After Reading This, You May Associate Claussen Pickles With A Two to Four Pot Per Day Coffee Drinker You Have Never Met.



I just got back from the drinking fountain. Where I work there is no water cooler for workers to gather around and talk about important things like American Idol or Who wants To Be The Next Beloved American Homosexual? or how they hate their spouses or how precipitation is undesirable unless it is summer and you have plant life you want not to be dead. There used to be a water club, where you could pay $25 every three months to have the right to drink from a water cooler, but due to restructuring of my office that is no longer an option. I quit the water club several months ago, calling it a colossal waste of money.

<start digression>I am trying to use the word 'colossal' more often--It sort of sounds like Claussen, a name of a pickle company that for whatever reason, just suggests to me that its pickles will be nice and firm and delicious, unlike Vlassic, which sounds kind of like 'flaccid', an undesirable property for pickles to have. I have not purchased pickles in some time because my mom gave me some pickles she canned herself some months back. I haven't opened the jar yet, as I generally do not consume pickles very often at home unless I am barbecuing.<end digression>

I bought one of those miniature horses Pur filtered water pitchers that fits easily in the door of the office mini fridge for about $15. I still haven't purchased a replacement filter for that unit or the one in my refrigerator at home. Maybe I'll die because of it, but I suspect that the recommended switch time is far shorter than is needed. Maybe if you live in Mexico you should follow the switch times.

While I was at the drinking fountain I noticed a faint smell of ointment in the air, which I found to be extremely unpleasant and unfortunately not unfamiliar. I remembered that as I was walking to the fountain to fill my pitcher, I passed a coworker of mine who was walking back with a Mr. Coffee carafe full of water indicating that he was about to fire up another pot. This guy drinks an unbelievable amount of coffee every day. While I have 2-4 cups from the shared coffee maker every morning, this guy drinks 2-4 pots.

Being a pretty regular guy, I find myself making a beeline for the mens room a few times a morning on average, partly due to the 2-4 cups of coffee. The mens room closest to me has two crappers and two urinals. Each of the pairs of different types of human waste receptacles consists of one made for a tallish person and one for a shortish person. I am 6'2" so I always go for the back crapper, which happens to be the more spacious of the two--I think of it as 'the owner's box'. Quite often when I get to this crapper there is someone sitting down doing some work next door. By a wide margin, the 2-4 pot/day and another big coffee drinker are most frequently in that 'office'. I can tell who it is by their shoes.

I feel like I know these people really well, although we rarely speak to each other or even make eye contact at the sink on those occasions when we finish the job at the same time. If one of them retires , I think I'd go to the party and put a poster size close-up photo of their left shoe on a stand at the front of the room. Maybe I'll give a speech, telling how I first noticed the left New Balance when I sat down and realized that the gentleman in the next stall was snoring. Now that would really bring the house down! Imagine an office photo book that just shows from the left or right bottom of the pant leg and down...that would be the shiznitt, in my estimation.

So anyway, the 2-4 pot/day guy I have noticed has that same disturbing faint ointmenty smell coming from his stall every time. Like the case of the Spinal Tap drummer to die choking on vomit, this mystery is probably "best left unsolved". I wonder if this guy's house and car smell like ointment. Maybe his wife keeps him up until 4AM every night, violating the shit out of him, forcing him to load up on ointment every morning and drinking shitloads of coffee to stay awake.

Note: My initial plan was to write about how NFL players should start doing end zone celebrations glorifying their own personal transgressions, such as simulating driving drunk or have a teammate simulate sticking a needle into their ass and following it up by simulated weight lifting. Somehow this happened. If you have a celebration idea you would like to share, please submit it in the comments section.