Round 2?

Yes, believe it or not, the saga continues...

Actually, this is more like a round two and three, because yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting through listening to both of these mopes as they complained about "GOB did this" and "Fnewgy did that." I mean seriously gentlemen, you are both approaching 60, not 12.

Round three though was a little more out of the blue. I mean if round two was just full of jabs and body cuts, then round three was a one-sided round of upper cuts, but no knockdowns. Here's what happened.

I get to work and get settled in for my morning routine of reading emails, assigning work, etc. GOB was already there, because he wanted to work early and leave early. During the summer we allow that, to help out with morale and let people start their weekends early.

I digress.

Anyway, Wannabe (he's a former Marine reservist, who we all kid about being a wannabe Marine - all in good fun.) was showing me a decade resistor that had crack in one of the panels, this rendering it defective and not up to our standards. (Boring, I know, but important as you will soon see). The only way that we can repair this would be to replace it with another panel from a decade resistor that has similar resistance settings. (Are you sleeping yet?) I help Wannabe and he goes back to his bench, and then I hear that Wannabe and GOB are joking back and forth about GOB blowing it up and all that blah, blah, blah background noise that I hear but don't really pay attention to during the day.

Unbeknownst to me Fnewgy showed up and went about his normal routine - whatever that is. All of a sudden I hear yelling. (hence the CAPS)

"THAT'S THE KIND OF CRAP I'M TALKING ABOUT GOB! YOU KNOW DARN WELL WHAT YOU ARE SAYING AND YOU BETTER STOP IT OR I WILL BE GOING TO HR!! AND YOU HEARD IT ROGER MILLER*** THAT'S THE CRAP I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!"

***First off, what's with using my whole name? Am I in some sort of trouble, MOM!***

I replied "I honestly didn't hear anything until you started to raise your voice. But I'm sure it's not worth yelling screaming about. Sheesh! I'm trying to get some work done here."

If I could do this differently, I would have told Fnewgy to start his vacation early, but I didn't, so I deserve what happened next.

Things calmed down, a bit, and the rhythm of the lab was coming back to a more normal state. There is something else I generally do first thing in the morning, and I was on my way to accomplish that, when GOB tells me to get out here right now.

Uh, sure.

He then proceeded to explain how that kind of Barbara Streisand should not be allowed, to which I agreed and apologized for, because a) I really should have handled it differently (but in my defense, I really didn't see it coming), b) I really had to accomplish my next mission, and pretty quick to, so I had to clear the room.

I'm a very private person after all.

The rest of the day was fairly tame, GOB did call J, so J had to call and find out what was up, and then he talked to GOB.

Fnewgy left for the day, actually for the next week, so things should be okay again. Until J decides that he wants to mix things up. Actually, I kind of want to have GOB work a 3 -midnight shift, along with OTW (Over Time (word for world's oldest profession that is illegal except for in Nevada)). Maybe I'd be able to kill a couple birds with one nicely thrown stone a) it would diffuse GOB and Fnewgy's rising tension and b) it might ease the cost of running the lab. I'll let you know how that works out.

One final note, I had to ask GOB if he knew what he was saying (for the record, he apparently said - as part of the give and take with Wannabe - something along the lines of "I'm going to sue you.") and he kind of smiled, but then said no he wasn't trying to get under Fnewgy's skin, and that it was just an opportune time for Fnewgy to be tuning in to their conversation.

Maybe I did the right thing after all.