Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something...

In case you were wondering,  I'm now employed, at yet another Large Corporation.  Almost gainfully.  I started about a week after my last post. 

I'm still considered a contractor, but now I'm in a situation that's called "contract to hire".  How exciting.  What exactly does that mean, you may ask?  I have no bloody idea, I may answer, but I'm keeping my nose clean, my mind open, and my fingers crossed, hoping that I may leverage my, charm and good looks, along with my kick-ass project management skills, into a full time, permanent gig.  We shall see.

Actually, at this point I have finished the planning portion of the project I have been given to manage and am now in full swing project-doing.  The project-doing phase has required me to move down from the shiny, cushy, corporate HQ office tower to a satellite call center, located close enough to my apartment that I can walk to work.  Although my commute is much improved, I'm having trouble adjusting from the professional, corporate culture to which I have become accustomed, to the elementary school level environment of the call center. 

I've been handed a crack team of ladies, or maybe a team of crack ladies, who are actually doing the work-work.  They have all been plucked from the mundane obscurity of the giant call center just for my project, and are considered the cream of the call center crop.  My role involves assigning tasks, doing the analysis as the project moves along, and to my surprise, a large degree of coaching, babysitting and mentoring. 

Basically it's 12 young women, all under the age of 25, and me, stuffed into a room together.  It's noisy, and frequently unprofessional and ridiculous in ways that I never considered possible before last month.  Every day I feel like I'm running a daycare.  I shouldn't have to ask you not to read the newspaper while you're at work, but on the other hand I don't need you to tell me every time you go to the ladies room to pee either. 

I'd like to strike some kind of balance where people use their own common sense to decide what is the right way to behave in a professional setting, but I'm beginning to come unravelled as I discover what has become the new norm among this next generation of working adults. 

There is a young woman (not the newspaper reader) who arrives every morning swaddled in a fleece blanket with Elvis on it.  It might be a snuggie.  Do they make snuggies with Elvis on them?  Whatever you want to call it, she wears it all day, every day.  Why?  Why?  All I can think of is that old adage "dress for the job you want, not the job you have".  What kind of career path does a fleece blankie prepare you for? 

Anyhoo... after a month of working with these young women I have discovered that I'm not only an old farty-fart who is out of touch with popular culture, I'm also a workaholic crank with a sour disposition and little patience for trifflin' bullshit.  Yeah.  It's a revelation.

You see... when I'm at work, call me cuckoo, but I WORK.  As in to work.  I agreed when I took the job that Large Corporation will pay a certain amount of money in exchange for me coming in every day and performing a particular service, so that's pretty much what I do.  I don't paint my nails or read magazines or call my stupid boyfriend or text my 10 best friends or balance my checkbook or shop online for boots.  It's not called lazy-ass-entitled-spoiled-motherfuckering, it's called WORK.

In an effort to bring some kind of order to the madness I've laid down some simple ground rules, in addition to the company policies they are required to follow.

1.  Shut up.

2.  Keep it down.

3.  Quiet please.

4.  Please shut the fuck up.

5.  Do your work.  There is work that needs to be done and a strict timeline in which to do it, so DO IT and button your damn lips.  Unless you have a question, in which case you should ask the question.  Then do your work while shutting up.

Now that I've said all that (this is the part where I get all high and mighty), let me also say to Large Corporations everywhere: When it comes to labor, you get what you pay for. 

When you treat people like shit, they will act shitty.  The young women who were chosen to work with me on this project are bright and capable and I have to remind them of this every goddamn day because they don't seem to ever get any other positive messages from the management of the company.  In addition to the real work that I have to do, I have to take time out of every day to perform like a flippin' cheerleader in order to get them all motivated and acting like they give even the slightest crap about themselves and the work they are doing.

If you give people incentives and spend the money on proper training programs and make them feel important and valuable, then your employees might actually become important and valuable to your organization.
 

The News Round Up - Soup, Cake, Drugs, Financing

1. Late Saturday afternoon my friend Rachel called just as I was in the throes of preparing the last big pot of soup (Portuguese Kale Soup) of the year, as it is now if not actually Spring, it is at least Spring-like and getting warmer and who needs big bubbling pots of hearty soup when it's warm out? Anyhoo... I heard the phone ring and hollered out to MDH from the kitchen that if it's for me tell whoever it is that I'm elbow deep in kale and that I will call them later... but then he hollered back that it was Rachel so I hollered back - tell her to bring Dave (her boyfriend) and come over and have soup with us - and so she did.

Then I called Ladette to see if she wanted to come by too and damned if she didn't just happen to be hanging out with her husband at a pub only a few blocks away. They came too.

Hence an impromptu dinner party - my dream come true.

Seriously, I dream of this but the stars are so rarely aligned in such a way as to accommodate impromptu dinner parties. House is clean? Check. Even the bathrooms? Mostly, check. Am I clean? Check. Got snacks? Check. Beer's cold? Check. Plenty of food? Check. Holy shit - c'mon over!

As if the evening wasn't already great enough Rachel caused me to squeal and carry on like a contestant on the Price Is Right, when she walked through the door with a Chantilly Torte cake from Arnie's for dessert. It's only my favorite cake EVER! Thanks Rach.

2. I start my new old job next Monday. When they told me that I'd have to take a drug test sometime this week my initial reaction was a quiet moment of slight panic until I remembered that I have nothing to fear. I have a guilty conscious but haven't been stoned in well over 10 years - unless you count Pamprin and I don't. If anything having to take the drug test is inconvenient because it causes me to leave the house and drive across town.

It's been awhile since I've had to take a drug test so I was very pleased to learn that they just take a hair sample now, which is so much more civilized than sitting in a room full of strangers avoiding eye contact with each other because we all know that each one of us is there waiting our turn to go piss in a cup. Eye contact avoidance aside, I will admit to looking around and trying to figure out who among us in the waiting room had the most to be worried about and it was never me.

3. MDH and I got a new bed a few weeks ago and it has been a glorious, transformative, life changing thing. It's a gigantic, king-sized, leather and teak* monstrosity of a bed. It's hard as a goddamn rock (extra firm) and so enormously huge that I have no idea what the hell MDH is getting up to waaaay over there on his side of it and I don't give a shit because I'm too busy sleeping like an angel through the night and waking up with no aches and pains.

His bowling ball doesn't knock over my wine glass anymore.

We love the new bed so much, and our bedroom has transformed into such a beautiful haven that we have agreed that whoever wakes up last makes the bed - and we have made the bed every day since. Not only that, but the room has remained clean and pristine. I actually dust in there now and put away all my clothes and shit where it belongs. Previously we were neither one of us bedmakers and we** had crap strewn everywhere to the point where not only was the room not a haven, I didn't even like walking by it. It was like a messy dorm room. We*** feel like grown ups now.

Each night before we turn out the lights we gaze lovingly at each other from across the vast expanse of it, sweep a leg around until our big toes are touching and declare aloud our love for each other and the new bed. I think it might be the best money we've ever spent.

*I don't actually know what kind of wood it is, but it is dark and teak-like.

**Me

***We

Employment History Part 2 - Talents and Trade Secrets Revealed

In my last post I wrote about my first job out of high school working in the cash office at Gold Circle. I really liked that job and totally lucked out because it didn't require me to sell anything, deal with the public or talk to anyone at all really unless I felt like it. I could pretty much go in, get my shit done and go home. It was part time and I was done by noon most days and that totally rocked.

On the other hand though the job had 2 major drawbacks:

1. It cramped my party lifestyle. I had to be there 6 days a week at 7am and getting up, dressed and forcing myself to be alert enough to concentrate on doing my job that early in the morning at age 18 when most nights I was out partying, drinking and doing god only knows what until scant hours before my shift started was extremely difficult. There were many days when I suffered through that job (or perhaps the job suffered through me) hung over or still drunk.

2. I already mentioned other major drawback to this job in my previous post, my cash office mate Missy, who found a way to suck every atom of joy from the air of the very tiny room we were forced to live in together for 5 hours each day but Sunday. Then again upon further reflection and after re-reading the last sentence of #1 listed above a couple of times over it has occurred to me that perhaps being trapped in a small airless, windowless room with a hung over or possibly still drunk teenage baboon like me may not have been exactly pleasant for her.

3. I know I said there were only going to be 2 drawbacks but upon even further reflection I am now wondering about the validity of #1 in total. I mean if I was going work hung over or possibly still drunk from the previous nights partying or god knows what then that probably negates the job cramping my style doesn't it? Sounds more like neither one had any effect whatsoever on the other. The job didn't seem to stop me from partying and the partying never seemed to prevent me from showing up and doing my job.

4. Fuck it then. The only drawback to my job at Gold Circle was Missy and frankly she may have had a point being nasty to me and giving me a hard time because I was a hung over, smelly drunk so who could blame her really? I mean, that room was pretty small.

I suddenly realize that I have abused my numbered bullet point privileges and at this point I'm rambling so it's time for an anyhoo...

Anyhoo... what I really wanted to tell you about was the job that I had after the cash office which I referred to as "the greatest job in the world". Are you still reading this?

I quit the cash office gig because I was going to start attending college and I needed a job with more flexible hours. I applied at several different retail shops, but the job I had my heart set on and didn't think I had a chance in hell to get because it was ranked pretty high on the coolness scale and I lived in a college town so there was always lots of competition for crappy paying jobs in cool stores was at a smaller but national chain that rhymes with Beer Ton Pimports*. Do you know of it?

It's a much different kind of store now. Back then it was only just morphing into the brand image it has now and many people (like my cousin J and his stoner buddies) thought it was a fancy head shop and sometimes when I told people (like my cousin J and his stoner buddies) that I worked there (oh, yes - in case you hadn't figured it out on your own - I got the coveted job) they would make bong and rolling paper jokes.

Beer Ton Pimports didn't sell bongs or rolling papers or any other smoking accessory except for Italian marble ashtrays and sandalwood incense. No. They sold the most beautiful and wondrous things. They sold rattan furniture made in Thailand, Japanese paper lanterns and jasmine scented potpourri. They sold cut glass Romanian stemware, bamboo fans from China and carved boxes made of teak wood from Brazilian rain forests. They sold English tea pots, Scottish shortbread cookies and itchy cable knit wool "fisherman" sweaters from Ireland.

For a young woman who yearned for travel, and didn't really see much chance of it happening anytime soon, it was a wonderland.

I started off as a cashier, but within a year was promoted to Assistant Store Manager. I love, love, loved that job. I got to be around all that cool stuff and between the shipments of new merchandise that needed to be unloaded from the delivery trucks, displays that needed to be built and the various trials and tribulations associated with working with the public, every day was new and different.

It's the only job I've ever had where I actually left smelling better than when I came in.

It was at this job that I discovered my uncanny ability to solidly and successfully assemble cheap furniture armed with only Taiwanese instructions, an allen wrench and wood glue without ever once bursting into tears. I would often return from having taken a few days off to find heaps of furniture left for me to make sense of by my frustrated and distraught co-workers who had tried in vain to assemble them in my absence. I was (and still am by the way) a furniture assembly goddess.

It was also at this job where I learned that working with the public is not for me. I continued to do it for quite awhile but eventually lost the ability to control my facial expressions enough to hide the disgust I was feeling behind a big shiny grin when confronted with:

• The woman screaming at me at full volume because I would not allow her to return a dress with filthy yellowed armpit stains and no receipt. She threw a ball point pen at my head.
  
  
• The children allowed to run loose all over the store and smash bath oil beads onto the floor I had just finished mopping while their parents argued over the fabric quality of $12 toss pillows.
  
  
• The wild-eyed man who banged on the door after closing time and tearfully demanded to be let inside. He shouted, "I can see you in there! I just need to buy a papasan!". Allrighty nut bag. Key indicator of nuttiness not so much the wild-eyes, door banging or tears but the word "need" used with "papasan" in the same sentence. Who in the hell has an urgent need for a papasan chair? He was out of his fucking mind and I called the cops.**
  

Mostly though it was a great job. I worked there for almost 3 years and made a lot of great friends. Here are some of my more fond memories:

• The morning my co-worker Jay broke all the jars in a spice rack and we used the jar labels instead of our name tags. I immediately snagged Rosemary and Jay grabbed Basil. As the day wore on some of our other co-workers including the store manager got into the act and we had Sage, Paprika, Nutmeg and Thyme all working at the cash wrap stand. I'm not sure why this was so funny. But trust me, it was. Epecially when you'd get one of those eye contact customers that make a point of reading your name tag and using your name when they pay. Thank you Nutmeg!
  
  
• After I moved out of my parents house I didn't need to buy groceries because I was able to live off of the free fortune cookies we gave away at the cash wrap.
  
  
• The time that I had excruciating pains in my abdomen and thought I was having appendicitis. My co-worker had just picked up the phone and started to dial 911 at the point in which I realized it was just some push pins that I had forgotten in my apron pocket stabbing me in the gut every time I leaned into the counter.
  
  
• Being in charge of the clearance book which gave me an inside edge into knowing all the items that were on 75% clearance. You see depending on the sales of an item we didn't always mark everything down as low as we could have. But using that book I was able to legally mark it down as low as possible for store employees. Handy.
  
  
• Our secret employee stash of full price merchandise that we all kept hidden wrapped in a tarp in the rafters over the stockroom. If we fell in love with something but couldn't afford it (and it was small, lightweight and pliable enough to be wrapped in a tarp and stored over hour heads) we would hide it in the stash and hang onto it up there until it hit 75% clearance. Brilliant.
  

*Perhaps some of you (who have made it this far and are for some reason still reading this post) may be wondering why I felt the need to hide the name of Beer Ton Pimports, but not Gold Circle and that would be because Gold Circle no longer exists as a corporation, but if balance is important to you may refer to Gold Circle as Cold Gircle as you continue to read this post.

**It's possibly the most useless piece of furniture known to humankind (it's a actually a tie between the papasan chair and the wicker bookshelf but for the sake of my post today papasan wins). It doesn't store anything, is flimsy as all hell, it slides all around when you even think about sitting on it and if you do finally find a way to get comfortable sitting in one for any longer than 90 seconds will give you curvature of the spine or at the very least a stiff neck.

Employment History Part 1 - The Cash Office

My young blogger friend Player wrote a post the other day about how much he likes his part time job working the fitting rooms at a big name clothing store. It was an excellent post that started my mind ticking back to some of the jobs that I had as a young person, most of which were also in retail.

I never had a job officially until the summer I graduated from high school. Before then I was kept pretty busy at home taking care of my younger sister, who was only 3 years younger than me, but mentally and physically challenged with Downs Syndrome. When my parents were at work and even when they weren't it was my job to bathe her, feed her, make sure she took all of her medications and generally keep her entertained and out of trouble. They paid me a small allowance for doing this and some other household chores which included cooking dinner every weeknight (my mother cooked on weekends), cleaning both bathrooms and vacuuming all the carpets at least once a week.

I got $20 per week for my labors, half of which I was supposed to use to buy my lunch at school. Is it really necessary for me to tell you that I didn't eat lunch for 4 years? Of course not. I pocketed that cash so that I could use it for whatever a teenage girl could buy with 20 bucks in the early 80's. Turns out quite a lot: records, make-up, movie tickets. Back before I started drinking, smoking and doing drugs life was pretty cheap.

Sometimes I was jealous of my friends that had "normal" teenage types of jobs working in fast food restaurants or bagging groceries at the local supermarket. They made more money and seemed to have a lot more freedom, but I didn't push the job thing with my parents because I realized that my friends with legit jobs also had to put up with such indignities as coming home smelling like a fry-o-lator or schlepping groceries across slushy winter parking lots for 25 cent tips. I had it pretty good.

What felt like mere minutes after high school graduation everything changed however. Suddenly it was expected that I would go out into the world and get a job. My parents started taking my sister to a daycare, hired a housekeeper and stopped paying my allowance.*

It was kind of horrifying.

At 18 I had no idea where to even begin to find a job. I had no idea what exactly I was qualified to do other than cook, clean and take care of my sister. The only thing I knew for certain, after listening to the complaints of my friends was that I didn't want to work in a fast food restaurant or a supermarket. So I spent most of June of 1985 trying to find a job worthy of my superior presence, a glamorous and exciting job that was also conveniently located on the bus line or within walking distance of our house because I didn't have a car. (I ended up getting a car later that summer.)

I wanted a job that didn't require me to lift anything, be seen by anyone, sell anything, get dirty or sweaty, move or speak to other people.

At this point you might think that I'm going to tell you that I was fooling myself and that such a job was not to be found for an 18 year old girl with no previous experience, who wore all black, an eye covering punk hairstyle, pale goth make-up and buried herself in books. My parents were certainly convinced that between my style and picky, priggish attitude that I was sure to fail. Perhaps I was being picky and priggish, that doesn't mean such a job didn't exist (Ha-ha!). Turns out there was such a job available (Ho-ho!) in the cash office of a local chain of department stores called Gold Circle (imagine Kohl's and K-Mart got married).

My new part time job in the cash office paid a whopping $3.75 per hour, which was a whole 20 cents above minimum wage at the time. As a bonus I got a 20% store discount. Ha-ha!

Every morning, Monday thru Saturday, at 7am I was locked into a tiny room containing an enormous walk-in safe, two adding machines, all of the store's cash register tills and another cash office worker. We spent the next 5 hours adding up and balancing all the previous days cash and receipts, refilled the tills with cash for the current business day and then prepared the bank deposits that were picked up promptly at noon by one of those armored car companies.

Every day literally tens or hundreds (during holiday season) of thousands of dollars in cash passed through my hands. It was a lot of responsibility and I like to think that my experience being responsible for taking care of my sister was what sold my manager on hiring me. Also I have an honest face. I do! Besides if there were any doubts about my integrity and ability to be trusted with buttloads of cash I had to go through some extra screening procedures and tests.

Anyhoo... that was my first real job and the only thing I didn't like about it was my cash office partner that I was locked into the room with each day. She was a girl named "Missy" with whom I had absolutely nothing in common. We got along, barely.

Missy, although only a year older than me, had dropped out of high school and was already married and had a one year old son. To be clear, it wasn't so much those facts that made me dislike her, but the fact that she was all superior about it. She was from a very small town where according to her being married and having a baby was the end all, be all of life's existence. She could die happy at 19 because she was married and had a baby. I was all like, big deal you've got a uterus.

I think perhaps because I wasn't totally jealous of her superior status as teenage wife and mother and frankly made no bones about my lack of interest or aspirations in either of those things (at any age), Missy thought that I was the biggest smarty pants asshole weirdo she had ever met and never stopped finding new and creative ways of letting me know how she felt. She certainly didn't like hearing about my taste in music, adventures in night clubbing and opinions about religion, politics or women's rights.

I might have stayed longer in the cash office of Gold Circle were it not for Missy. I was able to put up with her for about a year before I moved on to what I thought at the time was the greatest job in the world... which I will tell you about in my next post.

*I'm quite sure they weren't paying either the housekeeper or the daycare center a paltry $20 a week.

Holding Back

I've been pretty hush-hush about the fact that I applied for a job with the company where I'm currently a contractor. I don't like to keep secrets, so it's been rather a strain on my nerves.

Add to that the fact that I work in very close quarters, share a printer, ladies room, and break room with the people who interviewed me, and you will understand that there have been some awkward moments here and there as I run into these nice people and try to restrain myself from shaking them by the collar and begging them to please put me out of my misery and let me know if they are going to hire me already.

So far, so good, but I'll be glad when this whole thing is over.

As if walking around pretending to be all normal and shit while I wait to find out whether or not I got the job isn't difficult enough, I also have had to put up with a well meaning, fellow contractor friend of mine, one of the very few and privileged people I happened to let in on my secret job interviewing, who comes sniffing around my cube twice daily, asking in loud whispers, if I've heard anything about the job.

She has been doing this for what has now become weeks, like ever since I applied for the job and began the interview process. I'm ready to kill her.

Like dead.

Or at least maim her in some serious way that will leave marks, blisters and/or bald spots.

On Monday I asked her, in what I perceived to be the nicest way possible, to please not ask me about it any more. I assured her in calm and soothing tones that she would be the first to know. She seemed taken aback and quite stung by my request. I felt bad and wondered if I had used a harsher tone that I intended because I swear I saw tears well up in her eyes. So I promised that I would call her to let her know before I even call my own husband with the good (or bad, but I'm trying to remain optimistic) news.

I promised that she would be the first to know. Promised.

It seems that she has taken my request seriously because she doesn't come over to my cube twice a day and ask me about the job anymore. Thanks for that.

No. Now she comes over to my cube twice a day and in an understanding, wink-wink, overly sunshiny tone asks how am I "doing today". Insert air quotes here.

I'm not sure she knows it, but I immediately recognized this as a poorly disguised way of asking me if I've heard anything about the job. I'm pretty smart that way. I catch on.

I have so far responded by giving her one of those lip less smiles of mine where I don't show any teeth and my lips are pressed together, nod my head a little and say, "I'm fine, thanks for asking".

What I really want to do is leap from my chair, press her into a headlock and shove the contents of my recycling bin up her nose and scream,
"For fuck's sake you nosy twat, leave me the fuck alone. Stop fucking asking me about it. Fuck!" and then storm around my cube and knock shit over until I calm down, professional wrestler style.

I fear doing this may jeopardize my chances of getting the job.

Seeing the world through rose colored goggles...

Things are good.

I haven't been able to say that for a very long time indeed.

At the moment I have nothing to bitch about, except the fact that I have no ideas for blog posts and we are out of the "good" coffee. Our Gevalia shipment hasn't arrived yet so I've been brewing the swill otherwise known as Starbucks Breakfast Blend instead of my usual tasty, mildly roasted Mocha Java that I love so much.

Perhaps this is very boring, but there's a story coming. Bear with me.

I'm busy, which is something I haven't been for quite some time. I missed being busy and had forgotten how it makes the hours fly by almost as quickly as when I'm watching Project Runway (the shortest increment of time passage in my personal universe). My new job is not the kind of job where I will have much free time. It would probably not shock you, thanks to my moniker, to know that I barely have time to eat my PB&J.

I haven't told you the tidbit about how I've already been promoted, have I?

Well, it's true. Apparently they were so impressed with me that they decided to give me a higher paying job with more responsibilities than one I originally interviewed for. So I got promoted before I even started working. Marvelous! And I say that with not even the slightest trace of sarcasm.

Like I said, things are good.

Anyhoo... Thanks to all of you for your well wishes in the comments of my last post on starting my new job and commiseration in dealing with my husband's unnatural fear of natural disasters.

Since I have nothing exciting or upsetting to report I will instead share a story about my friend Amy. She called me last night and we were swapping tales of temporary employment from our pasts because as you may or may not know my new job is a temporary contract position. It's a very long contract (a year or possibly more) for an involved project, but anyway you slice it - I'm a temp.

Amy and I have both worked lots of shit jobs in the past including taking various temporary assignments. Being a temp can be weird. You are often treated as a second class citizen, and depending upon the length of the assignment and what kind of work it is, you may not even be given a place to sit. Often times the instructions on what it is you are supposed to do are unclear, especially if the temporary assignment is to take the place of a person who has had to leave unexpectedly.

When you are a temp nobody is expecting you to set the world on fire, so innovation and new ideas are not really high on your list of qualities you want to "wow" your new boss and coworkers with. Basically, you want to do what they tell you to do, how they tell you to do it and ask as few questions as possible. You tend to take everything very literally and this is why Amy's story is worth telling.

The story involves a one day temporary assignment at a metal working company. Amy didn't have a car at the time so she walked to this place through a very bad part of town. How she arrived to the job isn't pivotal to the story or even the least bit relevant, I just thought it seemed kinda sad. Anyway... When you are a temp you are not always told what is appropriate to wear so Amy chose to err on the side of caution and wore a suit and dress shoes.

She shows up on time and is met by a woman wearing safety goggles, who hands Amy a pair of safety goggles. Not the glasses kind, but the kind that wrap tight around your head with a piece of elastic. The woman instructs her to put them on and then guides Amy through a factory kind of building that is surrounded by offices with windows that look out into the factory area. Amy follows the woman to a back room office area filled with blueprints and the woman gives Amy her assignment for the day: Go through all the blueprints and sort out any of the ones that contain a certain part number.

The woman left and Amy got down to business.

It would have been an easy enough assignment were it not for the fact that the writing on the blueprints was kind of small and Amy was wearing a pair of scratched up safety goggles. The goggles impaired her vision and made if very difficult to read the blueprints, but she tried her best.

Hours go by... Amy is left unattended and keeps plugging away at her task.

Finally, late in the afternoon the woman returns to check on Amy and see if she wants a break. The woman informs Amy, who by this time has developed serious eye strain, a throbbing headache and a red, irritated goggle shaped indentation on half of her face, that the goggles only needed to be worn when walking through the factory, and that she has been needlessly suffering and sweaty faced all morning and afternoon.

If you look hard enough you can probably still see the goggle shaped indentation on Amy's face to this day. Well, maybe not, but the emotional scars remain.

UPDATE - 2-16-08 - after re-reading this post I have realized that one might think that I believe my new job is shitty. I'm a temp, but the job is not shitty. Not at all. It's fabulous and I love it. Of course I have only been going for three days, so it could go south in the future, but for now all is well.

I have a big giant cubicle that is is almost the same size as my home office and this company and the people I will be working with have made me feel quite welcomed and appreciated. They are all so nice and accomodating that it may even be a touch Twilight Zone-ish, but at the moment I'm just happy to be leaving the house every day and earning some bread.

I'm Hired

No post today.

Only this: Some very wise people have decided to bring me into their project management team - in exchange for money. Yes. I got a job.

Pardon me won't you? I have to put a load of towels in the dryer and after that I am going to spend the rest of the day calling everyone that I have been avoiding for the last 7 months and squealing into the phone at them.

!

Begging & Choosing

It has turned out to be a good week on the job front after all. I got a call yesterday about a job where my friend Rachel works (it was a phone screen and they'll call next week to set up an interview most likely), and 2 calls today from 2 different recruiters about the same exact job. Weird. The interview I have tomorrow is with recruiter #2, who seemed more on the ball than recruiter #1.

The job with Rachel's company is not anything close to what I'd like to be doing, but I will do if they offer and if nothing else pans out. Beggars cannot be choosers and I'm awfully damn close to begging at this point. Wouldn't that suck though? To go all this time looking and end up doing something totally awful and not remotely on my desired path? I may have no choice but to find out how bad it sucks.

Of course I was awesome on the phone so I'm sure my interview with recruiter #2 will be a shorty as he probably just wants to check me out and make sure I don't look like Mimi from the Drew Carey show.

I'll be sporting my new bob, my lucky tweed pants with my new Liz Claiborne jacket that I bought today at TJ Maxx for $20, brown pointy shoes and tasteful Tiffany loveknot necklace. My standard interviewing uniform. Oh, and a big giant smile..

Jeezus, I hope someone will hire me soon.

MDH has informed me that his vendor partnership is over as of January 1st. Meaning he will lose the office space he has been using at his client's headquarters. The office space he has been occupying for the last 3 and a half years. Meaning he will be working from home full time from then on. Meaning I will be kicked out of my cozy home office as it will become his cozy home office. Meaning I gotta get the hell out of here before then.

Here is a picture of what my office looked like summer before last when I was working from home in-between gigs on the road. Messy (sorry SRU - I'm a slob, but I did eventually pick up the phone bill from off the floor and file it where it belongs)! But what a nice view outside, eh? I'll miss it.

Would You Hire Me?

Hi! It's me, Lady! I'm just killing time before I have to start getting ready. I thought blogging might be better than pacing and blathering baby talk to the cat.

Thank you everyone for your well wishes!

Today I woke up feeling sound as a pound. Better than that - sound as a Euro.

I will be able to lift my arms after all and thereby fix my hair and put on make-up and hopefully wriggle into my Spanx with no issues (they are like wearing a hug).

Map & Directions?
Check.
Extra resume copies?
Check.
Napkin for spitting out gum before getting out of the car?
Check.
Collection of Sims 2 expansion packs in a stack with kleenex on top?
Check.

Hm.. I could use a little Visine.


I'm going to wear my brown pants with the pink pinstripe, bright blue RL dress shirt shirt and tan tweed jacket (of course the tweed). I'm also sporting my little sterling love knot (Tiffany!) for good luck and to remind myself that the only reason MDH started an arugument with me this morning is because he is nervous for me and not actually an economy sized asshole.

We used to argue in the car as he was driving me to the airport to leave for extra long business trips too.

That's not why I need the Visine. My eyes are super dry all winter long once we turn on the furnace every year.

Four Squares

I'm not feeling very creative today and slept in too late for anything interesting to happen, so have decided to take a little break and steal someone else's (some guy) idea for a post.

Four Jobs I've Had In My Life:
1. Sales Clerk at Pier 1 Imports from 1986 to 1988. I learned a lot by working here, but mainly that people are mean. Especially during the holiday season. I also learned that asshole parents will let their asshole children run around like animals and expect sales clerks to babysit while they are shopping. Asshole parents will then yell at the sales clerk because their nasty, misbehaved, asshole children have hurt themselves after knocking over an end cap full of hand blown Polish stemware while playing tug of war with a hand stitched Chilean hammock.

2. Accounts Payable Clerk for a small industrial parts distributor. It was a family owned business and the family was a bunch of solid pinheads. It was boring and they treated us like monkeys, but I met my best friend Amy there. She worked on the other side of the cloth wall that separated the A/P cubicles from the A/R cubicles. One day my first week of working there I heard someone singing the Smiths song "What Difference Does It Make?" and when she got to the line "I smoke 'cause I'm hoping for an early death", I stood up to see who it was and sang the rest of the line, "and I need to cling a hing hing to some-thing". Then she stood up and we sang the yodeling part of the song together. We've been best friends for 14 years. A port in the storm, that girl.

3. Office Manager for a subcontractor. I was the only woman among 25 men. I learned a lot about men there. Mainly that most of them are sex-crazed cretins to be avoided at all costs. I know more about men than I care to actually. Ladies let me tell you, if you knew what they were really thinking about you, you would spend every waking moment of your life creeped out and beating them with your purse. But since that's no way to live I looked for their brighter sides made sure I was friendly with all of their wives and/or girlfriends and we all got along just fine - and I put a pad lock on the ladies room door. Oh yeah, I had the best boss here. He was like my brother. He's the one who inspired me to get my degree and got me signed up for tuition reimbursement. He was a great guy and I'd work for him again in a minute. I owe him a lot. He was not a cretin.

4. Traveling Software Trainer. Life on the road sucks but the work was rewarding and I was really quite good at it. I found my calling as a teacher you might say. I didn't have an office to go to every day, saw my boss and other co-workers once a year and mostly kept control of my own doings. I'm just not cut out for the road. I gained 50 pounds and lost the will to leave the house. Seriously, I was worried I was turning into an agoraphobic.

Four Countries I've Been To (in order of most recently visited):
1. Canada - Toronto to be specific. Love that city!
2. France - Paris
3. Bermuda
4. Mexico

Four Places I'd Rather Be:
1. Home's not bad. I love being here, especially in my kitchen whippin' up some good grub. I'm a terrific home chef. Tonight we're having braised rosemary leg of lamb with tabbouleh salad and pommes frites, which is just a fancy way of sayin' french fried per-taters. 'Ceptin' of course that I make mine in the oven. Nothing is fried in my kitchen. This household has cholesterol issues.
2. Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay on Oahu. It costs $5 to snorkel all day in a sheltered cove and is also a film location for the Elvis movie Blue Hawaii.

3. If I could I would go back in time and visit Amy's back porch circa 1998. We all still smoked then and sat on the back porch puffing away, talking and laughing about stupid shit.

4. On the back of my cousin Julie's horse Freckles. This would also require time travel because Julie sold her 5 years ago. I'm not much of a rider, but I liked Freckles best because she was predictable and didn't mind that I only rode in large circles and didn't do jumps. She seemed to enjoy the break from Julies kids who treated her like a fucking theme park ride.

Four Foods I Like To Eat:
1. Caprese Salad, or in redneck speak - toe-maters drizzled in olive oil, sprinkled with basil, salt and pepper and if I'm real lucky some fresh rolled mozzarella cheese (that's pizza cheese, for any of my family members who are reading this). But only if the tomatoes are just right. I also like them drizzled and sprinkled on a toast sandwich. Like a BLT without the B or the L (or the mayo).

2. Fresh asparagus that has been blanched (quickly bawled) for not more than 1 minute. Tossed with garlic sesame sauce, sprinkled with sesame seeds. Served chilled. In the summer I pretty much keep a Tupperware container of this in the fridge at all times to munch on throughout the day.

3. Corn on the cob doused with lime juice and lots of salt.

4. 9 grain toast with real butter and strawberry preserves. Toast and jam. It's the only thing I use real butter for. Like I said, cholesterol issues.

At this point I'm wondering why am I so fat? These all seem pretty healthy and wholesome food choices. Maybe the oil and butter, eh?

Four Personal Hero's
I don't like this one much, but I'll give it my best. It changes frequently and I'm suspicious of the word "hero". Most of mine are dead, as live people often let me down.
1. My best friend Amy. Mom, scholar, wife, ex-wife and a raggy bitch. I love her awful. She's exactly the kind of mother I would have wanted to be had I decided to travel that path. She's firm but fun and her daughter is a delightful child to be around. Amy is also one of the funniest, smartest and most generous people I've ever met.

2. Dorothy Parker - I know she was a slutty, drunken manic-depressive, but what wit, what spice, she was the cat's pajamas.

3. Georges Sand - although I don't care much for her writing I always admire slutty women who were ahead of their time.

4. Coco Chanel - another slut ahead of her time with great taste in clothes. L'elegance c'est moi!!

Four Books I've Read Recently
1. Currently re-reading The Aspern Papers by Henry James. I'm on a Venice kick lately.

2. Just finished First Among Sequels by Jasper Fford. I'm a big fan and have read all of his books and feel strongly that you should too (if you're at all into fiction that is). I order his books in advance, pay full price and wait wide-eyed, with my face pressed agained the front window until they arrive.

3. Harry Potter and the I've Already Forgotten, oh yeah, Deathly Hallows.

4. What Is The What, by Dave Eggers - I waited until it went on sale and I really shouldn't have. It was an awesome and true story. Totally worth face pressing and full price.