check in
September 2, 2010
“How’s work?”
“Worky. How’s your day?”
“Nine to fivey.”
my San Francisco treat
August 2, 2010
My co-worker and her family took on San Francisco last week. In Chinatown, she met this little man and declared that I must have him:
I love him so hard.
His tag says ‘use method: to dangle.’ And so he shall.
-CJ
the frustrated work-rambles of yours truly
July 14, 2010
(from a few weeks ago. location: dark place)
I never felt like less than until I went corporate.
White Collar
The thing about my job is that it’s a contradiction. It’s the safest way to collect a steady income and to protect one’s self from (even more) exuberant medical bills. Working for someone who will pay the bulk of your insurance costs and put the same amount of money into your account on the same days every month allows plenty of freedoms. Namely, nights and weekends. But I’ve also never had to worry about whether I’d be scheduled my forty hours or if there would be enough work to collect on. I appreciate that people allow me to do this every weekday.
That being said:
My blue collar life is opposite my white collar paycheck. I break my back to fake it and still, you’d think I was deliberately defiant. The mold is unsettling and restrictive. Daily, I overhear college recaps and achievable vacation dreams. Some parents’ biggest challenges is affording the three thousand dollars it will take for their daughter to pursue a high school sport she’s never tried. Or helping them choose the right university. I’m asked questions that I want to answer with, what makes you assume I’ve ever had the same privileges as you? Are you completely unaware of the people who live a life that’s smaller than yours? You’ve got the audacity to think I have a clue. Are you giving the benefit of the doubt? What a gift! Are you trying to include me? I never wanted this membership.
You can make someone sympathize but when it comes to empathy, only a fellow blue collar knows where to look.
You drive home south but I hang a left and go north, home to my rental because I was born in the mid-eighties and my generation lottery doesn’t allot for my age to own.
Your expensive midlife crisis may come prematurely, but at least you can afford it. I’m two weeks without the medication it takes to go a day without taking my car into an unforgiving center divider and I could give a goddamn about your designer coffee with a sleeve more in tact than my used Old Navy career wear. I can’t afford my fucking meds.
I’ve got insurance but I can’t cover the co-pay.
I’ve got the car with the grinding breaks and a slow start but I’ll wave to your award winner on the road and flash my financial burden of a smile that I’m still paying for at only twenty-four percent APR.
What does it feel like to know that you’ve got it covered if the bottom falls out? How do you feel pulling from a savings account that isn’t empty? In the last two days I’ve heard from as many people how terrifying it would be to have to ask for help. Help they know is there. They’ve never had to talk themselves out of a panic attack, wondering how they’re supposed to function when prime need x runs out.
I’m not upset. I’m not even bitter and I’m certainly not envious. I know myself enough to know this: I’d forget everything I am and how I got here given enough luxury. This is one thing I’m glad I can’t afford to do.
Salads and fad diets and open toed heels and religious forwards and celebrity gossip in place of your ability to hold up one half of a real conversation – none of this is me. But I work one desk over. Someone once welcomed me to the world of designer clothing when I commented on the stitching that hadn’t fallen out on my clearance brand name pants. What’s ever been wrong with spending a quarter of that excess on a quality sewing job from the sweet Korean lady up the street? Where she works, your suits hang to dry and watch mine get repaired. You splurge on a silk noose with a pattern and sometimes I buy the brand name cereal. I don’t know who Jimmy Choo is but I can provide him with excellent customer service.
Only one in a million will succeed with quality human interaction and decency as their specialty. The sad thing is that you can’t frame that in an 8×11. You’re not going anywhere for sucking it up and being sweet. You’ll never get the step on the guy who could afford that parchment paper and ink. You get to tread water and hope someone higher up the food chain listens to your work because they’ll never hear your voice. I stare at my superiors and I know where they’re from, where they came from and how small the chance is that I’ll ever come close.
A day late and a dollar short isn’t just clever. It’s a lifestyle for some and I know them by first name.
None of it is about the money. It’s the ignorance. It’s never having to wonder about circumstances that have been clouded over all your life. They’re all raising purebreds and supporting businesses like dog bakeries. What about donating a textbook every now and again? How about making real contributions and leaving deep footprints? Thinking about how not everyone, not even most people, have lived such a privileged life?
But if you weren’t there, you can’t see it.
-CJ
ghost stories
July 8, 2010
Early yesterday morning, when there was still hardly anyone in the office and the air was perfectly still, when the sound of my swishing slacks is deafening on the walk to my desk and the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard is the only sound for miles… I was typing away on the one program I had opened when my tower randomly opened rather noisily, and spat the CD that Mix Master Skelly had made me (the disk drive sits vertically) and the disc went rolling on the floor, across the office like a little silver wheel, running for its life. I trailed the CD’s path with wide eyes, wondering what in the fuck had caused that little outburst. Of course, no one was around to see it.
It was all, This machines rejects The Dead Weather, Why?, Minus the Bear and My Toys Like Me, among others. Pa-tooey.
Not only has it never randomly opened, CDs never fall out. Some disgruntled employee of furniture past is fucking with me.
Also, my house is haunted by my roommate’s dead aunt.
Dead Aunt passed along a broken grandmother clock that doesn’t tell time but it also doesn’t chime at all hours, so I don’t mind it in the slightest. It’s actually super cool. It sits in the corner of my dining room, adjacent to beer and poker related paraphenalia:
One afternoon while cleaning the floors of their protective layer of rabbit and dog hairs, I moved the grandmother clock forward enough to fit a mop behind it. This was the first time that clock has been touched in the many moons since I’ve been in 2B. Within seconds of the slight, 12-15″ move, the black poker clock on the far left? SHOT. OFF. THE WALL.
Fuck you, don’t roll your eyes. There were several steps between the wall and the clock’s landing. This clock also doesn’t work and will apparently remain broken forever after that fall. It has never so much as leaned to the side, let alone fallen off the nail. The nail that didn’t fall with the clock. Dead Aunt lifted and tossed that thing with playful delight. Wild-eyed, I picked it up and inspected the damage, leaving creepy grandmother clock to my back, when one of the verticals over my sliding door, leading to my backyard, decided then would be a good time to detach from the headrail and flop to the floor, with no assistance whatsoever. Fed up and slightly freaked out that the next item would land on me or break something I treasured, I announced loudly, “OKAY, I’M SORRY.”
I softly pushed the large clock back into her place in the dining room. I’ve yet to touch it again, as she’s clearly comfortable there, regardless of dust underneath. The verticals only ever fall out when roused by walking through them or they catch on each other when I open them. The poker clock hasn’t moved since. We’re at peace though I wish Dead Aunt could like, play cards or something.
-CJ
blah blah workspeak
June 8, 2010
“This customer is asking for a chair upholstered in calf leather…”
“What?! Like baby cow skin?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you tell her we’re all out but we’ll send her some baby seal samples?”
*maniacal laughter on my part, recap first half of story to approaching co-worker*
“You should just offer her some baby seal skin.”
*baaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha*
“Oh, we’re carpooling on the ride to hell.”
-CJ
the humor of middle school, standing strong
May 20, 2010
Working from the main office once a week, I make a lot of calls to the people I’m used to working with in our little step-child office in OC. I ring my friend to get a quick e-mail address.
“Trader Joe’s, this is Bob.”
I don’t miss a beat. Bob, do you carry many varieties of vaginal cream?
“We do, they’re on aisle five, by the Depends.”
And are those Depends organic?
“Oh yes, they’re recycled, actually.”
Because at 25, genitals and poop are still hilarious.
-CJ
nerves no longer
April 27, 2010
in a week
April 23, 2010
Last Thursday, I had to plead guilty* to misdemeanor battery charges and was sentenced to over $1,300 in fines, three years of probation and twelve weeks of anger management. Get this: I didn’t do a fuckin’ thing.
*Guilty was the easier than the routes no contest or not guilty would have gone down. Trust me.
Last Friday, I danced and drank with the girls at a gay club for the first time in what felt like months.
Last Saturday, I saw some live music in a gritty bar with good people and some decade old acquaintances I could have gone without.
Four days ago, I spent forty minutes in a heated discussion with my boss that left me in frustrated tears; the kind that all the willpower in the world will not contain no matter how hard you try to hold up that tough exterior.
Three days ago, I had the most awkward and awful work day of my life, stemming directly from the previous day.
Two days ago, I went to what I thought was a social charity event, hosted by my company. I knocked on the door of the house were I was to meet a dozen or so co-workers to find out they’d all left without me. I headed over to a venue for 2-300 packed tight with at least double that and choked back my disgust for the schmoozing d-bags of the industry. It didn’t take long for me to sneak out and head home.
So there are some ups… but the last seven days have been shit. I’m tired.
-CJ
exhale
April 19, 2010
With the guidance of one my sweetest and wisest co-workers, I was able to completely overturn some negative thoughts that have taken over, even after I’d promised I wouldn’t let them. I made mention of my plaguing lack of confidence in the interview I had recently. She told me to remember that I’d already won. But without a job offer in hand, I didn’t understand how I could have won when some other better qualified candidate could always be in the shadows. She explained how if we decide we want something and we take the first step in achieving it, we win. If fate/chance/circumstance decides otherwise and you don’t progress, your trying effort is still your gold star. It could easily be a pick-me-up for a failed venture but I really, really believe this.
I wish I could arm her with a megaphone and ask her to tell everyone what she told me, without my improvised words mucking it up like they do. It was exactly what I needed to hear. More and more often, the things she tells me seem to be catered to the way my mindgrapes are leaning and she helps me back onto the better, brighter, less-falling-rocks path. Girl has no idea and I should really tell her how easily I breathe when I walk away from a conversation with her.
-CJ
results
April 16, 2010
Endeavor #1, from Wednesday: My optimism is wavering. I left the small office with no idea where I stood. It was regarding a position for office management mixed with (very) junior sales executive.
Endeavor #2, from Thursday:
I don’t really want to talk about it.
-CJ
