Ok, technically he's "Premade Food Boy."  However, Derek read my earlier post and got a little mixed up, dubbing him "Salad Boy" ever after.

I found out yesterday that he moved here from Miami, but grew up in Cleveland.  And he used to be a kindergarten teacher.  (I hope he didn't notice my momentary drop in height when he told me that, as my knees got a little wobbly.)  It came up that I was moving in a few weeks, and he looked genuinely saddened.

That's when he asked for my number.  ;)

I made a friend at Sutton Place.  So now I check my hair before I go over there.  Yep, that kind of friend.

On Monday, he told me to come back when I had more time and we'd "play."  Today, I went over there and he gave me samples of just about everything at the premade food counter.  It was yummy.  I was almost full before I ordered anything.  I had to cut our little rendez-vous short, though.  I figured my "It was really busy!" excuse back at the office would only cover so much time, since all I was supposed to get was a little container of tuna salad.

Does he make friends with all the girls?  Probably.  Is it a clever ploy to sell more food?  Most definitely.  I give.  Uncle.

Our office has a heating/AC guy who came out and fixed our heat pump this past April.  Well, it's broken again.  We looked on the past invoice and it says, "90 day parts and labor warranty."  So we call him up.  His phone number is one of those where you leave a message and it pages him.  This was on the 25th of June.  My boss and I called everyday, sometimes twice a day, since then, trying to get him to respond.  Today my other boss offered to call from his cell phone.  He left his name and his cell phone number and only said that he had some AC trouble.  The guy called back in 15 min.  Part of me doesn't want him to show up because I'm so embarrassed for him, I don't want to be in the room.

My junior boss is THE MOST technologically-challenged person I have ever known.  There should seriously be a Dilbert character based on this guy.

When he joined our team in November, my senior bosses gave him a BlackBerry.  Big mistake.  I have logged more hours on the phone to BlackBerry-tech-support than should be legal.  After we replaced his BlackBerry the first time, he dropped it--*he actually dropped it*--and put a hole in it.  It was really an internal crack which leaked air into the LCD, but it looked like he had used it for target practice.  There was a black, bullet-size void right in the middle of the screen.  So now he's on his 3rd BlackBerry.  We'll see how long this one lasts.

Then there was the day he came in and his computer decided to lock him out.  For no apparent reason, it had started to ask for a password to log on to Windows.  Only problem was, he didn't have a password.  He had never set one.  It took us all day and the help of a professional IT guy to get his system accessible again.  His only explanation:  "Well, I tried to print something yesterday, but it wasn't going through, so I tried to fix it."  He attempted to troubleshoot a print job, and ended up locking himself out of his computer entirely.  I don't even know how you would do that.

And just yesterday, he effectively rendered our fax machine useless for an hour or so.  It was out of paper, and since he was in the fax room, my other boss asked him to refill it.  Not a hard task.  Really.  I've done it many times.  From my desk, I could hear the plaintive beeping of the fax machine, and I knew it was taking much longer than it should have.  As I was getting up to see what the matter was, my befuddled boss begged my assistance.  He just couldn't figure it out.  I looked.  The top page was not lined up with the stack and therefore was not feeding through.  Easy fix.  Every fax we got after that, however, didn't come through; the fax machine wasn't picking up when it rang.  I thought perhaps there was a bigger problem that had precipitated the paper jam, but no.  Upon investigation, I discovered... HE TURNED THE AUTO-ANSWER OFF!!  No wonder it kept ringing and ringing.  Now I may not have great expertise in the technological realm, but I at least know not to push buttons if I don't know what they do.

My one consolation is that if we are ever at war with artificial intelligence, we have one heck of a secret weapon.  No technology can continue to function properly when subjected to my boss.  Pretty soon I think our office equipment will just break when he walks into the room, just to save time.

Because of a glitch in our payroll system, the job has fallen to me to fill out W2's, corrected W2's, W3's, corrected W3's, 941's, and corrected 941's.  By hand.  These forms, especially the W2's and W2c's, were not meant to be filled out by hand.  Each form is comprised of roughly 438 sheets of carbonless copy paper, the last of which is supposed to be equally as legible as the top sheet on which one writes.  To accomplish this Herculean feat, I must apply my entire body weight, through my pen, to the surface of the paper.  I have visions of myself as a druid carving runes in medieval England, or an Egyptian scribe decorating pyramid walls.  I'm sure archaeologists unearth these treasures and find important messages like *Social Security Tax Withheld* and *Employer's Federal EIN*.  Anyway, back to work; no reprieve in sight for this lowly scribe.

Welp, the squirrels are back.  We can hear their tell-tale skittering over our heads in the space between the second and third floors of my office.  It sounds like this:  skitter, skitter, skitter, clink, clink, clink, skitter, skitter, clink... (recessed lighting).  We thought at first that it might have been mice, so we called the exterminator recommended by our condo association guy.  Yeah, that was a smart move.  We payed $150 for some guy to put out little black rodent-death-boxes all over our office.  We told him, "No, you don't understand.  They don't come into the office; they are between the floors."  And his oh-so-helpful reply:  "Well, there's nothing I can do for in-between the floors."  Granted, his expertise was sufficient to tell us that it didn't sound like mice, but rather squirrels, and that they were "just playin'."  Thanks, bub.  We left the little boxes out (all 150 bucks worth) in case any animals ever did come into the office.  But they didn't.

I suppose they went somewhere else or hibernated or did whatever squirrels do in the winter, but now that it is warm again, they're back like unwanted relatives.  It adds a real air of professionalism to our business, when clients come here for a meeting and hear the critters scampering overhead.  "Wheeeeeewwwww dawgies!  Looks like them thar varmin are at it agin.  Now shush, y'hear, 'fore I come up thar with mah shotgun!"

Yeah, he just keeps getting more and more freaky.  He's been delivering FedExes here for a long time, so I'm pretty sure he's legit and not some psycho who killed a FedEx guy and stole his uniform.  It all started a couple weeks ago...  I had the office door locked because I was there alone (bosses' orders), but since I knew he was the FedEx guy and was bearing packages, I let him in.  "Lockin' me out, huh?" he said.  And of course, being the nice, kind, not-wanting-to-hurt-anybody's-feelings office manager than I am, I explained to him that it wasn't personal, just following orders.  And he proceeded to agree with the wisdom of such a practice, but the look he gave me changed ever so slightly.  And it weirded me out.  Ever since then, whenever I unlock the door to let him in, he lauds my safety-conscious bosses--a little too much.  Then last time, he took the weirdness to a new level.  My boss was even in the office at this point.  I signed his clipboard and he said, "No, you have to sign your real name."  Not catching on, I protested that it was my real name.  And he goes, "Miss America."  I was so creeped out, I almost couldn't move.  Since then I have run over multiple scenarios in my head, mentally testing out the tactical advantage of a Bic pen.  I HAVE A BALLPOINT AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!!!