Penultimate Administrative Notes

1. Within these pages of the Penultimate blog, I try out ideas like trying on clothes while standing in front of a mirror. You, my devoted following, are the mirror. Both of you. So, don’t be afraid to Comment and add your own thoughts about whatever you see. (Not you, Keith.)
2. If you subscribe to this Blog it will be a delight to me for the usual narcissistic reasons. On your end, you will gain nothing by it and it will probably be a pain in the ass to figure out how to do it. So please subscribe.
3. There has been a big problem reported by the staff here at Penultimate Headquarters. Per custom, we usually get everyone gathered in the lunch room at noon on Fridays and have a boatload of pizza delivered. The Coke and 7Up flows and a feeling of congeniality comes upon us. As Fridays are casual-dress Fridays to begin with, the casual dress combines with the drinking and we can come damn near to singing sailor songs with our arms slung about each other’s shoulders. But then, last Friday, as we all know, we had an incident. One of our Temporary employees was helping himself to the pizza and, well, we caught him and set him on the right side of Jesus. At this time, I’d like to recognize Sheila, one of our floor managers and function coordinators, for her diligence in protecting the rights and resources of our permanent employees.
4. Also, not to toot our own horn again, but the figures are in for this year and we made $56 billion dollars in profit. Our stock is through the roof!
5. OK, about the pizza incident. I have a confession to make. What had happened was . . . I had a flashback while writing this post (on or about item #3) about a time when I worked at Yankee Candle Company as a ‘Temporary’ employee. I was simply a guy hired through a ‘TEMP” agency, and at the time I was happy to be farmed out because I needed the work. I worked ‘The Floor’ and did all kinds of candle-making and wore a big heavy apron—though I would still get covered in wax anyway. And, as a bonus, I always smelled real pretty. So, my first Friday I followed everyone into the big lunchroom area for the vaunted free pizza and it was great. I had two slices and had just gotten two more (everyone was having that much, there was a ton) when I was suddenly confronted somewhat publicly by Sheila, who took it upon herself to inform me within earshot of half the factory floor, that the pizza was “for permanent employees only, not for you.” Wow. There’s a status hierarchy here and I didn’t make the Friday pizza cut. Me, standing there in the crowded cafeteria with a blank look on my face, two big slices of pizza threatening to slide off the flimsy white paper plate, a plate all grease-streaked with delicious golden grease. I’m standing there with piles of colorful candle wax all over my sneakers. “Oh” I said. And, honestly, that’s the last of what I remember about the incident. I don’t even remember whether I ended up eating those two slices I was holding.
6. Alright, another confession about Yankee Candle. You will think ‘disgruntled employee’. But you’d be wrong, I actually overall liked my short time at Yankee Candle and sort of have mostly good memories about it. But my lawyers are making me drop this other shoe to preclude exposure to the charge of hanging onto a juicy story. This was a real kicker, even though the pizza incident scarred me for life. OK. What had happened was . . .I got sick. I remember it very clearly; one October night I felt really woozy and went to bed. In the morning, I woke up and began to throw up. Whenever I moved my head, I threw up or dry-heaved violently. I eventually found out that I had an inner ear virus; it leveled me for weeks, and made me stagger like a drunk for 6 months. I couldn’t rise or sit quickly for years without head spins, but I’m ok now. So, I got sick and, after one week, I got a termination notice from Yankee Candle firing me. “Jesus Christ”, I thought. “I called in sick promptly and they know what’s going on with me. I’m not getting paid for my absence—not having accrued any sick or vacation time yet—and with the big factory population you support, you couldn’t wait more than 5 seconds to fire me?” They were already huge as a company and must have made $56 billion in profit that year. They must also have had some policy whereby Temp workers were just that highly expendable. I felt a little extra betrayed as I got the news lying on a couch with no medical insurance, unable to move without throwing up while being forced to crawl very slowly to the bathroom once in a while. My spirits weren’t at their highest. The hot wax spattering days of my life were over.
7. And here’s yet another colorful wax-dripping-covered shoe to drop about my time at Yankee Candle way back then. This all happened about 1980, I think. I said earlier that that was all that I remembered about the pizza incident—but that’s not all I remember about Sheila. What had happened was . . . Sheila worked the floor also and, almost immediately after the pizza incident, I began to bump into her frequently when we worked the candle-packing lines. Her line was next to mine, so we’d chat amicably while we packed candles rapidly and deftly as the line fed us candles. We grabbed packing paper and set up boxes and wrapped, boxed and stacked candles of all variety for a couple of hours perhaps each day as the manufacturing flow warranted. So, Sheila and I became kind of buddies, and she was a witty smartass with moxie. Also, and I can’t wait to tell you this: Sheila was a gorgeous girl with red hair, a pretty face and great body, and, fantastically, was a newly divorced single hot chick. She was probably in her mid or late twenties and I was 21. We never talked about the pizza incident. I guess a pretty girl can piss on a guy and all the guy will be thinking about is how great she looks in that skirt. (At 21, anyway.) One day, after I’d been there several weeks and just before I got fired, I ran out of boxes at the end of my line and yelled over to Sheila, who still had a ton of boxes at her line, if I could raid her boxes. Sheila was bent over, but stood up, looked me dead in the eye, hands on her hips, red hair tousled about and said evenly, “Kevin, you can raid my boxes anytime.” Believe you me, I thought about it long and hard. I guess I’m still thinking about it! But, as discussed, I’d already gotten a whiff of the crazy. So, nothing happened, but I was tortured anyway. That girl was on her game that year! Women are masters of the mixed message flirt.
8. Finally, please don’t litter. We’ve been finding litter about the grounds of Headquarters; in particular, we’re seeing Styrofoam coffee cups blowing about. Didn’t we already cover this?

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