NEW BOY'S NEVER USED A PHONE...PASS IT ON

Is it too late for me to go back to the newspaper?

Do you think Drunk-Assed Boss would throw the door wide open, get a big drunken grin on his face and hug me like the child he had to put up for adoption oh so many years ago?

Do you think that they would welcome me in and say "Oh...when we said that you leaving was the best thing to ever happen to this company, we were just kidding"??

Do you think that they would all get down on their hands and knees and begin pleasuring me in an oral sense???

No??

Good.

Because...

I LOOOOOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOVE MY NEW JOB!!!!

Gawd. I thought I loved my job at the newspaper. I stayed there for nine freakin' years, thinking this was the best that it was ever gonna get.

Hello??? Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard...please report to the emergency room...Uncle Bob needs a lobotomy STAT!

I cannot tell you how much I love this new job. So we'll just go down the list of basics.

Everyone was just sooo damned nice as Wendi took me from office to office introducing me. Nobody recoiled in horror saying "Holy Jeebus! You're one big man!"

We were standing in the hallway making small talk at one point and this man walks up and Wendi says "Jim, this is Ron."

Ron shakes my hand and tells me that he read my column in the paper and that he loved it and he just thinks I'm so great, blah, blah, blah.

I'm all like "Yeah Ron...I'll send ya an autographed glossy sometime...now beat it, dude, I'm talking to Wendi."

Ron walks away and Wendi says "Ron's the President of the company."

I about shit my pants.

So it's pretty cool when you start with a company and the President already loves yer dumb ass.

So we get to my office and it's all set up all nice. I counted...I had 12 drawers amidst the big desk and two file cabinets.

How many drawers did I have at the newspaper???

Zero.

To me, the amount of drawer space coincides with the exhuberance I'm going to have for a job.

We saw the Chief Operating Officer who apologized to me for my desk and the fact that all I had was a new laptop and not a full docking station yet but the docking station had been ordered and should be here soon.

Holy shit, pal. I'm used to typing on a ten-year-old Mac with more viruses than the entire nation of Ethiopia on it. No need to apologize, el Dude-o.

By 9 a.m. I had met everyone there, got situated at my desk and had absolutely nothing to do.

So I put a CD in, turned the music way down low and danced in my chair for an hour.

My editor came in and said "I think I have something for you to do."

Apparently, another writer that they had hired to do some freelance work absolutely sucked donkey balls. She had written a profile on our local Chamber of Commerce that stunk worse than a dumpster full of decomposing kitties.

"Do you think you can work with this and spruce it up a bit," she asked.

I flipped through the pages, pretending to decipher the garbage then sighed.

"I'll see what I can do," I replied.

"It doesn't have to be this week or next," she said. "Just sometime when you get the chance."

"Thanks," I said. "I'm kinda busy today dancing in my seat."

She walked out and I called my buddy down at the Chamber who happened to be in charge of this whole story deal.

My buddy was jazzed that I had switched jobs and KNEW I would do a bang-up job on this story now.

About 3 p.m., I took the story in to my editor's office.

"Here ya go," I said. "I did the Chamber story."

My editor was ...in a word...flabbergasted. She was used to having things in a turn-around period of about two weeks or so. I gave it to her in a matter of hours.

I coulda done it quicker, but I had to finish my sock hop in my chair which took a while.

"This is so cool," my editor said.

I corrected her.

"No dear...I am so cool."

She sunk to her knees, looked up in my eyes and licked her lips.

"You ARE so cool," she said. "Now...let me show you my appreciation...."

She then stood up and shook my hand.

So that went well.

I got my first two contracts for Eugene, Oregon ... I'm going to be writing a profile on a local hotel there ... and the Sony Disc Manufacturing plant in Springfield, Oregon.

Okay...I'm officially giddy.

I'm calling Sony today to set up a time and date for the interview. Now...while most interviews can be done over the phone, some companies may want me to fly out and do a face-to-face interview with them so they can take me on a tour of the company and show me exactly what they're all about.

And ... you know....maybe gimme some freebies at the end of the tour to make their story a little more exciting than the others.

It's called "payola" baby. And I'm a slut for it.

Soooo...here's my devious plan.

I'm calling Sony and suggesting that "if they want", I can fly out later this month and do a face-to-face with them, take a tour of the plant and then take home a shopping cart full of discs because I have to "test the product".

Huh??

Would YOU fall for that one???

Anyway, I hope they do. Because I think it'd be a blast.

Went to lunch with Wendi and my boy Eddie Lavoie to my favorite Chinese buffet place where we saw our old boss from the early 90s.

It was kinda surreal...we all worked for him way back when ... and here we all were...the three of us working together again and him right there.

Eddie kicked his chair and told him to get his ass up because he wanted to beat the living shit out of him over his Moo Goo Gai Pan.

Well...he didn't really. But I think he wanted to. Eddie never really cared for this boss. I always liked him because he was a friend of my parents and took it easy on me since I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I worked for him for the first six months.

He told Wendi to make me "work hard". Which is the second time in three days a former employer hinted that I was a lazy sonofabitch when it came to working.

Thanks guys. I made your asses more money than I can begin to count, but I'm "lazy".

Fuckers.

I shoulda kicked his Moo Goo Ass.

All in all, it was a GREAT first day. The only complaint I have is that it was wayyyyy too quiet for me. I'm used to yelling, slamming, bitching, phone ringing and people standing there trying to tell me about their weekend while I'm trying to write a story.

None of that here. People popping their heads in my office, asking if I had everything I needed was the most noise I heard.

I LOVED IT.

Oh...but there WAS one instance where I looked like an idiot.

I couldn't master this damned phone system. They have voice mail and "parking" which are two things I had never dealt with. At the paper, we had no voice mail, we had the drunk-assed boss's drunk-assed son sit by the phone and sometimes take messages for us, sometimes not.

I had to go to the receptionist twice and admit my stupidity.

She was very helpful and told me how to retrieve my "parked" calls (Punch "Retrieve" and then the number of the line that they're on...it's pretty simple, New Boy). And she gave me my voice mail code (111 ...simple enough).

Anyway...I'm so giddy right now...I can't wait to get to work and do it all over again today!!!

HEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

WHOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!

(Uncle Bob dances in his chair, first the Macarena and then the Electric Slide which looks more like he has hemmerhoids than a dance)

I CAN'T WAAAAAIT!!!

And finally...Senile Society Editor from the newspaper called me last night.

Just when I thought I was through with her senile old ass for good...she calls me.

"Uncle Bob," she says. "Where are my pictures from last week?"

"Roxie," I say. "They're in the same place that I always put them ... to the right of my FORMER computer monitor."

"They're not there," she said. "Do you know where they are?"

"No Roxie, I no longer work for the newspaper," I say through gritted teeth. "You may want to call Drunk-Assed Boss at home and ask him."

"When are you coming back," she said.

"I'm not coming back," I replied. "I love my new job."

"Don't you miss me," she asked.

"Just as much as you miss me," I lied.

She asked how old Andy was again and I told her eight months. Then she hung up.

Gawd.

I SOOOOOOOOO made the right decision this time.