Category Archives: Dead Inside

The Work-A-Day World

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Let me walk you through my routine at work as I believe everyone can agree it’s pretty Sad Sigh worthy.

I get in to my office and unlock my door. It’s true, I have my very own office with a door, and yet it doubles as a storage closet and so I have to essentially stumble over boxes in order to get to my desk. Once I sit down, I take a good, long look at my inbox and decide of anything needs my immediate attention. Usually, there is something. This morning, for example, I arrived to see that a co-worker had forwarded me an email he had initially sent the copywriter without realizing she was on vacation. Of course, it needs my immediate (emphasis his) attention. It involves “coming up with a clever title” for a trip to Romania and an intro paragraph telling travelers what they can expect from the trip (I am tempted to write something along the lines of “Enjoy tourist cheesiness like you’ve never seen before at Dracula’s Castle and thrill to the discovery of the loss of your petty cash as gypsies pick your pockets in other parts of Transylvania”). I don’t know why he can’t do this himself as I have never been to Romania and he has been multiple times.

So, I start thinking about that when 8 emails from my boss arrive, each with 1 individual website update, mostly small, all entirely unnecessary, and ALL flagged with the “IMPORTANT!!” flag. So I work on those for awhile, go back and write an intro paragraph and then I spend the rest of my day in one of two ways. Either I a) am ferrying myself around the office fixing stupid tech things that actually have very little to do with tech support and a lot to do with plain, annoying ignorance (“How do I empty my email?” “Why isn’t this Excel formula working?” “How come my iPod isn’t syncing up with iTunes”) or b) I give up and spend the rest of the day reading Go Fug Yourself praying for Bai Ling to make my day worthwhile and tell everyone I’m “working on projects” and stop answering my email.

When the clock finally runs out, I get home, I check Craig’s List, I discover there are no well paying jobs in New York I am qualified for, and then I cry myself to sleep because I have done nothing – literally, nothing – for my job that qualifies as actual progress toward any attainable goal. Whenever I try to push a project forward, I end up exchanging emails with my boss all day as to why a new website is necessary or why we really should not have our servers in an unventilated, tiny room where they have previously melted some of the wiring. Then she stops replying and two weeks later when I ask her if I can move forward with the project, the cycle repeats itself.

True story.

SMRT

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Sigh.

Another relationship down the toilet.

And why?  Did I display an appalling act of drunkenness that sent my mature, older boyfriend running for the hills?  Did I cheat with an 18 year old?  Did I go on and on and on about how awesome New York City is and how I am trying to move there as soon as possible causing him to bash me over the head out of complete boredom for a topic I have talked about non-stop for years?

All of these things are possible and well within the scope of things I have done in past relationships.  And yet this time I did none of them.

No.  Instead, I received the following email after not hearing from my boyfriend for a week by way of kiss-off:

Honestly -
You are likely the smartest person I’ve ever dated. At least, if there were smarter, it wasn’t apparent.

I learned true ambivalence each time we got deep into a subject; enthralled at being able to have such a discussion, scared that I would never be able to hold my own in it.

That’s the truth. And yes, it is my own ego causing this problem within me. But you deserve to know.

So apparently I am un-dateable because I am too smart.  If anyone would like to let me know where I can get a cheap lobotomy, come find me.  I’ll be the nerd in the corner discussing the merits of Boethian philosophy as applied to post-modern theory.  Or the person sticking an ice-pick up her nose.

Oh, San Jose. What chaos you have wrought in my life!

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I am the Scottish flag in the conversation below:

This is a phenomenon I was discussing with Gracie yesterday, and then it came up in conversation with my coworker. Not only did San Jose saddle me to the most boring adolescence this side of Amish country, but it also saddled me to a life of always knowing more than everyone else about computers EVEN THOUGH I HAVE TWO DEGREES IN LITERATURE. This is a conversation with my co-worker, Anne, who is the exact same age as I am. There is no reason why I know these things and she doesn’t…EXCEPT SAN JOSE. That’s all I can think of that makes us different since I certainly didn’t learn this shit at Sarah Lawrence. I grew up in the fucking Silicon Valley with nerds at high school who built their own computers and she grew up in Alaska and now I am doomed to be the default tech support person at every job I ever have that doesn’t keep an actual IT person on staff.

Well, I say NO MORE. After I am done at this job, I will be moving to a new one where I play dumb. I will not try to be helpful in the least, I will just shake my head sadly and pound on the keyboard and pretend I do not know how to insert a picture into Word (!!! Seriously, my boss asked me to do this for her yesterday).

Would you like some cheese with my whine?

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So, this is going to be a boring post where basically all I’m going to do is whine. There you go, that’s my warning. Grace said it’ll make me not want to die so much, so I’ll give it a try.

I don’t know why I jumped from one job that I constantly complained about right into another. My last job I loved my work but hated the people. This job the people are nice but the work isn’t quite matched with my skillset or interest, which I should’ve known but I was just determined to get a new job. I think I want out of the non-profit arts, start-up mentality world. I think I need a “get well” job even though I’m not in rehab or anything. Maybe working at a cute little bookstore in the Castro where I can’t take any work home with me, and have time to really focus on my social life (priorities, bitch!) and some creative projects on the side.

I was home in San Jose last weekend and out at this gay club called Splash and I realized San Jose gays are weird! But then I started thinking what if I just stayed in San Jose, and grew into one of them; shaved my head, got a tattoo on my neck and still plucked my eyebrows. Maybe I would fit in? They seemed so happy…

Nah, I’m much more of the trashed out, drugged up, screaming queen San Francisco type. Or maybe I should move to the desert like I’ve been feeling so compelled to do for some reason (I wonder what desert gays are like?!)

All I know is I need more excitement in my life. While I was at Splash dancing with some guy that I didn’t even like who left HIS SWEAT STAINS ON MY SHIRT, my best friend was texting me about her threesome with 2 Aussie guys in Las Vegas. Bitch.

Hmm, my wanting-to-die meter went down from like an 8 to a 7. Maybe you’re right about this sad.sigh posting thing, Grace.;) Sorry guys, you might just be hearing more from me in the next few days…

When it rains, it pours

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Without identifying what I do, where I work, and who I am, in the past week the following things happened to me in no particular order:

1) I was not paid. This was not the first time I was late getting paid. It will certainly not be the last. I drove 25 minutes to the company’s bank to cash my check as I did not want to risk it bouncing.
2) My office was evicted. I now work from home. It was 88 degrees today. I have no A/C at home.
3) I had a movie moment when upon dropping off my boss, she opened the passenger door, and a biker slammed into it. Nobody was hurt, the biker scolded my boss and rode off. My door, on the other hand, did not fair as well. Brought it to the shop today and the window made a bad noise rolling up and down, the door didn’t shut all the way, and the window tint was scraped. Upon loosening the inner panel, a chunk of foam fell out. Closer inspection showed the door hinge had also snapped. I don’t want to find out how much it will cost. My poor car still smells like new (or manure, depending on who you are); these are its first war wounds.

So, sorry Dennis. While you were out drinking with those who lost their jobs, I was without internet helping pack up my office, unable to comment on your posts. You passive-aggressive, smooth, flat surfaced SOB.