goodbye guido, bye-bye beefcake

at 2:30 AM this morning i found myself lying wide awake in bed, completely unable to fall back asleep, trying to sort out which unpleasant factoids about my ex-boyfriend were actually true (yes, he did get married to someone else uncomfortably close to the time we broke up, no, he i and did not get married and divorced in october of 2003). i fell back asleep just in time for my alarm to go off at which point i dragged myself out of bed and actually managed to get myself to work a few minutes early, giving me just enough time to enjoy a nice bowl of oatmeal before getting started on my day. but a leisurely breakfast wasn't really in the cards for me, and no sooner than i had walked in the door i found myself bombarded by angry phone calls from angry people who had me convinced that i was a blind, incompetent moron.

i was feeling pretty lousy about the way the day was going until i looked around and noticed the conspicuous absence of our visiting intern guido (or at least that should have been his name - he also went by beefcake or "that body builder guy")...

then things started looking up.

working with guido was a double whammy of awfulness. for starters, he was possibly the most useless rotator we've ever had. i'll never know if he was actually as thick-headed as he seemed to be, but i've never seen anyone demonstrate such an astounding lack of work ethic. getting him to do anything was like hitting your head against a wall.

for all his uselessness, he might have gotten away with it had he made a little less of an aesthetic spectacle of himself. he was completely ridiculous. he was about as thick as he was tall, with a shiny bald head and perpetually red face. not his fault, except that one could only become so muscle-y by spending all one's waking hours at the gym (possibly with the help of anabolic steroids). and he wasn't just huge and thuggish. he wore horrible clothes - baggy pants with pleats in weird colors with tight shirts and shoes and belts that always perfectly matched and were always just a bit too ornate. he would then adorn these belts with various gadgets, all held in holsters with little gold chains. palm pilot, cell phone, beeper, stethoscope. he even had holsters for his ridiculous pens. i realize that it sounds silly to hate someone for their choice of writing instrument, but every day he would show up with a different, big, shiny, obnoxious fountain pen. you'd think with such a flashy pen he'd write something down occasionally, but you'd be wrong.

so although i keep emailing and text-ing my blogmate messages that only say, "i hate everything," i at least have the solace of knowing that i never have to see guido again.