Confessions of A Peanut Butter Junkie

The people at Mercury Insurance started to drug me. I swear I am not making this up.
How do I know this? I know this because from 2002 until April 2005 I worked for Mercury Insurance at 1901 Ulmerton Road Clearwater FL 33762, and from about December of 2003 I had been completely impotent. I only mention the impotence, because while I was at work I started to pop some really great boners. Erections again. At last! Yeah for my team! Only it totally freaked me out because I knew that they were spiking Ken’s coffee, or slipping me the Mickey – you know a little something /something in my bottled water or whatever.
I told you that I had fallen in love with someone at work and that it was painful to see them every day. I told you that I didn’t really want to be in love with them but that I was.
I had fallen in love with someone who was way too young for me. But if I am the first idiot on Earth to fall into this trap I really do want my freaking trophy. That’s the real reason I stopped by the trophy store the morning that my old man called me the trashcan man.
At Mercury Insurance the real boss was a guy named Jack Daugherty. He was the guy at the top. Jack looked like he was about 12 years old. I swear I am not making this up. He was almost always dressed in a suit. He was THE MAN after all, but he always looked like he was about 12 years old to me. I heard a rumor that he went to Harvard, but I never saw a degree and I never asked him about it. I was tempted once or twice. I once walked into Jack’s office on the top floor of Mercury Insurance wearing a pair of rubber gloves and a mask. The kind of mask you would wear if you were painting the house or working with fiberglass. I think I even handed him a file to get his signature. He didn’t say a word. What do you say to a guy who works in your office and walks around wearing rubber gloves and a mask? But they were poisoning me with something and my solution was simple. I didn’t leave any drinks at my desk unattended. I didn’t eat any food that was not individually wrapped and sealed. I wore rubber gloves and a mask.
I wore surgical gloves and a painter’s mask. At work. I had to. They were poisoning me.
Think of how much of a prisoner you would be if you were impotent and someone at work slipped a little Viagra into your coffee or your bottled water? I mean I wanted the boner-don’t get me wrong, but at work? What the fuck was I going to do with a raging hard on at work? I’ve mentioned that when I was healthy I would jerk off at least once a day. I’ve mentioned that I looked at porn and never even gave it a thought.
I never did any of these things at work. The same way I never use curse words at work. I am polite to the point that people often mock me or parody me, and my politeness and I just take it as a complement. Please and thank you. They mean something to me. Excuse me. Pardon me. These are things that I say. I have never used or abused the Internet at work. Not at any job. Including Mercury Insurance. What I did in the privacy of my own home was my own business.
What they did to me right there at Mercury Insurance 1901 Ulmerton Road Clearwater FL 33762 is just unforgivable.
But I dug in. I made my stand. And the gloves and mask really helped. They really did.
“Why are you wearing gloves and a mask?” One of the Johns asked me. I think I was standing at the printer sorting through the pile of printed documents.
“Well,” I said. “I’m thinking about becoming a proctologist. I mean if I’m going to be working with so many ass holes. Why the fuck not?”
By this time the man in charge of the Bodily Injury Department was a guy named Scott Villwock. He was from Wisconsin, but he had the good sense to support the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The gloves and the mask really angered old Scott Villwock. He actually called me into his office for one of those uncomfortable talks that bosses will give now and again. You know a one on one that is essentially a disciplinary action.
Scott had the annoying habit of mentioning the CIA all the time. And by CIA…I mean that CIA the Central Intelligence Agency. I could never figure out if this fool thought I was with the CIA or if he was trying to imply that he was. I do remember thinking, “I don’t care if you’re with the entire alphabet and half of fucking Sesame Street you stupid asshole.”
Scott would often ask me if I had any guns at home. Even before they started dosing me with boner juice and I started to come to work wearing surgical gloves and a painter’s mask. Scott had a college education but apparently he could not master the technology of the Internet or read a map. How do I know this? I know this because one day Scott came up to me and all but forced me to show him the location of a place called Breezy Point.
It’s in New York out by Rockaway. It is the location of my grandfather’s summer home.
Yeah, old Scott Villwock he pulls out a map or an atlas or something and the fucking fool makes me point to Breezy Point on a map. What a genius this guy is. And he’s running the department that I work in. Ain’t life grand?
Scott would often shout, “Pound the Rock. Pound the Rock,” across the office.
Apparently it’s a Tampa Bay Buccaneers thing. I counted my blessings. At least he wasn’t walking around the office with a Green Bay cheese wedge on his head!
No matter how many times I assured Scott Villwock that I do not own any guns, or even enjoy guns, the look of fear in his eyes never went away. Scott was always somewhat afraid of me. If the guy had any guts at all he used them all up the day he fired me.
Me, I’m not so sure I have guts, but man have I got the biggest set of balls.
The only thing that was certain at Mercury Insurance is that you would be moving. From desk to desk. Floor to floor. Whole departments. The company was going through a growth period and whole departments were moved on a weekly bases. You just never really knew where you were going to be sitting or even on what floor. I stopped counting how many times I moved at 6. And I was there for just over 3 years counting the beginning of my employment as a temp.
For all my talk about being in love with someone at work the truth is I hardly ever saw this person. They were not in my department and were often floors away. But I usually got to see the person I think of as “other Murphy” at least once a day. In the beginning anyway. Why “other Murphy”? See I had the Mike Murphy that I didn’t like so much and the “other Murphy” that I liked a lot.
Now I know why they call it falling in love. Turns out love is the bottomless pit. You just keep falling.
Other Murphy would show up at my desk about once a day because I would process the expense checks for the Bodily Injury adjusters, and they would print somewhere else in the building. Other Murphy would deliver the checks at about the same time each day.
I can’t even remember what department Other Murphy worked in. Something to do with fraud or fraudulent claims.
The point is Other Murphy didn’t actually work with me.
But the company had us all moving around all the time. And in the end Other Murphy wound up sitting just a few desks away from me. And that’s when they stared dosing me with boner juice. I have no idea what they expected my reaction to be, but I thought my solution was brilliant. Gloves and a mask.
But Scott Villwock did not like my solution. So he calls me into his office and tells me that I can not wear the gloves or the mask because they are creating a distraction in the workplace that is effecting productivity. I’m trying to avoid being dosed with boner juice and this idiot has to go and mention productivity.
I took the gloves and the mask off. It was work with out them or not work at all.
That’s when they started to poison me with something else. I have no clue what this stuff is, but here’s what it does. It puts and odd sensation into my throat. It…almost feels like I’m coming down with a cold. It brings on the worst insomnia. And when I do fall asleep it’s NOT normal natural healthy sleep. It’s like passing out. No dreams of any kind. It’s like being dead…only with a heartbeat. When I get out of bed in the morning I feel the exact opposite of what a human being is supposed to feel after waking. I do not feel refreshed. I feel worn out. See now they just want me to fucking quit. But I just won’t. I will not quit.
So they decided to murder me instead. I swear I am not making this up.