One the way through the Austin airport, I had to walk by two young men who were seated outside of the security check point, and like it or not, I had their full attention as I walked by.
"That's a dude." One of them said to the other, loud enough for me to hear him. He didn't exactly yell it out, but it was clear he didn't care if I heard him or not.
"Nah, I don't think so." Replied his friend to my great amusement. This was a perfect example of what I've always thought and said here - I look just passable enough that people are not SURE whether I am a cross dresser or not. Of course I'd rather that I was so flawless that I fooled everyone all of the time, but I suppose that I'll accept what I've been given.
This week I was working with a customer in Allentown PA who has two instruments that have been obsolete for about a decade. The instruments were made by a company that my company later bought, and so we acquired it along with them. Almost immediately after we bought them, it was decided that this product was too expensive to produce and support, and there was not enough demand for them, so the entire product line was killed. They trained just one person to work on them before the last one disappeared and that was me! Now the problem is that this device uses a LOT of very fragile components that degrade over time, and we no longer have spares, and so if just about anything goes wrong, the quarter million dollar machine is nothing more than useless junk. For this reason, I told the customer repeatedly that they should not spend their money getting it repaired, and I warned them over and over that there was a significant chance that I would not be able to bring it back into operation. Despite my very blunt warnings and advice, they insisted that it was worth their money to at least try, and so off I went on a mission that I was reasonably sure that I could not succeed at.
One of the reasons that they insisted that it was worth trying for, was because they owned two of these machines and figured that I could probably salvage parts from one to fix the other, and they were partially correct. I did indeed have to pull multiple components from one to put on the other, but in the end, I could not bring either into operation, despite spending two eleven hour work days trying. Being an optical instrument, it relies on several very expensive mirrors that degrade over time, and these components on both systems were in such bad condition that we had to throw in the towel and give up. So, I made a lot of money for my company, but had the horrible feeling of failing and leaving an unhappy customer behind.
Two VERY long days on my feet didn't do my leg condition any good at all, but still I was in a fairly good mood on the way home. I couldn't help myself and decided to have fun with the waitress at Denny's when she asked if there was anything else that she could get for me.
"Yeah, how about a frontal lobotomy?" I replied with a grin. She broke out with a laugh, but you should have seen the looks on the faces of the people sitting around me when I said that - it was priceless! The shocked looks almost made me loose it. You could almost see their thoughts on their faces.
"Oh my God, did she have a lobotomy?!"
"Holy shit, is that a nut job?! "
"Do you think she she's safe to be around?!"
At that moment, I was pretty sure that this was going to be my best laugh of the day, but I was absolutely wrong. . .
I was sitting toward the front of the plane from Allentown to Atlanta and watching all of the cattle. . . Err. . . I mean people boarding the plane, when I noticed a kind of frumpy and frazzled looking young woman in a blue sweat shirt dragging a wheeled carry on behind her. The problem was, her carry on was wide open and she was leaving a trail of belongings behind her as she traveled down the aisle, blissfully unaware of the trail she was leaving. Much to my surprise, the first item I noticed was a very elaborate and I suspect expensive thong/panties. My first instinct was to pick them up and return them to the young woman, but then I kind of decided I wasn't about to handle some strange woman's panties, and so I reached out to touch her arm.
"Ma'am, I think that you may have lost something that you're gonna miss later." I told her with a grin.
"Oh my god. Thank you so much!" She said, turning to pick them up as her face turned a very dark red. I was still smiling as she took her seat, but not a minute later the peace in the cabin was broken when she starts to yell at a man who was standing in the aisle talking to her.
"Look, I don't give a shit. My ticket says 4D and I'm not about to move!" She was yelling at him.
"But mine also says 4D!" The man replied with an Indian accent.
"Well that's too God damned bad, because I'm already here, and I'm not about to move! There is a whole row of seats here, so you just grab another one!"
As this argument went on, another woman was entering the plane and holding a tube of toothpaste in her hand.
"I think someone dropped this." She said to no one in particular as she made her way into the plane.
I started to laugh and pointed out the loud mouthed and belligerent woman in the sweat shirt to her.
"We'll, I'd be willing to bet that it is hers since she dropped a few other things on her way in." I told her with a grin.
The sweat shirt woman was still in the midst of yelling at the man that apparently was assigned the same seat that she had, and so the woman with the tooth paste was just a bit put off.
"Are you sure?" She asked me with a look of trepidation on her face.
"Purty sure! The thing is, the OTHER things that she dropped were a bit more. . . . umm . . . personal . . ." I replied with a wink.
As for the seat mix up? Yeah, the loud mouth in the sweatshirt was on the wrong flight, but at least she had the grace to apologize profusely as she exited the plane.
Oh, you'll be glad to know that she managed to keep her panties with her on the way OFF of the plane!
Damn but I love my job . . .
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