Happy Halloween!

It's one of our favorite days of the year. The day that the Hutt actually lightens up for a change and lets us wear costumes. The day that all the t.v. channels show horror movies and everyone believes in ghosts, zombies, and monsters. The internet has a wealth of seasonal videos for this time of year. Here are a few of our favorites, though we admit these are more funny than frightening.

Song to Wear Pants To's "Zombie Ninjas"

AVbyte's "The Walking Dead"

Jonathan Coulton's "re: Your Brains"

Zebra is almost certainly brainless

Seriously, we think that any zombie that tries to feed on Zebra will starve to death (starve to second death?). This is the interaction that we overheard today.

Patron: I'd like information on braille.

Zebra: What kind of braille?

Duh. Is there any other kind

Seriously, has anyone ever heard of any other kind of braille?

Poor starving zombie. No food for you at Tartarus

 

No dog required

It's time once again for Stuff Out of Context! Today's line is:
I'm playing with your rabies.

In case you were wondering, that thing that looks like half an ear of corn is sort of what the rabies virus actually looks like. So, literally playing with rabies.

 

Mr. Not-so-clean

The Hutt admonished the staff today to clean out the refrigerator. Every shelf was full and most of the food in there was old. 

"Take out or label anything that belongs to you," said Shoes. "After lunches I'm going to throw away anything without a label."

Now, this has happened at Tartarus before. Usually it results in a nearly empty fridge. This is what the refrigerator looked like shortly before closing today.

This is clean?

And why is there so much year-old soda in there?

 A few things are gone. Like cheesey potatoes. But this was still in there.

See all that sediment? Disgusting.

 

It's Mo Monday!

We're learning that arguing with Mo is an exercise in futility. No matter what we say to him, he's certain he is always right. This delusion is reinforced when, occasionally, he is. We told him he would look ridiculous riding this dragon like a horse. Instead, he looks awesome.

Heigh-ho Dragon!

Let's talk about Spoof

Whoopity-doo!  It's time for evaluations at Tartarus. In a normal workplace your annual evaluation is a chance for your boss to acknowledge the things that you do well and gently remind you of some things that you could do better. Not at Tartarus.

At Tartarus you never know what will happen when you get evaluated. The Hutt may act as if you are the best employee ever. Or you may be treated like the lowest scum on the planet. Or you might be Spoof.

Today was Spoof's evaluation. The Hutt spent the entire time talking about other people, some of whom don't even work at Tartarus any more.  When Spoof said, "Excuse me. This is my evaluation. Please talk about me" the Hutt kind of squirmed.

"Uh, yeah," said the Hutt. Then it proceeded to talk about other people again. When the Hutt finally did talk about Spoof, the only criticism it gave was "When you're assigned to work the desk, you spend too much time actually at the desk."

What?!

We can only conclude that the Hutt is actually afraid of Spoof. We cannot guarantee that we will not use this knowledge for nefarious purposes.

Let the games begin

Really? Really?!

At Tartarus, we post signs in the building warning patrons about upcoming holidays and such when we will be closed. On the surface this is a very sensible plan. If only it were being done in a sensible way. 

Three of these signs got posted this week: two on Monday and one today. One of Monday's signs warned about a staff education day November 17th. A month in advance seemed a little premature but not particularly worth mentioning. 

Then the Hutt had Neppy post another one. The second sign told people we would be closed for Thanksgiving. Now, by our count that sign is posted SIX weeks in advance. More than a little ridiculous.

This seemed sensible to you Hutt?

The cherry on top is today's closing sign, reminding people that we close for Veteran's Day. It doesn't take a very big brain to realize that Veteran's Day actually happens before either of the other two. So why wait to hang that sign?

He'll notice in a minute

Harry Potter. He really is magic.

Like many businesses, Tartarus has a small collection of toys to occupy small children. There are a few that are quite popular. One in particular is highly favored. A Harry Potter doll.

Like this one. Only...not.

Most kids want to play with Harry. Then, towards the end of summer, Harry vanished. We spent several weeks looking for him with no luck. Eventually we had to conclude that someone had stolen Harry Potter. The kids were devastated. 

Bring back Harry Potter!

Then, today, a kid walked up and handed us Harry! We were startled to say the least. Then he informed us that Opie had given him the toy basket with Harry in it. This was peculiar to say the least. So, we tracked Opie down. "Opie, a kid was just playing with Harry Potter."

"Yup," said Opie, like it was no big deal.

"When did Harry get found?"

"Oh, I dunno. I guess it was last week. Maybe the week before," said Opie.

"Opie," we said, "we've been telling all the kid that Harry was gone. No more Harry Potter." 

"Huh," said Opie. "I thought everyone knew."

Note that in that entire conversation Opie never once apologized. In fact, he seemed more put out that we were upset than anything else.

It's Mo Monday

With the weather getting colder we've been seeing a lot of squirrels frantically storing food for the winter. And it got us thinking - What does Mo do for food in the winter? So, we took it upon ourselves to help him out. We took him to a forest and showed him nuts and such and how he could store his food in tree hollows. He was not convinced.

There are no eyeballs in this tree, Spoof and Speck

So much for our attempt at a good deed.

Since when does that count as work?

Some time ago the entire staff of Tartarus was soundly scolded for "chatting" while at work. We were told we could only talk about work things unless both people in the conversation were on break. Some people even got in trouble for talking about work. It was intensely insane. 

It was literally impossible to guess what might get us in trouble.

It would seem, though, that all of those rules have been tossed out the window. These days people sit around at all hours talking about anything from the "cute thing" their cat did yesterday, the awesome movie they just watched, to their plans for the weekend (all the way down to the meals they plan to cook/eat). Today, though, really took the cake. Today Zebra and Plague spent twenty minutes at the desk looking at and loudly discussing the Etsy shop Turtle just opened, all the while ignoring the patrons who were anxiously waiting for help.

This look may be permanently etched on our faces

To make matters worse, your friends Spoof and Speck recently got the Glare of Death from the Hutt when they took a few minutes at the desk to discuss plans for an upcoming event.

Send the Turtle back to Preschool

So, when you approach a door you need to go through and someone is in your way, what do you do?

Excuse me, cat. I need to get through.

That's right. You are polite, say excuse me, and wait for the person to move. Apparently Turtle missed that lesson in Preschool. When Turtle "needed" to get through the door that Spoof was trying to lock, Turtle responded by shoving Spoof out of the way snarling "I need to get out right away."

Turtle needs this book

Maybe it's just us but we thought manners were a part of everyday life, especially in a business setting.
 

Tongues are for licking, but not everything

It's time again for Stuff Out of Context. Today's line is:
That's a wise choice, not licking.

I think he found that lollipop in the sofa.

It's Mo Monday!

For once, Mo's curiosity and incessant need to crawl into strange places has gotten him into trouble. Out and about, Mo came across this wire dress form. He insisted on investigating.

Once he crawled in through the arm hole, he discovered that the body of the form made an excellent squirrel cage.

We thought this would embarrass him into proper behavior. Instead, we heard him plotting to trap his "enemies" in a similar manner.

Turtle and food part 2

Yesterday we told you how Turtle ate half a pan of Cheese Danish desert in a single sitting. And how we wanted to barf. We thought there was nothing else to say about Turtle's food obsession. Clearly, we were wrong.

Today Turtle brought cookies to share with everyone. And by "cookies" we don't mean a whole pan. No, to our best estimation Turtle brought 4 cookies and broke them into pieces so everyone could have a taste. So, 1 Turtle gets half the desert brought for everyone. 12 staff members get little cookie chunks. Does this math make any sense to anyone?

More danish! MORE DANISH!

 

Now I only brought 4 so you'll all have to share.

If you have a weak stomach you may wish to rejoin us tomorrow

We have discovered that the co-worker we call Turtle is aptly named. Consider the following story.

This week Shoes brought a desert to our staff meeting, a cheese danish style treat. While we watched, Turtle ate 7 of the 16 servings.
Curious, we looked up the recipe for this desert. It includes 2 tubes of crescent rolls and 2 packages of cream cheese (along with sugar, eggs, that kind of thing).

Doesn't everyone eat an entire tube of crescent rolls with a block of cream cheese in under 30 minutes?

Now, you're probably asking yourselves what any of this has to do with turtles. Recent research has taught us that some pet turtles will eat themselves to death given constant access to food. This seems like a real possibility for Turtle.

Not running with scissors

In which Spoof and Speck are too scary to talk to

Join us in a thought experiment. You are at work. You need to ask a question of one of your co-workers. For whatever reason you cannot walk up to the person and ask the question. Do you:
 A) Train a mouse or a cockroach to deliver messages and send it down to ask the person.
B) Become a psychic and psychically send the question and "read" the answer
C) Call a different co-worker who has no connection to the situation to ask the first one your question.
D) Call the person you actually need to talk to.

Easy answer, right? One would think, but not in the Mosquito's world. Apparently the mosquito thinks it is best to call Mr. Ed with a question for Spoof and Speck.

As if this were not dumb enough, Mr. Ed answered the question for us. 

It's Mo Monday!

Have you seen the previews for Annabelle yet? (Here's a link if you haven't. Go ahead. We'll wait.) It seems Mo has seen them and they went straight to his head. He's determined to find his own haunted doll to join him in his rein of terror. He hasn't succeeded yet but we fear it is only a matter of time.

Not this one Mo.

Plague of the Day

Today Plague was sporting: an over-sized black and white patterned cowl necked sweater (with a drawstring at the waist), a snake skin patterned petal skirt (and yes we know the drawing makes it look plaid. Lay off. Snake skin is hard to draw), black tights, and high faux-suede boots with weird and useless straps.

Staplers. Again.

We thought there couldn't possibly be any more stapler stories coming out of Tartarus. We told you about the long discussion about where to put a stapler. We told you about the labels on the staplers. What else could happen related to staplers (other than one of our favorite past times - opening up a stapler and seeing how far we can shoot the staples). Today our coworkers proved us wrong.

Who knew staplers were so complex

A patron approached the Neppy at the desk. "Do you have a stapler I can borrow," said the woman.


"Ah yes," said Neppy, plucking a particular stapler from the desk drawer. "This is the special lending stapler. The others do not move from the desk."

Are you kidding, Neppy? It's bad enough that you have a "lending stapler". You certainly don't need to tell the patrons about it. Talk about stupid.

What is wrong with you?

That's a bad way to get a tan

Today we bring you a very special edition of Stuff Out of Context. For the very first time, we have a conversation out of context. 

The lines are:

I found the guy's legs.
Oh, the one that was in the toaster?