"Like Falling Off A Bicycle" by Troy H. Cheek on Jul 13, 2009
Well, I'm finally starting to get into the new routine at the new job. It didn't help that most of the on-the-job training consisted of exchanges like the following:
Troy: "Okay, what do we do now?"
Trainer: "Well, you've worked here before, so I don't have to tell you anything about this."
Troy: "Actually, that's new since I last worked here."
Trainer: "Okay, let me show you how we..."
Alarm: "Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!"
Trainer: "Oh, bleep! I've got to take care of this. You're on your own for a while."
Later...
Trainer: "Okay, now that I've shown you that, I need to tell you about this other thing."
Troy: "But, you never showed me..."
Alarm: "Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!"
Trainer: "Oh, bleep! I've got to take care of this. You're on your own for a while."
Troy: "Huh?"
Except for one officer who thinks I'm dull and boring (I didn't ask him to try and show me anything), it's been decided that I'm a jinx and nobody wants to work with me for fear of having to spend the whole shift putting out metaphorical fires. No literal ones just yet, but I remain hopeful.
When something's supposed to be really easy, or something you never forget, or something that comes right back to you, people say it's like riding a bicycle. Yesterday, I forgot how to ride a bicycle.
Trainer: "Now, you're supposed to check this section over here every hour or so. It's too far to walk, so we've got this bicycle. Don't adjust the seat or anything. We've got it adjusted perfectly."
Troy: "Perfectly if your arms are two feet long, you were born with an extra set of knee joints, and you can grow eyes on the back of your head."
Trainer: "Yeah, perfectly. So don't go messing it up."
Troy: "Well, it looks a little ungainly, but how bad can it be?"
The bicycle and route allow one to reach speeds at which the bicycle brakes become mere suggestions to stop instead of actual instruments of stopping. Luckily, I have lots of experience with stopping vehicles without proper brakes, so I was able to figure out something in time to prevent ruining yet another pair of uniform pants. Which, incidentally, aren't uniform.
Trainer: "Here's your shirts. You can wear any pants."
Troy: "Any pants? So the ones I'm wearing now are okay?"
Trainer: "Well, you've got too many pockets. The boss doesn't like pants like that. They don't look like security professionals."
These were the pants that I'd bought for the last job because they matched the specifications that boss had for security professionals. I bought them out of the security professionals catalog. Seriously, we have our own stores and everything.
Troy: "Okay, so the same color and style, but no extra pockets. Got it."
Trainer: "Well, those are black. You need to be wearing something more like navy blue, dress blue, or midnight blue." He pointed out three other pairs of pants that just happened to be passing by.
Troy: "Those all look black to me."
Trainer: "Really? They're all obviously dark blue to me. Maybe it's the light in here. Here's a tip for you, though. You can really tell the difference when the fabrics are side by side."
Troy: "Thanks for the tip!"
I spent the rest of the day trying to get my pants as close as possible to everyone else's pants without anybody noticing. Pretty much everyone in the Credit Union now thinks I'm weird, but I did eventually see the difference between their blues and my blacks. Well, technically, my dark grey charcoals and soots, since what I was wearing wasn't actually black, I'm told.
Snotty Salesman: "If you can't tell charcoal/navy apart from black when they are side by side, you have some issues with your eyesight. Otherwise, you are just assuming everything very dark to be black, and you're not really appreciating the infinite amount of colors that exist."
Troy: "What special glasses are you wearing to distinguish between different shades of black then?" I was standing by the window in direct sunlight with three different colors held up before my face and couldn't have told you which was which.
It reminds me of going shoe shopping with my girlfriend one time. This was the time she who dared to question whether or not I truly loved her. I was going shoe shopping with her. Question answered. Anyway, it took us three hours to find just the right pair of shoes to go with her new dress. All the others were, and I quote, "the wrong shade of white."
The next day, I was showing off my new navy pants at work.
Trainer: "Nice, but you shouldn't have bought black. You won't be able to wear those here."
Troy: "These are navy."
Trainer: "No, they're obviously black."
Troy: "No, navy."
Trainer: "Black."
Troy: "Navy."
In the end, I had to show him the tag to prove they were navy.
Trainer: "Wow! You're right. They're not black. That's the darkest dress navy I've ever seen. My bad. Incidentally, we try not to pull our pants off while on duty unless we're in the office or something."
Troy: "It's okay. It's the Credit Union. They know me here."
Trainer: "What's that have to do with anything?"
Teller: "Dear lord! What's going on out here? Oh, hi, Troy. Nice pants. Are they new?"
