My mother hates her job. She works nights cleaning the Dixon Recreational Center on the OSU campus in Corvallis, Oregon. She is employed through the Willamette Valley Rehabilitation Center. They hire people with “special problems” who have difficulty finding jobs elsewhere. People with Teret’s syndrome, particular slowness of thought... Things like that. Although Mom doesn’t have such a problem, she oversees a cleaning crew staffed with people who do.
	And that’s not even really the problem. I’ll give a great example; this is the kind of shit that makes Mom want to flip off her boss and find a new job. The showers at the rec center have three drains placed evenly apart on the floors. When the drains get plugged, it is the maintenance staff’s responsibility to clean them. Mom sees that in the women’s shower two of these three drains are plugged, reducing efficiency and being a general nuisance. She leaves a note for the maintenance guys to fix it.
	After a MONTH and many more notes, the maintenance crew manager finally gets around to looking at this problem. However, he doesn’t see a visible problem and decides he’ll let the showers run for a half hour to see if they get clogged up. Naturally, half an hours worth of clean hot water goes down the one remaining drain like nothing. The (charming gentleman) writes it off like there’s no problem and goes about his business. In half an hour he could have just snaked out all the drains and moved on.. But no, he wants to be certain what little work he does is “worthwhile.”
	Keep in mind here that it’s now the rainy muddy season. When people go outside the rec center to play soccer or whatever and come back in to shower, grass and dirt and stuff gets into those drains, and without constant maintenance work on them they will not drain properly and won’t come clean.
Many more notes ensue, and finally my mother’s boss calls her in and says:
	“You know, (James’s Mom) the maintenance crew feels that it’s unfair for you to leave them notes insinuating that they aren’t performing their duties, and I am honestly not interested in becoming a middle man between your two crews. Isn’t it a little childish to continue leaving all these notes for them? They’re just showers, after all.”
	One, it’s entirely fair, they aren’t doing their duties. Two, as the head honcho of both crews, it is indeed his JOB to be the middle man. And three, isn’t it a bit childish to play favorites, go after the cleaning crew when the showers aren’t maintenanced properly, and not even bother mentioning to the maintenance guys that they really should be DOING THEIR FRIGGIN JOB?!
	
	Okay.. Sorry. I had to get all that off my chest. My mom just came home and related the whole story to me and I’m still kinda ticked about how much her bosses always seem to suck. I love my mom, but she is extremely irritating when she’s mad and I’m not excited about the current situation she’s in because she comes home every-day… Mad.
	Anyway, it’s BLOG time!
	So.. What have I been up to. Well, for starters I rolled my car through a fence and am subsequently forty bucks in the hole. I sentence both my radio and power brakes to eternal damnation. See, I thought the car was on because the radio was playing and I took it out of park…. You know what, you don’t need to hear this story. Suffice to say, I’m a dumbass. Anyone knows where to find a new tailgate for an 80’s El Camino, drop me a line.
	I went and saw The Wedding Crashers this weekend, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Also, it gave me another great idea to bitch about, but you need to read my next blog to figure out what that idea is. See, I’m trying to organize my blogs now by general idea, so that if you are bored with the basic idea of one you can mosie to the next one and not be bored, or at least bored on a different level.
	I aim to please.

Officially,
James Crockett.
But right now, call me Muffin.