this is bad comedy right here.

the whisperings i heard from the hallway last month were true. i'm losing my office. our suite is being rezoned, and my office is among the space we're losing to some new company that's going to move in as soon as next month. and to find this out, i had to ask our administrative assistant after a visit from the building owner this morning made me raise an eyebrow. no one ever told me. i guess nobody thought i'd mind much that i would soon be relocated to the same place i spent the hellish first seven months here: sharing a desk with the eagle-eye vice-president.

so this led to me calling a friend to bitch, and since the company's administrative assistant returned to my office to do work on my second computer about two minutes into the call, i was doing my best to speak in code as to not alert her i had a problem. she, however, saw right through my "careful" choice of words ("i know!", "can you belive it?" and "um, i can't really answer that right now") and excused herself from my office until my call was done. when she came back, i apologized to her and joked that i shouldn't have been trying to conceal my real conversation in front of her since she probably felt the same way i did about how shitty this job is. (she's been muttering under her breath lately.) her response is very you're-telling-me, and then she sort of cuts loose and starts complaining to me about the job.

so we're pissing and moaning, and all of a sudden, she puts our mutual misery on hold and goes to retrieve a paper from her filing cabinet. it's the resume of the guy who management interviewed directly after me on that fateful day in 2002, and written on the backside in someone's handwriting are interview notes about how that guy "is even worse than [me]." our administrative assistant says she kept the paper in her file because she thought she'd show it to me one day.

it's funny. i went into the interview under the complete misconception that this was a newspaper job, not a book-publishing job, and i'll bet you $100 my disappointment was totally visible from the moment i walked into the office. so i thought i bombed the interview. and then when i got called later that day and was told the job was mine, the first thing that popped into my head was that me being hired was a lesser-of-several-evils scenario. and now i feel like that's exactly what happened, which explains the rather cold way i was treated until i threated to leave last summer.

so how interesting has the day been so far? quite. and damn, i'm thrilled that all these revelations are falling on my shoulders right now. because it's all kindling, baby, and i'm about to start a huge motherfucking fire.

the title of this entry has little to do with self-reflection. rather, it's what i was thinking about the management of fuddrucker's a few hours ago. i decided to take a momentary break from the gloom of the past week and write about something amusing.

after work, mom needed to be run on an errand, and with dad busy watching the war on TV, i was next in line to "volunteer" my services. i agreed because i needed to return an unwanted christmas gift that was purchased on december 21 to target, and this was the day the three-month limit on returns or exchanges expired, plus mom said she'd treat me to dinner. we agreed to stop at fuddrucker's. before you think i have completely turned my back on the getting-fit thing, though my stomach was screaming for a 1/2-lb. burger with all the toppings, i decided to go the (reasonably) healthy route and order a southwestern-style chicken salad.

i was standing in line perusing the menu, trying to talk and there it was. no listing for french fries. in bold red letters was the replacement: FREEDOM FRIES.

OK. so regardless of whether you think this war and/or france's opposition to it is totally amoral or the niftiest thing since sliced bread, can we at least disagree on this "patriotic"-renaming-of-food thing? it's stupid. what's next? are we going to boycott french's mustard for being anti-american? or will we reach a compromise if they agree to replace the simple red flag on their logo with a stars-and-stripes banner? argh.

but that's not even the ass-kicker. what made fuddrucker's look even dumber was how there were dozens of posters all over the dining room advertising their new MARDI GRAS BURGER. what the hell? so french fries are actually belgian, but the misleading "french" in their name is apparently so offensive to potential diners that it must be changed ... but a mardi gras burger, which is inspired by a holiday americans adapted from french heritage, is permitted and promoted?

i stepped up to the cashier when it was my turn and placed the order. he asked for my name so they could page me when the food was ready. without missing a beat, i responded with a shit-eating grin: "frenchie."