Guest Star: Kyle

We have our first guest blogger! Kyle and Pearl are too lazy to write their own blogs on a regular basis...and let's be honest, so am I...so I volunteered a couple guest spots for them.  Enjoy!


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The name is Kyle. And I am a File Clerk Extraordinaire! Many of you may be asking yourselves, what is a File Clerk (extraordinaire)? Is there a concentration on the FILE part, or the CLERK portion? I am here to tell you that I… literally have no idea. Here’s the deal, back in 2008, I was working in Satan’s armpit, better known as a “Customer Service Call Center” for a top 4 (and I say top 4 because it was fourth, but it sounds special, right?) insurance company. I wanted a new job, I answered a job posting on Craigslist.com, interviewed for the position and within a week from when I answered the ad, I started. On my first day on the job, I was given a desk, I filled out a bunch of papers, and I met a ton of people… I still had no idea 1.) What my job title was or what I’d be doing for the company and 2.) what the company even did.

As time went on and I found that I was their “file clerk” I just basically knew where everything was (including the files in the office) and did a bunch of lame work around the office all day. Being that it happened to be a Law Firm, that gave me “Law Experience” and now I am trapped in the Law World… it’s very unfulfilling

Keeping up with joy of doing everything and nothing, I now have my current job. Where anything and everything can fall on my shoulders, or in my lap or my “capable” hands or whatever euphemism you deem worthy.

The unpredictability of my job makes it worth coming into work everyday. Well, at least that is what I like to tell myself. Like most people I do suffer through the monotony of a “9-5” office job. I have a cubicle, I fight epic battles with copy machines, I hate people who AREN’T stuck in a cubicle and don’t have to fight losing battles with copy machines. Every other red blooded American has to do it day in and day out as well… yet for some reason, the weird stuff happens to me.

Example: Friday before a 3-day weekend. The morning is quiet. Many staff and attorneys alike are off taking advantage of the warm San Diego sun, and making a threeday weekend into a 4 (and in some cases, 5 day) weekend. Those bastards. Needless to say not everyone was gone, and a lot of people were slated to wander in late. I get a heads up from the receptionist that a rather large package (giggity) has arrived with the words emblazoned “PERISHABLE” all over the box. I knew that the person that it was addressed to would be in the office later that day, and really, how perishable can something in cardboard box be that it cannot wait in room temperatures for a few hours? (Did I mention that I was horrible with math and science in school?) However as I am walking passed the legal assistant for said recipient, I am stopped and escorted to the kitchen where the box is SUPPOSED to go. Apparently SOME people already knew this box was arriving.

“This needs to go in the freezer.” She tells me “Lets make some room.” And of course she wanted me to do it… it was NOT going to be a team effort. I rearranged all of TV dinners that were in the freezer (seriously that was all that was in there) and made all kinds of room on the one shelf, but still there was not enough room in the freezer.

“Let’s unpack the box and put them in the freezer separately, that way it will all fit” she suggests (she is also brilliant) and I figure, I don’t really have a better idea… so I rip the box open to find a layer of Styrofoam… interesting… by now she decides that she wants to… ‘help’ so she lifts the sheet of Styrofoam up and SCREAMS. Which in turn made me drop the sharp scissors I was holding, and of course wonder out loud “WHAT THE F**K?”

“KELP? That’s why you screamed?”

“I wasn’t expecting to see kelp… it was a little unexpected” which, I hate to say was the truth… I wouldn’t have guessed that either. Along with the layers upon layers of Kelp where a few bags of clams (I assumed… I’m not big into marine life) so we decided that we would take the bags of clams, put them in zip lock bags, and then put THOSE in the freezer. Around the third bag we figure we have to dig deeper into the kelp to get the rest of the contents of the box. So, I go a little deeper and notice a banded claw.

Yay. Dead lobster. At least… I thought. So not really thinking twice about it I turn to her and said “I think there are some lobsters in here… don’t freak out” I turn back around… the lobsters that I thought were dead, are in fact, very much alive and over was trying to scurry backward out of the box. Cue shenanigans. It was my turn to squeal!

What the hell!? Who sends live lobsters via UPS in a BOX and not expect… well… what happened to happen!?!

So, a oh so helpful attorney (note sarcasm) came bounding into the kitchen with a Dudley Dooright grin all over his face

“These lobsters are alive!” I shouted to him.

“Well of course they are alive!”

“…Well I didn’t know that”

Then Captain DB decides to wax poetically about his first job, which was banding lobsters on a fishing boat in the atlantic… “if there is one thing I know, it’s shellfish. Kyle let me tell you, you never want to cook dead shellfish, it should always be alive…”

At this point, I walk away while he is talking. I have other crazy things to take care of.

Clearly the most sensible thing to do at this junction in the adventure is to replace everything, seal it back up, and place it out of the sun in the person’s office… which is what I was trying to do in the first place.