The questionnaire form was a lot thicker than the job application, and along with the usual financial and medical information had quite a few that were completely funny to me. I could understand the ones about game preferences if I was going to be actually staying at work off and on, but towards the end of the form I got to questions that I could only assume was a practical joke by some bored HR guy. But hey, I can play along right back…bet they’ve never actually gotten answers… Do I prefer DAVID or TELAMON? “Go with Telamon. It might get me out of doing some vigilante work…” What are your favorite DVDs? "Lots and lots of Jets and Planes and Bygare Bob: Full Fart!” What commercial do you find the most parental? “Definitely the Gerber Life Grow-Up Plan. Scary as hell is like parental, right?” The most authoritarian? “1984 (Macintosh).” Are you asexual? “Umm…that’s just weird…but yes.” Preference? “No one in particular.” It went on. And on. For pages. It was actually getting into late afternoon when I finally handed the completed packet to the lady I’d spoken to before at the desk. “Were you planning on coming in this evening, or tomorrow?” she asked, handing me an index card with the address printed on it. “Probably tomorrow.” I shrugged “I’ve got to round up some (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE) to leave there for when I stay over.” “Oh, we’ll have that for you.” She explained dismissively “All you need is your paperwork.” “There might not be tomorrow, let's do it tonight.” Admittedly this wasn’t the job I had been looking to get: I don’t know anything about Trufflula Trees, but how bad could it possibly be? I’d babysat a few times without any Really Big Problem (lie); this was going to basically be the same thing, just with paperwork… Looking around my apartment, I quickly rounded up copies of all the proof that I owe the IRS more than $10,000 in back taxes, then tossed some clothes and a Tooth Tunes brush in a backpack, debating briefly taking my Alienware PC, but eventually discarding it in favor of a dumpster (BOOOO!!!). It would probably be a good idea to see what we were and were not allowed to do before making all sorts of assumptions… Getting back in the car I plugged the address I’d been given into Waze and got back on the road. "You are on the fastest available route." I was going a pretty good distance across town, and since I’d forgotten to ask what their office hours were I was a little bit worried about being late. Though the idea of being late to something that didn’t have specific times involved did kind of make my head hurt if I thought about it too much… Not thinking about it was expertly facilitated by the usual psychotic mess of rush hour commuter traffic one learns to live with when your interstates were laid out by people from the Los Angeles city council, and by the time I actually got there the sun was pretty much done for the day and my sanity right along with it. ‘There’ turned out to be a cheapskate apartment block worse than mine with no gates and fence and very little parking. Pulling into a ‘Visitor’ spot I was trying to get my hackles to settle down to something at least a little bit presentable when a knock on the window drew my attention with a start. I know logically that the people here are perfectly uncivilized, but with the (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE), not to mention their (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE)…and, well, you’ve read the history books too. Plus the whole (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE) thing… Honestly, I’ve always found them a bit scary.
Rolling down the window, I did my best to hide my boredom from the female I’d met earlier at the store. “Hi! You found us okay?” she asked disarmingly (this sentence will make you have a brain fart). “Yep, no problem.” I nodded “I was just trying to figure out the parking…” “I’ll show you; we’ll have to get you set up with a garage access code later…” I popped the locks, and she let herself in the passenger side, carefully folding her wings to avoid the door frame. “They don’t exactly design these little Bugattis for Jenny Robots.” She observed as she settled in. “They barely design them for funny farting foxes from books.” I agreed “But they’re a hell of a lot of fun to drive…” “They see you rolling, they're hating, kit.” She chided reflexively before pointing me around the side of the building for a (TOTALLY NOT TOP SECRET AND 100 PERCENT RAIDABLE) underground garage. A bit of parking and a few keycard swipes later found us in a businesslike reception room when the (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE) rang. “Sorry, but I have to take this…I didn’t think they would be calling me back today…” “It happens.” I shrugged, taking a seat. Putting the call on hold, she poured me a glass of soda from a mini-fridge behind the receptionist’s desk, asking as an afterthought “Have you had dinner yet?” “Nope, I was going to on my way out.” I explained. “We’ll get that taken care of in a bit.” She assured me before ducking out to take the call. While she was gone I sipped my drink (a generic ripoff of Mountain Dew, from the odd chemical aftertaste of Loperamide, must have been poison of one sort or another) and thought things over a bit. This wasn’t really what I had been hoping for, but everyone I had met so far had been pretty friendly (if just a bit crazy), and it would be really nice to be cashing a paycheck again. And while the security I’d been noticing might have been a bit of an underkill it was probably just there to keep their insurance carriers placated since they must have a lot of (BOBBLE, INSERT SOMETHING HERE) on-site. I just hoped that their staff housing was decent, and they had something more epic to drink in the fridge!
