And the cheesy, paper, last-minute crown goes to...

The workplace torture team had the novel idea of having an after Oscar party for the drones at ICE. You had to choose the winners from a ballot Stepzilla created and passed around. Everybody dutifully submitted thier guesses, save Hasselhoff who refused to participate (we like him already), and went to the elegantly decorated seminar room. Loud speakers with an 80's oscar cd and red tape on the floor. Totally Oscar-worthy. So Stepzilla says she is going to announce the winner and that four folks got all the answers right. Well ok, not all the answers right. There was a typo on the ballot. The Departed was omitted and low and behold it was the correct answer. She flippantly blows it off and said "your wct made a boo-boo". OMFG are you kidding me? First of all, SHE and SHE ALONE made the "boo-boo" and secondly, if Mav or I had made the error we would have been reamed. Completely. Nothing left inside but a long dark hollow feeling of inadequacy to follow us the rest of our lives. And I am sure it would have been pointed out to us on EVERY occasion. But haha, giggle giggle, no big deal, let's move on. The winners are.... Tinkerbell... of course.. She flits to the front and grins like a cheshire cat - probably the highlight of her week. Oh you pop culture princess. Congratulations. All those hours on myspace are beginning to pay off. Stepzilla gives her, and I kid you not, a cheesy, paper, last-minute crafted paper crown to wear. She puts it on and flaunts it like it is the queen's jewels. Second, Lemming. A shy timid character that never leaves his office... never says a word. Yes, he has to wear the crown too. He does. He is a lemming. He knows nothing else. Good guy tho. I actually felt a tinge of sorrow for him. Next... the haute couture goddess of ICE... but she's not there. Stepzilla points out that she will insure that she wears the crown eventually. Mav and I determined the point of the crowns was for nothing but humiliation. I mean why on god's green earth would you force adults to don crappy paper crowns at a full staff meeting? Evil. Pure evil. And the fourth unfortunate to have guessed accurately? Maverick. O god. That's what she got for using a vegas odds table to participate. She goes to the front. Stepzilla is owning the show like she made it up, she put it together, she coordinated everything, she is responsible for the glowing success, (not the typo on the ballot mind you), and Maverick SNATCHES the crown from her hand. So snatchingly that Hasselhoff and I have to bite our tongues not to laugh out loud. A couple of others at the table noticed..it was glorious. Stepzilla was startled and had to regain composure. Mav didnt even realize she had done so. All the months of degredation and humiliation released themselves in one snatching of the crown. Poetic justice. The entire staff was there. Stepzilla looked like an idiot. Ahh life is good... for one brief fleeting moment. The odd part... all day today Stepzilla has been giving Mav a wide berth and been unsetttlingly nice to her. I am gonna have to round up a crown snatching of my own if I am to ever get some peace...

Here we go again on our own....

Well, colormist is officially gone. Maverick and I realized this today at about 10 this morning when she IM'd us from home and let us know that she was going to get up and take a shower for the day... Good for her. The exciting news here is that Maverick has an interview Thursday and I (Sharpie) had one yesterday. We are hoping for a dual exodus and sweet, sweet revenge. If the universe is fair the resignations should fall within a week of each other. Not that we are bitter or anything...however I was delighted to assume the responsibility of the ICE bashing blog. I have so much to say and such a small space to vent. So HELLO everyone... and hopefully soon... GOODBYE!!

Farewell Party

When Stepzilla announced that I was leaving to my office mates and then added that she would of course be giving me a goodbye party, I rolled my eyes and groaned.

It's not that I don't like some of the people I work with, but rather that I don't like being the center of attention or going to parties. I think this was made apparent at the party by me sitting in the corner, far-far away from everybody, and having Sharpie & Mavvy sit around me as a buffer. They were like body guards. It also didn't help that I couldn't control my mouth and kept saying rude things to infer that I hated being there, I hated everyone I worked with, and I couldn't wait to leave the damned hell-hole.

After the party, I sent out two thank you letters. One to everyone:

Thanks for the presents and food! I will never ever, in all my days, forget the people I met here. You really have given me a wonderful learning experience. I enjoyed working with you and bringing the ICE image into the 20th-century. I'll be sure to stop by infrequently to visit with everyone.

Thank you again for all the memories. :)

(Notice I didn't say the 21st-century. That is another matter altogether.)

Then I sent around another email to people I knew that I could personally trust:

Back when I first started at ICE, four years ago, I was overwhelmed by the complexities. Everyone was very serious and all doing very serious work-like stuff. I was stuck editing word documents and wondering if my temporary position would end when Lily returned from maternity leave. Thankfully, Lily didn't leave right away, and instead my other coworker left. One person was hired, then fired. Then Clark started, and Lily left. Then Piper started and Piper left. Sharpie started, and Kent left. And Mavvy and Hasslehoff started and I wondered, when the HELL was I going to leave??

Thankfully, the day before Hasslehoff started, I received an offer from HMI. It was the happiest day of my life. A final relief from 4 years of misery, verbal abuse, and torture.

But I'll still miss you guys. ;)

Fridge Monitors

I was waiting impatiently for my hot pocket to heat up in the lunchroom microwave, when one of our resident senile employees, Herman, walks into the kitchen. I try to make small talk with her as she opens the fridge. She grabs her lunch, sets it on the microwave, and then looks in the fridge again.

“This was in here last week. It’s been in here for a whole week!”

Herman pulls out someone’s lunch. As to why she’s monitoring what’s in the fridge, I have no idea. She continues ranting about leaving food in the fridge and puts the offending food on top of the microwave. I honestly can’t believe why she’d pull out someone else’s lunch and decide it was unfit to be in the fridge when the fridge is clearly packed with lunches.

The crazy old lady then leaves the lunch room. She didn’t wash out the container with the offending lunch; she didn’t throw the lunch away. She just pulled it out of the fridge, left it on the counter, and walked away.

----

Then we have Carol-the-Skeksi, of course. Bushead was in charge of cleaning out the fridge during the holiday break. Bushead sent around an email in the building for people to mark the food they wanted to keep in the fridge over the break.

Carol-the-Skeksi wasn’t having it. She confronted Bushead and said, “I’m going to have to micromanage the fridge cleanout. You have to throw everything away. Nobody is allowed to keep anything.”

Bushead was a little confused by this remark, “Oh, but if I had salad dressing or something like that in there, I’d like to keep it so I can use it again.”

Carol then goes into freak-out mode, “We are going to be gone for two weeks. Do you want people to DIE?”

The Last of the Evil Faces

Sadly, this will be my last of the evil face series. I probably won't build up enough moxie at my new location of employment until I have 4 years of disgruntledness--and even then, I'll probably be more disgruntled with the clients than my employer. And I wouldn't want to hurt my employer.

This series started out without any need for revenge on the piece. I just had an opportunity to make an evil snowflake and decided to fly with it. (excuse the blurriness, had to protect my identity) I especially loved this brochure, because it gave me the opportunity to not only put the evil snowflake on the web, print, signage, and all ads, but it also appeared in the brochure four times and in the snowflake itself 6 times. That's a total of 24 times--and still nobody noticed.

It is a little cryptic, I'll admit. Some people had difficulty finding this evil face. So I uploaded an image to help. See the little red lines that define the evil faces. I really think this is my most-evil face appearance to date.

And yet so SUBLIMINAL. It's perfect.

My letter of resignation

To: Stepzilla

From: Quirky Colormist

Date: February 12, 2007

Subject: Resignation

*********************************

Dear Stepzilla,

God, I thought this day would never come.

It’s with a happy heart that I am submitting my written notice of resignation from ICE effective two weeks from today. My last day will be 2/23/06. Suck that, bitches!

The past few weeks have been a great time for me as I interviewed and received an offer for a new career. The lady was very nice, pleasant, understanding, sympathetic, and totally lenient—you know, everything you’re NOT. Then I thought about whether or not it would be best served staying with ICE (HAHAHAHA) or moving to a new position with more money, nicer people, a creative environment, and where people are allowed (and encouraged! OMG!) to think. I probably won’t answer any questions you may have and am not comfortable discussing my totally awesome new job at this time because you’re not worthy.

I will be happy to help train my replacement—whatisface (we decided we shouldn’t put forth any effort to get to know one another)--or do anything else you feel will help make the transition smoother so long as it doesn’t involve me working or answering to you.

Thanks so much for always encouraging me to find a new job in that wonderfully unique way of yours. My experience at ICE has been demeaning, miserable, destructive, abusive, and enlightening. I finally understand what all narcissism involves. And I only wish my voodoo dolls actually worked.

Go to Hell,

Colormist

For some odd reason, I was feeling really stubborn...

And decided to torment Stepzilla. Now, here recently she's pussy-footing around me and letting me get away with being a total bull head. So, I push the envelope and mess around with her text (which I'm told not to touch, because I can't write) and don't make half of her irrelevant changes.

I get her draft back and she's written this near-frantic letter. I would scan it in, but I'm being lazy. So you have to imagine that the text is sloppy, hurried, and with many scribbles.

Colormist —

What's going on WiTh The inside Left
Panel? I Know you do OR
don't (scribble) do Things for a reason. :)
I Think It's too much text w/
what you have and would prefer it
to be what I gave you. Do you
want more headlines to fill The SPace?
I'm goin for totally SCANNAble.
Please talk to me if (scribble) There'S
a problem w/What I gave you OR if
you need more.
ThanKS.

My problem with the brochure was that it was all headlines and bullets. No content. No paragraphs. No sentences. It annoyed me, so I fleshed out a line or two to make sense (and to be grammatically correct).

She was practically in hysterics when I went to ask her if I was allowed to change her horrid grammar so that it made sense. It was nice to see her try to fight her instinct to totally attack me for lack of my complete obedience. And she threw in that little happy face to prove that she was being nice.

Oh so nice.

Fall Book Sale Tanked

Just a follow up to the Fall Book Sale. I was cleaning out my desk and noticed a few *saved* frantic upper-management emails that Stepzilla printed out for reference:

Stepzilla reports book sale numbers:

Total sales for this year were $31,288.52 which is less than I had hoped. 2005 and 2004 totals below.

2006: $31,288.52
2005: $53,372.31
2004: $42,459.12

Online sale totals were actually less this year than last, $4,900 vs. $4,225.75.

CEO Lady responds:

Wow—that's a big dip! ... This is such a massive drop, we certainly have to analyze things and get to the bottom of it. I wonder about the timing. I think it's a month earlier than last year. I wonder about length and notice and number of notices last year compared to this year. also....any differences in who we sent mail to; how often and who we advertised to. Something really took the wind out of its sails....the offer? the timing? the targeted notices?? ...or books are dying fast???

Stepzilla replies:

The drop seems really high to me as well which I would find almost unbelievable... I'll have IT double check those web numbers just to make sure we haven't missed something.

CEO Lady responds:

This is such a big drop that we want to be sure to analyze it from all angles: (she proceeds to list everything except the design). We definitely want to know what worked/didn't work between last year and this year so we have some guidance.

Hmmm... maybe it was the sinister feeling every time someone looked at the postcard and website--like something EVIL was staring at them and they would suffer a painful accident if they went to the sale. NAH, couldn't be...