REMEMBER THAT STAR TREK EPISODE WHERE TIME GOT SPED UP AND KIRK AND BONES SOUNDED LIKE MOSQUITOS? YEAH, ME TOO.

There is a place where we get our material to do the electrical magic that we weave. It's like a big hardware store where we are the mosquitos and the men staffing it are the molasses slow people that they are. Part of it is just the karma of the place, the other part is the lethargy of government employees, people who have been doing the same fucking thing for years, have their eyes on that magic number for being fully vested and retirement. They are slow like old people fuck, and over the months we have gotten used to it. Now don't get me wrong, these guys running this store are good people.
The boss is one of the coolest over 50 guys I have ever met...a real people person, he should have been a politician what with all the hand shaking and heartfelt gratuities offered to any and all that cast a shadow on this counter. He is also the most excellent at fucking with people, a skill we have observed while waiting on his old people fucking staff to gather our material, inevitably to come to us saying " need your help with this wire mold stuff" and we go back into the warehouse to help them find stuff they have have been issuing for YEARS, yet they cannot or will not learn what the fuck it is despite their tenure. Ahhh, the joys of government employment...make your six months probation period and it takes an act of god (or sodomy in the middle of the parking lot) to get you gone. Make your probationary period and you have permission to join the slow and stupid club. Not that any of these guys are slow and stupid, it's the system that is and they have just been sucked into it. They are state employees and state employees are expected to be slow and stupid, just like the organization they represent. Higher ups spends hours in meetings constantly redefining and fine tuning the stupidity by applying that tried and true fosterer (is that even a word? It is now:)) of all that is stupid and useless. The byproduct of many intellects gathered together in one room on the premise of making things run more smoothly, failing on a grand scale almost every time. Management, thy name is sloth.
Up until today today we would enter the store and fill out our own order forms. Today we were told that we should give a list of our needs to the staff and thay would transpose it to the order form and we could come back to pick up our pulled order later. We placed our order at 10am, we were told to come back after lunch to pick it up (12:30). Remember that "we need your help with that wire mold stuff" line in the last paragraph? Yeah...that happened, only 2 and a half hours after the fact. Instead of the usual 45 minutes to an hour it took us to get our material, it took over 3 hours.
Hooray management! Hooray effeciency!! Hooray for people who cannot find their ass with a map and both hands on said ass.
Productivity was a lie today, and we choked on it.
Along the same lines, but funnier, was something that happened to us this afternoon. Yesterday we first entered the electrical room that has the transformer, main panel, etc. for the job we are on. Inside this room , on the floor, was a chair cushion propped against the wall with a double layer of cardboard the length of a man beneath it. A place to crash, in other words. Some resourceful maintainence man had found a place to ride the clock while enjoying the blissfull sleep that is reclining on cardboard on that neverending quest to being fully vested without putting in the actual fucking time.
Today we went to this electrical room and met him...I placed the key in the lock...I turned the knob and pushed...hard...it's a heavy wooden door, right into the face of a government employee. HARD, I clocked his ass with this door, and the light came on AFTER I clocked him. I knocked his glasses askew, but to his credit, he rebounded on the obvious saying "hey, guys, how's it going? Working hard? " And he blazed down the stairwell like a raccoon making it's escape after being interrupted liberating your trash can. My journeyman felt the cardboard and it was still warm. BUSTED. For the rest of the day I was "maintainence man killer".
You gotta love it.