Coffee good. Work BAD.

Today was a rather slow business day at the store, which was two things: unusual for a Monday, and fertile ground for humorous slacking. I began my morning with way too much coffee in a short period of time, so that didn't really help matters.
One of my minions is a rather lonely gentleman (and I use that term loosely) who lives by himself. He loves watching TV, and spends most of our workday hours telling everyone about shows he watched the night before. We call him The Human TiVo, as he will recount the minutes of a show like he's at a damned city council meeting. This is usually bearable since he at least watches good shows, but on Mondays he has a whole weekend of TV watching to catch us all up on.
He has become a fan of "Ancient Aliens" which sparked a discussion on whether or not extra-terrestrials exist. We eventually decided that they do, but Earth is essentially the "ghetto" of the galaxy, and that aliens fly past us with their doors locked only stopping for fuel, or some chili dogs, or whatever. John Travolta was cited as evidence.
A little while later, I heard the dreaded sound of a diesel engine and a back-up alarm. This means that a big truck is backing up to my loading...zone...area. Perhaps I should explain why this is "dreaded". My store gets re-stocked from our serving warehouse on a nightly basis. Any time something is delivered via an external carrier, it's usually a large shipment of inventory. This means work on my part, and work = BAD.
So I discover that I am to receive three pallets of brake cleaner. This is, as the name implies, a chemical that is used to clean brake parts before installing them on a vehicle. It comes in aerosol cans, and smells like a mix of nail polish remover, gasoline, and Taco Bell farts. Most garages go through it like water, so we sell quite a bit. Someone high up on the corporate ladder apparently got a discount and decided that my store was a good place to keep it. (They do that to me sometimes).
After using the forklift to unload all three pallets and drag them back into the store, I heard a faint hissing sound. Some investigation on my part revealed that I had punctured a can on the bottom of the pallet whilst moving it around. I have two options here: break the entire pallet down by hand to remove the leaky can, or just let the whole thing leak out and stink up my loading...area...zone. Since we have already established that work = BAD, I decided to let the cursed thing leak out into the air and hope no one would notice. When that didn't work, I fork-a-lifted the whole damn thing back outside. OSHA be damned.*
Since most of this shipment was to be broken down and distributed to the retail stores in our area, I spent a good bit of time writing on the cases with a black magic marker. That plus the fumes leaking from the broken can resulted in a pretty sweet buzz, so even though I had to do some work, it was worth it.
Later in the day, I spent a good half-hour watching two of my guys fiddle with their "goddam" cell phones. Two of them have recently upgraded from relatively simple flip-phones to a touchscreen and a smartphone. If you have never watched a stubborn, cranky old codger fiddle with a smartphone, my God, you owe it to yourself to see it. I didn't think it was possible to cram so many curses in to one sentence. I suppose I could have helped the poor man figure out how to open solitaire, but the coup-de-grace came when he yelled "Aww fuck it!" and shoved his phone back in his pocket. It was especially funny to me since I had been breathing brain-damaging vapors not long before.

To sum up, the three things I learned today are:
1. John Travolta is an alien (and possibly a "commie")
2. Brake clean and coffee make things funnier.
3. Work = BAD.

*Brake parts cleaner has been found to cause cancer in the state of California. Fortunately, I live in Pennsylvania.