Memory Lane (Part 6)

I am in the middle of waiting for some crap, so I figure I'll expand on my memories. I think I will make a prequel later on the stuff before Part 1.

The summer prior to my junior year, FlyingTim talked me into rejoining the swim team. To better prepare, he suggested we go to the summer training for the girls team. Wonderful idea. FlyingTim is a good guy. So, we spent a week (or was it two) swimming (outdoors) at the pine orchard country club with thirty or so hot girls. God damn tho, we were dumb.. all four of us (two other male swimmers went too). Guys are stupid, but anyway..

School started, I was taking physiology, advanced algebra or trig or whatever you take just befor calculus (with Stone), english (with Stone), and ap history (with Stone, and I think FlyingTim was in there too... I dont remember too well).

It really was just another year, especially early on. Around Thanksgiving the swim season began, so that became my life.. it was 3 hours of swimming 6 days a week. It was a lot better than the previous year though. I even scored a legitimatly this time (other times I was defaulted points since there was no 6th swimmer). Our team was small.. very few male swimmers, so we didn't have enough guys to swim every meet.

In February, the boys and girls teams go to Florida for a week or so.. I went this year, and had to sell candy and crap to raise money. The school band and orchestra go on trips every year (freshman year I went to virginia beach, sophomore year was toronto). I decided not to go with them to myrtle beach (band dorks suck more than computer geeks like myself). It ended up that most of the orchestra didn't want to go... so the orchestra didnt go. Fine by me, I wasnt going to go anyway.

So, Florida was awesome. I mean.. I have not gone on a trip like that since (or before). It was just.. waking up, swimming.. relaxing on the beach.. then swimming some more. And we'd swim in teh ocean between doing laps in the hall of fame pool. Lunch at Subway or Hooters, etc. It was fun.

Half the boys team bought glass pipes from a head shop down there.. so half the team ran out of money :). I didn't buy one.. I didn't really spend much money on anything down there.

Once back, the season faded off.. no more meets, and I didn't qualify for states or anything.. so I was done. I still went to watch the other folks and such. The year finished with a party at Howell's. PV spent the entire time roasted.. hell, most folks ended up blitzed.

In the middle of all this, I got a job working as a cashier at the local grocer. It was a small place, and the job sucked. I started working in march.. and eventually started taking on extra hours (needed money.. for what i dont know) as a stock clerk. So that meant I got to load stuff and carry things. It was great for my health though. I was exercising for 18 hours a week at swimming, plus working another 20 carrying things. I got into great shape.

But, this wasn't enough. See, the previous year I had been harassed by the school-to-career witch at the high school. I started the application process and the bitch went on vacation and didnt come back till september.. but she got ahold of me again, and I went through the motions AGAIN.

And again, the fucking bitch left. I was not pleased because I wanted to work at the place (a biotech firm.. I wanted to go into genetics and biotech for a career). I was applying for a gopher position.. trivial but would get me in the door of a nice company.

So, a bit into the summer my parents had over a professor from Yale for dinner.. he had become a family friend. Pretty young, and taught diagnostic imaging. Anyway... he happened to know someone who worked as a scientist at the biotech place and he told me to call in. So, I called.. didn't actually speak to the dude the Yale guy knew, but I got ahold of the admin assistant lady who knew what was what.

So, I faxed my resume.. they called me to have an interview (the normal interview process back then was the CEO and two other folks would interview.. they had other shit to do, so I just talked to the admin assistant. There was no human resources). I got all dressed up with a tie (I had to wear a tie to the freakin' grocery store) and went to this place downtown.

The interview consisted of me sitting in the company cafeteria (the company had JUST moved to these offices.. hadn't even really moved in yet). There were only a few chairs in there, and we sat next to the window overlooking the city. The lady just chatted about school and what my interests were and that sort of thing... nothing difficult. Then I left.

It was only a day later that I got a call saying I have the job if I want it. They overnighted me the offer letter (whopping $7.50 an hour.. fucking, so sweet.. I had been earning $4.16/hr or something at the grocer). I got a start date set and everything. I didn't even have two weeks till the date.. so I told the grocery store I was quitting.

What did I do then? I piled on the hours. Fucking, why. On my last day there (a monday, the day before starting at the new place) I worked from 6am till noon unloading trucks, and then from 4pm till 9pm.

So, I started the job. They had moved into the offices more now, and I was in a button up shirt and nice pants. I met the kid I was replacing (he was going off to college) who I had sort of known in high school, who was wearing shorts and a tshirt. Everyone in the damn place was wearing casual clothes. I felt stupid. My first day was basically a bunch of paperwork (there were a dozen other folks starting that day.. all scientists, much older than me). I then had a little tour with the kid (Len) who I was replacing, and he showed me what he does. He showed me the supply room and such, and that was basically the day.

The next day I come into work wearing shorts and a tshirt. I walk to my cubicle and see Len is already around, but not too pleased because they just sent a memo around saying you can't wear shorts and a tshirt anymore. No jeans either. I didn't care that much.. I wasnt used to it, but whatever. I met the CEO that day.. the crazy fuck. He didn't look like the CEO... he didnt fit the new dress code either.

My second day I went around with Len to Yale to get articles for the scientists.. thats the gopher part of hte job. Fetching articles from the library. This basically meant coming in (which was around 9am) and sorting through the new requests. You'd then telnet to the library and find out where the articles are and if they have them. You then set aside the ones you can get (which was like 10%) and sent the other 90% back with post-its saying you cant get it.

You then went to the library to get one or two articles. By now it was 10:15am. It would take a bit of time to find a parking spot, but by 10:45 you'd be in the library. By 11:15 we had the articles copied and we were back to the car. At 11:40 we were at Subway having lunch. At 1:15 we'd stop by the other corporate office in Branford and pickup the mail (newly moved, so they had to move the mail somehow). Along with teh mail, we'd pickup some other shit like glass and specimens and stuff.

At around 2pm we were back in New Haven dropping off the mail and things. From about 2:30pm till 5:30pm we would surf the internet.

Wonderful job.

Till I started doing too much. The next day Len was away, I was alone.. and had no library requests. I had NO work to do. So my boss (the CEO's secretary) asked me to make labels for the mail room.. everyone's name, printed onto a label and put on a magnet for their mailbox.

It took me about 20 minutes to do it. My boss was thrilled and amazed. It was now about 10:15am and she told me that I shouldn't go home yet, that I can transcribe a fax into MS Word till lunchtime. I could then leave after lunch. So, she hands me this fax... it's very readable and only one page long. So I sit down and type it up. It takes me only a few minutes (I am a geek, so I type quick). I then tried to kill some time because I had a ways to go till lunch.. but gave up and went back to her.

Now I became known as being able to type fast, so she gave me a few other documents. I asked her why she didn't just scan them, and she didn't know you could. So, I go do it and stuff, and she's more than pleased.

She then loaned me out to the company's graphic designer for the afternoon.. who was this HOT HOT HOT chick from Chicago, who is a personal trainer by night. The legs on this woman. She was 26 and gorgeous. I taught her how to scan pages and OCR them (this would become part of her job, and part of the reason she quit).

Another stupid mistake I made a coupld of days later... the company intranet was just starting up. On it was supposed to be a list of books in the company library. The dude making the intranet was the nephew of the CEO and a graduate student who only worked in summer. He wanted a list of books from me for the intranet.. so I exported the list to HTML and since I was bored I made it sort of pretty. Now they know I know HTML.

So, daily now I was given more responsibilities not part of the library research thing. By September, I was doing more computer related junk than library research/gopher stuff. So they asked me to find a new library person and I'd get a different job.

In October, I was given the fun task of bringing the intranet back after a server crash. We had no backups. So, I got a new cubicle (twice the size of most peoples) and two computers. One was the intranet server. It was a fucking awesome box.. dual ppros with a 9gig SCSI hard drive.

To be continued.