Here is the former Dad Van parked outside of a nondescript office park off Route 28 – a stone’s throw from Dulles International Airport.
(Ignore the firemen climbing on the roof. They were just conducting some training.)
This is where I “worked” from January to September of that year. And when I say “worked” I basically sat at my desk and stared around waiting for someone to bring me something to do.
For some reason I thought about this period of my life today.
Maybe it’s because we just sold the Dad Van after 13 years and 217k miles and I’ve got a tremendous amount of memories associated with that vehicle, including a lot of time sitting in this parking lot waiting for someone to let me in.
See, after I was poleaxed by my organization and threatened with termination (but then reluctantly brought back when more rational minds were able to convince them that was the legal course of action) they had to find a job for me to do, except it couldn’t be back in my old office because that would be awkward.
For them. Not me.
So, they found me a job as a “liaison” with another organization out near Dulles.
Which is funny because when we first started negotiating my return they claimed there were no liaison jobs available and my only course of action was to resign or be terminated. But then when they were in the wrong, suddenly a liaison job opened up for me.
Except, there really wasn’t a whole lot for me to do.
It wasn’t that the new agency was bad, it’s just that I don’t think they knew what to do with me as they were so busy with their own issues.
They did issue me a desk and a computer, but it would be six months before I could get access to it since I didn’t work for them. As a workaround, I brought my parent agency’s laptop and connected to the office’s WiFi, which worked some days and didn’t work on others.
In fact, I would only get a badge that would allow me access to the building itself a month before my position suddenly evaporated.
Around September the partner agency’s big boss called me into his office and told me that, while they loved having me, they needed my space for new employees, and I’d have to go find work elsewhere. That was fine because I really wasn’t doing anything anyways, so I went back to my parent agency (under new management) and told them they needed to find me a new job. Which is how I ended up down here.
When I started working in that office park as the “liaison,” I was so paranoid about my parent organization trying to find some rinky dink new allegation to make against me and trying to make an unimpeachable work reputation for myself to protect me from being attacked again that I would habitually arrive at the office park at 6:45 AM every morning.
Nobody else was there.
I’d have to wait until 7:15 or 7:30 before anyone else would roll up and let me in.
It was humiliating. I had to sit there in my car waiting for someone to open the goddamn door. Then I’d sheepishly follow them into the darkened office while we flicked on lights. They’d go to their office and I’d go sit by myself at my desk and stare at the walls while waiting for my colleagues to slowly begin arriving as I waited to “liaise.”
Some days my colleagues wouldn’t show up until later and the automated motion detector overhead lights in the office would turn off because nobody was moving around. I’d have to wave my hands vigorously above my head to get them to turn on.
Just sitting there in the dark in a suit and tie with no work to do and no WiFi.
You literally can’t make this shit up.
After a couple of months of that I decided this was bullshit and I needed to do something productive. I had a little extra money at the time, and one of the things that really bugged me was that the main henchman who tried to get rid of me was a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and listed that designation on the signature block of his e-mails. Something like:
“Joe Blow, CFE”
He was the only one in the office at the time who was a CFE and he liked to rub it in people’s faces as if to remind them that he was better than you.
In my profession, being a CFE is kind of a big deal. It’s something people always talked about doing, but nobody had the time to study for the exam because they were too busy working cases. Plus, it was really expensive.
But suddenly I did have some time on my hands and what I wanted more than anything was to send Joe Blow an e-mail that read:
“Jay Bobb, CFE”
The thought of that cracked me up and motivated me to pay the thousands of dollars to take the prep course, study several months for the examination, and then to take the exam in a noisy food court at Dulles Town Center because the exam was timed and I couldn’t afford the shitty WiFi to go out in the midst of it.
Remarkably, I passed on the first try and now carry that title.
Thanks, Joe.
Sterling, Virginia (2015)
Song Of Ajax 