Break out the duct tape...

Thursday is payday at my company.

Which means Thursday is the day I have to walk down to payroll and sign my name away towards a couple hundred paychecks and paystubs. I stand at a makeshift counter and wait while the gremlin behind the cubicle wall decides how many she will force me to hand out. She goes through the box and goes "I think these people are on the second floor, oooh and these are too, and actually could you just take care of the third floor while your at it...and since you're going that way, just drop these off on the first...kay? Thanks!" Then payroll slams the huge pile of envelopes on the desk and all but makes me put my hand over my heart to swear I will not let any envelope 1) Out of my sight and 2) Be touched by any person who does not go by the name on the envelope.

Because I get to hand out each envelope individually on Thursdays I also get to (read: am forced to) socialize with the rare and exotic breed of office worker: The Paranoid Corporate America Employee.

The PCAE's are the people who seem to be just a little too pale. Their cubicles are filled with humidifiers, de-humidifiers, and allergen reducers. No big deal you say, some people have allergies. Yes, but PCAE's wrap their machines in foil. They also have microwave transmitter interceptors placed strategically around their "personal space". These interceptors would normally be labelled "wave machines" and are filled with blue water.

Most paycheck envelopes are filled only with a little paycheck stub telling the person how much money was directly deposited in their bank account. Most people don't care if I miss them during hand out (and therefore mail their paystubs to them instead) because most people have direct deposit and the stub is really only for tax purposes and their files. There's a little sadness in this when it takes me two hours to track someone down, hand them the auspicious letter and have them carelessly chuck it towards some file box in an out of the way area. But what can you do?

PCAE's care however, because PCAE's don't have bank accounts. PCAE's don't trust banks. They believe a bank is an institution controlled by the government to make sure that the "people" do not get enough money and food to rise up and rebel. Banks are a form of control. PCAE's envelopes are filled with a live check. (As opposed to a dead one? I never really figured out why they were called "live checks" Do they need to be fed? Are there check vets? What type of vitamins do they require?.) The live check is a hard pet to take care of. If security got any worse I'd have to walk around with a bulletproof briefcase handcuffed to my wrists. I have a time limit for how long I can not give away the live checks. If I still can't find the living breathing PCAE by that time limit the check is put in the mail to be rushed to their home address post haste.

PCAE's are difficult to track down. They are often absent (random alerts about smog and the ebola virus keep them at home), or they leave early without warning. They like to keep their movements unpredictable - in case someone is following them - and in this case that may be a good idea. I follow them all the time on Thursday...I'm thinking of getting a bloodhound to help with the search. What I'm trying to say is it's really freaking hard to find these people at their desks. So I have to do a lot of mailing of checks.

Which is also a problem. PCAE's don't trust the mail. According to them, the mailroom has been infiltrated by the FBI and one of our very own geeky, sweet, kinda ill-adjusted mail clerks is really an agent who takes pictures of the address portion of all letters and packages and sends them to the "home office." Even worse they do this with cell phones thereby effectively tainting the mail with cell-phone cancer causing agents in order to eliminate threats to government security.

Today I got chewed out by the boss of a PCAE because I put her check in the mail yesterday (she was out sick) and she freaked out so bad she had to be sent home. She was certain the CIA knew where she lived now and was busy tapping her phones.

I was just doing my job!!!

PCAE's and their counter-parts PTFH's (People in Tin-Foil Hats) strike me as very sad. It must be an awful existence to walk around daily worried that the very air you breath is something toxic. I like breathing air, I don't want to think that something I like to do would be bad for me. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

I had a friend in high school (actually I had a "stalker" in high school.) who had difficulty telling the difference between Anime plot lines and real life. He was in JROTC (Junior Reserves Officers' Training Corps in case you got to go to one of those nice schools that don't try and recruit you from the age of eight) for a semester and he was certain that at JROTC camp they brainwashed him to be a secret soldier. He was privy to all sorts of secrets about the military and he went around trying to convince anyone who would listen that the little blue vein in our hands was actually a transmitter chip. Religious Apocalyptic Fever was at an all time high in my town in high school and all the kids were certain that the end of days were coming because we all had the mark of the beast.

The really scary part was when my biology teacher mentioned it in class too. Obviously I went to a "public" school.

In anycase, his life was not a happy one. He kept thinking that they would drag him away to some undisclosed location because he was educated the masses (third period English class) about the evil of the military. Even if high school wasn't a torture chamber and people didn't pick on him to distraction he made his own life a hell.

Interestingly enough I think he tried to enlist after graduation and lasted all of a week before they declared him crazy and booted his butt out. I'm not sure if he was just paranoid and confused or actually diagnosable crazy. I'm kinda glad that they didn't let him carry a gun though.

In anycase, in our house, the PTFH's and the PCAE's are mocked to no end. And it does seem pretty silly that people who work in a large International company are worried they might be "on the grid" or "in the system". I mean they work in corporate America, they submit to random drug testing and use the company doctors for the many ailments they contract. They eat the company food and fill out all the forms we have listing what cars we drive, registration numbers, SSN's. It's not like we're not already in some system...any system. Why so freaked over the mail and the bank?

I might get tickled by the guy who covers his desk in foil, but I feel sad too. You might say these people have a disease or a disorder...but I think they may be simply eccentric. Which is even worse because they choose to frighten themselves, they have to lead this overly-paranoid life, and it can't be joyful. If I were to give into a fantasy world I'd much rather believe I were a cat, or a princess of some island, or a superhero. I wouldn't want to constantly try and convince myself that people were out to get me.

The really really scary part though? People are out to get us...just look at London, again. There is stuff to be afraid of...and my fellow employees wave machines won't do much to stop it. What a waste of energy.