I’m beginning to think the people I work with here are complete morons.

To protest the insanity and corruption of this place, I decided to wear my badge upside down. It was just the sort of thing that would earn me a quick reprimand, but I didn’t care. I wanted to make a statement.

Only thing is, nobody noticed. I’m serious. This is three days now and nobody so much as blinked. These are people who are supposed to be trained to look for anything out of the ordinary, and here I am, waltzing around with an upside down badge right under their noses.

Un-fricking-believable. What a week.

This mixture of hellish humidity and heat is sucking the ever living joy joy out of me.

Top it off, the female race found yet another occasion to twist the knife in my back just a wee bit more, this time while I was trying to enjoy a nice quiet dinner at my desk. So I’m sitting here, downing a few bites of cold baked ziti, when in walks this drop dead gorgeous bombshell, asking for help on a court paper she needed to find info on.

My mouth stuffed with ricotta cheese, I barely managed to choke it down as I dropped my fork and managed a friendly, muffled hello.

“Ok, let’s see what we got here.” I recovered slightly and took the paper she had. Her light and pleasant perfume was starting to make me dizzy.

It was something I needed to check in the state database, so I walked over and fired up the box to make an inquiry. In the meantime I tried some small talk.

“So… had enough of this humidity?”

“It’s alright,” she said in a bored tone. “Is this going to take long?”

“Oh.. uh.. no, should come up right away.” I felt my cheeks getting hot and tried so very hard not to stare at her figure. Checking her papers, I tried again to get a conversation going by pointing out a few things I thought might be worth checking out.

She wasn’t impressed. The printout finished, so I tore off the info and gave it to her.

“I haven’t seen you around before, are you working in the new –” I never got a chance to finish as she mumbled a curt “thanks” and quickly walked out.

“Goodbye,” I said wistfully, to no one in particular.

I have a coworker named Prue. I hate Prue. Prue takes to my desk like it’s her personal kitchen, leaving me a mess of Hurricane Katrina-like proportions that I have to clean up every time her shift finally and mercifully ends. Since I’m forced to share my desk with her due to the cramped conditions of our section, I have to endure a daily ritual of fumigating the thing so I can use it again after she leaves.

Today was no different, so I started checking the drawers for something I could use to clean up the coffee stains, grease spots, and other strange substances I’d prefer would remain unidentified. I found some nice pads in my right drawer and started scrubbing away. They seemed to do the job pretty well, and I thought maybe, for once, Prue had actually been considerate enough to leave some cleaning supplies behind, a humble admission to what a raging slob she was.

“Linc, what are you doing?” It was Leeza, a motormouth but a friendly coworker of mine.

“Just cleaning this crap up as usual.”

“But why are you using that??”

“Hey, it works good, and it was in the drawer, so why not?”

“Linc… that’s a tampon.”

I stopped scrubbing.

“What now?” I said weakly.

“It’s a tampon,” she repeated, then broke out in uncontrollable laughter.

My face darkened several shades of red as I quickly threw the “cleaning pad” away in disgust.

I hate Prue.

“Gotta go report another break-in at the impound,” John my co-worker said.

“Being that we currently got an 80 year old security guy guarding the place, I’m not too surprised. What’d they take now?”

“Copper.”

I looked up. “What?”

“They boosted copper from some of the cables that used to power the old buildings we don’t use anymore.”

“Who the hell steals copper?? We have like $50,000 cars just sitting there waiting to be driven out, and they go for copper?”

“Hey, it sells. And they took their sweet time too. We found where they broke in, along with a cooler and some empty beer cans they left behind. I think they’re gonna be coming back tonight.”

“So are you gonna go stake ‘em out?”

“Nope, denied overtime.”

“Frickin’ A’.”

“They’ll send a patrol to drive by every now and then.”

I leaned back in my seat. “You know, I never would have figured to boost copper in an impound lot. I’d go in there and go, “Oooooo, motorbikes!” then drive out with one of those babies. Who would think to steal copper?”

“Hey, three dollars a pound baby.”

“Besides you, smart ass.”

John just shrugged.

One thing about the media, when it comes to covering a story they obviously feel they can park anywhere they damn well please. I showed up to work today seeing my usual parking spaces taken up by several news vans, some of which were even double parked. Idiots.

I walked up to the building and noticed they were having a major press conference right outside the front entrance. Naturally, being the serious professional that I am, I started making faces at the cameras as I walked by. I heard a few snickers and quickly went inside before the spokesman had a chance to turn around and see who had just disrupted his live conference.

Fun day.

“Yo Linc! We just got a BOLO for a guy who’s White, Black, Asian, Hispanic and Indian.”

I snickered.

“No, seriously, we really got a BOLO for a guy who’s White, Black, Asian, Hispanic and Indian.” He showed me the printout.

“What the f-”

“Is that not messed up?”

“So… he’s a multicultural fugitive?” I rolled my eyes.

Sheesh, this job sometimes…