Greetings Manifestites! The other night I was chatting with a friend via IM, and I relayed the story I'm about to write up, and we agreed that even though it happened almost 15 years ago that it's well worth telling. So, I bring you the story of Morphy, the cable guy.
I also decided to expand this a bit, and am inviting submissions from anyone out there that wants to relay a good story. If you have something that you think might be a good Donks of the Past story, please email it to me at xaqmorphy@gmail.com. I'll post these as often as I receive them. If I receive many of them, I'll pick a winner who will receive, well, nothing, but having something on the Manifesto should be praise in and of itself. Self-inflicted accidental injuries are always a favorite, as are driving incidents and of course just all-around donkishness. Ok, on with it now.
The year is, umm, 1994 maybe. I'm working for a distribution company in a newish office building with a big warehouse attached. The building is set up so that the whole thing is basically 2 stories, but in the office areas, the ceiling is dropped down to a standard 14 ft. height or whatever the typical standard ceiling height is. There was no 2nd floor, as everything above the drop ceiling was open, up to the upper ceiling of the building. The warehouse of course was wide open all the way around.
When it came time to upgrade the old coax network to cat5, the drop ceiling made it really easy to get things set up. We had contractors drop most of the cable, but there were a few out of the way locations that we decided to cable ourselves. This is where I come in. As the youngest person on staff, I was often volunteered for jobs that no one else wanted to do. "Morphy, here, go stand on this wheeled chair on the file floor and adjust the security camera." "Morphy, go underneath the filed floor and bring the power whip from one side of the room to the other (while we cover the floor tiles back up)." "Morphy, for some reason we used 50 ft. phone cables to connect these 16 modems to the PBX, even though they are on opposite sides of the wall. The extra cables were just stuffed in the wall and/or under the floor. Take them all apart, one at a time so we don't lose connectivity, and replace them with nice 3 ft. cables." "Morphy, fill up this guy's cube who is on vacation with balloons." "Morphy, shrink wrap the asshat who keeps giving you these tasks to a pallet and ship him to New York." You know, standard procedure stuff like that.
So here's the task: run a cable from room 1 to room 3. Room 2 happens to be the main senior management conference room which is in between rooms 1 and 3. Senior management happens to be in a week long series of all day meetings to try and save the company from bankruptcy (translation: coming up with lists of people to lay off). So, it's not like we can just go into the conference room, remove a ceiling tile every few feet and feed the cable through. We also needed this up and running immediately, so we couldn't even wait until that evening to do it. Yup, you guessed it..."Morphy, climb up this ladder and walk this cable 30 ft. or so across the ceiling and drop it down into room 3."
Oh sure, I bet you're sitting there asking yourself how they expected me to walk across a drop ceiling. Well, I was in luck (?!?!?) because there was a 6" or so wide girder about a foot above the drop ceiling that ran the length of the room, and a pipe/girder thing above that to hold onto. The plan: they tie the cable to my belt loop, and I carefully walk across the girder, holding onto the pipe as support. When I reach the other end someone hands me a wire cutters, I snip the cable, feed it through the hole in the tile, and someone was even going to be nice enough to put another ladder there for me to climb down. As those Guiness guys from the commercials say: BRILLIANT! Come on readers, you should know better by now. The astute reader should even be able to figure out what happens next...
About half-way across the girder, there's one of those air vent thingers, and I basically have to work my way around it. Now I'm not really sure what happened next, and of course no one admitted anything, so I never did find out. One of a few things happened: I either lost my footing, some jackass pulled on the cable attached to me, the cable became stuck somewhere, or we had a minor earthquake that made me lose my balance (those aren't very common in Wisconsin, by the way). Whatever happened there, the next thing I know, I'm falling through the air, and THUD, I hit the conference room table. That's right folks, right through the drop ceiling, and smack onto almost the exact fucking middle of the conference room table where at that exact time, management was deciding the fate of some of my co-workers.
For what seemed like an eternity that was more like about 2 seconds, nothing happened. I looked up, saw a lot of really surprised looks, and blurted out the first thing that came to my mind: "oh my god, I'm so sorry I interrupted your meeting!" Most of the room still sat there with dazed looks on their faces, but one guy actually picked up a pen and wrote something down! I then regained my senses and said "hey, you aren't going to fire me for this, are you?" THEN the room broke out in laughter, about the same time my colleagues burst through the door.
After everyone managed to settle down, we evaluated the situation, and were completely amazed at what we found. Other than a bruise on my hip, no one was hurt. No less than 5 ceiling tiles fell along with the metal brackets, and I dodged everything that could have caused injury: coffee cups, staplers, pens/pencils, the projector, everything. No cups were spilled. One guy got hit in the head with a piece of one ceiling tile, but they were light weight enough that he wasn't hurt at all. I went right in between 2 big light fixtures, and they didn't move at all. Nothing. Just falling what was at least 10 ft. onto a hard table, that's all. Just another day on the job I guess!
I didn't live that one down for months. No one ever did fess up or even really speculate as to what happened. I had a feeling I knew who did it, but I think his little impromptu trip to New York settled the score quite nicely. If he didn't do it...ummm...dude, I'm sorry.
Yours Donkily,
Morphy
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Donk Donk Walla Walla Donk Donk
Greetings fellow Manifestites! So some strange things are going on. I’m not sure if they’ve suddenly gotten smarter, or organized in some way, but the donkeys have been really quiet lately. About a month ago someone asked when I was going to update the blog. I had nothing then. It’s a month later, and, umm, I got nothin’ really worthwhile.
I guess the problem is, I am pretty picky as to what I consider blogworthy material. It’s not every day you get 2 idiots to almost blow themselves up 20 ft. off the ground (see Darwin Tried: Chicken Fried Donk), and once something like that happens, the bar raises just a little bit. After that, the typical idiot running a red light while on the phone and nearly killing an old lady walking across the street just doesn’t seem as interesting. But, I realize that there are fans out there, and all of you are anxiously awaiting my next entry, to see what sort of donks I run into next. As I’ve said in the past, there are a few things that go on at work that could make it, but I would rather keep things in the workplace off of the blog. I did run into a real interesting situation with Citrix, which is the software company that makes the main product I support every day, but since my average reader likely doesn’t understand what Citrix is or does, it’s pretty hard to make sense out of it.
Now, that said, one thing did cross my desk yesterday that I feel is at least worth a mention. I want to warn readers who managed to get this far without falling asleep from the boredom that this isn’t one of the better entries. I almost didn’t post it, but our motto of quantity over quality rang out, and I decided to go with it. It doesn’t end with the usual jaw-dropping, mind-numbing donkishness that I usually run into, but I did chuckle a number of times while reading my end of the exchange below, so I figured it was good enough to post.
I was going through my morning routine of attempting to wake up, read a bunch of emails from people who spend all day complaining about this and that, and generally attempt to look busy, when I decided to check my gmail account. Let’s see, hand histories from WPX that take 5 hours to get there that I totally forgot about, some newsletter crap from various poker sites I don’t play on, a tracking number from www.woot.com for something I don’t remember buying, and hey…what’s this:
FROM MRS ELA BIBANG.
This is my private email address elabibang1@yahoo.fr
For introduction i am the wife LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA. He was accused of plotting to overthrow the government with two others namely LT COL FELIPE ESONO NTUMU and LT COL ANTIMO EDU.They are currently held in the maximum security prison in NIGERIA under inhuman conditions as we were meant to understand by some of the human right watch observers who have visited them.
They fled the country and sought refuge in CAMEROUN from where they proceded to NIGERIA.
They where apprehended by the NIGERIAN authorities and ever since then no news and sign of their release.
My children and i have fled to the REPUBLIC OF IVORY COAST for our safety after passing through hell in the hands of the security operatives/agents of the government.
Why i have written to you is for help ;i want you to help us get some funds stashed in a finance house in holland by my husband the worth is $2.5million.
This was money meant for the purchase of ammunition which was never used due to the accusations and his eventual escape.
I have the address of the company and contact and hope that you will understand my plight and help us.
once you have shown interest and ready to help i will divulge the information so that you will make the necessary transaction and secure the funds for us.
We shall discuss your percentage when you have notified me of your interest.
we need this funds for our upkeep and eventual migration to europe.
I await your mail.
Conatct me through this private email address elabibang1@yahoo.fr .
MRS ELA BIBANG
Hey, a typical Nigerian 419 scam. I get these from time to time and typically just delete them. But, something struck me as overly funny about this one, so I decided not to delete it, and maybe come back later and read it again. These are pretty strange, because they are so obviously scams, but there are enough morons out there who get their bank accounts wiped out by these criminals that it’s apparently worth it for them to write up these emails and spam the world.
I came back a few hours later after dealing with something particularly annoying, and read the email again. I decided I couldn’t let it go:
FROM XAQ MORPHY. WITH URGENT ATTENTION NEEDING.
Good day. I am XAQ MORPHY originating from ODS, RGP, WTF and PDQ. I just received your message of urgency and want to be providing my assistance because the happenings of circumstances to be coincidental cannot be passed up.
In 1963 I was stationed in the Moroncan Navy in the small fishing village of Dawnkei. It was here that I had I met the man later introduced to me as LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA. I also had the extreme pleasure of meeting his twin brothers, E. Walla and O. Walla.
It was to be my mission of protecting the citizens of that small fishing village, so many years ago. As you know, many governments in so-called foreign nations are having corruptness in the experiences of dealing with national citizens. This I am sure you have been witnessed of.
While in the village of Dawnkei I was extremely lucky to have had the experience of having my life saved by Mr. BIBANG and his brothers Walla and Walla. While performing my morning constitutional rituals, I was attacked by many ravenous WILDEBEESTS. FLORENCIO and his private Ting Ting saved me from sure doom. Unfortunately LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA was forced to leave Dawnkei, and I was unable to repay the needful favor. To him I am owing my life.
Please letting me know how I may be of assistance. I have waited many years for the contact of this email, and now is the time to be performing acts of goodwill to those that have allowed my stay in this lifetime to continue. Please do the needful and allow me to save you and your family.
Sincerely,
Mr. MORPHY
I still chuckle reading that, so if anything, I’m amused, which makes this post a success. I was surprised to actually receive a reply today, but it appears that my attempt at humor was seen as just that:
ELA BIBANG to me
you are very very funny.
i like your sense of humuor.
keep it up.
by bye
So Mrs. BIBANG, I’m glad I was able to brighten your day. I imagine scamming stupid people out of thousands of dollars can get depressing now and then. I’m glad I could help. Now, if you could please do the needful and send me your bank account information and mailing address, I will send you your share of my life’s savings, ONE THIRD OF THIRTY FIVE CENTS IN US CURRENCY.
Yours Donkily,
Morphy
I guess the problem is, I am pretty picky as to what I consider blogworthy material. It’s not every day you get 2 idiots to almost blow themselves up 20 ft. off the ground (see Darwin Tried: Chicken Fried Donk), and once something like that happens, the bar raises just a little bit. After that, the typical idiot running a red light while on the phone and nearly killing an old lady walking across the street just doesn’t seem as interesting. But, I realize that there are fans out there, and all of you are anxiously awaiting my next entry, to see what sort of donks I run into next. As I’ve said in the past, there are a few things that go on at work that could make it, but I would rather keep things in the workplace off of the blog. I did run into a real interesting situation with Citrix, which is the software company that makes the main product I support every day, but since my average reader likely doesn’t understand what Citrix is or does, it’s pretty hard to make sense out of it.
Now, that said, one thing did cross my desk yesterday that I feel is at least worth a mention. I want to warn readers who managed to get this far without falling asleep from the boredom that this isn’t one of the better entries. I almost didn’t post it, but our motto of quantity over quality rang out, and I decided to go with it. It doesn’t end with the usual jaw-dropping, mind-numbing donkishness that I usually run into, but I did chuckle a number of times while reading my end of the exchange below, so I figured it was good enough to post.
I was going through my morning routine of attempting to wake up, read a bunch of emails from people who spend all day complaining about this and that, and generally attempt to look busy, when I decided to check my gmail account. Let’s see, hand histories from WPX that take 5 hours to get there that I totally forgot about, some newsletter crap from various poker sites I don’t play on, a tracking number from www.woot.com for something I don’t remember buying, and hey…what’s this:
FROM MRS ELA BIBANG.
This is my private email address elabibang1@yahoo.fr
For introduction i am the wife LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA. He was accused of plotting to overthrow the government with two others namely LT COL FELIPE ESONO NTUMU and LT COL ANTIMO EDU.They are currently held in the maximum security prison in NIGERIA under inhuman conditions as we were meant to understand by some of the human right watch observers who have visited them.
They fled the country and sought refuge in CAMEROUN from where they proceded to NIGERIA.
They where apprehended by the NIGERIAN authorities and ever since then no news and sign of their release.
My children and i have fled to the REPUBLIC OF IVORY COAST for our safety after passing through hell in the hands of the security operatives/agents of the government.
Why i have written to you is for help ;i want you to help us get some funds stashed in a finance house in holland by my husband the worth is $2.5million.
This was money meant for the purchase of ammunition which was never used due to the accusations and his eventual escape.
I have the address of the company and contact and hope that you will understand my plight and help us.
once you have shown interest and ready to help i will divulge the information so that you will make the necessary transaction and secure the funds for us.
We shall discuss your percentage when you have notified me of your interest.
we need this funds for our upkeep and eventual migration to europe.
I await your mail.
Conatct me through this private email address elabibang1@yahoo.fr .
MRS ELA BIBANG
Hey, a typical Nigerian 419 scam. I get these from time to time and typically just delete them. But, something struck me as overly funny about this one, so I decided not to delete it, and maybe come back later and read it again. These are pretty strange, because they are so obviously scams, but there are enough morons out there who get their bank accounts wiped out by these criminals that it’s apparently worth it for them to write up these emails and spam the world.
I came back a few hours later after dealing with something particularly annoying, and read the email again. I decided I couldn’t let it go:
FROM XAQ MORPHY. WITH URGENT ATTENTION NEEDING.
Good day. I am XAQ MORPHY originating from ODS, RGP, WTF and PDQ. I just received your message of urgency and want to be providing my assistance because the happenings of circumstances to be coincidental cannot be passed up.
In 1963 I was stationed in the Moroncan Navy in the small fishing village of Dawnkei. It was here that I had I met the man later introduced to me as LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA. I also had the extreme pleasure of meeting his twin brothers, E. Walla and O. Walla.
It was to be my mission of protecting the citizens of that small fishing village, so many years ago. As you know, many governments in so-called foreign nations are having corruptness in the experiences of dealing with national citizens. This I am sure you have been witnessed of.
While in the village of Dawnkei I was extremely lucky to have had the experience of having my life saved by Mr. BIBANG and his brothers Walla and Walla. While performing my morning constitutional rituals, I was attacked by many ravenous WILDEBEESTS. FLORENCIO and his private Ting Ting saved me from sure doom. Unfortunately LT COL FLORENCIO BIBANG of EQUATORIAL GUINEA was forced to leave Dawnkei, and I was unable to repay the needful favor. To him I am owing my life.
Please letting me know how I may be of assistance. I have waited many years for the contact of this email, and now is the time to be performing acts of goodwill to those that have allowed my stay in this lifetime to continue. Please do the needful and allow me to save you and your family.
Sincerely,
Mr. MORPHY
I still chuckle reading that, so if anything, I’m amused, which makes this post a success. I was surprised to actually receive a reply today, but it appears that my attempt at humor was seen as just that:
ELA BIBANG to me
you are very very funny.
i like your sense of humuor.
keep it up.
by bye
So Mrs. BIBANG, I’m glad I was able to brighten your day. I imagine scamming stupid people out of thousands of dollars can get depressing now and then. I’m glad I could help. Now, if you could please do the needful and send me your bank account information and mailing address, I will send you your share of my life’s savings, ONE THIRD OF THIRTY FIVE CENTS IN US CURRENCY.
Yours Donkily,
Morphy
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