City Hall: An Autobiography, Chapter 5

September is here, and the brats have gone back to school.

I officially start training with my new boxing coach next week. I am really looking forward to it. I am also looking forward to our new P.A. system being finished. They said it would take three weeks, and we are now into week four, and they are now just finishing it. Gotta love those Bose speakers they installed all over City Hall.

One of the installer guys handed me a "manual" on how to use the thing. Its about the size of a Stephen King novel. There is another "manual" explaining how to use the Bluetooth function. Yes, I payed an additional $14,000 to have Bluetooth installed, so you can just bark commands at it, without using the keypads. Yeah, how cool is that?

The main unit is in my office. It looks like a server, with some kind of external sound mixer and P.A. amplifier. I will have to read the novel to find out how it all works. I'll be sure to get right on that.

Let's see what my colleagues are up to today, besides the usual nothing.

Judy is working for a change, although I have no idea what she is doing, but at least she is working or pretending to work. However, she seems to be ignoring my existence. That is fine, that way she isn't bothering me.

Jannet and James' temporary assignments are almost finished with us. However, the Mayor may decide to hire these two dummies. I hope he doesn't.

There is the Mayor Man, in his office sifting through some papers. Thinking he is something special. Yeah, he is "special" all right.

I sat at my "computer", and started checking email. Oh, what's this? An email from my coach.

"Hey Jake,

Can you make it into the gym after work today. I would like to start your training now. I may have an opponent for you. A guy from New York. His name is Jeff. I think we can make a big thing of this, a Canada vs. USA kind of deal. If you are interested, let me know, but we need to start your training soon...

Thanks,

Coach Jeremy "

Oh, Jeez. Now? Crap.

Right at that moment, the Mayor walked in with James and Jannet, "Jake", he said in that smug voice of his, "I am very happy the James and Jannets' performance. I want to hire them. Would you fill out the paperwork and send it over to HR, please?"

The rage that I felt at that moment. How dare he want to hire these two pains in the butt! Damn him! Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! Asshole! Fart face! Crap for brains! Numbnuts! Grrrrrrrrr.....

I gave a sarcastic smile to James, as I reached back to my filing cabinet for the appropriate forms.

Trying to keep my temper under control, I lightly slapped the forms down on the desk in front of James and Jannet, "Tax form, tax form, tax form, another tax form, tax form, contact information, tax form.....and finally, a tax form. Please fill these out and return them to me.".....followed by a sarcastic smile.

I then looked over at Judy, and gave her a disgusted look, and she smiled. Of course she did!

Jannet and James were in the process of filling out their forms, as John walked in.

"Hi all!", he said joyfully.

"Someone is in a good mood", Judy said.

"Oh, I had a great day!", John said with enthusiasm, "All right, get this, I was offered a promotion with the Department! They want to make me a supervisor!"

I looked at John and said, "So, it means doing even less work?"

"Oh course", he said with enthusiasm, "Why else would one want to be a boss?"

"Are you not proud of what you do, John?", I questioned, "I mean people should be proud of their contribution to society. Most police are quite happy with what they do, and are great contributors to the community. They care about the people they serve. All you care about is being a boss, and being able to get away with doing even less work. Although, I don't know how anyone could do any less work than you."

John gave me a questionable look, "This coming from someone who does not like police, and wants to cut our budget down to zero?"

"It is not a matter of liking or not. It is matter of people like you, who don't do their job properly, and you make your colleagues look bad.", I said defensively.

"...So, very much like you", John said back.

Two of the P.A. system installers walked in behind John, "That's it. All done.", one said.

"Really", I said in a surprised and somewhat sarcastic voice, "That was fast, I'm impressed."

The other installer pointed at the server unit located just across the room, "This is the main unit, everything can be controlled from here. Otherwise, you can control each room individually with the keypad or Bluetooth headset."

He then handed me what looked like an old-school operator's headset from 1950-whatever. "Just speak your command into here. It will control the room you are currently in. Just say 'Play' and then the song title, to play an MP3, or say 'Tune" and then the station number for the radio."

I put on the monstrous unit, which felt like it was crushing my skull, "Tune ninty-seven point three", I said into the unit. After a two-second pause, Boom 97.3 began to play in my office.

"Great, thank you", I said to the two men, and they left.

This was fun. "Tune one-oh-seven point one", Q107 began to play after a couple of seconds, "Cool." I said joyfully.

"Are you happy now?", Judy asked. "After spending three million dollars of tax-payer's money?"

"$2,650,300", I corrected her, "plus $14,000 for the Bluetooth attachments."

I looked through the manual, or novel, I guess, and said, "Hey, this this is pretty smart! Check this out..."

I spoke clearly into the headset unit, "Play cheesy seventies hit"

After about four seconds, "Fung-Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas began to play.

I pointed up to the speaker, "Isn't that great?!", I exclaimed.

"Let me try.", John asked.

I handed him the headset, he put it on, "Play a song from someone nobody likes."

The system replied through the speaker, "I found SEVEN entries IN the LIBRARY by Justin Bieber..."

John smiled, "This is so freaking cool!"

Judy put her hand out, "Oooo, I want to try!"

John handed her the unit.

Judy said, "Play a scary song."

The system replied, "I found SIX entries IN the LIBRARY by Celine Dion..."

Judy laughed, "Great!", she said.

By this time, Jannet and James were finished their forms. I took the forms and swept them into the top drawer of my desk. I will get to those eventually. I then asked them to 'Find something constructive to do.'

Judy still had the headset on, "Play Elton John", she said.

The system replied, "I found NINETEEN entries IN the LIBRARY for Elton John..."

I interrupted, "No music in the office during working hours..."

The sysetm continued, "I found CROCKodile ROCK...I found LEVON...I found LOVE Lies BLEEDing...I found RockET MAN...I found..."

"Is this stupid thing going to name all nineteen songs?", I said with disgust.

The system continued "...BITCH IS Back...I found..."

At this point I was fed up with this, so I yelled as loudly as I could, "Play something!"

The system paused for a few seconds, and then said, "I found One-Hundred Twenty-Three TITLES IN the LIBRARY with the WORD 'something'...I found 'Something...'"

"Oh, way to go Jake", John said.

I was already starting to get annoyed with this new system.

I thought that with a "limited" library of 450,000 songs, 'The Rodeo Song' would not be in there, but I wanted to try it anyway, "Play The Rodeo Song", I said aloud.

The list of titles stopped, and after about a second, sure enough, 'The Rodeo Song' began to play.

Myself and John began to laugh, however, Judy, James and Jannet did not find it so funny.

"You'd better turn that off", Judy said in a serious voice, and handed me the headset.

"Stop.", I said into the headset.

The song continued to play.

"Stop.", I said again.

Still, the song continued.

"Play something", I said in an attempt to stop the song.

Nothing was working. 'The Rodeo Song' continued.

"I think something is wrong", James said.

"No, really?", I said with sarcasm.

I tried one last attempt, "Play 'Eye of the Tiger'.

At that point, something very odd happened. The song began to skip, and the got 'stuck' on one line,

"B-b-b-b...He...eeee...eee..re...D-d-d-d...

P-p-p-p iss me off...fucking jerk...iss me off...fucking jerk...iss me off...fuckimg jerk..."

Judy's eyes became very wide, wider than usual, and James put his hand over his mouth, meanwhile, John was smirking. Yeah, very funny.

I quickly walked over to the keypad, and on the LCD display was a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside, and some red text, "FATAL ERROR: UNCAUGHT EXCEPTION AT MEMORY LOCATION"

"Ooooooooohhh, Shhhhhit!", I said aloud.

I walked to the hall, and heard the same thing playing in the hall. It was also playing in the other offices.

I turned to Judy, "Ummm, would you call City Hall, please?"

"What, why?", she said.

"Would you just do it?", I said back in a hurried voice.

Judy sighed, but did it anyway.

She put Speakerphone on, and after a couple of rings, "Please hold for the next available agent..........iss me off...fucking jerk..."

John was snickering like a little girl.

I flashed him a dirty look, "Sssshush!"

Everyone was looking at me.

I looked around, and in an annoyed voice said, "Can you people maybe help me with this, instead of just sitting around like idiots?"

"Help!", I yelled.

Suddenly everyone jumped up and started running around trying to find something, anything that could solve our problem.

"Unplug it!", James yelled.

"Unplug it?", I said, "With what?! There is no plug. Its hard-wired!"

"Breaker!", Judy yelled.

"Where the hell is it?", I questioned.

There was utter chaos in the office. I was very surprised the Mayor was not aware of what was going on. Then again, he is not aware of anything that goes on in City Hall. Why would he? He's the mayor.

I found a panel, opened it, and just started flipping switches.

Lights, computers, vending machines, TVs, and everything you can imagine began to shut down, except the damn P.A. System!

The Mayor walked into the office, "What the hell is going on?"

"Jake broke the P.A.", John said calmly, as chaos ensued.

I gave John a dirty look, then over to Mayor Man, "I didn't break it. It is a piece of crap."

"I don't give a rat's fat patootee!", The mayor yelled, "Just fix it!"

In the meantime, Judy was at her desk reading a book...oh, wait, it was the manual for the System.

After a couple of minutes, she calmly walked over to the keypad, and typed in a few things, and magically, the System stopped. "System memory reset" was showing on the display.

We all looked at her.

"How did you do that?". I asked.

She quoted from the manual, "In case of a system freeze, enter pound-zero-zero-zero-one-Enter."

"Did you read the manual, Jake", she asked.

"Of course", I said in a questionable voice, "I read the manual thoroughly. I must have just missed that part."

TO BE CONTINUED...