The Importance of Being an Assistant

If you have any aspirations at all about working in the entertainment industry you will probably spend some time as an assistant. One of the things you will notice as an assistant in Hollywood is that everything is important. “Shit, Julia they still haven’t delivered that three-hole paper! Get them on the phone and don’t let them hang up until you get a straight answer from those assholes!” or “Where are the good forks! The meeting is in 5 minutes and I’m not going to have it with these shitty plastic forks!” Another thing you might notice is that your definition for what counts as a good joke will alter drastically, “We took Jeff’s precious tricolor highlighter and… get this… hid it! He’s going to be looking for that fucking thing forever *snicker snicker*!”

Also people swear a lot.

Gynoid

Some of you might remember that I work in an office with all robots.

Remember?

About 6 months ago I started dating the receptionist. It’s kind of a cute story how we started dating. I mentioned how it was great that they were finally hiring Androids, “It’s good to see a friendly face, or you know even a face at all!” but instead of taking the complement she got really mad, “I’m a gynoid, not an android! Do I look like I was designed to simulate male appearance and behavior to you?” So the next day to apologize I sent her a card saying, “As a human male I can clearly see that you are feminine.” And she sent me a text saying “I accept your offer of courtship.”

That wasn’t really what I meant by the card, but I figured it was worth a shot, after all it wasn’t like I was having much luck with the human females. Our first date went rather awkwardly, I asked if she wanted to go see a movie only to find out that she’s bolted to the floor. She seemed kind of embarrassed about it but I told her I thought it was sexy. I just waited till the office closed and brought some DVD’s to watch on my laptop (and a Chess set but a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell). Things heated up pretty quickly from there and pretty soon we were sending each other little love notes and NP -complete problems to solve. For our 1 month anniversary I bought her one of those super powerful drills and a battery pack and she said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.

Our relationship has had its rough spots, one time she called me at 4:00AM. “I had the most horrible nightmare, I dreamt that our relationship was equal to the sum of a five digit prime and a perfect cube.” When I asked which of us was the five digit prime she said I was “insensitive.” We made up though and now we have a good hearty laugh whenever I say things like, “Well at least we’re not equal to 75,228.”

I know what you’re thinking, and a lot of my friends have told me that this relationship is doomed but, I still think it’s possible for an office romance to work.

Working Late

Ok so at my work for like the last six months we’ve been busting our humps on this Doomsday Device and I’ve finally got some positive news. It’s finally finished, which is good, since this Friday is Doomsday.

Yes, we finally finished, but what a hassle! It seems like we’ve been working on this thing forever. If it wasn’t the Justice Squad blowing up our reactors, then it was Captain Amazing (who didn’t die in that mysterious explosion after all) messing around with our geo-synch satellites , or the Moon People deciding to break their vow of non-interference to team up with The E-men etc. etc. After a while it started to feel like the only reason we existed was to give these heroes something to fight week after week.

Well, we finally got the Matter Eraser hooked up to the Infinity Cannon today and the Boss took us all out to Applebee’s to celebrate.

Afterwards we’re all relaxing and goofing off in the office when the Boss storms back in, super-pissed, and says the U.N. called his bluff! Apparently they were all, “Fine blow it up! See if we care!”

So now I’m going to have to stay late all next week while we try to change the machine into a Blow-up-only-one-city-at-a-time-so-the-jerks-at-the-UN-
know-we-can-really-do-it Device. My girlfriend is going to kill me.

Office troubles

Every office has that one co-worker who is an absolute dick. In Funbox's office our dick jokes around constantly, and his jokes are always at the expense of interns and other underlings, and always along the lines of “you are incompetent and will be fired soon.” When you work in an industry like I do, where such things are a real possibility, it’s rather cruel perpetually tell underlings that they might not make this months rent.

That’s why I'm grooming one of the interns to kill him.

It starts simply enough. A few jokes by the water cooler, a shared commiseration that we have to spend 10 hour days cooped up with this asshole, and of course a steady supply of fruit snacks to reward any thought that leans in a murderous direction. The groundwork thus laid, I then began a series of casual IM’s that I would send whenever the offender was yelling at the intern. He would try to hide his smiles when “FUNB0xx1: What a Dickhole!” poped up on his desktop while the oblivious red-faced ass-munch screamed away. After that, it was simple, almost too simple. I just slowly increased the frequency and intensity of the IM’s. Now the IM's are more like “FUNB0xx1: Soon he’ll be dead, and we will consummate our love. Soon my angel… soon.”

Every now and then he will express reluctance “InTERnGuy1444: What about an office prank instead of, you know, first degree murder.” But I just ease his mind with more fruit snacks.

meeting

After a few minutes, his focus completely shifted to the cup full of peppermints placed at his table, and his effort to grasp one with his mind and hurl it into the gaping maw of Deborah, the much hated company controller. He imagined her feathered 1980's haircut standing on end in fright, as five grams of cellophane-wrapped-breath-freshening-death closed upon her. Despite the unlikelihood of the scenario, he knew if the universe granted him this power, it would be the most productive meeting the company had ever had.

Robot Office

So at my office, I work with a bunch of robots.
I’m actually the only human there. I don’t know if you’ve ever been the only person in your office of a specific race/gender/ethnicity but it can get awkward.

I was walking down the hall and these two robots were totally talking about me. I could tell.

Robot 1 (Not his real name): And he’s always doing “breathing” thing. I mean I know he needs to do it to live, but do you have to do it like, in front of me?

Robot 2 (Not his real name): Yeah it’s like, “You’re a human, that’s fine. You can be a human, but you don’t need to rub everybody’s face in it.

Robot 1: And like he gets to go home to “sleep” or whatever. I don’t see why we need to pick up the slack just ‘cause he has special needs. (Stops, hears me) Oh! Heyyy… Guy.

Me: Hey robots, what were you guys just talking about?

Robot 1: Nothing.

Robot 2: What’s that in your hand?

Me: Oh that’s food… I need it to live.

Robot 1: (rolls eyes).

Then we got in a huge fight. And now my robot manager is making me take "insensitivity training."
Jerks.
At least I get my own bathroom.