Jack Hardy Gets to Know Mike Romano

I'm going to skip ahead a bit in the narrative. A few days after acing my editing test, I got the call from HR, and AII made me an offer. Other than a few choice, and somewhat inappropriate, run-ins with Thomas, who just happens to be the guy who in-processes new-hires at AII, I don't have a lot to report on that those issues.

On to the working people. So, a couple of days in, after learning the database system and learning the day-to-day operations, I got to sit in on my first group editorial meeting. These meetings are called Pods, and I still don't know the reason why. Apparently, it's some sort of inside joke among the original handful of members at AII, but I don't know.

A pod is a small editorial meeting where a few of us sit around a computer and analyze content that we're about to put in our database. Generally, we have the author of the content (article, trivia questions, essay, short story, etc.), an editor (that would be me), a proofreader/formatter (responsible for keying any changes we decide on in the meeting, and maybe another person just for fun (I really don't know why we need this fourth person, but we sometimes do). So, we all sit around, read the content that comes up, and decide what changes, if any, should be made, finalize the pieces, and then store them in the database for our future use.

My first time in the pod, it was just Mike Romano and me. We still don't have any actual proofreader/formatters yet, and I, being the only editor yet onboard, took on those duties. So, I'm sitting in this meeting with Mike Romano, and he's going on and on about how much he loves cannolis.

"Yeah, man, I like cannolis, too," I say. "I haven't had one in a long time."

"You ever have one in New York City," he asks me pointedly.

"No, I don't think so," I respond.

"Then you ain't had a cannoli," he fires back. "No questions asked, you ain't had a cannoli."

I didn't really know what to say. "Any good cannolis around here?"

He actually turns to me and pushe his nose well within my comfort zone. "Are you freakin' kidding me, man? Hell no you can't get a decent goddamn cannoli in this town. Have you been out to eat here? Jesus."

"Oh, well no, I really haven't," I say.

"Well, don't even bother looking for a decent cannoli," he says. "You ain't gonna find it here.


A little while later, we're taking a break, and I start asking Mike about his background. We talk a little bit, and he tells me he got a master's degree from University of Chicago.

"Wow, that's a pretty good school isn't it?" I ask.

Mike doesn't answer my question. Instead, he launches into this self-love tirade. "Yeah," he says, "I am the single smartest person I've ever met. Hands down. You don't ever want to test my intellect." He glares at me in this really macho way, like he's a lion trying to protect a kill from a ravenous pack of hyenas.

"Cool, man," I say. What am I supposed to do with that, good readers?

Inside the Making of "Tales of an Office Scavenger"

First thanks to those few of you who keep sending me e-mails. I appreciate it. I really do. But how's about we knock off all the scavenger jokes, eh? I think the metaphor for this blog is apt, and I like it. But these jokes! They've gotten a little perverse, even for my taste. Not to be the censorship police, but come on people, we have to maintain our dignity. You know who you are, and you've been warned.

Just a note about my last couple of posts. I was willing to give AII the benefit of the doubt after some of the earlier weirdness, but that editing test was what put it over the top for me. That is the most unprofessional, amateurish, denigrating hiring-related document I've ever had to fill out. I couldn't get over the content of some of the reading passages in that thing. It was after taking that editing test that I thought, I really need to document all these things. That was when this blog was really birthed. Gross, I know.

You loyal readers probably want to know what we really do at AII. Well, I'm not going to tell you exactly. I don't want to blow my cover. There are only so many clues I could give before people who were looking would be able to say, "Oh, he works for so and so." Exactly.

So, allow me to fictionalize it for you a bit. I work for a company that writes material for various newsletters. We have this giant database that was developed by a few hardcore IT geeks here who hang out on the second floor (more on them later; yikes!). I'm talking, they developed this thing from the ground up. In this database, we plug in materials that we write in a variety of subjects from finance to recreation to sports trivia to ancient history. Then we go out and try to sell the contents of our database.

Let's say you are the owning interest of an apartment complex. You want to publish a newsletter for your tenants once a month, but you don't really want to sit down and write a bunch of stuff. You submit material that is property-specific, and you tell us you want a five page newsletter. We build a newsletter around your property-specific material and any other special requests you make, and voila, you have a newsletter to give your tenants.

Take that model and repeat for just about any industry or organization you can imagine. We are essentially a newsletter database and construction company. Except that we're not. At least not in real life. That's just the best analogy I can come up with for Jack Hardy's fictional world. Remember, Jack Hardy is just a fictional representation of me in this story about AII. I'm just filtering my experiences through him. I work for company X, Jack Hardy works for AII. We at company X do Y, and Jack Hardy and AII are a newsletter database and construction company.

Sound screwed up? It is.

Jack Hardy Takes (and Finishes) the Editing Test

I take home the editing test and throw it on the kitchen counter. I kick my suit off and slip into something comfortable. It's time to go exploring.

I grab my bike out of the bedroom, where it's been stashed behind a tower of unpacked boxes, and head out the door. This is a new town, and I really have no idea where I'm going. I've been to the supermarket once, so far, and stocked up on some necessities. I need a little adventure, though, so I kick off for downtown.

I spend a few hours wandering the downtown area, pick the nose on more than one Abraham Lincoln statue to the bemusement of several passers-by. I can't help but stop at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library, where I drop 10 of my rapidly dwindling economic stimulus dollars. It's well worth the trip. A few hours later, I wind up at a cute little coffee shop on, I think, 6th Street, where I spend an hour reading and sipping some delicious coffee. I tell the lady at the counter that I'm new to the area, and she pours me a free cup, tells me it's, "on the house," and smiles at me. Nice! Gotta love that free coffee!

Just as the late afternoon traffic starts to pick up, I hop back on my bike and return home. Money's a little tight, so I smooth myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and pour a glass of water. Once done, I settle in with a Rolling Rock and my editing test and get to work. This thing is ridiculous. It's like a caricature of an editing test. First, it's incredibly long, and the reading passages are ridiculously amateurish. (I find out later that the brunt of the "writing" was done by Sharon Bigwig's teenage daughter, Alexis.) There's an anecdote about a well-to-do family that feels threatened by the biker landscaper they hire to do their yard because he has tattoos and long hair. By the end, they've come to realize that just because he looks like a scumbag, doesn't mean he can't appreciate the finer things. In the end, he actually sits down to discuss Flaubert with them! Just ridiculous.

There's a passage about armadillos. An essay about Filippo Brunelleschi. All obviously written by a teenage girl and then with errors thrown in to make it a test. I keep thinking that this is like an editing test put together by a group of people pretending to play business. It's a weird feeling.

I read through this ridiculous monstrosity once. Comb through it a second time, and then review one final time before I flip the pages back together and slide it back into my interview folder. Done.

The test takes me the better part of three hours. I'm sure I could have done it in less time, but I really wanted to get it right. I need this job. I'm soon going to grow weary of peanut butter and jelly, I'm afraid. Need to get a money trail started that leads to my wallet.

I spend the rest of the night unpacking my stuff and sipping Rolling Rock. By 9 o'clock, I'm bushed. I sit down at the computer and play Super Mario Brothers on my Nesticle emulator for an hour before crashing to bed. Yeah, I'm old school as hell.

The next morning, I get up, shower, and hop on my bike to take my editing test to AII. I stop on the second floor and check in with Angela. As soon as she sees me, her eyes widen. "You look like a damn fool comin' in here all sweating and in a shirt like that," she says, with a smile.

"Um, thanks," I say. "I need to get this editing test to Mary Ann. Can I leave it with you, or should I just go up to 6?"

"I am not going to take that thing and hold onto it until I see Mary Ann Lump, and I'm sure as heck not going to take it up there to her."

I smile. "So, you're telling me you want me to take it."

She doesn't respond. She grabs a nail file and starts to work on her nails.

"Thanks, Angela," I say. "You're tons of help."

As I exit, she says, "Welcome back, Jack!" in a real smart ass tone. I like her.

When I get to the sixth floor, I see Mary Ann in her office with a woman I don't recognize. She's a middle-aged woman, average height, with bright blonde, curly hair and a tanned face. She looks a lot like a stereotypical housewife from the 50's. The others are all around the same makeshift workspace, looking like they haven't moved since yesterday.

"Oh, Jack!" Mary Ann calls. "Doris, this is Jack, the one I was telling you about."

The blonde 50s housewife type paces out toward me, doing her best June Cleaver, "I'm Doris," she says, shaking my hand.

"Jack," I say, "Jack Hardy. So nice to meet you."

Doris has this thing where she peers directly into your eyes. But it's not like she's looking at your eyes. More like she's looking about three inches behind your eyes. That, combined with her large Stepford wives smile, is a little unnerving. "I believe you have an editing test for me," she says.

"I do," I tell her. "It was a pleasure, let me tell you."

"Oh," she bursts out in laughter. "You're a funny one. Well, I can't wait to get started on this." She takes the editing test from me and retires to a table to review it.

I step into Mary Ann's office. "Well, is there anything else I need to do?"

"Nope," she says. "Once Doris finishes the editing test, we'll make a decision and let you know either way."

"Oh, before I forget," I tell her. "I got my phone hooked up yesterday. Here's my number." I scratch it out on a piece of paper. "My cell phone reception has been spotty, to say the least."

"Thanks, Jack. We'll be in touch."

By the time I get home, there's a voicemail. It's Doris. She tells me she wants to talk about the editing test.

I call and after a brief encounter with the bee's nest I call Angela, I reach Doris. "This test is perfect!" she tells me. "You caught mistakes that we didn't even mean to put into the test. You know, typos and even a subject-verb agreement problem we didn't know about."

"Well, that's great. So you're happy with it?"

"Happy with it? I'm going to frame it! You're almost as good an editor as I am. It's almost like I taught you everything I know. But I haven't. Isn't that something?"

"What?"

"When I was making this test," Doris tells me, as though recounting the construction of a world wonder, "I thought it would be so wonderful if we could find someone who could find all of the problems. You've done one better than that, AND you're the first person to take it."

"It wasn't--"

"Jack, don't be silly. You did great."

"Well, thanks," I say. This test really wasn't that hard. I like to think that it's because I have superior editing abilities, but I know that's not the truth. It was just a pretty sucky test.

The Face-to-Face (Part Two)

We step off the elevator on the 6th floor and head down the long hallway to the suite with the Anonymous Industries Incorporated logo on the door. I'm carrying the chair with me, my resume and interview folder balancing precariously on the seat. Mary Ann swings the door open to a cacophony of construction noises. There's sawing and hammering and men swearing. The suite, which takes up about a third of the sixth floor, is a construction mess. There's one finished office which, it turns out, is Mary Ann's.

There are a handful of people sitting on boxes and lawnchairs and huddled around computers on fold-out tables. "We just moved in last week," Mary Ann tells me. "It's still going to be another week or so before the space is finished up."

She introduces me to the folks working at the table nearest her office. There's a big Italian-looking mug named Mike Romano. He tells me he moved here from Chicago, but that he's originally from New York. He's a proud New Yorker, I can tell. His dialect is as thick as bagel dough. His dark brown hair is slicked back straight over his scalp in the fashion of a movie mobster. He wears a pair of khaki pants and a polo shirt, accessorizing with a big gold chain around his neck, a huge gold watch, and gold rings on his fingers.

There's Lisa Lightly, a pretty, soft-spoken girl with fair skin and very delicate features. She looks like a skinny porcelain doll. She shakes my hand briefly and then turns her attention back to the computer, as though looking into my eyes might be bad for her health.

Kim Longfellow, I can tell right off the bat, is a person you don't want to cross. She's kind enough, but her eyes tell me that she can hold grudges. She's sipping a Diet Coke, and she stands militantly to shake my hand. Note to self: I want this one on my side.

Next I meet a woman of Middle Eastern descent who introduces herself as Quranti. She's very lovely, with a warm, intelligent smile. She wears a stud piercing in her left nostril and she exudes intelligence.

The last one to shake my hand is Elizabeth. She's a stern-faced woman, about my age. The way she watches me interact with the others, I can tell she's a deeply skeptical person. She exhales unhappiness.

We say our brief trivialities to one another, and I pick up my chair and carry it into Mary Ann's office. She closes the door behind me.

In Mary Ann' s office we sit down. I with my dragged-along chair, she with a big cardboard box that she tells me is full of books.

Mary Ann starts off by apologizing to me for being a terrible interviewer. "I didn't know I would have to do this when I was hired, or I probably wouldn't have taken the job," she confides, giggling. "But that's just between us."

"Certainly," I tell her, nodding.

She tells me that AII has been around for a little over a year-and-a-half. The company is the brainchild of a local entrepreneur, Sharon Bigwig, who managed to get enough seed money to get the thing off the ground. About two months ago, Ms. Bigwig closed a deal with an international company, Big Daddy International, to have AII absorbed into BDI. Up until the merger came through, AII was operating out of Ms. Bigwig's garage with four employees. Now, they have a multi-million dollar budget, have purchased office space, and are hiring employees to grow the company as quickly as possible.

"They've put me entirely in charge of filling Creative," Mary Ann tells me. "I've been here since the beginning, with Lisa and Darlene who's working from home today. I just don't know how to do this. They want me to hire as many as thirty people. That's tough."

"Sounds like a lot to take on," I chime in, sounding sympathetic. I do feel sympathetic, but I also feel really thrown off. This is not like any interview I've ever been in before.

"Oh it is," Mary Ann says, giggling. "I've thought about it a lot, and I think my most important criteria for a new-hire is that they have a good personality. I want people who will fit in here together. I want this to be a great social environment." She snickers. "Holly told me about your phone interview. I love that story."

"Well, it wasn't the best situation, but I tried to make the best of it. I always like to make the best of every situation."

"Mm-hmm," she said, disinterested. "So," she says, "is your name actually just Jack, or is it, like, short for Jackson."

"It's just Jack, although I think the name Jackson is nice, too."

Mary Ann giggles, "Yeah, it really is. So, Jack, what's your favorite of Shakespeare's plays?"

What a strange question, I think, and my mind shifts gears to think about the Shakespeare plays I've read. I've never been a huge Shakespeare fan, so this is kind of hard for me. "Well, I've always been partial to Twelfth Night."

"Oh, me too," she says, really pepping up. "I even named my dog Viola, after Viola in the play. Wow, it's got to be right up there as my favorite of all time."

"Well, me too," I say.

We spend the next twenty minutes talking about our favorite books and authors. She tells me a couple of times that she's reviewed my resume and that it looks great, but mostly she spends the rest of the time telling me about how much she loved going to school at University of Illinois, and that she lives and dies by U of I's sports programs.

Then, out of nowhere she says, giggling, "Well, I'd hire you today if I could. I think you'd be a good fit here."

"Wow, that's great," I say.

"Here," she says, handing me a thick stack of papers, clipped together. "It's our editorial test. Doris, she's not here today. She's our editorial project leader. She put this test together last week. Anyone applying for the editorial positions needs to pass this before we can hire them. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all," I assure her, tucking the packet into my interview folder. "Do you want me to take it here before I leave?"

"Oh no," she said, snickering. "That might be uncomfortable. Why don't you take it home and take your time? Just try to get it to us by tomorrow afternoon."

"No problem," I tell her. "So . . . are we done then?"

"Yep," she said, giggling.

"Okay then," I say. "Thanks so much for the opportunity, Mary Ann. I'll get this in as soon as possible, and I hope to speak with you again soon."

"Okay," she says. And then, as I turn to leave, she stops me, "Wait, Jack, I have a question."

"Sure," I say, turning back to her.

Her face is twist of concern. "How did I do? You're the first person I've interviewed that I felt I could really talk to."

I tell her I think she did well. I tell her that I think she has the right idea for hiring people based on how they fit together. I tell her that my last job only hired people based on how they looked on paper. It was a poor social environment. Lots of egos. Lots of competition. Lots of backstabbing. I tell her I think she's got the right idea. I tell her it will get better.

"Thanks," she says. "Do you mind taking that chair back when you go? They need it downstairs."

"Not at all," I tell her. I pick up the chair, turn, and leave the room.

When I get back to the second floor, Angela's gone from her desk. I put the chair back where it belongs and grab my cell phone from her desk. Down the hall, I see Thomas poke his shiny, bald head out from his door. "Hey guy," he says, with a wink.

"What's up Thomas?" I say. Then, as he stares at me, I say, "Welp, gotta run. See you around."

"Byyyyyyeee," he says, waving.

The Face-to-Face (Part One)

It's Wednesday. I assemble my best look, a Hugo Boss suit that I got a heck of a deal on with my electric blue shirt and black-and-blue striped tie. I hop in the car and follow the directions Holly Frisk gave me on Monday. I arrive at the building a good ten minutes early and spend a few minutes looking around. The office park is nice enough. A bit sterile, perhaps. I don't see a lot in the way of amenities (restaurants, grocery, etc.) right nearby, but this town isn't so big that I can't jet out on lunch break if need be. As for the building where AII resides, it's one of the nicer buildings I've worked in, and that includes my previous job in San Diego. It's a newer building, and everything is clean and nice. It's one of those buildings where everything seems to gleam.

So I walk in and head to the second floor. I see the sign for Anonymous Industries Incorporated, take a deep breath, and open the double doors. I am immediately greeted by a receptionist with an attitude. Not a bad attitude, necessarily, just an attitude. She's sassy. Her name is Angela. She has dark black skin, and a pretty face.

"Hi, my name is Jack, I'm here for an interview with Mary Ann Lump."

"I'm Angela," she says. "I'll call her and let her know you're here." She picks up the phone, dials a few numbers and speaks in a hushed voice that I cannot hear. "She'll be down in a minute," Angela says, and, "Have a seat." She gets on the phone again, whispering quietly. I think I can hear the phrase "fresh meat," but I assume it's my imagination.

I take a seat in a nice padded chair opposite Angela's desk. We sit in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly, an incredibly effeminate man flounces from the hallway and across the room to Angela's desk. Angela snickers. "Thomas, this is Jack. Jack, Thomas."

"Well," Thomas squeals, eying me. Thomas is tall and lanky. He is probably my age, with milk chocolate skin and a bald head, and he is sharply dressed in a green-and-white sweater vest and perfectly pressed pants. Thomas moves in slips and slides, like his joints aren't quite tied together tightly enough. "So nice to meet you, Jack." He rushes over to shake my hand. His handshake is firm and lingering.

"Nice to meet you," I say.

"Well, best of luck, Jack. I look forward to seeing more of you around here," Thomas says, sashaying back to his office down the hall like a runway model.

"Me too," I smile.

Angela and I sit in silence again for a few minutes. Then she laughs. "What do you have in your pocket?" she asks me, with a grin.

"Um, just my cell phone and my keys."

"That is ridiculous," she says. "Who carries a cell phone in their pocket? Look at that thing. That looks tacky. It's all fat and makes your pocket stick out. Geez."

I am totally thrown off my guard. I've always carried my cell phone in my pocket. I mean, I know it's old and bigger than most of the more modern phones, but it's not that big. "Well, should I take it out and just carry it?" I ask.

"You should have left it in the car," Angela says with a little head movement.

I just sit there, not really sure what to do. This is a strange interaction. I cannot imagine the cell phone is throwing off my professional look enough to cost me the job, but I don't really want to take any chances. I put all of my eggs in this AII basket. I am in an apartment I can't afford, living in a town I don't know, and if I don't get this job, I don't know what I'm going to do. "Will you keep it for me?" I ask Angela.

"Do I look like your mama?" Angela asks, and I feel like I've been slapped in the mouth. She must be able to tell because she immediately lets out this big burst of laughter and says, "I'm just kidding you, Jack. I'll hold your phone here at the desk."

"You will?"

"Sure," Angela says. Then, "Boy, I hope they hire you. You're going to be a fun one to have around here."

Not a minute later, Mary Ann Lump comes gallumphing through the door. That's the only way to describe Mary Ann's walk: a gallumph. I don't even know if it's a real word, but it fits. She's a pretty woman with bright blonde hair and a large, toothy smile. Mary Ann is tall, like she just stepped off of a girls' college basketball team, but she walks with a slouch and a kind of haphazard clumsiness, like she's walking on jell-o. "Mary Ann Lump," she says, arm outstretched.

"Jack Hardy, so nice to meet you," I say, heaping on the candy coating.

"Right this way, Jack," Mary Ann giggles. That's another thing about Mary Ann that I learned pretty quickly. She giggles or snickers at just about everything, as though everything in the world is a big joke. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice trait overall, but it can be murder when you're making your best pitch in an interview, and all you get are giggles and smiles. "We've got to take the elevators to the sixth floor," Mary Ann says. "Oh, and bring that chair. We don't have any up there."

The Phone Interview

Okay, so I've been at my job about a week now, and I'm starting to settle in. For the next few days, I'm going to take you back to the beginning of my experiences with Anonymous Industries Incorporated (AII). Here's the first installment: The Phone Interview.

After a long 16 hour drive, I arrive in my new apartment late on a Sunday night. I still don't have a job. I'm hoping that AII will come through for me. After applying for the job, you see, AII called and told me that they were really interested in me. They really were. But they couldn't hire me because I didn't live nearby. I asked them if we could do a phone interview and get the process started while I looked for a place to live in Central Illinois. "No dice," they said. They needed me to have a local address before they would be interested in hiring me.

For a few days I searched for apartments online and made phone calls. Time and again it was the same response. No job, no apartment. I called AII back and explained my predicament. Time and again they gave me the same response. No apartment, no job. I was on the verge of moving, getting a PO Box, and living in my goddamned car.

Finally, I managed to find a place that would rent to me at an extremely high price. We're talking beelzebub takes you to the woodshed for a little intimate one-on-one-time-with-the-pants-down high price. I called AII back and spoke with my HR rep. Holly Frisk is her name. She's this spunky, crazy, high-energy woman who tries to make everything seem possible. I spoke with her and told her that I would be moving the following weekend and could they at least go ahead and schedule an interview for me. She promised me a phone interview.

So I arrive on Sunday night. Late. My phone interview is scheduled for 10 AM on Monday morning. I wake up, look over my resume, make a few notes, and get ready. At a couple minutes to 10, I start dialing. I can't get a signal. I have this old piece of shit cell phone, and I'm going to blame it.* Motherfucker! I try again and again. Nothing. I don't have my phone hooked up at the apartment yet, naturally, so I am feeling pretty much screwed.

I do what any sane person would do at this moment. I race out of the apartment in my old, tattered Umbros shorts and white T-shirt, resume in hand, and hop in the car. I drive like Steve McQueen to the nearest pay phone I can find . . . at a convenience store. It's a few minutes past ten. I plunk in some change, and make my call. I get Holly Frisk on the line. "Can you call me back in ten minutes, please? I'm having computer issues."

I sit in my car, shaking with nerves, wishing I had some coffee and trying to find something to listen to on the radio and relax. After ten minutes, I call Holly back. We start the interview and things are going well. I have the experience they're looking for. I have worked on some pretty important projects at my last gig. Holly seems happy with those. Then, a garbage truck pulls up not thirty feet away and starts emptying dumpsters. Suddenly, my self-praise is drowned out with clanking metal and hydraulic humming and the bang bang banging of the big metal bins being dumped unceremoniously.

I explain to Holly where I am and why. "That's awesome," she replies. "Courage under fire. I like that!" she practically screams. Then, after a few more minutes she tells me that, based on the circumstances and on her read on me, she will schedule me for an interview with Mary Ann Lump, the head of Creative. Then we move completely away from business and Holly launches into this discussion about how she can really read a person's energy. "Even over the phone?" I ask. "Especially over the phone!" she answers back eagerly.

After telling me about a recent past-life regression she did with a psychic, Holly says her good-bye. I say good-bye too and hang up the phone. I have my interview. Wednesday at 1:00. I walk back to the car and try the door. Locked. And then, before I even have a chance to check my person, I see my keys sitting in the ignition. Goddamnit!

I walk back to my new apartment, track down the maintenance man, Gary, and convince him to let me into my apartment where I find my spare key at the bottom of one of my backpacks. Then I walk back to the car, unlock the motherfucking thing and drive home angrily.


*I've since purchased a new cell phone.

A Note About Me

Dear Readers-

Hi, I'm your scavenger host on this little expedition. My name is Jack Hardy. Well, that's not exactly my name, but it's close enough for now. Throughout my blog posts, I will keep my name a secret. I will also keep the names of my employers and any other members of the staff at Anonymous Industries Incoporated (AII). As crazy as this job is, I still need it, you see, for the money. I like a paycheck.

The purpose of this blog is to entertain. I've only had a handful of experiences with this company so far, and I can tell you that I just sense that crazy times are ahead. There's just an energy present that says, "Whoa, one day this whole thing's going to get wacky as all hell." I hope to take you there with me. I'm not trying to make any grand statements on modern life or the modern workplace or the politics of sex in the workplace or anything like that. I just want to tell you about funny shit that happens around the office. Got it? Cool.

As for the scavenger metaphor, well, I thought it was clever. I've been reading blogs for awhile, and I've always thought of bloggers as internet scavengers. So many of the bloggers I've read on a daily basis rely on information from the day's news or someone else's content for fodder for their own thoughts. That's not to say I don't have the utmost respect for bloggers. I absolutely do. Some of the most brilliant writers out there on the internet are bloggers. I just think there's a strong correlation between bloggers and scavengers. It's a good thing. Embrace your inner scavenger.

So, I have chosen to scavenge on the remains of the day at my new job. Thanks for joining me. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Jack