office space
so some magazine recently reunited the cast of office space, mike judge's 1999 sleeper comedy about life in cubicleland. missing from the reunion was jennifer jane emerson, a featured player in the flick (she played the annoying temp who said somebody had "a case of the mondays"). back then, jenn actually occupied the cubicle next to mine at my soul-destroying job in corporateamerica. while she was there, she actually had a couple of experiences worthy of inclusion in the film.
the first came after someone had told our boss (the guy who fired me, later on, whom i'll refer to as "numbnuts" for simplicity's sake) that he needed to spend more time getting to know his subordinates. so, he'd come out of his office and visit with each of the people in our department in turn. numbnuts was an interesting fella, with an mba from a baptist seminary, to give you some idea of what he was about, but kinda short on social skills. when it was jenn's turn to get up close and personal with him, he walked into her office, sat down on her desk, and farted. "i couldn't believe it," she told me later. "it was disgusting."
his predecessor as head of our department, who was kinda anal-retentive and controlling but whom i basically liked and respected, was famous/notorious for conducting the longest pre-employment interviews in the known world -- so much so that when she was interviewing a prospective new hire, we'd have a pool to see who could guess the closest to the interview's actual duration. (her record was three and a half hours.) numbnuts had a similar quirk: whenever somebody walked into his office to quit, numbnuts would invariably spend an inordinate time bullshitting with them about something completely random before they were able to drop their bomb and get the hell out of there. when jenn went in to quit, numbnuts spent a half an hour blabbering inanely about losing weight before she was finally blurted out, "numbnuts, i quit."
i didn't learn about this last one until a couple of years after the fact. at the time, it didn't even occur to me to suspect that something was up, but everytime our administrative assistant -- who looked kind of like dame edna, sat at an island in the middle of the department and absolutely _hated_ to miss a phone call -- got up to use the restroom, her phone would ring just as she was rounding the corner to the women's facilities. hearing it, she'd dash back to her desk, yelling "i'll get it!" what was really going on was this: jenn, whose cube faced our long-suffering assistant's, would e-mail another co-worker (this was before the advent of office im's), who sat in a corner of the office where he couldn't even see the administrative island. he'd wait a designated interval, then call her phone and let it ring just long enough for her to traverse the space between the ladies' can and her desk, then hang up. proof positive, as if any more were needed, that corporateamerica can be a cruel place.
according to the imdb, jenn is also in judge's new movie, fat girls, now in post-production. good on her.
the first came after someone had told our boss (the guy who fired me, later on, whom i'll refer to as "numbnuts" for simplicity's sake) that he needed to spend more time getting to know his subordinates. so, he'd come out of his office and visit with each of the people in our department in turn. numbnuts was an interesting fella, with an mba from a baptist seminary, to give you some idea of what he was about, but kinda short on social skills. when it was jenn's turn to get up close and personal with him, he walked into her office, sat down on her desk, and farted. "i couldn't believe it," she told me later. "it was disgusting."
his predecessor as head of our department, who was kinda anal-retentive and controlling but whom i basically liked and respected, was famous/notorious for conducting the longest pre-employment interviews in the known world -- so much so that when she was interviewing a prospective new hire, we'd have a pool to see who could guess the closest to the interview's actual duration. (her record was three and a half hours.) numbnuts had a similar quirk: whenever somebody walked into his office to quit, numbnuts would invariably spend an inordinate time bullshitting with them about something completely random before they were able to drop their bomb and get the hell out of there. when jenn went in to quit, numbnuts spent a half an hour blabbering inanely about losing weight before she was finally blurted out, "numbnuts, i quit."
i didn't learn about this last one until a couple of years after the fact. at the time, it didn't even occur to me to suspect that something was up, but everytime our administrative assistant -- who looked kind of like dame edna, sat at an island in the middle of the department and absolutely _hated_ to miss a phone call -- got up to use the restroom, her phone would ring just as she was rounding the corner to the women's facilities. hearing it, she'd dash back to her desk, yelling "i'll get it!" what was really going on was this: jenn, whose cube faced our long-suffering assistant's, would e-mail another co-worker (this was before the advent of office im's), who sat in a corner of the office where he couldn't even see the administrative island. he'd wait a designated interval, then call her phone and let it ring just long enough for her to traverse the space between the ladies' can and her desk, then hang up. proof positive, as if any more were needed, that corporateamerica can be a cruel place.
according to the imdb, jenn is also in judge's new movie, fat girls, now in post-production. good on her.
posted by stashdauber at 6:07 PM
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