Thursday, October 04, 2007
Throwin' Up The Deuces
During one of our team meetings at work, our manager was going over our production numbers and letting us know how poorly we were doing in hitting the required numbers. Not only were we not meeting the minimum service level numbers as a group, but the minimum service levels were going to be increasing in each of the next three fiscal quarters.
Needless to say, the news was a blow to the team morale and people were frustrated. Specifically, many people felt that the sales numbers were were expected to get were unrealistic. And I can't say I necessarily disagreed with them. Somebody decided to share that with our manager who told us that the numbers are going away and we need to deal with it.
Exasperated, one of the black girls at my work turned to another black girl at my work and announced "Well if things don't change soon I'm gonna be throwing them up the deuces."
I had no idea what that meant, but the other girl nodded in emphatic agreement. She obviously knew what the first girl was talking about, because she was down with the slang. My curiosity was piqued.
I asked the first girl what "throwing up the deuces" meant. She explained that it is what you do when you quit a job; you throw up the deuces by giving a peace sign to your boss/company as a way of saying goodbye.
Upon hearing this, I immediately wanted to use it in every possible situation. Not so much the flashing peace to people like some damn hippie, but the ability to brag to someone that yes, I, whitey, not only knew what "throwing up the deuces meant" but actually used it in the proper context.
Well today, that dream came true; I threw up the deuces to my job. I still work for the same company, but on Monday I start at a different office, in a different position. They gave me a box to pack up my cubicle. As you can tell from the picture of all my personal belongings, I didn't really need it. I took the mentality of Ryan the temp, from "The Office," who claimed if he had to, he could clean out his desk in 5 seconds. I packed up my pens, a pad of paper, a stress ball that the company gave me, and a picture of my favorite word that a friend of mine gave to me. That's it. No inspirational posters, no plant, no fitting comic strip about office life. Besides, not that I read it everyday, but no Dilbert strips have ever accurately portrayed anything close to the things that happened to my office.
I don't think anyone would be able to print a comic strip that did.
