Open Letter

Dear Real World,

I am seriously thinking we might have to break up soon. You keep throwing these impossible insane people and situations at me and I'm not sure how much more my bleeding heart and thin skin can take.

Like this latest employment episode, was this some elaborate fraternity prank? That's the only way I can explain how truly terrible it was.

Firstly, I should have known something was up when the dude was so eager to hire me. I mean, I know I'm brilliant and cute and smell really good so any straight thinking 35 year old male would be sold. But this wasn't a date, it was a *job*.

Secondly, I should have known that the hellish 19 mile commute that took over an hour and a half EVERY day both ways should have been a deal breaker.

Applying for a simple secretary position and finding myself with not only one but two desks of work to do for not only one but two companies should have also been a warning sign. All this for two companies who happen to be totally unrelated to each other and have two totally different needs. One of many being a capable and trained accountant that boss-man just assumed "because I was smart" that I could just step into, despite my protests and admonitions of only having "light accounting" as in balancing my check book.

People go to school for years and study for years after that to be able to keep up a full set of auditable books, much less two of them. Oh - and the detailed and helpful instructions of "just go and do this" were invaluable in dealing with the waves of overwhelmed "wtf" and my helpless internal hysterical laughter.

So when boss-man comes back in all of 20 minutes demanding a pretty and accurate one page report of the "this" and I'm still starring blank eyed at the instruction manual and begin to ask a clarifying question and he oh so sensitively yells back "DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TWICE??" - um - yeah. That's not so conducive to my productivity.

Or having boss-man call almost every weekend asking me to come to do things as meager as send an email when he knows I'm 100s of miles away at Coachella and not exactly available to drive 4 hours to come into the office to send and email that isn't an emergency to someone that can't look at it till Monday anyway. A bit irrational you think?

I don't mean to be picky but also have a suggestion in the responsibility section of things. When someone hires someone else, lets try to make sure its not just to have someone to dump all of the problems they've left hanging or have managed to avoid/ignore.

Like say, when an individual has started a business that costs about 25K a month to keep up (not including payroll or anything else, just infrastructure support) and you're only billing customers about 17K a month, you're going to run into some problems running that kind of deficet. Look at the State of California and the US for that matter. AND that's assuming that everyone will pay their bills on time every month, which they don't. SO - putting off the bills you have to pay for months and months and making arrangements time and time again and not paying them and finally getting disconnection notices (which will cause a lot of customers to have a bad day) and putting the newbie on the phone with the only instruction being "fix it. Disconncetion is unacceptable" but because boss-man had totally abused any good will we might have had for leverage all I get is a bunch of people yelling at me, $10,000 bills to pay, no money in the business account to pay it and boss man being as unnegociable an inflexible as the collectors are. Yeah - thats effective.

Oh - and having boss-man not letting me know the entire situation before I get on the phone with said upset and lied-to people was really considerate. Brave even. I was floored by the honor-bound way boss-man was running things. I found it inspirational even. Made me want to do everything better and faster, since rapidity seemed to be his core value. Things were expected to be done before he asked for them, even before he imagined they needed to be done. Last time I checked I was an employee, not an X-Men, and this is a three room, 3 person operation, not some Fortune 500 highrise in New York. Having expecations purportional to you resources is a pretty key part of success last time I checked. Boss-man hadn't gotten the memo yet.

Oh and Real World, letting people go around with all these expecations and frustrating senses of entitlement under the guise of "thats how things are in small bussiness" is ascenine. Its even worse when that's their answer to every question you have. That or "DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TWICE??!"

Being a small bussiness doesn't excuse you from simple values like honesty or decency. It doesn't suspend the concpet of keeping your word to your vendors or the people around you. It doesn't make things like bills go away. It doesn't give you the right to just plow your way, emotionally and logistically through life. As a matter of fact, it heightens your accountability. You have to run a bussiness as well as be a leader and be more responsible because if you have people working for you they don't have a logistical safety net. If you screw up they don't get paid. It's that simple. More caution is required, not less.

6 weeks of this almost did me in Real World, and I have to say, I'm one of your better assets. I'm addiction, STD, child-out-of-wedlock free, I'm literate, educated, in possession of responsible transportation, and make divine chocolate chip cookies. I think all that puts me in the top 5% of the population and few would disagree.

I think you need to start treating me with a bit more care. I'm not affraid of hard work or doing hard things but I am not a magician, a whipping boy, or a push over.

Please reconfigure your settings, I'll mend and dress my gapping wounds and we'll meet back up some time next week.

bewildered and bruised,
Lizzie

Wednesday Giggles

So the other Monday I was sitting at my desk and it was still pretty early so both my cube mate and I were still waking up. My cube mate is awesome. He's my partner essentially and on the surface is a tattooed rough walking guy that plays hockey and has a bulldog (who is adorable beyond measure btw. Her name is Daisy and I love her). He doesn't exactly scream "funny guy" at first glance, but let me tell ya, he is. In the form of random and 80's music.

This particular Monday Cubemate was coming back from something and sat down, my back was still turned and I just heard "BOBBITY BOOPY BAHHH" in a far too chipper voice for a Monday morning and especially from him.

I turned around and just looked at him like "What on earth..." and then he started waving his hands around like English Sailor practicing his flag communication. "BIBBETY BOOOP BOP" Needless to say I fell into hysterics for a good 5 minutes and when I finally calmed down he sheepishly asked "Didn't you see Family Guy?"




So that's been a joke for a couple of weeks and today he showed me this and I was lost to hysterics again -



enjoy -

Wednesday Giggles

This was my heartiest laugh this week. Maybe I've been dealing with finicky HR people for too long but I just lost it.

The Price We Pay

So there are two ways people pass time in life.

One is having a career which is usually challenging, but in the good, worth-the-sacrifice kind of way. It's anything from being an artist to a lawyer to a gardener or mother. But it's always something that somebody does because of what drives them.

What we do in the meantime are jobs - and having a job sucks. I know this because I have one. It's a very jobby kind of job.

I think there is a reason they call this state after one of the most afflicted men ever recorded in history. Job - stricken Old Testament prophet. Job - source of the majority of affliction in one's live.

Coincidence? I think not.

Yes you get paid. But most of the the time it's doing something you either loathe, are bored to tears with, feel is sucking your soul out of your ears, or something you hate yourself for, or all of the above.

And sadly the jobs that actually pay you enough to, I don't know, PAY YOUR BILLS, are particularly loathsome because the more you're paid the more somebody else doesn't want to do your job. Which really just means that it's a terrible thing. A very terrible thing.

There are a few things that make the concept of a job bearable.

One is the people you work with and the other is your environment.
Benefits are nice, but I think, in terms of the emotional toll a job takes on you those are the only two factors that could possibly curb the tediousness that is your everyday.

I've worked in offices my whole life. I grew up in my father's law office. They're second nature to me but it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized how utterly ridiculous they are and an expository of the worst that human nature has to offer.

I work with a few cool people. They're real and funny and chill and we all have the same work ethic and it's awesome. One is my supervisor and the other is my partner in my division. But the rest of the people, including our diabolical Ned Flanders (aka- HR man), are bearers of some of the grossest double standards I've ever come across in my life.

They try to paint a picture of a chill "business casual" workplace but what they say and what you're held accountable to are apparently two different things. And what standard you're held to depends entirely on their mood that day apparently. We're supposed to be on time I seriously can't remember the last time two of the three people I'm accountable to have ever been there when they say they're going to be. There is a myriad of other things I could harp on but it would be pointless, silly, and probably wouldn't make much sense to someone who doesn't spend 8.5 hours of their day in my little corner of the world. Needless to say, power games are constantly being played, and people's punctuality is the tip of the iceberg.

It literally makes me sick if I think about it too hard. Because the reality of it all is that I am subjected to that kind of hypocrisy all day everyday. I mean, it might just be a matter of time before it becomes commonplace to me. Put a frog in cold water.... It's beyond me how people live like that. It's a delicate schizophrenia and one I want no part in.

I don't believe in maniacal games or petty office politics and consequently don't play them or understand them and so when they eventually effect me, they hurt three times as much. But how can little else happen when you work in such a place? No wonder people drink. I really understand that on days like today.

I mean - it could always be worse, and I realize that. I could be mining coal or working for Anne Wintour or be a PA on Jerry Springer or clean out porter-potties. But seeing this side of people day in and out is taxing and depressing. Why are there people like this in the world and why do I always seem to end up working with more than one? I mean - one is enough, but we have multiples.

You know when you look at someone and can almost taste how bitter they are about life and can almost hear the jeers of the adolescent boys that teased him all through high school and regularly pantsed him and shoved him into lockers? And you can see that he is still fighting all of them somewhere somehow everyday? You know he still remembers their names and finds himself gripping is steering wheel too hard on his commute home when he thinks about them. He sees them in the faces of the big Company executives who handed him his pink slip when he had just began to think that he was finally getting out of his loser whimper phase he'd been in for 15 years. You know when you can smell the smarm he developed from pitting his divorced parents against each other his whole life just to get what he wants and he is bent on taking out all of that frustration and powerlessness and consequently power-hunger on people like you who are just trying to get through school and have a bit of fun in between?

You know that guy? Welcome to my office -

I need to move to Africa and help AIDS orphans or do something that actually contributes to the Greater Good (not in the Hot Fuzz sense) and work with people who truly care about things other than themselves.

Designer purses, river houses, an office with windows, and being able to stick it to a subordinate and get a way with it doesn't vindicate anything. It doesn't make life worth living and never has. And no matter how much bullying they do, it won't ever even the score of the real battles they didn't have the balls to fight when they came up. All they're doing is making new enemies and proving themselves to be the EXACT type of person that hurt them in the first place.

I am SO glad its Friday.

Tragedy

No hyperbole on this one. This really is something that registers on the Lear Scale. It is a breathtakingly beautiful day today. Its warm but not too hot. Its clear(ish) and there are white fluffy cumulus clouds popping up over the mountains saying "come out and play". And where am I?!??! Stuck inside my cubicle farm. I swear - summer is so hard for me. I get SO restless from having to stay inside all the time. I miss the sun! I just need to get out and hear moving water and feel all sunshiny. Anyone for the Huntington on Saturday? That's where I belong right now. Sitting in the Italian garden or at the lily ponds watching dragon flies and playing tag or something. I mean it - lets go. Right now -