May 11
I’ve spent a lot of time packing this weekend. The combination of packing and just driving around town running errands makes me oddly nostalgic and a wee bit emotional (ok, so that piece isn’t entirely surprising considering that I have been known to cry at particularly moving movie trailers). Everything I see/do evokes some kind of memory. Maybe it’s that some of my more formative “adult” years have been spent in Wichita, but I am in a seriously retrospective place at the moment.
I’ve decided to sum up my Wichita experience over the next three weeks. I feel like I have a gazillion stories to tell, so sit back and get comfortable.
To start things off, let’s discuss my very first job in the ‘Ta:
I spent my first year in Wichita working for one of the craziest small companies ever. Then again, every small company I’ve ever worked for has had a nice dose of crazy mixed in, but this one was mixed with a heavier hand. For instance, the CEO was an absolute tool with minimal intelligence and maximum self-tanning and teeth whitening. The president was a slimy, disgusting douche bag who liked to mention that he was at one time one of the top salespeople for Apple. I always wanted to remind him that he was now hawking ink jet refill kits, USB hubs and what basically amounts to a time clock in Wichita, KS, but I never did. This place was both the bane of my existence and the place where I made some really good friends. You may recall my former BFF worked there. Days went by where the two of us did little else other than instant message one another from across the hall. I used to call her “Wilson” because I could only see her face from the bridge of her nose and up - the rest was obscured by her computer monitor. This is also the place where I met Chris and Dan and a variety of other characters, from “Nurse Rob” (a friend who wore scrubs to work) to Lenny, who would show up around eleven and then go straight to lunch with the rest of us. How he managed that remains a mystery. There was the woman who sat behind me and made repetitive clicking sounds and shoved kleenex into her PC tower and the 25 year old guy who still lived in his parents’ basement and once asked me and the ex-BFF out. There was the guy who we called “Potato” for no reason other than he looked like a giant, six foot six potato and rarely bathed, the woman who best resembled an Oompa Loompa and the hairy, socially incompetent kid who always gave me bottles of Perrier and cans of clam chowder from the stash in the office shared by the programmers. There was the guy who married a stripper and then suddenly stopped coming to work because they were divorcing (he was also eternally trying to sell the awful Pontiac Aztec that they purchased together). And there was the head of the technology group who favored high waisted denim shorts with hiking boots and began every sentence with “Weeellll…”
I used to hate this place with such passion, yet enjoy coming to work because we formed a tight knit group of friends and it was kind of like playtime mixed with really awful technical support phone calls. There was a core group of us who started going to Mulligan’s after work on Thursdays, blowing off some steam and then showing up to work on Friday like zombies, but at least we had each other to send instant messages to - things like “I think I might die now” or “My liver hates me.” There are still a handful of us who keep in touch and who have become (I think) friends for life. The year of torture was worth it, if just for that.
Some of you might recall that I left that company on less than amicable terms. It’s sort of what plunged me into a life of unemployment checks and plasma donations. But at least I could join my friends on Thursday for 2-4-1 tall beers and laughter ’til I cried.
omg. you worked in an office more diverse than, well, The Office.
Thank you for not mentioning the “webmaster” who was really bad at her job (and still is), who always wore a jacket at work (and still does) and who spent more time in the office of the graphics designer and his lesbian assistant than her own.
I was never part of the Mulligan’s crowd, but I do hope I’m considered one of “handful” of friends who still keep in touch. Otherwise, it’ll be really awkward when I show up to visit you in St. Maarten.
Hahahaha, Kim! I was trying to give you some anonymity. But I would have said “There was the really nice webmaster who I liked telling that something wasn’t working with the website so I could spend a solid 10 minutes in her office chatting. We perpetually made lunch plans, but only went out, like, once. She’s also one of the few female Wichita bloggers that I know…”