You Giff Me Heart Atteck!

waking up thursday morning was fantastic despite the fact i had to rush some diarrhea to the toilet even before my alarm told me to get out of bed. the squirtiest of poops cannot put me in a bad mood when i know i'm about to get my very first paycheck in months. nothing can.

and at work, things only got better.

"little bit of a warning," my boss said, "we have a lot to get done in a very short amount of time. i'm going to be... tense. more than usual. so if i tell you to get shit done, get it done fast and don't fuck up."

this made me smile. in my head, i said bring it on. i'm getting paid today, so do your fucking worst.

ten minutes later, our russian printer-guy walked in with two women. he's not a man of many words, and i have a feeling the the few words he speaks are not the words he means. it's hard to say if it's a language thing or a passive-aggressive thing, but it's good comedy for the most part.

and thursday morning was the best of it.

the russian printer (who i will call igor-- because come on), clocked in immediately and began his work as if he had not been followed by the two women still standing at the front counter.

"i vould lake to talk viff you," the older of the two said to my boss.

she had ridiculously frizzy hair. actually, her hair looked a lot like mine does when i badly need a haircut-- except mine looks the way it does because i don't do anything to make it look appropriate.


her hair, though, seemed intentionally that bad.

at first, i thought she was perhaps a customer. till she said this:

"you are bad person."

everybody sort of looked around.

"you heff give to me a heart atteck this mornink. you make igor cry, end treat him lake he is brainless. my son is so good! other employee says to him 'you are brainless idiot!' and so igor says 'shut up' and then you make him to say he es sorry? why es he sorry?"

...this lady was igor's mom. geez.

we all stared before realizing this was the unmistakable DO YOUR WORK AND PRETEND NOTHING IS HAPPENING WHILE THE BOSS SPEAKS WITH A CRAZY scenario.

"madam," he said, "i have never treated your son badly. if he messes up, i will lecture him for messing up. but i have never been unfair to him and i do not treat him like a slave. but look, i am very busy and--"

"no!" she interrupted, "you are racist man! you pick on my igor because he es jew. racist man! other employee says to igor he is brainless end you let employee go for free. but igor is hurt! he cannot say this to you because he es quiet shy man and cannot stand up for himself. so i tell you: you are racist man!"

"what?" he asked, "i'm jewish. all of my ancestors are jewish. how am i racist? look around. that guy is philipino, he's black, both of them are hispanic, he's gay, and i don't know what steven is-- but i've got the whole gamut, okay? racism has nothing to do with this. we have tried to teach igor how to use this machine for four years and he can't-- so we don't let him on it. last night, when one of my employees called him brainless he had taken the machine apart to try and "fix it"-- what do you want me to say here?"

we really are diverse. like a pack of skittles. or an episode of captain planet. and it was oddly refreshing to hear that i was a no-idea-what. that's a lot more fun than an OTHER, or TWO OR MORE RACES, or the old days when i'd have to pick which parent i loved more and wanted to side with.

this entire time, though, the mother was the only one of the two ladies speaking. the other, younger one, had just been standing there with a glare smeared across her head.

"no! no! no!" the mom continued, while slamming her hands on the counter in sync with her words, "you meck igor to feel like fool! you treat him to be stupid!"

"madam," my boss said again, "i can't even understand you when you bang your hands at the same time as talking... so you need to stop one of the two, or i can't have this conversation. again, i'm sorry, but i am very busy. what do you want from me?"

"fair treatment," the quiet girl finally spoke, "i'm igor's girlfriend and i see how he comes home. he's hurt; he's depressed; he's abused-- emotionally, he is abused. you cannot call your employee an idiot and make him apologize for telling you to shut up."

discovering the second lady to be igor's girlfriend made the situation 90x funnier. i think most of us agreed that it was a bad move to bring his mother into the office to fight his battles, but the addition of his girlfriend only made matters worse. especially because igor is pushing forty.

this entire time, igor was just sitting in the back doing his job as if neither of them were present. not even looking up or reacting to the shouts and hand-slams.

"you are stupid man," the mom said, "you are. igor is brilliant man."

she pounded her fists again. for a moment, i drifted into a daydream about history class in high school. we were learning about khrushchev slamming his shoe on a podium, shouting "we will bury you!" during the cold war.

okay, i'm really only putting these drawings in to break up the text. i know they're barely tangent.

"call the cops," my boss told me, "call the cops, please?"

i've now called the 9-11 three times in my life and i can't say that any of them have been for anything too serious except for the time a homeless man died next to me on the 38 geary bus. and that time, the paramedics didn't care. this time was just comedy.

"9-11: emergency," the phone said to me, "would you like the police, paramedics, or fire department, sir?"

"i'll have the police, please."

look, if you can't see from the few posts i've written so far, this job requires you to take some shit. it was a surprise to me, at first, but a print shop on the level that this particular one operates cannot succeed if people make mistakes. it's a lucrative business selling prints in the financial district-- like selling whores outside of charlie sheen's mansion. so, if you slip up, or continuously ruin projects, you will be teased hard; you will be yelled at, and you might feel stupid. but hey, you kind of are stupid if it's been the same mistake for four years.

so deal with it. moxie, moxie, moxie.

"my boyfriend is mentally-disabled," igor's girlfriend explained, "he is not very smart, okay? he has a hard time thinking like a normal person, and--"

"whoa, whoa, whoa," my boss stopped her, "i love igor. he is a great worker. and i don't think you should call him mentally-disabled. you come in here and yell at me because one of my employees called him brainless, but you-- his girlfriend-- are openly referring to him as mentally-disabled? that's rude."

"well, he is," she said, "and you are not treating him fairly. everyone else has a happy time at work and gets whatever they want. but not igor. you pick on him and you let others pick on him, too."

and now that his mommy and girlfriend have shown up to get his back, i'm sure no one will pick on him ever again.

"you don't know what goes on here," my boss sighed, "and, as always, there are more than a few sides to every story. so don't tell me how my employees feel. you can tell me what you see and i can tell you what i see. i am not picking on him nor am i a racist. but again, i am very busy, and i don't know what you want from this conversation."

a rather portly police officer entered and stood watching.

"you giff me heart atteck," the mom said again, "heart atteck!"

"well, no," my boss said, "obviously that's not true because you're standing here yelling at me right now and you seem healthy."

the cop laughed.

"what's going on here?" she asked everyone.

"thank you for coming, officer," my boss replied, "but i think we're okay. things were a little wild at first, but it seems like everyone is being calm now."

so the cop left. i was hoping for more, but hey, i'll have to consider the entertainment i got a freebie considering it lasted over an hour and involved fists being slammed on tables.

i think the presence of a police officer probably killed the angry mood of igor's mom and girlfriend-- they complained a little longer, debated about whether or not igor should quit, be fired, or just grow up, and then they yelled a few things in russian before leaving.

and wow. i dare say igor will never live that down. if he was having a problem with the way everyone pokes fun at each other, i don't know that this made anything better. in fact, i have a slight feeling he didn't ask the ladies of his life to even show up.

my drawing of a screaming shoe.

the rest of the day was spent rushing orders and multi-tasking like a crack-headed octopus, but here and there someone would giggle to themselves. and we all knew it was an igor-infused giggle.

"i'm going to go take my lunch," the assistant manager said, "...is your mom going to have a problem with that?"

the best way i can describe my work-environment is "demanding, but fair." and i think, despite it all, even igor understands that. i still get made fun of for the one time i misplaced a work order, and i'm sure i will months down the line even if i never lose another. but that's just how it is. some orders are over $10,000 and have a deadline so tight there just isn't room for fucking up. and yes, we all talk a lot of shit-- it's something of a survival tact in such a busy place where actual conversation hardly has a chance.

i'm unsure if i feel bad for igor or not. if i do feel bad, it's not just because of how often he messes up at work. it's also because his mom came in at 9am and asked the boss to fire him. actually, she demanded he be fired. if i feel bad it's because igor's entire life may just be one gigantic story of stubborn characters forcing him into positions he's not prepared for.

oh well. my story is diarrhea-alarm clocks and broken whiskey glasses-- we all have our ups and downs.

somewhere in there, i did get my check and found out i was being paid $1.50 more than i was hired at, but i didn't make it to the bank.

and i don't really mind. the igor-family entertainment show was well worth an extra day of $0.

"poor steven," one of the designers said, "he just got hired, and after one day of training, his trainer leaves sick for a week. and then he has to see this fucking fiasco with igor's mom and girl-- probably writing a fucking screenplay in his head about the shit that goes down here and it's only been a week and a half."

oh, but you have no idea.