Life with Skippy Whitebread
It’s been a long week here in paradise.
My supervisor Chris is out this week, so our team manager Skippy Whitebread has been on a rampage. He’s nutso with OCD, and refuses to take his meds any longer, so his obsessive/compulsive ways have been off the charts as of late. Usually I can ignore Skippy’s OCD-induced spaz attacks, but with Chris gone on vacation I don’t have my usual “buffer zone” to keep me safe from Skippy’s freakouts.
You’re probably wondering: Why do I refer to my manager as “Skippy Whitebread”? Well, if the name fits...
Skippy is a nice guy for the most part, and on a personal level we get along just fine. He’s literally from small town Iowa; a farm boy who has rarely experienced anything outside of his isolated world, and comes across as the cleanest, most wholesome, purest, Skippy Whitebreadish guy you’ll ever meet. Seriously. He makes Beaver Clever look like a sinner. Part of the nickname comes from his lunch box contents. He’s 37 years old, but his lunch box always contains the same thing – PB&J on white with the crust cut off, an apple or banana, a Jello pudding cup, and a Twinkie. He doesn’t like “high falutin’” city life, fancy food, etc., and he rarely goes anywhere other than to home or the bar on Sundays to watch football.
Ah, football. His lifeblood. When he’s not watching football, he’s talking about it. Pre-game stats, post-game analysis, in-depth information on college players from the late 80’s who are now selling used cars. July – January is the worst time for his football jones, but the off-season is just as difficult.
Now, I could really care less about football. I’ll watch the Super Bowl, and that’s about it. If I happen to miss a game over the weekend, who friggin cares. But not so for Skippy. He spends all day Saturday in front of his TV watching college football, then all day Sunday with the pros. That’s his weekend schedule, 18 weeks a year. He videotapes every game he can, then watches them weeks later - sometimes watching them over and over again. Pathetic, really.
The hitch is that he loves to talk about the game, and I really don’t give a shit. Before the layoff wagon struck he had four other buddies in our group who he’d sit and talk sports with for at least an hour a day. (Usually closer to two hours a day during the season, and upwards of 3 hours on Mondays during playoffs.) But all of his pigskin pals were axed – funny how spending your day talking football and not actually working affects your stats, doesn’t it? – so Skippy is an island all alone, with nobody to talk to about his beloved spectator pastime.
I feel bad for him sometimes – he’s got a lot of pressure on him from the company to make the three of us remaining writers perform at the same level as when we had 16 writers. But there’s only so much you can get out of us. So I know that he’s stressed, but I also know that he voluntarily gave up his medication, because he felt that it was “impeding” him. Well, sure – it kept him from driving us all batty. He seems to think his OCD is under control. Um, no.
But I’ll keep plugging along, trying not to let him get under my skin. I know it’s an illness, but sometimes I wish he’d just get off his ass and do something about it...
...and try a pastrami on rye during a lacrosse match once in a while. It might do him some good.
My supervisor Chris is out this week, so our team manager Skippy Whitebread has been on a rampage. He’s nutso with OCD, and refuses to take his meds any longer, so his obsessive/compulsive ways have been off the charts as of late. Usually I can ignore Skippy’s OCD-induced spaz attacks, but with Chris gone on vacation I don’t have my usual “buffer zone” to keep me safe from Skippy’s freakouts.
You’re probably wondering: Why do I refer to my manager as “Skippy Whitebread”? Well, if the name fits...
Skippy is a nice guy for the most part, and on a personal level we get along just fine. He’s literally from small town Iowa; a farm boy who has rarely experienced anything outside of his isolated world, and comes across as the cleanest, most wholesome, purest, Skippy Whitebreadish guy you’ll ever meet. Seriously. He makes Beaver Clever look like a sinner. Part of the nickname comes from his lunch box contents. He’s 37 years old, but his lunch box always contains the same thing – PB&J on white with the crust cut off, an apple or banana, a Jello pudding cup, and a Twinkie. He doesn’t like “high falutin’” city life, fancy food, etc., and he rarely goes anywhere other than to home or the bar on Sundays to watch football.
Ah, football. His lifeblood. When he’s not watching football, he’s talking about it. Pre-game stats, post-game analysis, in-depth information on college players from the late 80’s who are now selling used cars. July – January is the worst time for his football jones, but the off-season is just as difficult.
Now, I could really care less about football. I’ll watch the Super Bowl, and that’s about it. If I happen to miss a game over the weekend, who friggin cares. But not so for Skippy. He spends all day Saturday in front of his TV watching college football, then all day Sunday with the pros. That’s his weekend schedule, 18 weeks a year. He videotapes every game he can, then watches them weeks later - sometimes watching them over and over again. Pathetic, really.
The hitch is that he loves to talk about the game, and I really don’t give a shit. Before the layoff wagon struck he had four other buddies in our group who he’d sit and talk sports with for at least an hour a day. (Usually closer to two hours a day during the season, and upwards of 3 hours on Mondays during playoffs.) But all of his pigskin pals were axed – funny how spending your day talking football and not actually working affects your stats, doesn’t it? – so Skippy is an island all alone, with nobody to talk to about his beloved spectator pastime.
I feel bad for him sometimes – he’s got a lot of pressure on him from the company to make the three of us remaining writers perform at the same level as when we had 16 writers. But there’s only so much you can get out of us. So I know that he’s stressed, but I also know that he voluntarily gave up his medication, because he felt that it was “impeding” him. Well, sure – it kept him from driving us all batty. He seems to think his OCD is under control. Um, no.
But I’ll keep plugging along, trying not to let him get under my skin. I know it’s an illness, but sometimes I wish he’d just get off his ass and do something about it...
...and try a pastrami on rye during a lacrosse match once in a while. It might do him some good.
posted by Tommy G at
9:10 AM
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