| I arrived, for the last time, to my IBM office at about 10:00. By 11:30, I had finished my last edit.
At about noon, I had my last lunch in the Tivoli cafeteria. Ironically enough, I was delighted to see that they’d brought the “Personal Size Pizza” station back, but the pizza I got from it—a ham and cheese one—was really not very good. It was overcooked. At about 1:30, I called Woody Oliver over to “check out.” I gave him my lap top, my office key, and my badge. Woody is quality people, and as I believe I mentioned previously in an entry, I can’t think of a better person to whom I’d rather say my final goodbye at IBM. |
This is the last thing I took of my office wall. I almost forgot it:
Back when I first started this blog and my friend Jay heard that my URL was going to have “Daily Affirmation” in it, he made me this mirror, as an allusion of course, to the SNL Stuart Smalley sketches, which eventually lead to Al Franken’s book, I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!: Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley.
I was supposed to meet Nathan, my financial advisor, at 2:00, but just as I was getting ready to leave IBM, he called to postpone the meeting until next Wednesday.
I took advantage of the opportunity to go directly to the Jiffy Lube for an oil change. The TV in the little lobby in that place was entirely too loud. After the other two people who were there left, I got up and turned it down.
Then a girl came in who was one of those people who are totally oblivious to the possibility that one might lower one’s voice on her cell phone call, or a thousand times less likely to think about just stepping outside the door to have her conversation in a place where other people weren’t forced to listen to the entire thing.
“Yeah, gurl. I’m tellin’ ya. I had just started pumpin’ my gas when this man came out, and he went to da signs, and he changed da price from $3.89 a gallon to $4.89 a galloon! Yes, gurl. A dollah! Right in the middle of my pumpin’. But he let me finish at da old price.”
I heard this story three times. For one call, each instance of “gurl” was replaced with “boy.”
I met Joe at Flex, where we played a few games of pool and eventually made our way to The Borough. Joe sat down, ordered one soda (for him) and one water (for me), while I used the restroom.
When I got back, we were still waiting for a menu, and waited and waited while the two servers/bartenders talked with other customers and while Liz, the owner/manager, gave someone at the other end of the bar a little back rub.
Finally, one of the servers walked behind the bar in front of us, and ignored us while she poured a draught beer for someone.
“Can we have a menu, please?” I asked. She lightly “tossed” the menu on the bar, which with the state we were in by then, was more like throwing it at us. She walked away.
A minute or so later, I was fuming by then, one of the servers walked behind us on the patron side of the bar, and I stopped her, “How much is this soda?” I asked.
“Uh, I don’t know, like a $1.35,” and then as an after thought, she said, “I’m sure someone will be right over to take your order.”
We put $1.50 down on the bar and walked out of there.
This is at least the second time now that it would appear that we’re “bothering” the staff ordering after 1:00 in there. Here’s an idea. If you don’t want to serve patrons food that late, then close the kitchen at a certain time, and just serve drinks.
We really hate that this has happened more than once now, as we really like this place and want to give it our business. However, I’m not the type to keep coming back for more of something that leaves a bad taste in my mouth—or never even gets to my mouth to taste at all.
From there we stopped by Sammy’s but they had stopped serving food at 1:30, and so we just missed it. We drove through the 24-hour Burger King drive-thru, where we got their two double cheeseburgers for $3.00 special. Got off cheap at least.