Tag Archives: bathroom

Amos’ Moment of Terror

12 Jul

July 12, 2021

Amos: I didn’t know where I was!
Me: But you went-
Amos: Then the lights went out!

Amos comes to the office once a week, every week, for as long as he has been working for the company. He has been working for the company for better than two decades.

Amos has had some issues with the fax machine my boss bought him.

Amos: I sent it back to the manufacturer.
Me: Didn’t it come from Amazon?
Amos: It came in the mail.

After exhausting every effort to get the fax machine working, my boss finally faced the reality that he was fighting a losing battle. He printed out the return free shipping label from Amazon and asked Amos to pack up the machine and send it back to Amazon.

Amos took it to his neighborhood Staples, where they boxed it up and shipped it to Cannon, for $32.75.

Amos: It was the right thing to do.

With no fax machine, it was more important than ever to get his email working. He had somehow blocked me so neither I nor our general office account (also blocked) could reach him. I found out today that he also blocked our other supervisor and the boss. Amos had blacklisted the three most important people in the office.

I found the directions to remove the blacklist. I told Amos it would probably take me a few minutes.

Amos: Can you take your time?
Me: Sure.
Amos: I have to go to the bathroom. I might be awhile.
Me:
Amos: I’ll bring my phone.

Amos had not returned after awhile. I was not sure how long but I had finished the email and moved on to other work. Then:

Amos: I got lost!
Me: Where did you go?
Amos: I went to the bathroom.
Me: Our bathroom?
Amos: The lights are on a timer. They only give you 15 minutes.

Amos explained that he was in the bathroom when the lights went out. He did not know what to do. Amos explained that after he completed his business, he slowly opened the stall door. Amos did not want to hit his head on the door, he said, so he turned with the door and closed it. But now he was turned around.

Amos: I was afraid to move.
Me: Shouldn’t the lights have come back on? There’s a motion sensor.
Amos: I moved so slow I guess it didn’t see me.

Amos, in closing the stall door, had spun himself around and did not know if he was facing a sink, a stall, or a wall. He felt for the wall and then made his way along it, feeling along inch by inch, until he found the door and escaped the 8′ by 10′ room.

I tested Amos’ email before he left. We are all still blocked. The problem must be in his phone, not the account settings on the sever. Amos is now effectively unemployed until he gets this problem solved. He’ll probably buy a new phone.

.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conveniently Inconvenient

1 May

May 1, 2021

Dear readers, Mr. and Mrs. Blog are once again looking for a place to live. For reasons I prefer to keep to myself, our old place was no longer meeting the needs of a pair of globetrotting iconoclasts such as ourselves (and our cat.)

(On a completely unrelated note, if anyone would be interested in buying a slightly singed and smoke damaged sofa, or some only partially burnt pants, drop me a note. Ha ha, I kid because it’s true.)

Well, as part of my brilliant plan to see every lousy house in Brooklyn, a plan which I pinky-swear is not at all motivated by my lack of money but only motivated by sense of ironic humor, I toured a home which, after some long thought and soul-searching, I declared was a house that people only move out of, not into.

But that’s not to say that it didn’t make me think. Below is a rough sketch of the layout of the last apartment I saw. It isn’t to scale, but it is close, and I did not exaggerate it one bit.

BEHOLD!

You are reading that correctly. The bathroom is in the kitchen, directly between the stove and the dining room table.

Now, if you spend as much time in the bathroom as I do my cat does, you can see the obvious convenience.

On the other hand, without being too graphic, there are some, um, “obvious drawbacks” to having the toilet three feet from your breakfast burrito. And speaking as someone who hosts lavish dinner parties, it can be unseemly when the Archbishop excuses himself from the Vichyssoise and the rest of the party can clearly hear his “business affairs.” Let alone smell them.

This is not the first time I have seen an apartment where the bathroom is uncomfortably close to the kitchen, but this is the first time the bathroom has actually been in the kitchen.

(Meanwhile, I have a singed loveseat to go with the burnt sofa, and there is a charred sport coat with most of the lapels still intact that matches the only partially burnt pants. I’ll toss in some waterlogged sneakers too.)

.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: