He's not making this shit up..

Posted by Doodface

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Since I am a guest on Mr. Heittenflaugen’s blog, and this is my first post, I will give you MY perspective of the man you know as E, and how I came to know him. In November of 1999, I was 20 years old, and recently had quit my shitty IT job. The company that I had worked for was a joke, and run by complete assholes. That company went under a couple months after I quit, which made me very happy.

Of course, being 20 years old, I quit this job without having a new source of income. Being fresh out of my teen years, I was indestructible, so I knew the rent would get paid "somehow". Luckily for me and my roommate, I found a new job very quickly doing technical support for a software company. This is where I met E. I will get to him later.

The support department consisted of 4 people: Me, E, Giant Cockface, and The Smartest man alive. I was hired not for my knowledge, but for my track record, and the ability to learn. What this boils down to, is that I didn't know shit about shit.

Giant CockFace was my boss, and as you can gather by his name, was a Giant Cockface. I will have to write another post about him one day, as I cannot stress to you the level cockfactiousness that this man exudes in this paragraph. I immediately started off on the wrong foot with this guy by giving him a nickname that basically referred to him as a giant, walking phallus (which E found to be hilarious). Needless to say, we became enemies from "go".

The smartest man alive was extremely intimidating. He also lacked patience with anyone less intelligent than himself (which is everyone). Asking him a question, even a complicated one, would result in the most condescending attitude imaginable. After asking what I considered to be a complex technical question, he would look at me as if I had just inquired on how to remove the feces from my underwear. No matter what the question was, it would usually result in an eye-roll, a sigh, and a patronizing response. This got real old, real fast, so I quickly began to avoid him at all cost.

I was quickly running out of people to turn to. Did I mention that I am kind of an asshole, and tend to alienate myself? Luckily E was there. He was immediately friendly, helpful, and forgiving of my assholish ways. He took me under his wing, and taught me how to properly do the job. If it were not for him, I can guarantee that I would have been fired pretty quickly. To repay him for his kindness, I gave him the name Heittenflauggen in my first week on the job - mainly because I couldn't remember his real last name. While being a very nice guy, and easy to get along with, this is not the "fun" part of E.

As I soon found out, E is a weird guy. The more I worked with him, the more of his little quirks started to surface. It started innocently, with his fascination with Star Wars. Yes, that in itself is nerdy, but E takes it to another level. At the time, his apartment was filled with Star Wars toys and memorabilia (including a life-size darth vader). Oh, did I mention the 3 Star Wars tattoos? He can also name pretty much any character that has ever showed up in the movies (even the ones in the background that are never mentioned), and give their back story.

My favorite of E's quirks has to be the endless list of phobias. One of my favorite cures of office boredom is to get him to start naming some of the things he is afraid of. Some of my favorites are: Flushing Toilets, Corners, Hallways, open windows, CLOSED windows, and Dolls. The dolls are especially fun, because you can get to see it in action. For a real fun day, just leave a doll sitting on his desk. He will become visibly frightened, and shy away while making references to their dead, soul-less eyes staring at him. I love hearing stories of him flushing the toilet when he is home alone, and immediately running in fear (I also picture a girlish squeal as he runs from the toilet).

As previously mentioned, E is a good boredom killer. Listening to his stories of a strange childhood, or of his phobias is quite entertaining. However, my all-time favorite boredom killer is the "what will he eat?" game. Being a typical office, we get fast food or food delivered here quite often. We hang on to the condiments from these meals in case we need them for future meals. We also keep food in drawers for lunches and such. Well over the years, these condiments and snacks turn in to new creations. These are the tools that make this game possible. On a day of extreme boredom, I will start digging through drawers to find the weirdest, oldest stuff that could be consumed. E immediately takes on a look of dread, as he knows what this means. I will put something in front of him, and beg him to eat it. he occasionally puts up some resistance, but unless it is unsafe, he will eventually give in. Watching him choke down these goodies puts me in tears every single time. To see him struggling to get down a heaping spoonful of powdered chicken bouillon is just magic. He once ate a slim jim that was so old, it could have been considered petrified. All of the oil had seeped out from the "meat", and left this shriveled, leathery stick. Yes he choked it down, but it wasn't easy. In other feats of gurgitation, he took down 12 packets of splenda at once, a giant pouch of chili sauce, and countless "aged" condiments.

E is by no means a side show freak that everyone laughs at. He laughs at himself, and knows that his idiosyncrasies are strange and amusing. He thrives on the fact that he is an outright geek, and will proclaim it proudly. His fascinations with horror, blood, guts, and other atrocities do not make him menacing in any way. To read some of his posts, you may wonder when he is going to go on a killing spree, but trust me, he's harmless. I describe him as "lovably quirky", not psychotic.