I’m gonna shoot for going back to three RK’s a week for the chapter. Muchas gracias to the various people I’ve annoyed lately asking about how to make some improvements to it here and there. You’ll probably all be glad to know that the ‘meandering’ is about to end since the cast is (basically) all out there now.

(The no-text, no title isn’t a flub, by the way. The chapter title is coming up on another page.)

At work, I believe I’ve stumbled onto one of the most hilarious managerial quotes ever. The background: A woman had dropped film off late Monday to be sent out to Kodak, a 2-3 day process, and since she was past the drop-off time for Monday, it was actually shipped Tuesday, causing her to drop in Thursday and get astoundingly uppity over the fact the film wasn’t there. I explained the situation to her enough to calm her down (or so I thought at the time) that her film would be ready Friday. Friday afternoon.

I arrived Friday morning to have the Big Boss of the store, whom we’ll call Mr. Pink, and describe as looking something like a highly-evolved strain of Walrus riding my ass because this woman had come in at 9 A.M. and become flustered that her pictures weren’t back- apparently they were for some kind of bank customer appreciation day luncheon and she decided it would be a better idea to entrust them to a delivery service that frankly not even we have a lot of faith in to be on-time rather than go to another store’s one-hour service to be sure they’d be ready.

(I digress again to mention that among the ‘upgrades’ to our store like the addition of over 100 security cameras, mostly aimed in places to catch employee theft while shoplifters trot out with satchelfuls of DVD’s, they decided that it would be brilliant to remove all of our film processing equipment. So, yes, we are now a photo lab which doesn’t process actual photos. Walmart’s photo department enthuses that our new Marketplace set-up is the best thing that ever happened to them!)

Anyway. The store honcho is riding my ass in an attempt to see if I can crap her photos out if he pushes down hard enough, I assume, in spite of the fact that:

1. The plant is in Chicago
2. In order to make it to our store on time, the delivery man would probably already be on the road

In spite of the absence of say, warp devices in the real world, however, he was determined to get results! So, he flips out his *darling* little mobile store phone and declares, with gusto:

“I’M GONNA GET ON THE PHONE AND MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!”

I wonder if there’s an emoticon to sum up what that did to me. My mouth bolted itself shut to keep myself from laughing, screaming, or maybe explosively decompressing. If this guy could really materialize things or accelerate the flow of time with his cell phone, I didn’t want to risk something like the sudden evaporation of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Anyway, naturally the end results of this little encounter were:

1. His call to the main office in Cincy and subsequent call back from them to me resulted in a lot of laughter and a probable dip in their respect for him
2. The delivery guy showed up all of five minutes before his usual drop window.
3. The delivery guy coming at the earliest portion of the aformentioned window meant that all new film for the rest of the day wasn’t going to even leave the store until Monday.
4. No film leaving until Monday cost us another handful of customers.
5. I’m going to make a t-shirt of his stupid face with the caption above. I MUST.

OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN! EXCELLENT JOB! “I’m Gonna Get On The Phone And Make Things Happen” is like the epitome of out-of-touch statements I’ve heard out of the management. It’s roughly like saying “I’m gonna fill this comment card out so hard the hotel will HAVE to fix the jacuzzi,” or “I’ll call the cable company to get this hooked up right away!” It’s going to happen whenever the hell the planets align enough to make them ready to do it.

Anyone else interested in a shirt like that? I might post up a template assuming I don’t get tired of saying it before I snap a reference shot of the guy. Considering now my coworkers are starting to pick up and say things like “Oh snap! He’s on the phone!” whenever he walks by on it or uses the PA system. Remember, you don’t have to know THE Mr. Pink personally- I’m sure we all have a Mr. Pink* or two in our lives.

*Reservoir Dogs reference aside, the guy’s real name is also a tint of red! Like his face when he stops by the wine testing booth!