Twenty-Four Days and Counting
What I Learned On This Day, 2005: As a newcomer into fast-paced and jaunty Corporate America, it's important to stay alert, stay focused, and stay quiet; there are a lot of powerful people milling around who have oodles to offer in terms of benevolent mentorship, and if I keep my boots shined and my eye on the prize I might just find myself a rung or two higher on this crazy ladder!
What I Learned Today: If I pick up my phone, dial nine to get an outside line, and then press any other number? It'll beep like a motherfucker for about three minutes, but eventually that shit'll go silent and I can hold that receiver to my head for at least two hours. It's worth it in silent-mouthed sorries and finger-shushes alone.
|
R and I went hiking on Sunday. I always think that hiking sounds like a fantastic thing to do, and then once I start to do it I remember how much walking is involved.
I can't for the life of me figure out how to link to flickr from a picture, so
HERE. Goddamn.
|
This morning my boss sent a snarky email to everyone in my department demanding that we disable our instant messaging service because it's making us "unproductive". I actually don't think that it does affect our productivity, seeing as how we only use it when the boss is out on a three-hour lunch or when she's locked in her office talking to her kids while shopping the Victoria's Secret semi-annual sale on-line or something.
And this was exactly what I put in the email that I then forwarded to a co-worker. And when I say "forwarded" I of course mean "accidentally sent to my boss".
I've never actually done that before.
You know how sometimes when you lock your keys in the car, you get out and slam the door and realize JUST as the door shuts that "HEY MY KEYS!" and you're about one-tenth of a second too late? This was just like that. Only imagine that the car is engulfed in flames and sitting in the path of an F5 tornado with a basketful of abused puppies and viable donor organs in the backseat. And that your boss is in the front seat about to read an email that you meant to send to someone else.
My company uses Lotus Notes for our email application. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Lotus Notes given that this isn't 1983, but I commonly like to analogize that switching from Outlook (or ANYTHING) to Lotus Notes would be a lot like having a guy show up at your front door one morning to take your car keys from you and casually explain that from now on you're going to be driving a spatula to work. (I've used this analogy often and I used to say "crock pot" instead of "spatula", but a crock pot has a dial and a cord and shit. You look at a crock pot and some people might think, "Well hell, I bet I could drive that to work. It won't be quick, and I might need an extension cord or a generator or something, but I could do worse." Well you know what, then, MacGyver? Drive a SPATULA to work, motherfucker. Work THAT shit out.)
And insofar as the only "recall" procedure that Lotus is capable of involves… nothing, there was no way for me to pull that fucker back. So I sat here for a second. Evaluating my options. I could either… WHAT THE FUCK THERE IS NO "EITHER". I had to Lucy and Ethel that shit, fast. The boss was down the hall at the copy machine.
"Hey, do you mind if I see how your Windows Media Player is configured?" She stared at me a second and then shrugged. She doesn't know what "configure" means so she deferred. Phase 1 complete.
I sat down at her desk, pulled up Windows Media Player (very complicated, the Windows Media Player; my neighbor's four-year-old had some initial trouble with the install but once he took the blindfold off, hooked up the monitor, and pretended like he was three everything worked out) for cover and then DELETED THE SHIT OUT OF THAT EMAIL. The good news is that I didn't have to worry about any sort of fancy "backup" or "archive" function; you even ACT like you're THINKING about deleting something out of Lotus and it immediately rips it from your account and flings it into the third ring of hell. Sometimes the fourth ring. It depends on if there's an attachment*.
So then I guess I came back to my desk. Where I've been for the last six hours waiting for my heart to stop screaming for an ambulance. But my main point here, really, is that all of this could have been avoided with INSTANT. FUCKING. MESSAGING.
* ATTACHMENT: an extraneous file of any size attached to an outgoing email that causes said email to disappear for an indiscriminate amount of time before bouncing back to the sender's inbox with an error message in Cantonese.
|
Another Drunken Realization Brought To You By: Sure, It's Warmer Now, But The Room Smells Like Hair.
Remember when you were younger and you'd be sitting around on Christmas or just some cold day and the fire would be going down in the fireplace? So your dad would get up and reach his whole ARM into the fireplace and just... GRRRRRR!... move the logs around in all the hot coals and fire and flames and shit with his
bare hands? And you just sat there awestruck in your little blue pajamas because your dad was the toughest dad in the whole history of vikings?
Whiskey.
|
Last Friday I reached
THAT POINT at work. You know
THAT POINT? Where you've absolutely had e
nough, where your character and dignity and ethics and pride and morality and some other shit that you have that hasn't been completely corrupted jump forward and demand JUSTICE, demand that YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS, demand POSITIVE CHANGE FOR THE SELF AND THE SPIRIT???
Not that point.
I actually reached the other
THAT POINT, the one where your coworkers finally roll their eyes and cover their ears and call you out on all your rabid shit talk. "You're 'done'?" they sniffed. French manicured finger quotes akimbo. "You've been 'done' for about a year."
Did you seriously just finger quote at me with an airbrushed decal of half a reindeer on your fingernail? OH MY GOD I AM SO. FUCKING.
DONE.
So I did what any self-respecting woman with a mortgage, a car payment, a $40,000 student loan and a Discover card that's been maxed out since All Those Times I Paid My RENT With It In '99 would do; I downloaded a snippy letter of resignation from Microsoft, signed that sucker and strode into my boss's office.
Two hours later I sweatily emerged from the Lair, thankful that The Robot in all her Merciful Majesty had agreed to let me stay until the end of February. And also that I would now additionally be in charge of defrosting her port-a-fridge and combing out her hair.
So let it be known: before you sort of curl your plastic fingers at
ME in the air, you better make goddamned sure you're ready for my kind of action. YOU DON'T EVEN
KNOW HOW DONE I'M GETTING CLOSE TO ALMOST BEING.
|
Is it wrong to write your letter of resignation when you're actually on the clock? My boss made me take a company-wide cognitive exam for her last week so that she could brag about how smart she is. This is a woman who until a few weeks ago thought that New England was a state.
I'm done.
|
R and I are took two of his kids skiing for the weekend. I’ve been skiing for, what, ten years? Twelve? The first time I went it was with an ex whose idea of teaching was to show me where the equipment rental shack was and whose idea of support was to laugh like a hyena and take pictures of me crying. So over the past completely self-taught twelve skiing years, I have perfected a style of skiing that embraces all of the known principles of NOT FALLING. It's
work, this style. People who ski complain that their calves hurt? Their quads?
I get off the mountain and I need a left frontal forearm massage. My pelvic bone aches, my gall bladder starts bleeding and I can't move my head to the up.
I will say though, in my own defense, that I bought skis this year that are actually the right
length (my previous skis I bought on impulse at The Liar Ski Emporium! All Boots Three Sizes Too Big Half Off! and it's been like trying to swing eight-foot wooden dead bodies around in the snow.
Bloody eight-foot wooden dead bodies) and with the appropriate equipment I did much better this trip. I hardly even knocked down any old people and then ski kicked them, laughing. I
did knock down a few old people somberly and then steal all their cash and rip up pictures of their grandkids, but that was in the airport.
|
Skiing.
Back tomorrow if I continue to not break things.
|
A few weeks ago I found out that
Stace is pregnant and I immediately began the crochet schematic; a production schedule had to be established... materials had to be estimated and appraised... I had to find a baby blanket on clearance at Babies R Us for my brother's first child due in June... shit had to be taken care of. I have responsibilities.
I'm not bragging here when I tell you that I've been crocheting for almost twenty-five years, since I was six years old. And the
reason I'm not bragging is because I suck at it righteously. My mom taught me on this thick wad of pink yarn, and my uncoordinated brain and stick fingers fucked with it and fucked with it and fucked with it until I had a filthy pink triangle potholder. My mom laughed at me then the same way she laughs at me now, only with less vodka. And less mom.
A History of Fucked Up Crochet, Exhibit One
|
Lend me your tack hammer and I'll give it right back.
I got in this morning and my voicemail light was flashing so before I even had a chance to throw my purse on the ground or spit on anything I pushed the voicemail button. And it just beeped at me.
I've pushed the button maybe forty thousand times between eight-thirty and now, and each time it just beeps at me. I just got an email explaining that "the voicemail PC is in need of a new power supply" and it MIGHT get fixed tomorrow.
I'm trying to figure out whether I should carefully pry my phone open with a box cutter? Or just slam it open against my desk? BECAUSE THE LIGHT IS FUCKING FLASHING AND I HAVE VOICEMAIL IN THERE.
|
It's a super slow day here at the office. You probably don't know that. You're probably at home. I forfeited my ticket to the Fiesta Bowl today because apparently it was really very important that I come here and sit in this chair with my legs crossed and work. I naturally interpreted "work" to mean "download as many animated pirate gifs as humanly possible". I'm making great strides.
I've also called the company payroll department eight times this morning to ask when our W2s are being sent out. There's only one guy working in payroll today, and he sits about twenty feet from me.
My feet are numb.
|
Happy 2006! This year I promised myself that I would handle my money more responsibly, lay off the booze, and stop being such a procrastinator.
So today once I could stand without retching I drove down to the Safeway and spent $78 on Bloody Mary supplies.
I'll clean that up later.
|
