Lydia Aswolf

Years and years ago, in my youth, I worked for a time as a 411 operator. It was a very, very boring job, only a few occasional calls that spiced things up. On one memorable call, a man was trying his very best to get me to have phone sex with him, whereupon I reminded him he had two hands, most likely some lotion around the house, and definitely toilet tissue, unless he was a caveman, and since ostensibly he had called for a phone number, I assumed he was civilized enough to utilize the tissue, lotion, and hand option, instead of wasting my time.

As I stated, for the most part it was terrifically boring. I am not a person who can take to boring easily, and throwing notes over our claustrophobic cubicles soon grew old.

So, I decided to spice things up a bit. I was friendly with all the people whose cubicles I sat near, so I started throwing tampons (not used, I’m not THAT nasty) at the guys just to see who would recoil fastest. Oddly enough, I found when I started throwing tampons at women, they tended to recoil even more, probably because they had firm reason to associate tampons with suffering.

I also plugged a former co worker in the head with a nickel in the middle of a call. God, I still do laugh over that, as I threw that nickel HARD. She happened to be in the city and state portion of the call, and understandably the “and state” came out a little garbled, as she held her head, eyes glazed over. She was the consummate professional however. She finished the call before she glared in my direction. It wasn’t hard for anyone to know who the culprit was behind these tampon and lower denomination monetary attacks. You just turned around and looked to see me giggling madly.

One extremely slow Thanksgiving, we had a toilet tissue party. Yes, I did start it, there were no managers on duty to avoid, THEY got the holiday off, only employees holding fort, so I threw the first toilet tissue roll (lying around so you could blow your nose, the company was far to cheap to provide you with anything other than sandpaper toilet tissue to blow your sensitive nose with). We had a grand time that day, the cleanup sort of sucked, but well, it was worth it to giggle through asking for city and state, and anyone actually using 411 that day was treated to some of the most cheerful, happy operators they’d ever encountered.

I did have one bad patch of time when I worked there, and I was unable to escape, as were my co workers. I don’t know if the ladies reading this have ever come across a period in time when they are extruding truly noxious gases out of their ass, but I know it’s afflicted me, and in the worst way, stuck in the middle of a very narrow cubicle with nothing to…shield myself from the blow.

Now, I did have fun with this, believe it or not. I have witnesses who are prepared to step forward and admit some of my more noxious days resulted in their eyes tearing up, and I personally witnessed this for myself. But my fondest memory is of a supervisor no one liked at all walking into one of my clouds, then literally turning right around on one foot and walking the other way. There could be no doubt in my minds, nor the mind of my co workers why she fled, as our eyes were full of tears anyhow…no, not from the gas, we became accustomed to that, they were tears of joy that the bitch wasn’t there to lecture us. Conversely, I was ashamed and felt pity for my own direct manager, who was one of the sweetest, nicest ladies I’ve ever known, when she leaned down to whisper good job in my ear one day, and I had just let off a blast. I understand she did recover, but I know for a fact she was in her office the rest of the day, with a fan on.

Lest you get the idea I was a raging adolescent…ok, I kinda was, but I did hand out roses to EVERY female employee working there at my own expense….at least they smelled better than what I had previously given them to work with. I’d do it for holidays we worked, or just for every day purposes to perk them up. I also made absolutely sure to get balloons, flowers, and a card for anyone’s birthday, so I tried to even myself out, even did a charity dinner there to provide Christmas gifts to the elderly at a local nursing home.

But being nice now and again didn’t stop me from laughing my ass off when wasps invaded the building one day. I will never, ever forget one gal I worked with standing up with her headphones hooked into the computer at her cubicle, screaming “JESUS CHRIST, WASPS,” right in her clients ear, and then running in a circle hoping somehow this would make the wasps get tired and wander off.

In spite of my antics I wasn’t fired. Nope, I actually had a dinner in my honor for all the client comments on me, and my accuracy rate in giving out correct information, won numerous awards, and had lots of friends there.

Think I’ll save perhaps the most startling thing I did while working there for another blog post.

I shaved my head.

Bald.

As in, shaving cream applied to head, razor to take stubble off, bald.

To be continued….

Tomorrow’s post will be a scary story, not a continuation of this one. November 1st is my birthday, and I will be taking November 2nd off as well, so I shall be back and blogging again November 3rd….please pray I find my bald pictures, or figure out how the hell to get them uploaded so I can post them for you all to see!