It is apathy oh no it's just fever

I have created a new person that I oft adopt at work called "BIG RONNIE" Big Ronnie is basically a white trash nascar lovin dude who thinks larry the cable guy is the best. It all started when I was joking with one of the managers about how I was going to start calling in on my time off with a southern accent and heckle him. Seeing as how the kitchen staff is made up mostly of thugish black guys, I didn't plan on it being a reoccurring thing. But then the managers started calling me BIG RON and basically encouraging me to do it constantly. I was pretty confused, is it some sort of trap to get me to say something racist as big ron and fire me??? Turns out no they just seem to think it is the funniest thing ever. The one younger manager, Dan, fucking loves it. Whenever I come in he asks me how if I had anyone over to my double-wide the night before and how much PBR I drank. Now pretty much all of the managers joke about it. The head manager who is usually really stern and gruff made a joke about Big Ronnie chugging a sixer of PBR on my lunch break.

I'm actually fairly certain I could start drinking at work or before work now if I wanted to. Last Saturday, I was only scheduled to work 10-5. When one of the other workers "Cortez" called from JAIL to say he was in JAIL, Dan asked me if I wanted to stay until 11 instead of 5. The prospect of working 6 more hours and having to do dishes and close didn't really interest me, so rather than just say no, I lied. I told dirty Dan that I was planning on going home and getting hammered and then joked "If I can get real fucking drunk here then maybe I'll stay" Almost instantly he said "Yeah I don't fucking care as long as you can still get your shit done."

That was definitely not the response I had expected, so stunned, I somewhat backtracked and told him that I might come back in later when I was drunk. It's weird and really hard to gauge what the actual stance is on drinking at work. Since I am the first person to be trained to cover every position in the back of the house, I am currently the most useful employee in the fucking joint. I think the managers actually realize that I am probably way too intelligent to be working in a deli and its obvious that they REALLY don't want me to quit.

My second full week of work I was supposed to go in one day, but woke up hungover and decided not to show up. Rather than getting fired like at least 5 other people I know of, when I came in for my next shift they just said hey what happened Wednesday are you alright? I just told them I thought I had the day off and nothing else was ever said of it.

The problem with me knowing how much they want me to keep working there is that I know myself, and I fucking love to take advantage of shit as much as possible. When I worked at Home Depot, I didn't know shit about lumber or cement and could be easily replace, and as such I showed up on time and did my work right out of fear of being fired. But if you put me in a situation where I'm not so expendable and I slowly but surely test the waters of how much shit I can get away with until I inevitably cross that line.

I'm not too worried about the prospect of actually being fired from work at some point in the future so much as I'm slowly starting to realize that if I continue the trend of achieving as little as possible at work that it will eventually bleed over into the rest of my life. Maybe it already has.

On a lighter note, I booked my plane tickets for SF during spring break. So for a 10 days I will be able to fuck around.

So far this entire entry has been a tangent from my original motive. I was working wednesday when I started feeling kind of "wavy" or maybe "untethered" is a better word. I soon began to realize that something was certainly not right. I talked to a manager and came home early. By the time I had gotten home the fever was in full force. Even with pants and a long sleeve shirt on underneath every layer of covers on my bed, I was shivering like a mothafucka. Realizing that I was quite sick now, I only wanted to sleep. But one thing stood in the way of my repose. I had to take a massive dump.

Now taking a shit normally can be sort of cold. Feet on cold tile floor. Bare ass on cold porcelain. Pants pulled down etc. But in my feverish state this was basically the worst thing on earth. I was shivering and shaking and my teeth chattering as I desperately tried to jettison whatever I had eaten the day before. If taking a shit with a high fever is uncomfortable then I can't imagine what freezing to death would be like.

****FAST FORWARD 35 YEARS ****

Old Smacko: OH FUCK THAT RETARD PAPERBOY THREW MY SHIT IN THE SHRUB AGAIN.
(Walks outside in Bath Robe with slippers. Glass of scotch on the rocks in one hand.)
OS: How come that fucker can't throw it on the goddamn driveway for once in his life. I swear I'm gonna give him an envelope full of anthrax as a tip this Christmas.
(Makes his way towards the shrubbery covered in a thick layer of snow)
OS: God my fucking balls itch.
(Reaches down to scratch the worlds most famous sack)
OS: OHASDHHDSDH
(Slips on some ice and falls into a shrub)
OS: shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
(dies an awful slow death and is found frozen to death on his front lawn with a turd halfway out his ass and a 2 finger salute to the frozen tundra that surrounds him)

Being sick is bad enough, but now you have to be tortured more just so someone else can fucking tell you that "HEY YOU SICK"

My mother suggested that I go to the doctor so I could get some new miracle flue cure pill. What she neglected to tell me was that in order to receive this wonder drug you had to be clinically diagnosed with the flu. This means getting this fancy new swab that tells the doctor within about 2 minutes if you have the flu or not. The downside of this swab is its administration. It's not a throat swab or mouth swab, oh no it's a fucking SINUS SWAB. They take this small weird q-tip like thing and ram it up your nose until it almost punctures your brain then they MOVE IT ABOUT and remove it.

After my swabbed turned pink, the obvious was confirmed, I HAD THE FUCKING FLU. A prescription was written for wonder drug and filled. I must admit I had my doubts about this shit, but it's not fucking joke. I went from laying in bed all day wanting to die to waking up and spending all day playing a Charles Barkley RPG.

The downside of not being violently ill is that I no longer have fever dreams. I had one memorable one which centered around a grade school classmate dying. It featured at the FUNERAL ALONE, an on stage sex show, a street motorcycle stunt tribute, a sing-a-long, and plates of free shrimp.