now I know. So I should be able to get into the garage without any further delay or humiliation. I suppose the moral of the story is this -- when you're not the sharpest shucker in the crab shack, everything is 'rocket science'. Meh.