Yesterday at work I rolled up a fat set of blueprints; bear hugged them in an attempt to get a rubber band around the roll, and sliced a flap of finger skin wide open. I smeared blood on my jeans and later, my lunch of leftover meatloaf met the other leg. I was like a filthy, small child. Today I tore way too deep into a cuticle (horrible, horrible habit) and bled far too dramatically for such a small cut. I had to ask my boss for more Band-Aids but it seems I’ve already gone through both hers and my stash. Idle hands and shit.
The other day on my lunch break I was performing one of many awful, awful tasks that come with moving (returning my internet modem and various other part and pieces to Time Warner) I walked into an ongoing spat between a righteous customer and an employee who’d simply had more than enough. By the time I arrived they had escalated to a point of no return; the customer service gal going all street on this woman and the woman going all everything-is-your-geedee-fault on the gal. As I quietly (so as to continue eavesdropping) and politely (like a normal human) spoke to someone and signed off on my delivery, a very old woman walked up to my other side and started immediately berating another girl behind the counter. Her bill had INCREASED! AGAIN! And it was JUST RIDICULOUS! She tossed the offending bill across the counter, shaking her head.
It would be a very rare occurrence that the person in customer service had anything to do with what is pissing off one customer so badly. They are doing their job to collect their paycheck, must like the rest of us. They are not laughing manically behind your back and fucking with your account for giggles. Acting like a helpless victim with a horrible attitude is so far beyond acceptable, those irrationals deserve to have their bill increased or service shut off or whatever it is that got them all irate. We are a society above taking out our pain on the wait staff. They are human beings. Mistakes occur. So it goes.
It was really hard to watch and I do not for one second miss working in retail.
Do you know that Farmer’s Insurance jingle? We are Farmers. Bum buh bum bum bum bum! It makes want to stab things, people, myself through the cornea. Maybe because it has interrupted my happy time ska loop on Pandora ten too many times this afternoon. Maybe because it has a brain-grating tone and is slightly infuriating in its simple non-advertising. You tell me nothing with bum-buh-bums!
OH MY GOD ANOTHER COMMERICIAL OF THEIRS JUST CAME ON
It’s the weekend. Calamity OUT.
Filed under: workplace
I was screwing around with Microsoft Office Publisher, because the icon just sits there and begs for clicksies. I was in a greeting card making template and excitedly chose “bars” for the design.
When that piece of crap loaded, I went, “Oooh.”
And then laughed out loud.
*a fantastic song by Thursday, FYI
Dearest mostly strangers,
Did I mention that my new job is actually my old job? Follow along, and then I’ll never mention the new job stuff again. I quit the interior design place in the summer of 2008 for the furniture place. I can’t seem to get out of the furnishing and making pretty industry. The transition sucked but it smoothed out into a really cool thing for me. I was glad I endured the scariness of leaving what I knew, what I knew well, and venturing into new territory and being a big dumb dumb around the new terminology and processes. While there, my career mentor from the interior design place, love that she is, offered me three positions to come back to. None of them had the payoff I wanted, job description or monetary, until now. I got really excited about this most recent offer when it came up and was sorely disappointed when the managers of the hiring department declined my asking pay. I had mentally walked out on my current job, which I did not like much anymore. Within a few days, the job scope was revised, the pay was met, and there was an official offer. I lunged for it.
So I’m back to the very place I started, office wise. Sorta. They opened a new building up the street from the “corporate” one I used to work in. I came from the grocery store into the 8-5 world and learned from the bottom up, picking up samples in the showroom and answering phones early on and eventually moving into various departments for order processing, auditing, learning my way around a blueprint, etc. Now I’m back, in a new department, with new people and a whole lot to learn.
It’s going well.
Also? My mom works in a different department here, my dad in another, with my brother alongside him, and my uncle in another. Our last name is all over this place.
/work speak
-CJ
Dear sitee-site,
I survived one work week at the new job. I went in with zero excitement, much to my dismay. Work was work was a paycheck was a job, new place, old place, where is happy hour held this week? But the transition has been smooth, the work is steady, the people are nice and that giant private office upstairs? All mine.
Please feel free to send me some living, breathing greenery to keep me company.
There’s a Thai place nearby. I’m slacking on my quest to try new foods so I think I’ll head there for lunch soon. What’s a picky girl to order from a Thai menu?
The other day when I picked up Kiddo from school, there were some screaming kids on a nearby playground, around her age (or size at least), and one yelled, “I’LL SMACK THE KOREAN OUT OF YOU.” No shit.
I had to have a quiet chat with the super amazing after-school supervisor gal about Kiddo. I was afraid we were in a bully situation and mine was not the victim. There’s a younger girl in the same after-school program that has told Kiddo once in front of me and once in front of Josh that she hopes Kiddo will be “nicer tomorrow.” Which totally freaked me out to the point that I couldn’t even take my kid’s word that she wasn’t being mean. Super amazing after-school supervisor gal assured me that the other child complaining about everyone and everything and I should definitely not worry about my kid being mean to anyone. Exhale. But when it came to speaking her mind, apparently Kiddo’s got the gold medal. The gal told me how she’s so straight forward that some of the other kids have trouble even trying to react to her.
I’m good with her telling someone deadpan that she doesn’t want to play with them, as long as she’s not shoving them while she does it.
Alright, turning off the mom and turning on the SEX DRUGS AND ROLL ‘N ROLL.
A bunch of my actual family members went out to Vegas two weekends back for my Floridian cousin’s wedding. She and her new spouse decided to forego the fancypants wedding and put that kinda dough toward a reverse vasectomy so they could make BEBES*.
*I KEEP DREAMING I’M HAVING THEM. At least once a week, I’m taking care of a newborn and the memories of almost a decade ago come flooding back.
Upon arrival at the Orleans, Josh and I freshened up and hit the casino with various members of my family. Within an hour, I was pocketing this:
& yelling at various strangers, “I JUST WON FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” This was a huge boost for us, being that we had only booked one night with our meager earnings and would be booking the second night once we arrived. We were able to have a good time, guilt free, and leave our bank account untouched.
The wedding was short and sweet, Vegas style. My sister-in-law took one jillionty pictures on her awesome, gigante new camera:
wedding prep
I took some grainy cell shots, as usual:
It was so, so fun. I am reminded that my extended family is so, so cool and I can’t wait until we all get together again.
-CJ
This post is brought to you by my college library’s internet access. Something happened last week after Kiddo was done using my laptop. The laptop that I am militant about, running updates on and removing unnecessary crap and saying sternly about how nothing is to be downloaded do you hear me.
One time I got a very random text from a weird six digit number, saying something about my temporary password. I looked around, confused, deleted it and moved on with whatever I was doing. Drinking rum and playing Dr. Mario is a safe assumption. Cutting the skin around my nails with cuticle cutters is another. I found out a few minutes later that some random pop-up had asked for a phone number and Kiddo typed on in my cell, which I should never have had her memorize, because it’s not once been used for an emergency but only handed out freely to second graders and plugged into random kid-friendly joke websites.
She loves her jokes.
On that note: Why were the teacher’s eyes crossed?
Because she couldn’t control her pupils!
HARHAR
So, yes. Something happened. Something that has stripped my computer’s ability to connect to the internet. The connection is “excellent” and the bill is paid and the little connection indicator is green at the bottom of the screen. But the page will not load. It has been a few days of hell, especially when, for an upcoming Vegas trip, I listed a bunch of crap on Ebay in hopes of making some gambling and spending money. And I could refresh my seller page all damn day in hopes of watching the green numbers climb. As of today, we’re a happy fifty-two bucks richer and in high hopes that someone will buy that coffee maker.
Today I rejoined the work force for a few hours. It was a weird transition, the iced coffee procurement, the freeway traffic, the quiet morning hours or e-mail sorting and the like.
Around 12:30, I submitted a written resignation from my job*. By one p.m. I had not heard a breathe of response. Granted, my boss is on vacation, but I know she’s checking e-mail by phone. And my supervisor was copied but if she has had any reaction, it was probably in the direction of human resources, asking what to do in our boss’ absence. Or something. Either way, by one o’clock I could wait with baited breath no longer and I left to meet with a surgeon’s assistant for a check-up. My wounds are healing nicely, she said, as she removed the tape holding me together. Or, you would think it was holding me together because I was so terrified of it being removed. It was lifting and gathering shirt lent and looking most unsexy but I was so, so scared of pulling it off all four incisions. She yanked it gleefully and sent me home. And I sent me to the library on campus to do the homework I postponed for an entire week. An entire week that I didn’t even have to work but I still avoided my homework. I am without excuse. And I just remembered I have to do my vocabulary work…
*A bigger, better, un-refusable opportunity came my way with very little effort on my part. And I’d had it up to higher than I can reach with the management of my department. If asked, my reasoning would be something like, “Y’ALL SUCK.” With a flip of my hair, I hope to be out on good terms this Friday. But by the way my supervisor and I fight, it could be as soon as tomorrow morning if they feel like being big jerks.
Which would just free up my Wednesday afternoon for a lecture I really wanted to check out.
/geek
Friday night we’re taking the new! hybrid!* down the loooong fifteen freeway stretch from Orange County into Las Vegas. My awesome cousin is getting hitched and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her. Secretly, I’m pretty thrilled for some kid-free, hotel time with my honey too. Guilty pleasures await.
*Josh got a sweet new ride.
-CJ
Friday, fifteen hours with my sig-o’s family and extended family and distant family and non-blood family, etcetera, for as far as the eye could see for a double funeral and the reception that followed.
Saturday, a mad cleaning spree and three dozen cupcakes for guests who came to celebrate one blue-eyed wonderchild’s eighth birthday.
Sunday, eight hours on foot at the magic kingdom. Some portion of those hours spent in the rain.
Monday, from bed to work to English 106 to this stellar bean and cheese burrito and cold Corona. When I could have chosen one of many mindless DVR options to decompress with, I forced my ass into this hard and unforgiving dining room chair for some sort of pathetic, minor and likely ineffective creative outlet. Because I’m fucken losin’ it, man.
The workload is all-consuming without a moment to breathe. The only reason I took a lunch hour today was to bang out 1.5 pages of key points from a short article by Malcom X to turn in at 6:30pm when I switched to student mode. Today, in conclusion to a loooong-winded e-mail, I told my boss, “I am very, very upset.” Which is corporate code for SO FUCKING PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW. But between anger and my usual tall order of discouragement, I’ll take blood-boiling rage that can only be expelled through proper e-mail because my mind and my feelings mean nothing without a branded signature at the end.
I framed and hung a huge Kraken rum poster in my dining room. It’s making me smile.
Of note, the music that plays on that website was reoccurring background noise in a number of nightmares I had as a kid. Eep.
More later. Lots.
-CJ
Pulling into the larger, main office of the company I work for, I pass the executive, reserved parking and keep going on toward the farther, little-people parking. Those convenient, up front parking spaces do not say to anyone in particular, you are special. They say to the people who have to keep driving, you are not.
-CJ
SO
MUCH
WORK
This is the busiest week I’ve ever worked in all my years. Praise all things holy there’s a halfway decent hourly rate that comes with it.
There was some very recent, very traumatic happenings about 2B that are changing the way I’m thinking almost every minute of every day. I can’t wait to write about them. At a time when my eyelids weigh a little less.
-CJ
On this lovely Friday evening, when I left the office after what felt like a long, long week, I should have felt lighter. Carefree. But I was weighed down by my pillowcase sized pursebag (I have to always carry ALL THE THINGS*) and my laptop bag and one overflowing bag of my co-workers’ generous food donations. When my arms regained their feeling, I took a deep breath for the first time in days. Work is so overwhelming in its quantity. School feels like a chore (one! more! week!) and my kid is making me crazy.
*I can’t even talk about going to the bank without saying it exactly like this, and yes, I do a voice.
When I got home, the bathroom reeked of an awful mildew.
From when the toilet overflowed. Twice.
Again.
And so I cracked a beer and got back to work on my laptop, this time in my long basketball shorts and a baggy MMA thermal, hijacked from Josh. (Athletes must be so COMFY all the time.) Two hours of OT didn’t dent the stack of papers I brought home. The stack that Lucy decided looked like a good place to lay upon. We all know I did not stop her.
Kiddo has taken to lying. A lot. For silly, nonsensical reasons that will not benefit her. Except by the time she realizes it won’t benefit her, she’s stared me in the eye and said with conviction that she lost her lunch money.
Er, spent it on charity candy.
Um, bought cheap breakable toys at Santa’s Workshop, where the kids can buy inexpensive presents for their family with a couple dollars.
She’s admittedly thrown responsibility to the wind. When it comes to bringing home her jacket or lunch box, or turning in important papers, or listening to at least ONE of the words we say to her, the kid could not be paid to give a chocolate dipped fuck.
In the car last night, I told Josh, “You realize… she’ll be a teenager one day.”
“And she’ll have her lunch money outside the liquor store…”
“Begging for booze and cigarettes…
“Coming home with tracks marks and saying, ‘Mo did it!’
“And we’ll be like, ‘Mo’s been dead for five years!”
I reiterated some portion of this to my mom in a woe is me and parenting stinks phone call. Surely she rolled her eyes and laughed maniacally when he hung up but before that, she reminded me, “This is parenting. Being able to laugh about it.”
dramatic sigh.
I GUESS.
Wouldn’t you want to trust this face?
Is it any wonder where the blue eyes came from? This is my (incredibly handsome, yes?) dad.
-CJ
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