The Joke's on Skippy

Nothing – and I do mean NOTHING – in this world is more fun than a really good practical joke. Especially when it’s played on my manager, Skippy Whitebread.

Skippy drives a huge oversized Dodge Ram – you know what they say that little boys who drive great big cars are trying to overcompensate for... Anyway, he took his Dodge Tiny Member in for service this morning to have front end ‘bushings’ or some crap like that replaced. (Hell, don’t ask me anything about car repairs. I know where the gas goes, and that’s about it.)

Anyway, he was expecting it to cost about $300 for repairs, but he got a call at about Noon from the shop saying that his Dodge Phallus was ready to go, and it’d only cost $205. So he spent the next hour dancing around, being overly obnoxious in his O.C.D.-fueled way, telling everyone ha, ha, he was saving a hundred bucks. As if we cared. Congratulations, Skippy. Now go sit down and take some downers.

After a while I got tired of his gloating, so I decided to do something about it. I sent the Lovely Mrs. G. an e-mail and asked her to call his extension and leave him a voice mail (he was now on a conference call – one of his 30 hours of regularly scheduled meetings a week) letting him know that she was calling from the auto shop, and they’d made a mistake and forgot to add labor charges to his estimate. His new total would be $405, not $200. Sorry about that, chief.

And so she did. And when his conference call ended and he retrieved his voice mail, you could see it all over his face. I really wish I had a camera --- the look was worth every bit of effort that went into it. He was seriously mad. Like Colonel Kurtz mad. I heard him call and whine to his wife about the costs, then he came over to bitch to us about it. His $100 savings windfall had just turned into an additional $200 cost. Boo hoo, boo hoo.

Oh, but wait – it gets better.

A few minutes of his rumbling and grumbling later, he disappeared for yet another meeting. (Yes, it truly is a gift he possesses – TALKING about work more than actually DOING any of it.) So I had the Lovely Mrs. G. call him once more, only this time they’d “forgotten” to charge him for four bushings – oops – the original quote was only for two. So the new total would be $810.00. We apologize for the inconvenience, yadda yadda yadda.

Heh heh.

Skippy finally returned from his latest meeting/excuse for not working, and got his voice mail.

Is it possible for someone to literally turn as red as a lobster? Well, break out the butter and handi-wipes, kids, 'cause that’s exactly what Skippy did. I might have to change his nickname from Skippy Whitebread to Skippy Redface. Or a least offer him a plastic bib. Instantly he was up and cussing, using every filthy word his little farmboy imagination could think of (except for “what in tarnation” and “daggummit”, which I’m sure were running through his mind...) He was seriously pissed, and the fact that his 5 teammates were laughing uncontrollably at his discomfort wasn’t helping the matter. But what could we say? We all knew the truth, and it was great fun to laugh at Skippy’s pain and misfortune.

Finally, I had to let him off the hook. He was about to call the auto shop and curse at them, too, so to save those poor souls from an undeserved verbal assault (and to save Skippy from finding sugar in his gas tank for being mean to them), I confessed.

He laughed, we laughed more, I explained all the juicy details, we all laughed again at him, and then we moved on. He went on to another meeting, and I went to log this for all eternity in my blog.

In a few minutes from now he and another worker will leave early to go pick up his Dodge Teeny Weenie truck, which should only cost him $200 or so. Perhaps I should ask him for $20 bucks for saving him over $600 in the process?

No?