Happy 12th Anniversary

To me! Yes, today, May 1st, is my 12th year anniversary working here at American Amalgamated Corrugated Conglomerates of America (AACCA). Who knew I'd be here this long? Many of my friends have teased me about being a lifer, but I've had good experiences here, so I'm in no hurry to leave.

Like most companies in the country, AACCA recently had layoffs. The company did manage to get rid of some dead weight, some fat weight, and some useless people, but they also laid off some good people that were my friends. Unfortunately, that is a part of life at a big company.

When I first joined the company I was an amalgamator. I thought I was big time - except for my salary - $22,000 per year. Little did we know how insignificant we were at the time - sort of like how Republicans feel in Maryland. Fortunately, I quickly moved up into the Corrugated division and began working with customers.

I once spoke with a wife who's husband ran off with all of their corrugate. She was devastated. I talked to many people who complained about their corrugate, some young ladies who wanted to share their corrugate, and others who were delighted to learn how much corrugate they actually owned.

Several years later I had the opportunity to move up into an amalgamating position and now I am a Senior Amalgamator.

Some funny stories of my years here. There was an older employee in my department when I was a statistician who wasn't very friendly. She was probably in her mid-late 60's and hated everyone. I was new and it was her birthday and the whole department took her to lunch (about 10 people). She ordered crab cakes and before you knew it the crab cakes were gone. The waitress returned not 5 minutes after serving the food and noticed that her crab cakes were gone and commented, "Wow, you ate those fast." I quickly retorted, "Yeah, she used to be in the marines." The look of horror on the faces of my coworkers was priceless. But guess what? That lady thought the comment was hysterical and has been my friend ever since.

We've played many pranks over the years - especially when someone walks away from their desk and leaves their computer unlocked. You don't want people breaking in and getting conglomerating secrets! One prank is doing a screen shot of the desktop, pasting it in MS-Word, then adjusting the viewable screen on the monitor. When the user returns and tries to click on the icons - nothing works! Why? Because their clicking on a picture.

One of my favorite pranks is to do the Ctrl-Alt-Right Arrow. This flips the user's screen sideways. Most users are fairly stupid, so it's always fun trying to see them figure that one out.

So here's to 12 fun years here at AACCA. Here's to 12 more!