Tales from the Steppes

2005-10-01

11:24 p.m.
Saturday, October 1

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus,
Riding on the dashboard of my car
- Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon

When you work in local government, there are all of these little competitions and events to break up the tedium. If it is not some Ethnic Group Month, with plenty o'lectures, slideshows, presentations, and the obligatory lunch outing, well, they will just make something up to punctuate the time. I guess this keeps morale up. Or perhaps it just distracts you from the fact that you are getting no raise or bonus and just forget about any business trips

Often these events will have something to do with either food or sports. Food events are especially popular in my building. People spend months getting ready for the International Food Festival in early summer. The golden spoon awards are highly covetted and prominently displayed in winners' cubicles. Perhaps it is not as exciting as the Roman chariot races but I suspect they partially serve the same purpose.

And so it was that Friday was Creative Commute Day. We were all exhorted, cajoled, and lightly threatened to come up with some way to get to work besides individually driving in cars. The hope was that the parking lot would be empty, we could take pictures, have a press conference, and show how comitted we were to being the leaders in pushing for mass transit and lessening automobile dependancy. Whatever committee or group organized this came up with prizes for various categories of commutes and there was an inter-divisional competition for % participation. My own division then set up an intra-division competition for the different groups in the division. The winner would be awarded a pizza lunch, thus combining the sport and food categories.

Because I live less than 5 miles away from my office, I had many choices as to how I was going to go to work. MARC, Metro, Ride-On buses, bike, carpool, and my own two feet were all options. I chose to walk because it would give me an excuse for a nice morning walk. And there was a prize worth about $100 for the longest walking commute. Now, I know my coworkers. Most of them are sedentary slugs and those that aren't either live really far away or work in different buildings and thus were not elligble for prizes. So I was pretty confident that no one would walk further than that. And for a $75 gift certificate to Foot Locker and a pedometer, I was willing to invest an hour or so of my time to find out.

I was right so now I have a pedometer and basically a free pair of shoes for either the EM or MM. Both of them wear adult shoes but I think the MM will be the recipient this time. His sneakers smell so bad they should be classified as a gaseous weapon and handled with remote devices. Yes, we have washed them. But after a certain number of times, it no longer helps.

I would never buy shoes from Foot Locker myself - I need shoes that actually fit and work for my needs. I have looked in the store occasionally and tried to talk to the employees before but found them worse than useless. Instead of saying "I don't know" when asked a more advanced question, they try to bullshit you about their products. I guess I expected too much. Now I just have fun with them and sprinkle words like "supinate" into my conversation to see the "duh" look cross their faces. And no, this isn't mean - it is supposedly their jobs to know this sort of thing.