Archive for the 'Tales of the Weird' Category

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Fireball

Published on August 20, 2004 in Auto and Tales of the Weird. Closed

So. Was driving along last week and heard a big pow from under the hood. Knew that couldn’t be good, and it continued to make awful sounds, so I immediately pulled over and called for a tow. Tow was pretty uneventful. Just a quick hop across town via the interstate. Went in to take care of the paperwork while the driver unloaded my car. Came back out to find the car still jacked up and with the hood popped up. Apparently, there’d been a fire under the hood while I was inside. After a fire extinguisher and a lot of water, they’d managed to put out the fire. Driver towed it on over away from anything of value and unloaded it. Car started to roll down the slight incline, but it was in park (had been in neutral when it was towed). Not a good sign (you’d think the fire would be enough to tip me off that there were problems afoot). Turns out, towing a vehicle with the drive wheels on the ground… BAD IDEA. Transmission ripped itself apart, metal bits from it shorted out some wiring, which led to the fire.

Suffice it to say, my old ’86 Tercel is now toast. And after I’d finally come up with a name for it too (Fireball). Farewell sweet Fireball, we’ll miss you. At least you went out with a bang instead of a wimper.

'86 Tercel

Tow company cut me a check for the cost of replacing the transmission (a little more than the Blue Book value if I’d sold it in working condition). I’ve managed to come up with a suitable replacement, an ’01 Honda CR-V. It’s even silver.

'01 CR-V

A Jane Story: Tupperware

Published on August 14, 2003 in Tales of the Weird. Closed

So State Farm, or at least the actuarial department, has a policy that co-workers do not bring in food to help you celebrate your birthday (or any other celebration-worthy event). That would be dumb since you end up having to bring in food frequently in a large department. State Farm’s solution: the person celebrating is expected to bring in food for the department in order to celebrate. That way, you only need to bring in food once a year (ie your own birthday). While it is not a written rule that you have to bring in food for your own event, everyone will give you crap if you don’t. There’s just something wrong with that… having to throw your own birthday party.

But I digress. The real reason I bring this up is Jane’s behavior on such days. She keeps Tupperware in her desk for the sole purpose of snagging a bunch of the birthday person’s leftovers to take home herself. Can you get more tacky?

But that’s not quite the end of it. You see, people in the department have learned not to eat food that has been set out for general consumption unless they have been explicitly been informed that Jane didn’t bring it in. She apparently has a habit of buying cakes and such from the supermarket. She lives alone and really can’t eat a whole cake before it goes bad. So she will eat what she wants for several days, and after it has become dry and stale, she’ll bring it into work for everyone else to “enjoy.” Such a class act.

Reminds me a bit of my uncle’s co-worker who had a habit of bringing in day-old donuts he snagged out of the dumpster behind Dunkin’. Or the time he brought in homemade “venison stew.” He neglected to mention that he managed to run into a deer on his way to work the previous morning. Tossed the carcass in his trunk and left it there… baking… in the hot sun all day. Hadn’t even bothered to field dress it. Suffice it to say there were some ill people after that one…

A Jane Story: Jane vs. UPS

Published on August 7, 2003 in Tales of the Weird. Closed

Well, since I’ve introduced Amanda’s co-worker Jane, I suppose I should actually start posting some of the more absurd stories about her. The first one that comes to mind I will entitle “Jane vs. UPS.”

One day, Jane got it into her head to send a marinated steak to a priest friend of hers in New Jersey. So she packaged up this piece of raw, marinated steak in a bowl surrounded by ice, and put this bowl in a box and taped it shut. Note, she did not put any sort of lid on the bowl, she just packed it uncovered in the box. After arriving at work, she dropped by the shipping office in the building with the intent to send this steak via UPS to New Jersey. Discovering that next day air is expensive, she elected to send this piece of raw meat via the much cheaper UPS 4-day Ground service. Of course, she didn’t bother to tell the person at the shipping office that she was sending raw meat…

Later that day, she received a call at her desk from the shipping office. Turns out all the ice had melted while it was sitting there waiting to be picked up by UPS, and had started leaking all over the other packages. Jane’s response: “You turned my package up-side down?!?!” She is such a special human being. Why on Earth would she assume they wouldn’t turn her package over seeing as she had not made any particular indications that it was to be kept right-side up? She was forced to come down and claim her package which she then proceeded to keep at her desk all day, unrefrigerated. I can only assume she then took it home and ate it.

Tales of the Weird

Published on August 4, 2003 in Tales of the Weird. Closed

So I’ve decided to add a new category. I think I’ll title it “Tales of the Weird”, but for some reason I suspect simply “Jane Stories” would be more accurate. As such, I’ll start this category off with a brief introduction to Jane.

For those not in the know, Jane is one of Amanda’s co-workers over at State Farm corporate in Bloomington. Anyway, Jane is a weird little critter that should have been fired long ago, but somehow due to the ineptitude present in corporate America, continues to be paid to occupy space.

She was originally an actuarial student like Amanda is currently, but was surprisingly tossed out of the program eventually. You see, until they’ve passed the requisite number of actuarial exams, you aren’t considered a certified actuary. As a result, companies have “actuarial students” who do actuarial work but are in the process of taking the grueling actuarial exams offered every 6 months. State Farm has a policy for how it handles the fact that most people don’t pass an exam their first time out. Basically, they will pay for everything on the first attempt and progressively less for each attempt after up to 3 attempts. According to their company guidelines, there will be no more than 3 attempts. If a student fails to pass an exam within 3 attempts while working at State Farm, they will be tossed out of the student program and become a lowly tech (ie mindless data entry and such).

To cut a long story short (too late), Jane took one test like 5 times (keep in mind this was exam 3 of 8, and the first two only cover basic calculus and such). Her boss then decided that maybe she just had a mental block and would regain her confidence if she could go pass one of the later exams. So she took the next one a few times and repeatedly failed. After it had long become clear that there was no chance in hell she could ever pass these introductory exams (and the later ones are much harder), they finally kicked her out of the student program. What a surprise that day was.

Anyway, if that’s all there was to Jane, then that would be one thing. There’d be nothing interesting for me to write about here other than she’s not cut out to be an actuary. That’s certainly not interesting, because a lot of us aren’t cut out for that, and it’s by no means a reason to fire her. I would certainly not be writing about someone who simply failed in their chosen career. Oh no, there’s much more. You see, Jane is an utter loon. She has the inter-personal skills of a brick and tends to sway between somewhat annoying to downright disturbing.

This category will largely focus on her quirky behavior… just as soon as I can remember some of the stories Amanda has shared with me.