Conrad Is Unsure If This Intro Is Malicious Compliance Or Revenge
I shall relate the story and you can judge for yourselves. I've had it on the back-burner in 'Save To Watch Later' for months as the whole story runs for about 20 minutes, and took ages to annotate. It's another of 'Ripe's stories, and his tales tend to run long, so I'm not sure if this is going to be the whole Intro or not. Art!
Because a mid-size plumbing company is pretty dull stuff when used as an illustration, before you ask. Yes, that's the business behind today's Intro, not evil mutant pineapples attacking sentient windmills.
So! today's sorry tale of angst in the workplace is narrated by Able DispAtcher Man, hereafter ADAM. He was one of three admin staff who covered all the shifts between them, the others being: Henry, who was so old he'd witnessed the death of the dinosaurs. He never worked weekends, and in fact didn't really need to work at all given his hoarded wealth. He worked to avoid having to care for his even older, dementia-stricken parents, a duty that fell to his sister; Smashley, a single mother to three children, who arrived late, left early and was a howling absence of work ethic. Art!
Henry
Things went south when Smashley got involved with one of the plumbers, doing what ADAM called 'horizontal dancing', and fraudulently puffing his hours up in order to split the difference between them. She got caught out and fired on the spot, leaving only 2 admin staff. ADAM agreed to a temporary change of his normal 08:00 - 17:00 hours, starting instead at 11:00 to provide cover for when Henry left. Art!
Then the owner, whom I shall dub Older And Foolish, hereafter OAF, hired a third person and put them in charge of ADAM and Henry. We will call them SOB, after ADAM's name for them, as they were a Sadistic Overbearing Bottomhole. In ADAM's deathless prose 'He was an ass', especially since he denied him leave on two separate occasions.
SOB had unilaterally decided to cut OT in order to look good to OAF, docking ADAM 5 hours he'd worked and forbidding him to do any overtime. Not only that, he cut 30 minutes from ADAM's pay over lunch, despite the latter working during his lunch. When ADAM protested, SOB came out with a quote he was to later regret: 'It's the letter of the law', meaning he was legally able to dock his report's wages. Art!
Close enough
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
Enter Eric, a long-time friend of ADAM, and an attorney at a highly-respected law firm in the city, whom ADAM consulted over a meeting involving beer and chicken wings. He made one solid recommendation that ADAM ought to purchase in order to cover his bottom and uncover others, which he did. No, I'm going to keep it secret. Tee hee! Also, Art!
Because he started work at 11:00, ADAM's lunch fell due at 16:00, which is when he went to eat it in his car on the company parking lot. The first time it happened, SOB came looking for him, only to be told that, if ADAM wasn't going to be paid for his lunch, he most certainly wasn't going to be working it, and moreover 'It was the law of the land'. SOB left in a frothing rage and tried to change lunch to 14:00, whilst Henry was still in the office. No dice, ADAM quoted chapter and verse on working hours and lunchtime entitlement, and also added 'It's the letter of the law', probably bringing SOB close to having a rage-stroke. Art!
Every time his will was thwarted, SOB would respond with aggressive swearing and cursing and threats - remember the 'B' in SOB.
Now, you may cast your mind back to several paragraphs ago, when ADAM agreed to a temporary change in hours thanks to there being only 2 admin staff. So, he pointed out to SOB in an e-mail - which he copied in to HR and OAF because SOB certainly didn't inform them - that he'd be reverting to his original hours of 08:00 - 17:00 as of next Monday. When SOB objected in e-mails and person, he once again got the answer that must have dangerously elevated his blood pressure: "It's the letter of the law", probably pronounced with emphasis "It's The Letter Of The Law". Art!
Think calm thoughts, SOB
One of the admin staff's jobs was to cover late calls into the office, from people making emergency plumbing requests, up to 19:30. However - O that word again! - with ADAM on his new hours, he would have left hours before the lines closed. Surely gritting his teeth so hard he suffered enamel damage, SOB told him to cover the late calls, thus creating overtime, which he had desperately wanted to avoid.
Okay! I'm going to call a halt here, as the transcription above is half of what my handwritten notes run to, or else this BOOJUM! would be another Intro only. Part Two tomorrow. I bet you can hardly wait. Art!
BINGO! BINGO! BINGO!
One of the problems of having a mind like a skip four miles in every dimension is that stuff comes up to the surface and needs identifying.
For example, I well remember reading a couple of novels in the early Seventies, written for young adults, a cringe phrase if ever there was one, involving a squad of British commandos. Could I remember the titles? I could not!! Could I remember the author? That neither! Damn you old age and gin. Art!
British vandals with guns visit Teuton tourists in Norway 1941
For no good reason I was carrying out a bit of Google-fu, inputting various combinations of 'British commandos', 'Norway', 'Young adult', 'Seventies', and then remembered that one of the characters was nicknamed 'Curly' and another went by 'Sam'.
I struck paydirt. Art!
"You are likely thinking of The Tunnel Busters, the second book in the classic pulp/adventure series Fighting Four by W. Ryerson Johnson. The story follows a specialized WWII commando unit carrying out a high-risk mission behind enemy lines. [1]
- Sam Foster: The communications expert.
- Curly Bates: The team's explosives expert."
Let's have a cover picture. Art!
O dear, I hear Abebooks a-calling. NO! Be strong, Conrad, be strong!
Another Unflattering Canklegraph
You may have seen, by now, clips of Donold Judas Trump walking out of an interview where he was being challenged by Kristen Welker, pushing back on his conspiranoid loonwaffle blather. Donnie Dorko hates hates hates his lies being defied, especially if the defier is a woman, and he looked so empurpled some viewers feared he'd stroke out in his chair. Art!
He looks like an angry paper bag and it's hard to tell where his tie ends and his scrofulous flesh begins.
Chongarbage
Forgive my punning. In more bad news for Putinpot, Mordorvia, the orc army and tourists in Krim, the strategically important bridges at Chongar that leads onto the isthmus has been well and truly scragged by the Kozaky. Art!
Some pundits have been showing the old Storm Shadow missile impact from a couple of years ago, either unaware or not caring that it's the wrong image. Art!
Stormzy is not intended nor very good at bridge-busting, as it's intended to penetrate into a reinforced bunker and then explode. Rather like shooting a door with a rifle; all you do is make a neat little hole in it. Art!
The green overlay means Firepoint, in this case an FP, and each bridge was generously allocated two each. These are a fraction of the cost of Stormzy and much better suited to destroy the bridge on impact, instead of blamming a neat, easily surmountable hole in it. Imagine shooting that same door with a shotgun loaded with buckshot - much more destructive. Art!
"Chongarskiy bridge - ('use' couldn't be defined) - a blow struck at enemy logistics".
The orcs will definitely try to get this repaired in short order. In the black and white photo you can see either end of an old pontoon bridge they put up whilst repairs were being conducted.
There's nothing to stop the Ukrainians coming back with more drones after it gets repaired, mind.
Final Report
I finished off the Marvel 'Avengers' jigsaw, with no pieces missing. Art!
The sharper-eyed amongst you will have noticed the two pieces left over. They don't belong to this puzzle, and judging from the artwork for the second puzzle in this box, they don't belong to that one, either.
Someone, somewhere, is sadly looking at their jiggy missing two pieces.
Finally -
Looks like our Focus is on it's way to the scrapyard. Farewell stout fella!
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