Hypochondriac.

So I'm getting sued. Well, not really sued per se, but someone has filed a pretty serious official grievance against me. Lawyers are going to have to get involved, and it looks like it could get messy. Anyway, it's too early to be talking about that subject yet. Maybe another time.

Today I'd like to discuss The Hypochondriac.

The "wash your hands" segment of a collection had never taken this long. The woman rinsed her hands under the water, then pumped a huge glob of soap onto her palm. Then another huge glob. She lathered vigorously until flecks of white were shooting off in all directions. She then scrubbed under the water until all the soap was gone... and went back for a second helping.

She asked if it was antibacterial soap. She asked if it was a disinectant. She asked if it was just generic hand sanitizer, because that stuff doesn't really wash your hands, it just makes them slippery.

"It's just generic store-brand hand soap," I tell her. "It's the kind you'd get at a supermarket."

This answer does not appease her. I wonder momentarily if she buys her soap online from some kind of top secret alarmist hand-washing website. www.rubthemrawandbloody.com, perhaps?

She asks if she can take her little moist mini-wipes in the bathroom with her. She says she can't use my toilet paper. She looks disappointed when I explain that she can't, and why she can't, but she accepts reality and moves on. The Hypochondriac is a little crazy, but she isn't mean or impolite.

In her opinion I am a massive slob with no redeeming value whatsoever, but she's nice enough not to point this out explicitly.

And it's true; I am something of a slob. Cleanliness is not high on my list of priorities. Which isn't to say I'm a disgusting mess, of course, just that I'm disorganized and a little dirt and grime don't bother me. I'm what you'd call a "before" cleaner. I do the dishes before I cook. I make the bed before I get into it. I tidy up the living room before company comes over. I wait until practicality demands that something be cleaned before cleaning it.

The toilet, as far as I'm concerned, is not a device that needs to be cleaned routinely. If it smells particularly foul, or something happens to it that isn't supposed to happen to a toiilet (bad aim, for example) then yes, clean it up. But cleaning it just to say it's clean? Why bother?

This "meh" attitude towards cleanliness doesn't carry over to the office, however. Some people like their potties to be pristine, and I can't hold that against them. My toilet gets a big ole' deep clean once a week, with periodic wipe-downs inbetween as needed. The water is blue and beautiful. Something's wrong with the flushing mechanism and the water drains continuously (whistling like a tea kettle all the merry way) until I manually reach in and tap the plug, but that's my only real gripe with the toilet.

Point is, the toilet in my office is cleaner than the toilet in your house. Yes, we both know it's the truth. Fact is, I'd wager my toilet is cleaner than most toilets in most offices or businesses in the area, if only because I have the time to do a once-over every time someone uses it.

Still, The Hypochondriac scouts out the bathroom for a few moments before asking where I keep the paper seat covers.

"Sorry," I say, "I don't have any. Is there a problem with the toilet seat?"

"When was the last time it was cleaned?"

"Friday afternoon, before I left." It is now Monday morning. The Hypochondriac leans in and whispers to me, "You should talk to your cleaning staff, I don't think they did a very good job."

"I cleaned it myself," I admitted. "Nobody's been here all weekend, I assure you."

"Did you clean it today?"

"No."

"What about the three ladies ahead of me?"

I glance around the bathroom, thinking maybe I missed something. "It doesn't look like they left any messes. Is there a problem?"

"It's not very well lit in here, either..."

"My apologies," I stammer, not really sure how to help this woman with her plight.

"Do you have some disinfectant cleaner? I can't use this toilet."

"I do not. I used the last of it up cleaning my counters on Friday." The cleaner I use is a Pine Sol and water solution, and I use it to clean pretty much everything in the office. I like to do this on Friday afternoon because the smell of Pine Sol makes me gag. By the time I open up Monday morning the odor is gone, but everything is still clean.

In any case I don't have any left; my trusty spray bottle is empty until I get some more supplies in. Given my track record with securing supplies in a timely manner, I may or may not get a fresh bottle by this Friday.

Without a word The Hypochondriac pumps some hand soap onto a stack of paper towels and sets to work scrubbing the toilet. She scrubs the seat. She scrubs under the seat. She scrubs the base. She scrubs the tank. She scrubs the handle. She comes back out for more soap. She comes back out for dry towels. After she's soaped, rinsed and dried the entire counter, discarded her spent paper towels and re-washed her hands she asks me if I have any glass cleaner for the mirror.

The miror looks fine to me. There's a scratch in one corner where the mirror-y stuff is starting to peel off, but otherwise it accomplishes its task admirably. "Ma'am, you don't need to clean the mirror."

"Sorry," she replies, "it just looks really dirty to me."

I hand her the cup and give her the rules again. She has spent seven minutes, half a bottle of hand soap and the better part of an entire stack of paper towels to wash my bathroom. After she's done she apologizes again, then explains herself by saying, "It's just that a dirty bathroom is a major health hazard. It's not right to make people go in a filthy bathroom..."

To clear up a bit of misinformation -- you can't catch something off a toilet seat. For one thing bacteria have a rough time of it on the cold, smooth surface of the seat. Microscopic critters prefer warm, wet places to be fruitful and multiply. A toilet seat is neither warm nor wet. There's probably a better chance of harmful bacteria breeding on the paper seat cover than the seat itself.

For another, you can't catch things with your butt. Even if the seat were slick with unmentionable nastiness, the worst thing you'd have to deal with is wiping the mess off of yourself after you stood back up. This is assuming, of course, that you don't have a gaping open wound on your butt cheek, in which case I would be more worried about the person after you. You get sick by touching your hands to nasty things, and then exposing your hands to the openings on your body. For example, your mouth.

Here's a quick guide to getting sick off a toiilet seat. Step one: wait until someone pees all over it. Women who "hover" will accomplish this task quite nicely. (Isn't it a double standard that men are expected to put the seat down, but hovering women aren't? Maybe that's a post for another day...) Step two: wipe the seat clean with your hands. Step four (and this is important): do not wash your hands. Step five: patty you up some hamburgers, again without washing your hands. Make sure the beef is fresh, though, otherwise you'd be able to blame your food poisoning on ratty food and not a dirty commode. Finally, step six: add ketchup and enjoy!

Look, we all know people who won't use a public restroom. We all know people who don't know the difference between "looks clean", "is clean" and "smells clean". Something can look clean and be dirty, or look dirty and be clean. I used to get a lot of complaints that my office smelled dirty until I added an air freshener, and then the complaints stopped. Note that I didn't actually start cleaning more, I just changed the scent. That's enough to trick most people.

The irony is you're probably safer licking a toilet seat than licking your cell phone, or the doorknob to your house, or the clean laundry that's been sitting in your drawer all week.

The Hypochondriac gathered her things and left as demurely as she entered. She never raised her voice with me. She didn't try to argue. Although she looked disappointed that my office did not meet her impossible standards of immaculate cleanliness, I think she understands that nobody's bathroom except her own could possibly stack up.

Which gives me an idea for a new reality show. How Clean Is Your Bathroom? Little old grannies everywhere duke it out to see who can be the spic-and-spanniest! Coming this fall on Fox.

I apologize to all of my readers in case www.rubthemrawandbloody.com turns out to be a not-safe-for-work porn site. But in my defense I didn't make it a hyperlink, so you really only have yourselves to blame.

24, and wasting my life.

I just turned 24 last month, which means now I can file for financial aid as an independant student.

It may or may not surprise you to learn that I haven't been to school in about five years. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that since I couldn't get financial aid (students under 24 have to file as dependant students, meaning their parents need to pay for part of their education, and my parents weren't anywhere near in a position to do that) I would have to pay for school out of my own pocket, which wasn't an attractive prospect. The second is that I had no real direction; no clue what, in fact, I wanted to go to school for. Since I didn't have a goal in mind, it seemed ridiculous to me to pay out a huge portion of my income or, even worse, take out thousands in loans.

I love school and I love learning, but I couldn't really justify that much expense for what would simply amount to a way to kill time.

Anyway, what happened was I landed the peemeister gig. This job, for all the complaining I do about it, is extremely sweet. I don't have a boss or any co-workers. My duties are simple and leave me with lots of spare time to surf the internet, play video games, or generally goof around. I can even sleep if I want to, right here in the office, while on the clock. I don't make a huge amount of money, but I do keep my bills paid and have enough left to buy fun toys and keep my girlfriend happy. I have health insurance and a retirement plan. I am awesome at making and sticking to a budget. I am financially stable and almost completely content.

Almost.

See, the problem is that there's this nagging thing in my head telling me that I'm wasting my life. My mother and other various family members agree with it. I'm not in school, I'm not working towards a career, I have no plans to start a family, yadda yadda yadda. Just the typical nagging that anyone in my shoes would go through.

As far as I'm concerned, life is really good and as long as I'm not placing the burden of myself in anyone else's lap and as long as I'm having fun doing it, I should go ahead and stay the course. Making my family proud of me is not a huge priority. And anyway, I'm more stable financially and emotionally than most of them were at 24. I don't really want a career or a family. What I want is constant access to the internet and video games, and a paycheck every week that covers all my ridiculous nerd hobbies.

I've somehow managed to find myself in the exact position I've wanted to be in ever since I realized I'd have to work for a living, and people tell me it's not good enough. I figure if I ever find myself not enjoying life this much, and really wishing for something more, it's never to late to pick up and get started on something else. I'm lazy, but I'm not hopeless. I'm a slacker but I'm not irresponsible.

Well okay... maybe I'm a little irresponsible.

Anyway, for better or worse, I'm 24 now and as far as the federal government is concerned that means I can get free money to help go to school. And, working the job I do, I really have no reason not to. So I applied for my aid and we'll see what happens. Of course, since my birthday is in the summer it means I won't get anything in time to go to school until next year, but that's fine with me.

There's a stack of PlayStation games here I need to get through, anyway, and Monday starts another week at the pee clinic.

4:30 am on Sunday morning. This post brought to you by way too much caffeine. I should go to bed, but I'll play more Warcraft instead.

Classic Peemeister - You callin' me a liar!?

In honor of the complete and utter lack of anything interesting happening here the past few weeks, I've decided to go ahead and dredge up an old entry from my LiveJournal, back before the Peemeister blog existed. Here's a gem from December 9th, 2004.

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This is a strange tactic I see from time to time at my job, as well as various other places in the service industry: someone will lie about something, and when confronted with their lie, will yell "Are you calling me a liar!?"

This tactic works surprisingly well. Nobody likes to be called names and, what's more, nobody likes their customers to think they're being called names. The usual response starts with "No, but..." and then concludes with an explanation of what the problem is again and perhaps a possible way it can be solved (or an explanation of why it can't be solved). If the liar is really a wily one, at this point he will shout "So you ARE callin' me a liar!"

I mention this because I hear this particular line once in a while at work, where someone will try to weasel through this loophole or that, and when I call their bluff and they're out of options the only thing left for them to do is get confrontational. Today was an oddity in that I met three people who accused me of calling them liars, spaced evenly throughout the day.

Culprit #1: Mr. McBaldington. Mr. McBaldington is the baldest man in the universe. He shows up at 9:30 am to take a drug test. This wouldn't be a problem, except he was in at 8:10 am yesterday for a drug test as well, but for whatever reason could not contribute a sample. It's against the rules for me to take something after the 24 hour mark, so whenever someone wants to leave and come back at a later time I make it very clear that there is a 24-hour rule, that yes they will have to abide by it, yes I am open weekdays, no I will not stay late on my lunch hour, and no I am not open Saturdays so if it's Friday you'd better get here before 5:00 pm or else.

Yesterday when Mr. McBaldington wanted to leave I made it very clear that if he showed up at 8:11 am, that would be too late (actually I'd cut him some slack, but I don't tell people that up front). I also tell him that I open at 8:00, but if something comes up and I open late he's still out of luck even if the lateness is entirely my fault. I tell him he needs to be in by 5:00 today or he risks not getting the collection done at all.

Now, as it was I got to work on time this morning; with eleven minutes to spare even (for you math whizzes out there, that's 7:49 am). So when Mr. McBaldington shows up at 9:30, an hour and twenty minutes too late, I have no sympathy for him. So of course he says "Well I was here at 8:00 and you weren't open." This is, of course, a flat-out lie. Not only was I at work at 7:49, but I had done a collection by 7:59. I pointed this out on my sign-in sheet that someone had, in fact, signed in at 7:54 and had their collection done by 7:59. Mr McBaldington's response: "Are you calling me a liar?"

I told him no, but he should probably get his watch fixed because obviously it was running at least twelve minutes fast. I told him he would have to get new paperwork from his employer if he wanted to do a collection, and he stormed out. He was back at about 11:45 with new paperwork and his drug test was completed successfully.

Culprit #2: Evil Midget Woman. Evil Midget Woman came in and said she needed a drug test for her parole hearing (or whatever). This is a little out of the ordinary for me; it requires payment up front and an extra form. She wants to pay with her credit card, which is fine, except I have no way to run the card at my office so I have to call my bosses in Tampa. I get in touch with them, rattle off the card number, expiration date, yadda yadda yadda, and the card is declined.

Right then I noticed the number I thought was a 1 was actually a 7. I apologized and rattled off the number again with the 7 in its proper place. The card was declined once again.

I tilted the card and saw that the 7 was actually a 9, and I triple checked the card (by the way: white numbers on a white background is hard to read) to make sure I had it right this time (Evil Midget Woman was getting furious) and rattled it off again, but the card was still declined.

At this point, between me and the other office, all our information was correct. We confirmed it when Evil Midget Woman got on the phone herself. Eventually Tampa told me there was nothing they could do and she'd have to find some other way to pay, and hung up.

The woman informs me that she knows her card went through because it's not really a credit card; it's her debit card. And she, like, just put $126 or whatever in the account, so she knows it's good. I tell her, once again, the card was declined. Her response: "You calling me a liar, boy?" (The addition of "boy" to the question was comical because I towered over this woman. She was like two-foot-nothing. Like a hobbit with a drug problem.)

I told her no, but she'd have to straighten out her card with her bank before we could run it. It was agreed that she would pay with cash, but when she found out she'd need exact change (drug tests cost $38 and I don't keep cash at my office) she left in a huff.

Culprit #3: Teh Glassez. Teh Glassez comes in about 4:00 or so, interrupting my work on a Lord of the Rings jigsaw puzzle. Right away I have to stifle myself because this kid is a goth/punk wannabe with big thick coke-bottle glasses. Seriously, if Steve Urkel were emo... and white... he'd be Teh Glassez.

Now, Teh Glassez doesn't want to empty his pockets. He pouts for a bit until I tell him he can lock his wallet and wallet chain (HAH!) and his half-eaten pack of Starburst in the box. Box goes in the bathroom with you, key stays out here with me. Important to note: I never touch anyone's stuff. If they put it in the box, they put it in the box. And when we're done, they take it back out. So when we're done I watch Teh Glassez take his wallet, wallet chain and half-eaten pack of Starburst out of the box and that's that.

He shows up about a half-hour later saying he left some money in the box by accident, and could he please go back and get it? "Sure," I say, "you can go look. But I'm fairly sure you didn't leave anything in there. I checked it after you left and it was empty."

"Dude," says Teh Glassez in his hardest 'tryin' to sound like a tough guy' voice, "if it's not there I'm going to be somewhat cross, because the logical deduction would be that you took my money. Pray let us investigate, good sir." (He was actually a lot less cordial than this but it wouldn't be nice to reproduce his exact language here.)

I go back and unlock the box for him and, sure enough, it's empty. "Dude, where's my money?" says Teh Glassez. At this point I tell him I don't remember him putting any money into the box, or taking any out, and that all personal effects are solely his responsibility. If he did in fact lose some money (funny how he never mentioned how much) he'd be just out of luck.

"Dude, I put money in your box. What'd you do with it?"

"I didn't take anything out of that box, and there was nothing in there when you left."

"So are you calling me a liar?"

This is the third time I've been asked this today, and I'm sick of it. So I answer his question with a question: "Do you maintain that you put your money in this lockbox earlier today?"

"Yeah, I put it in there."

"Then yes, I am in fact calling you a liar."

Teh Glassez was shocked! He'd been called on his lies! The look on his face was priceless, and not just because of the black lipstick (seriously). He said he was going to call the police; I said fine, you can use my phone. I even have the number handy. He backed down. On his way out the door he said he'd be back with the police.

By this time it was ten minutes to closing time, so I decided to leave early. I am currently enjoying my last night of freedom, because between 7:49 and 8:10 tomorrow (whenever I feel like showing up for work) I will most assuredly be arrested and locked up tight.

It's been fun guys! Write to me in prison.

Suffice it to say, i did not actually go to prison. What a disappointment.