Cleansing the Pallet, Touring the Palace

Heading into the second week of March, Kevin and I were each dealing with "work issues."

For Kevin's part, he was growing increasingly frustrated that he and Joe rarely seem to work more than one day a week on their woodworking venture... and that had seemed to further decrease to zero days a week over recent weeks.

He was starting to wonder if maybe Joe had lost interest and just didn't want to admit it because he felt bad about how much money Kevin had spent buying an entire shop worth of tools!

For my part, we'd had an HVAC crew working up on the roof at work the day before, and late in the afternoon when I came off a break and went to head back into the clean room (which is a highly controlled environment with multiple HEPA filters) there was a very strong odor that smelled like burning chemicals or a gas leak, or something.

My immediate boss (who I actually really like) had already left for the day, so I went looking for the owner of the company or her husband since their cars were still in the parking lot.

Instead I found their teenaged son "Junior" (who is employed there, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he "works" there). Junior told me that he had driven his dad's car in that day, and his mom was in the middle of a virtual meeting in her office.

Okay, that's all well and good, but there are some really bad fumes in the clean room, to the point that I got a headache from them the moment I opened the door. So I really think we need to tell someone and figure out what's going on!

Junior panicked but he agreed.

And then he marched to his mom's office, stormed inside, and regurgitated a slightly altered version of reality to her:

But, the owner of the company brushed us off, telling us that we were more than welcome to just clock out and go home if we felt like it, but she was in the middle of a meeting and was staying.

So I took it upon myself to go outside and flag down one of the guys who had been working on the roof. I escorted him inside and led him to the smell, at which point he assured me it was just residual fumes from some welding that his crew had just completed, and they should get filtered out and be gone within the hour.

Eventually the fumes did dissipate and I was able to go back to work. But then a couple hours later, my friend Melinda came to me and said she had to tell me what had just happened:

Apparently when the owner of the company finally wrapped up her meeting and came out of her office, she found her son to ask him again what had happened. And he again regurgitated to her what hadn't quite happened (falsely conveying that I had remained in the clean room and tried to work through the fumes despite not knowing what they might be).

At which point the owner of the company, who is the same woman who personally headhunted me on LinkedIn three years ago, shrugged and said, "Well, you can't fix stupid." Right in front of her son and my coworker Melinda.

Needless to say, I was fuming the rest of the day and evening about it. But when I went into work the next day and my immediate boss (the good one) arrived, he was like, "Oh, I have to tell you about the bullshit that happened yesterday afternoon."

And then he proceeded to explain, without knowing my role in the story at all, how the owner of the company had called him yesterday afternoon in a panic to tell him that she smelled a chemical leak and to ask him whether or not she should evacuate her own building!!!

So I got to tell him the rest of the story, including her "can't fix stupid" comment, and he was so incensed on my behalf that he went and confirmed its veracity with Melinda...

I probably shouldn't elaborate too much on what all happened next, but suffice it to say that I found out I'm hardly the first one at the company who's had a similar experience. And the owner is actually under investigation by her own H.R. department for similar things she has said to and about other people!

Aaaaand Kevin and I have since polished up my resume, and I am actively keeping my eyes peeled for a jump to greener pastures, should an opportunity present itself.

As we approached Tuesday evening, Kevin texted me to let me know that Joe had had federal jury duty down in the city that day and walked away $9 richer. And apparently he wanted to use that whopping paycheck to take all of us out to dinner!

Paula already had other plans, so it was just Joe, Kevin, me, and Riley. We met at Metro Diner in Langhorne and then we invited Joe to come back to the apartment and hang out afterwards.

He and Kevin and I ended up having a very productive philosophical talk about life and the future for several hours at the kitchen table until we finally reluctantly had to kick him out so we could go to bed.

It turns out that he's still fully on board with the woodworking venture, and we all agreed that we want to see each other flourish over the course of the rest of the year :)

So on Wednesday, Kevin and Joe worked on their latest build together (a rustic looking coffee table).

And then to reciprocate Joe's treat from the night before, I invited him and Paula back to the apartment for chicken, broccoli, and potatoes for dinner.

Joe was playing a gig on Thursday, but he and Kevin worked again on Friday, and Kevin sent me this picture from the Home Depot parking lot when they stopped in to buy some polyurethane:

Then just a few minutes later, he sent a follow-up picture:

Three coats of polyurethane later, their table top was looking pretty good!

Meanwhile, Riley had Kassie and their mutual friend Jaden over Friday night.

Kassie was spending the night, but Jaden is a boy, so we took him home around 9:30. But the three of them walked to McDonalds and Rita's together and then came back to the apartment and played video games.

Saturday evening we had our usual takeout from Taormina's at Catherine and Ron's. Surprisingly Kassie's mom agreed to let Kassie come along with us! So she got to see what a normal loving family looks like :)

Kassie slept over again Saturday night, and she and Riley had Jaden over again on Sunday.

He seems like a very sweet boy. He kept insisting that his parents would embarrass him whenever we eventually met them, and sure enough, Kevin and I walked him downstairs that evening when his mom arrived to pick him up.

Here's how that went:

So, uh, yeah.

Jaden said he'd be embarrassed, and I imagine he was pretty embarrassed.