Job Slobs

Casual Friday the 13th

2010-08-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I've briefly mentioned before that people in this office don't care how they look, myself included. Because of the outreach aspect of my job, I do sometimes have to care how I look, namely when I am out in the field recruiting for our program.

I've also cared yesterday and today, because it's Orientation. I'm showered, I'm wearing my makeup and clothes I did not pull off the floor of my bedroom this morning, as well as somewhat uncomfortable shoes with pointy toes. I may or may not be wearing a blazer. Officemate stepped it up somewhat, but she is of the "eff you if you don't like the way I'm dressed; I'm good at my job" disposition, so she's not as fancy-professional as she could be.

My boss tries to look nice, but for various reasons, always looks disheveled. Hair a mess, makeup apparently applied by a fourteen-year-old in the dark, shoes that in no way go with what she's wearing. It's par for the course. I know I've mentioned the red sweatshirt with the saxophone player she wore at my interview before, and while today's outfit is better than that, I don't think it necessarily conveys the level of put-together professionalism someone in her position should display.

Despite this, she really cares about how other things look. She has more than once lectured me about my appearance; and I really had to choke back laughter during that talk, because despite my lack of effort in that area, I can't explain how much bigger fish she has to fry in our department, and like I said, I think I do know how and when to step it up.

Today, she's upset because there aren't tablecloths to put on the tables before we put boxes of pizza and cans of soda on top of them. Never mind that our whole damn department seems to be imploding and I've come the closest I've ever come to saying "I quit" and walking out the door in the middle of the day, no, it's the lack of tablecloths that's the problem.

But I am not writing to complain about my boss. Oh no, I am writing to congratulate my colleague, who said to me after hearing the tablecloth lecture (why the admissions coordinator is responsible for procuring of tablecloths is beyond me), "for someone who doesn't brush her hair, she sure cares a lot about aesthetics."

If same sex marriage were legal in this state (booooooooooooooooooooooo, jerks), I would have proposed right then and there.

Bad Ride

2010-08-17T18:14:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Forgive me, dear friends, for my absence (is something I've been saying here a lot lately). Here's the thing:

When I was 19, my parents were getting divorced and I was living abroad in a country where I was legally allowed to drink. This did not go well for anyone, certainly not me. For Thanksgiving that year, my abroad group gathered, I contributed peanut butter and banana sandwiches to the potluck, and then drank my weight in wine and Desperados (for those not classy enough to have experienced Desperados personally, they are beer with tequila in them and also what someone told me, "all the bums who live in the metro station drink"). After that I tried to make out with a boy in my group who most certainly did not like making out with girls, not even at parties, got lost, and the whole event climaxed with me getting punched in the face by a taxi driver. Seriously- Black eye punched in the face. I made it home, and all ended well enough. But the thing about that story is that I've been waiting for coming up on 10 years for it to join the ranks of other goofy stories of drunken debauchery, and it's never quite made the transition. It was just too upsetting at the time to make the leap to silly anecdote. And that pretty much sums up what's been going on at my office this last week. Like, if that cab driver applied for my immediate boss' position, with the odds stacked that he would once again punch me in the face, I would welcome the change. I hold out hope that soon enough I can resume tossing off the yuck of this office, but until then I'm asking for any leads on where I can get a Desperado and a good ice pack stateside.

Super Tuesday

2010-08-17T09:36:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Everyone is really bugging the shit out of me today. I know that's got to be a shock. I've been here an hour and I already think I'm either going to go home or on a murderous rampage by lunch, and this point, I can't decide which is preferable. Here's who I'm hating today:

Annoying workstudy: bitch is always singing and humming to herself. Even when I put on music. She also stands uncomfortably close to me when she's asking a question and does that nervous laugh thing after everything she says. Good workstudy hates her too. It's awesome.
Incoming students: One of them sent me an email with the phrase "please advise." I cannot explain how much I hate this phrase. I'm always tempted to advise them to eff themselves, but instead I directed this gentleman to an email Officemate sent last weekend containing the exact information he swears is not available anywhere. I have special prejudice against "please advise" because my supervisor at my internship used it all the time, essentially as code for "what the hell is this?" My friend B says it's code for "here, you deal with this shit." Either way, it's silly office-jargon and I do not care for it. I told my Dean that I hate that phrase a lot and he sent me an email with the subject heading "Advise This." He is the best.

Boss: Is at a Dr.'s appointment but keeps calling me to ask me to tell the cleaning crew who's here to do stuff; even though she was here this morning and was supposed to give them assignments. She keeps mentioning she got here at 7:30am today like she deserves some kind of prize. I'm tempted to remind her that I was here all summer and haven't taken like 30 hours of sick leave in the past two weeks, but I don't think that will benefit me in any real way.

On the plus side, I'm wearing new shoes! They're super cute. I keep looking down at them, the one bright spot in this day so far. Until lunchtime, that is.

Tyra Mail

2010-08-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I'm working from home today and it's awesome for the following reasons:

1. I am not work
2. I am still in my pajamas
3. I've been listening to Ambrosia's Biggest Part of Me on repeat for like 20 minutes, something discouraged in my office. (I really like it when he says "Make a wish, baby...")
4. America's Next Top Model reruns are on Bravo

I don't think K and I have ever appropriately documented our love of Top Model on this blog, but god do we love it. This is the cycle where they go to Brazil, with that girl Allison who has big ole eyes and loves bloody noses.

What? You don't know what I'm talking about? You don't like that show; it's fixed and looks stupid and Tyra annoys you? Go to hell. It's incredible. Back before I moved up to this undisclosed Bay Area location, K and I and two other folk would get together to watch ANTM on a weekly, drink wine and analyze the show and its contestants. It was the closest thing to a religion we had.

So excuse me, everyone, I have to go pray.

Upright Position

2010-08-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I've constructed an inflatable slide from my second story window and filled the office mini-fridge with beer. Get me a PA system, friends; I want to do this thing.

If yesterday was the day that Jenny the HPOA took over the internet with her dramatic "I quit," and today is the day we learned she faked it, then let us raise our glasses even higher, our voices even louder to Steven Slater whose F you was as real as it gets. To you, sir. You are a vision, and an inspiration, and if you need to know where to get Munchies Mix now, you let me know.

Hero Squad

2010-08-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I don't have much to say at the moment; everything is kind of regular around here. There's work to do, work I don't hate, and while apparently our graduate students are incapable of reading an email entitled "Registration Instructions" and call me to ask for information that is clearly and readily available in said email, their banality has yet to make for an interesting story, except for the one student who called me to verify information that he already knew. When I told him that yes, his understanding of our course registration process was indeed accurate, he replied "See, I don't really need your help at all; you're just a crutch." Waste my time and demean me? Kudos to you sir.

Anyway, things are kind of humming along here in a normal way, with no pranks or exciting events---wait!! My boss is throwing a "watch slides from my long vacation" party this week. She sent out an email inviting everyone in the office to attend and closed it out with the phrase "please feel free to wear safari attire." Oh I will feel free. I will feel so free. Generally this office is so discouraging about my beloved pith helmet and khaki separates, but this Thursday, I can live my Jumanji dreams with her blessing! So magnanimous.

Okay what was I talking about? Oh yeah, this. This girl is my new hero. (And really is a pretty serious HPOA in my opinion, even with the glasses.)

Apples to Mondays

2010-08-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

This is a picture of one of the tables in the courtyard outside my building. For whatever reason, in response to some rotten Granny Smith or Fuji or Gala, a person- presumably a professional person of some description- decided to permanently carve "F*ck Apples" into a table using an instrument of some kind, their force of will to share this message, and probably their other hand to cover up what they were doing. Amazing. And in the spirit of totally juvenile dislike, I say the same thing to Monday today...except I don't carve it in a table. I do, however, use my force of will to figure out a way of sharing it that isn't just saying, "F*ck Mondays," and I do use my body to cover my computer as I type so that no one I work with realizes that not only am I not doing my job, but more than that I'm complaining about it while not performing it. I may have better luck just carving tables.

Don't Stab Me Bro

2010-08-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today, for a brief and glorious moment, my office mates and I left the building to go across the street. One of my office mates, M, had a friend who was shooting an episode of NCIS-CSI-L+O: LA (none of us really knew or asked) and he told M that M should come to set and get some of the catered lunch. Because on set catered food is usually real tasty, M told our other office mate B that he should come, and because I don't like anything good or free and delicious to happen without me, I invited myself along, too. I pretended to give them an out if they wanted to go alone, but I think that as I put my lunch of leftovers back in the fridge it was clear that I was getting me some set food.

So we headed across the street, stealthily avoiding a (noble but annoying) Greenpeace volunteer on the way, and were trying to figure out where exactly M's friend was in the throng of extras and crew people and general outdoor shoot chaos. As we stood scanning the crowd, a super grungy, brown-toothed homeless man came running at us. He was wearing a filthy trench coat and a beanie in pretty hot L.A. summer weather, and he was shaking a giant cup at us yelling for a quarter. I felt terrified. I was sure that I was about to get all kinds of cut up right there on Wilshire Blvd., and that when I finally got out of the hospital and managed enough strength to return to work my immediate boss would say something like, "You know, you guys never checked in with me before you went across the street to get stabbed or whatever it was you were doing."

But the homeless guy ran right past me and grabbed M. Not that either of the men that I was with attempted to shield me with their body or throw a block of any kind when it looked as though the crazy might have been coming right towards me in my pastel cardigan. (They have, accordingly, been added to the growing list of people who would be of no use to me in a bar fight.) Anyway, the insane homeless man was holding and shaking M. Oh. Right. Because he was M's friend, and he was just playing a homeless guy for money. On TV. He introduced himself all around, and I had met him before, but forgave him for forgetting because I was feeling generous of spirit after that whole threat of imminent shanking passed. Then he ran back to where he was taping because I guess that some people get a job and then commit to doing it/well even, and we all decided to go back to our office. Not sated, but also not stabbed. A fair draw.

Serendipity

2010-08-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

My day began with a 3+ hour training session run by the central admissions office. As longtime readers know, I hate the central admissions office. Graduate admissions is a constant battle between the department and the university proper and the university always seems to win, because they were here before me and they'll be here long after I leave (please please please let that time be soon). Suffice it to say, I was not looking forward to this training.

But lo and behold, it was actually good. Interactive, informative, dare I say: enjoyable. I LEARNED things. Things I didn't know before! I can't tell you how rare that is for training sessions like this. In the ~4 years I've been working in higher education administration, I've attended several institutionalized trainings, which usually go like this.

Pick up your packet.
Grab coffee and muffin.
Spill coffee (okay that might just be me).
Read the things in your packet while you wait for the speaker to begin.
Doze off/space out/doodle while the speaker reiterates everything you just read in the packet.
Q&A, in which people ask extremely specific questions that apply only to their jobs/situations. Speaker answers a minimum of 2 follow-up questions before suggesting that the questioner contact him/her personally.
Sneak out before the thing is over because you can't take another second.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did leave this training early, but mostly because I was anxious about getting things done in the office, and not because I was bored out of my skull. Progress!

Meeting with admissions people from departments all over campus was first depressing, then gratifying. If I was not the youngest person in the room, I was easily the second-youngest, and most of the people were old, short, overweight and poorly dressed. Not kidding. Dudes had long hair, women were wearing tennis shoes and homemade shawls. It was not a pretty sight. Good god, let me get out of here before I become one of them, I said to myself.

But then the commiserating started. As I texted to my friend M, we have many differences, but one key similarity: we all hate the applicants. We complained about dumb applicants, bitchy applicants, applicants who need to have things reconfirmed four or five times. International applicants, non-California residents, reapplicants....we all hate them all. It was life-affirming. So enjoyable was the work-related commiseration, I was almost tempted to tell these people about this blog, but then remembered that for the sake of keeping my job until I finally fulfill my dream of becoming of a trophy wife and living out my days in my Infinity Pool, I need to prevent my place of employment from knowing my true feelings.

The joy of commiseration was so great, I really want to extend to you all (both?). Would you like to anonymously guest-post-bitch about your jobs? It's fun, I swear.

Art Imitating Life/Pants

2010-08-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

As I've shared before, I not only torture myself at my every day job, but also drive around Hollywood during moments that I can sneak away from my desk and audition for various inane commercials. Today I tried out for a spot for a communications company where my lines were hilarious guesses at what DSL- which they were cleverly knocking- might actually stand for. I thought about suggesting what I'd always heard it stood for, but that's less about the internet and more about, say, Angelina Jolie. Well, I guess there's a reason people look her up on the internet...

Anyway, I had to dress "business casual" for my audition this morning, which meant that I, along with every other girl there who looked creepily like me as we were all auditioning for the same part, wore a bold-colored blouse with buttons and a ruffle of some sort tucked into either slacks or a pencil skirt. Seriously. Every girl in that room.

The audition went regular/fine/who can tell?, but the miserable part was going to my real office and actual desk job afterward, because I was embarrassingly overdressed. Quality of office wear and height of success have an inverse relationship in entertainment, so who wants to suggest that there so unimportant that they've got to dress up in the kind of trousers and high heels I was rocking all day? No one. But I bet at my pretend office in the commercial, where everyone dresses up and dresses well, no one would tell me to go to hell or to blow them as my two office mates just did, and who wants to work somewhere where you never get that kind of love? Again, I'd say, the answer is no one. Or at least not me. Or at least not me unless someone offered me any kind of other job doing anything at all anywhere in the world.

Time Flies

2010-08-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I went away to the East Coast this past weekend, and after I flew overnight on Thursday (sleeping for 2 hours of a 4 hour flight to Chicago, pinching myself into consciousness for a 2 hour layover, and then dozing on a 2 hour flight to Boston) I went to lunch in Providence on Friday and stayed up until 2:30 p.m. and then napped to the Kourtney and Khloe and their ridiculous shenanigans (although I do think that Scott is real-life Patrick Bateman and no one is taking it seriously enough) after which I saw 2 plays and then stayed out late for drinks and then repeated that the next day when I saw 3 plays and had even more drinks and didn't go to bed until 4 in the morning, but didn't get to sleep it off because the day after that I got up early to hang out with a 3-year-old and 1-year-old who are the cutest of buttons, but children nonetheless and then this morning I got up at 3:45 a.m. Providence time- which was 12:45 a.m. L.A. time- and L.A. was where I was headed to go directly to my office which was particularly horrifying because after I'd been up for 2 hours, I saw on Facebook that one of my office mates hadn't even gone to bed for the night and I knew that I was so effed that I couldn't concentrate on work all day and wasn't even sure I could post more than a single sentence on the blog, and for those keeping track: I didn't.

You've Got a Frenemy in Me

2010-07-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Be forewarned: this post has nothing to do with my job. I'm still way too over it to discuss it.

I've been listening to a This American Life about frenemies; stories of the friends you hate to love, love to hate, and for one reason or another, just can't quit (even if you wish you knew how). There's stories about women who became frenemies after dating the same dude, sister frenemies, and even the invention of the word "frenemy" which apparently can be attributed all the way back to the Bhagavad Gita.

When talking about portmanteaus like frenemy, Ira Glass consulted a woman from the Oxford English Dictionary who shares my disdain for people who believe that they've "invented" words simply by combining two other ones. Por ejemplo, "linner." It's like brunch, but I'm sure you can figure out which two meals it's between. A girl in my junior high thought that her family invented the word, and she thought it was actually a good word. But that's not my favorite example. My favorite example is much more recent and ridiculous. I'm talking about how Sarah Palin recently likened herself to Shakespeare in defense of using the word "refudiate."

If she'd only used it once, I'd cut her slack; who amongst us hasn't been thinking of two words to use and instead of choosing one, creates a new hybrid? Remember on Mean Girls when LiLo's character starts to say "great" and then decides to say "cool" and it comes out "grool"? We've all been there. But then Palin also used "refudiate" on her Twitter feed and could not attribute such an action to tongue-tiedness, and decided to call upon W's infamous "misunderestimate" and Obama's nonsensical "wee-wee'd up" and claim that she's just participating in word creation in the great tradition of the Bard.

But of course, the Prez was just using seriously dorky (and in my opinion, totally non-presidential) slang to describe people with ants in their pants (way more presidential), and we all know what mastery of the English language Bush II possessed. And in fairness to my old 7th grade English classmate, she was 12 at the time. But I still remember thinking she sucked, not only for believing she invented a word that is clearly not difficult to invent, but also being proud of it. "It's like, between lunch and dinner!!" If I had had my shit together at the time, I would have said something like "wow, that's really lad. That's like, between lame and sad." But because I wanted to be invited to her birthday party, I laughed. And frenemyship had begun.

Assignment: Asinine

2010-07-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Remiss indeed, S. For my part, I've definitely not been extra liking my job, but I've almost reached a point where I'm not extra hating it either. I'm sort of extra busy at it, but also extra apathetic.

See, recently the higher ups at our show have been worried about our ratings/competition/continuing relevancy, which has meant a whole lot of ideas/policies/procedures that we are all told are super important for a week until they are either forgotten about or ignored to death by the writing staff, and then abandoned. For my nervous-disposition part, I do frantic research for every new task our staff is given as I imagine our meetings turning into- I almost said that one serious drama where Holland Taylor is the law school professor, and then I remembered that in fact it's "Legally Blonde"- a classroom where we will all learn our lessons in preparedness by the harsh hand of the Socratic method. I worry about each new assignment or requested contribution all the way until the meeting where our presentations are due, and the big bosses ask if everyone thought about what they were supposed to think about, and are satisfied with a room full people silently nodding. Sigh. All that time I wasted when I could have been coming up with clever Facebook statuses. But now at least I've learned my lesson: Waste my time blogging and complaining about my job rather than waste my time doing it. That's the stuff of Aesop, friends.

Not My Job

2010-07-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Well K and I have been quite remiss in posting these past two days. It's either because we've been extra-loving our jobs or extra-hating them. You decide. (Hint: it's always extra-hating.) I don't feel like getting into why my job's been lame lately, so instead I will regale you with things I've found online that I like a lot. It's like Follow Friday except it's Wednesday night and we're not Twitter.

Why isn't Joshua Jackson my boyfriend yet? I'll see you all at Pacey-Con 2011.

Which do you prefer: early Ian McEwan or late Ian McEwan? Defend your choice. (Ahem-hem)

Sweet Valley High in the future: Liz is living in some kind of dystopian Sex and the City; Jessica's still whoring it up.

If I could learn to dance like Janelle Monae, I wouldn't need any of y'all.

Finally, a classic.

Thanks, Mel

2010-07-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Sometimes, like the moms I used to nanny for who would call me at 8 o'clock in the morning because they had been up since 5:30 and had lost all sense of what time girls in their early twenties- me- might arise on any given morning, I feel as though I no longer have a clear sense of the world outside my own office world. We focus a lot on pop culture for our show, so last weekend when I was at a bachelorette party and one of the very smart and nice girls said, "Is it true that that Heidi girl from The Hills had a lot of plastic surgery? I thought I saw that on Yahoo..." I had to stop myself from naming- off the top of my head- every procedure that that girl Heidi had, and also refrained from adding details like what high school I know her creepy TV husband Spencer went to. I often forget that just because every man, woman, and intern on our show can detail things like what time Lindsay Lohan arrived at court last week (six minutes late, you guys!) and what she ate for dinner her first night in jail (well, actually, some news outlets reported that it was turkey tetrazzini while others called it a turkey casserole), that's not something that people with real jobs necessarily follow or take any interest in.

All of this is to say that I have no idea whether anyone else has listened to the recordings of Mel Gibson yelling at his baby mama. In my office, for example, once we've all staggered into work for the morning, if there's a new tape, we play it from the big TV/computer in our office and invite people in to join us as we listen to it in its entirety. Then we quote it all day to each other, and if you haven't listened at all, you can get a sense here of some of the more delightful material from the earlier tapes. So when I ask office mate for a stapler and he says no because I look like a bitch in heat and he's going to burn my house down, and I find it disturbingly hilarious, I become slightly concerned that by the time I leave here I will have lost any sense of appropriate communication among colleagues. When telling someone that I will put them in a f*cking rose garden seems like a good answer to whether or not I want to go buy lunch with them, I think I need an HR check. Or a new job. Where I might be given some slack for yelling profanities. And then laughing at my own inappropriate joke.

Status Update

2010-07-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Quick Facebook check-in. Show of hands: working friends, who's pissed that it's Monday? Pathetic friends, who got soooo drunk last weekend? Bay Area friends, who still cannot believe that the weather is cold and overcast?

There are so few things I can count on in this world, but people posting the same kind of Facebook status updates on a Monday morning never lets me down. Let's anonymously mock some of my favorites, shall we?

Girl from my high school: Heading to work right now... Man what a crazy weekend... Happy Birthday SB I love you girl... We rocked it this weekend xoxo

Translation: My life isn't sad! Sure I'm almost 28 and probably still live with my parents and have completed like 18 credits at my local community college, but I like my life this way because I can go out and PARTY with all my BEST FRIENDS weekend after weekend...oh crap I'm late for my shift at Kohl's.

Friend's little sister: driving home from sf.. adam lambert blew my mind into a mess of glitter and strobe lights.. that man is beyond amazing, works his vocals to DEATH and his makeup is on point...I'm jealous :)

Translation: I have terrible taste in everything and don't believe in capitalizing.

Childhood friend/repeat FB oversharer: Why cant the person I heart ever heart me back!!?? How does this happen to everyone else??!! grrrrr ♥

Translation: I have no filter, the emotional maturity of a 15 year old, and probably need therapy.

I know you're probably wondering who slipped Extra Bitch into my coffee this morning, and you're justified. My boss is just bringing the suck SO BAD now that she's back that it's beyond frustrating. She took three days off last week because she was sick, came in late today and just started undoing everything we did this summer, complaining about every decision we made and generally just being the worst. Officemate and I have already contemplating getting drunk to make the day bearable and it's 11:30AM. Oh, and it's Monday and the sun isn't out.

Full of Something

2010-07-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

We have two interns in my office these days, and they are both absolutely delightful, shockingly professional, and female which means that now I can talk about dresses and make-up at work sometimes. They aren't required to come in on Fridays, but they both usually do. Today, however, one of them texted the other right before our morning meeting to say that she ate too much at breakfast, was in a food coma, and wouldn't be coming in. Because her Friday attendance isn't mandatory, this was completely acceptable. And wow am I jealous. I would love to call in full some day. Or call in over it. Maybe I could just e-mail some morning and say that I'm too sleepy/disinterested/my dog is just too adorable to part with for the day. I'd also enjoy calling in hung over or because my hair was just not cooperating or to say that I would rather be waiting in line at the DMV than volunteering my soul for slaughter by sitting mindlessly at my grubby (that part's my fault) desk all day. Although I guess having to go to the DMV is a valid excuse. I will save it for a day when my hair isn't cooperating.

Good Grief

2010-07-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

When I travel for work, I infinitely prefer to travel by myself. I'm an only child, and my theory is there are two kinds of only children: ones who love to be alone and ones who can't be alone. I definitely fall into the "love to be alone" category. I lived in a studio for a year in college and people would ask if I got lonely. "Au contraire," I would reply, "sometimes, when I'm out with other people, I fantasize about coming home to my empty apartment." I currently live alone and frequently have the same fantasies, even if I'm out having a great time with my friends.

When I lived abroad, I spent a lot of time alone, which was hard a lot of the time, but also great. I traveled by myself a good deal, and as such, really enjoy being able to walk around a new city alone, taking in the sites and sounds and stopping to check out a shop or museum without having to ask anyone if it sounds good to them.

This is just a lengthy preamble to me complaining about the student that my boss made me take with me on this trip. I didn't want to bring her. I didn't want to bring anyone, but I really didn't want to bring her. She was supposed to come with me on the this trip last year but was beyond wishy washy about committing to a flight time, also didn't want to have to pay up front for the hotel room (we reimburse), and at flaked basically at the last minute. I was over her, but my boss insisted we invite her again.

She was an hour late yesterday, slept through our dinner meet-up, and proceeded to ask me the following questions this morning at breakfast:

1. How does the Super Shuttle know what time to pick us up? (I said that when you book the shuttle, you're supposed to arrange a time to get picked up...she was shocked.)

2. Do we need to check in for our flight today or did we check in for both flights Wednesday?

3. (After I ordered a breakfast item called "The Twos") What is that? I saw it on the menu but didn't know what it was.

4. (After I told her to read the description on the menu which read "2 cakes, 2 eggs, 2 bacon or sausage.") What are cakes? How do you know if you'll get bacon or sausage? Do they surprise you?

Non-Post Post

2010-07-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I forgot to post yesterday! But if I had remembered, it would have been about my grody boss sitting next to me at our staff meeting biting her dirty finger nails. It would have been hilarious.

Moving on. I have been sitting in a dark edit bay killing my eyes reading a magazine for the last four hours, certain that at any minute I would be finished "supervising" the editor whose shoulder I look over and whose skills far exceed mine. I squinted through some great articles on such topics as Tom Cruise and senility, and imagined myself returning to my desk in the bright afternoon to write a great post about... Something. How I accidentally burped in front of a lot of my coworkers? How I am embroiled in a heated e-mail battle with some techie people on the other side of the builing whom I've never met? Comic Con? All I know is that is would have been amazing. Or just OK. Either way. But I'm still in the bay. And now dinner's here. Which means it's almost time to not eat it because I have to go unstack 70 chairs in the studio or go to Starbuck's and return with 28 drinks for people. So this is it. I'm sorry, I love you, good night, friends.

Mini-soda

2010-07-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed hotel room in the Twin Cities...

Yes, you read right. I'm in Minnesota. And if I wasn't already not wearing pants*, this place would have charmed them right off of me. It's green, it's clean, it's other things that rhyme with green. People are friendly and there are sculptures of Peanuts characters everywhere. It makes me feel right at home, as my hometown is also littered with Peanuts memorabilia. Apparently I just go wherever Charles Schulz goes.

The conference doesn't officially start until tomorrow, so I don't have much to report, work-wise, but I will tell you about my new love interest. He's 3, and his name is Aaron. I met him on the plane. He was sitting in front of me and stood up on his seat and turned around to say "how are you?" but he hasn't totally mastered enunciation yet, so it came out like "howyou?" but I knew what he was getting at. He then asked me for me name and proudly announced that "I Aaron."

At that point, his mom made him turn around and leave me to read my book, but the connection was just too strong. He kept sneaking a peek, and finally made his move when he offered me one of his cookies. I thanked him and went to grab it, he regaled me with a full course of "Happy Birthday," which his mom says is currently his favorite song. I've never felt so special.

The course of true love never did run smooth, though. He was also flirting with the lady in the seat next to me, a Minnesota native who complained that "these airplane seats just get smaller and smaller!" She decided to regale me with information about why Minnesota is superior to the Bay Area and attempted to monopolize Aaron's attention, but the battle and the war were won when he offered me the cookie and serenade. "They always go for the pretty young things!" she said with a laugh, but I knew she was crying on the inside.

Tragically, our romance was cut short as it turned out that Aaron's family was catching a connecting flight to Memphis, and I was deplaning in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I don't know if our paths will ever cross again, but I've got a cookie in my belly and a song in my heart for the rest of my life.

*I'm wearing a dress.

Bad Dream

2010-07-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

There are a few things in this hard knock life that make me truly happy. In an effort to streamline this post, I will ignore the ones- like my dog and Ben and Jerry's Phish Food- that don't relate to this particular story, and focus on two that came into direct painful conflict last night: My early bed time and bad television. After a dumb day at work, I take great pleasure in relaxing with some insane Housewives or Top Models, and then turning the lights out before any Lettermans or Lenos get in the mix. So imagine my profound dilemma last night when my friend L, who always comes over to watch The Bachelorette on Mondays, was running super late. Like, we weren't even going to take off for Tahiti to meet up with Ali and the tooltestants until 10:30... P.M.! But we had to do it. In the end I thought it was the brave choice, and one that- even after a sleepy and yawning day- I do not regret.

What I do regret, however, is that my two office mates have now both seen "Inception," and spent all day playing this gong or drum or whatever the eff it is noise from the movie over and over for effect. They played it while they told stories, and while they watched various muted commercials, and YouTube videos, and anything that they could find that they thought would look and sound funny with that dramatic percussive soundtrack. And hey, I haven't seen the movie, so maybe that particular noise is super profound and I should shut up and drive straight to the movie theater and change, yes, my entire world view, but more specifically my feelings about a boom noise for minutes on end in my office on a day when all I want to do is sleep and, with my eyes peacefully closed, go back over the Bachelorette episode from last night to see if there weren't any clues I missed about how it all ends. Although, if I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on me driving straight home, saying something cranky, and immediately passing out instead.

Stay Classy

2010-07-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I knew it! I knew my boss was going to be able to go right back to sucking as soon as she returned to the office! Man, when she brings the suck, she really brings it.

So she was about 2 hours late yesterday because she took her cat to the vet. Then we went out to lunch to "celebrate" her return. I mentioned to her that everything is ready for the conference she's attending next week in San Diego (the one she said I couldn't go to because it's "important that [she] be there." It was all I could do not to say "bitch, no one is aware of your 'importance' besides you."); we just need to book her flight and how about we do that after lunch?

She replied that she doesn't want to go because she doesn't want to leave her cat alone overnight so soon after her getting so sick and can't I just go? I'm already going to Minneapolis this week, a trip she decided she didn't want to go on minutes before she left for her 9-week vacation. I told her I thought that two trips in the course of a week was too many for me and she said "Well, then I guess our office doesn't need to be represented. We have a good enough relationship with this organization anyway."

A) She said it super bitchy.
B) We already paid the $800 registration fee to attend, as well as reserved a hotel room.

San Diego, here I come. Look who's important enough now!

ADDENDUM: Victory is mine! I don't have to go anymore! We conned a very sweet student who views the conference as a "networking opportunity" and a free trip to sunny San Diego and is actually HAPPY about going! HAPPY. Bless her sweet, dumb little heart.

The Tweet Smell of Success

2010-07-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I've been at my job for the better part of a year. The only responsibilities I've gained over these last many months are either completely menial or slightly important but stupid and the result of my immediate boss' laziness/power trips. I technically make less money than when I started last summer, and more than having not been promoted, I have been explicitly asked to not show initiative or work outside my pay grade.

But... Leno Jokes, the mock Twitter account that my coworkers and I started in March and kept up with for all of three days, has one hundred seventy-eight followers! One hundred seventy-eight! That means that one hundred people decided to follow it, and then so did seventy-eight more. Monetary and professional advancement be damned. I've found all the success I can handle. If nothing else comes of my time at this job and, listen, I'm pretty sure that nothing will, at least I will always have Twitter. And bad jokes. And one of those one hundred seventy-seven Leno Jokes followers as a part of my blog readership, right Mom?

Summertime Blues

2010-07-19T09:21:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Some amongst you might say it's only July 19, but for me, summer is over. Why? Our boss is back today. I just got a voicemail from her saying that she is taking her cat to the vet but plans to be in ASAP. Booooooooooo. Where did those glorious two months go? Honestly, when she left, I kind of thought she'd be gone forever. I really did not plan for this let-down of her returning. Back to inane emails with the instructions "please advise." Back to her thinking it's okay to call my cell phone as I'm driving home from work after working an extra 2.5 hours that day. Back to events that are well attended and running beautifully and her pulling me aside to ask why there aren't flowers on the table, because flowers on the table are "always a nice touch."

It seems like everyone is a bad mood this morning. The reception area got painted over the weekend and when I went up to make a copy, I told the front desk ladies that it looks great, which it does.

"Looks great up here!"
"Sure."
"You don't think so?"
"It's just paint."

I mean, yeah, it is just paint, but what were they expecting if not a fresh coat of paint? It's not like the painter promised to remodel the room and install a Jacuzzi; he said he was going to paint it the color they chose.

Maybe she was hoping he'd leave flowers on her desk. That would be a nice touch.

End of Days

2010-07-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I keep thinking that today is Friday. Let me stop you here- It's not. The reason that I think that it's Friday, however, is the best reason to think that it's Friday, which is that I don't have work tomorrow.

But here's the thing about the last work day of the week be it Thursday or Friday or- for one glorious Thanksgiving week in November- Wednesday: There is actually absolutely nothing to do. Nothing. I show up and wait around for the one person responsible for getting our show ready to air to get our show ready to air, and then I go home. It sounds kind of glamorous, I'm sure, looking at everyone I've ever known's Facebook pictures, watching an hour of the worst movie ever called "Black Cougar" that is a sort of modern day Pinocchio revenge tale with my coworkers because some weirdo sent it to our office, and seeing how long I can wait to go into the break room to take a free bagel (it's ten minutes, that's how long). But, while it is pleasant to not have anything to do at the office, I would so much rather be at home with nothing to do. Or on the beach with nothing to do. Or maybe even asleep. Oh, the simple dreams of someone who hates their job...

Bizarro World

2010-07-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...
Today I had something that I have not had in a very long time, and honestly wasn't sure I even could have anymore. Mind out of the gutter, pervs, it's not that. It's a positive interaction with a prospective student.

A large portion of my job consists of meeting with prospective students, in person or on the phone, so naturally, I don't like it anymore. Usually, I find their questions to be completely inane. Generally, the undertone of my most of my conversations with prospective students is "how will you get me admitted to your program with full funding? No, I don't care that I'm unqualified."

So I didn't have high hopes for my 11:00am appointment. But lo and behold, this young man was on time, articulate, full of interesting questions, engaging, well-dressed...I really could not have been more pleased with our meeting and now am completely committed to getting him enrolled in our program if it's the last thing I do.

Now I'm wondering if I'm living in Bizarro Office. I'm liking prospective students, so does that mean I'll start hating Officemate? Will the upstairs fridge start sneaking food from me? Will I... return phone calls?

Refrigeration Investigation

2010-07-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Most days I eat my lunch and all my snacks so soon after arriving at my office that I don't bother to put anything in the little dorm-style mini-fridge that my coworkers use. Today, though, I brought a real lot of food from home because I didn't know what I would be hungry for (and felt panicked at the idea of not have a particular snack or lunch item that I wanted over the course of the day), so I didn't feel too nervous about putting 20 feet between my desk and one of my many snacks, my yogurt. When I went to put my yogurt, bottom left, into the fridge, I was struck by what a very yogurt-laden, Trader Joe's heavy, yuppy little group it was joining. We're not a big staff, but we are a very white staff, and somehow I feel that that goes some distance to explaining the five low-fat yogurts we called our own today. And the sliced celery sticks and Trader Joe's salad aren't in a category too far removed.

There is, however, one food item from a different sort of group. If you look just under the freezer section (which, incidentally, I've not tried using on this particular freezer because of how burned I was when- with my college roommate- I gathered up some Ben and Jerry's money only to have the whole container melt after I overestimated a similar freezer's freezing capabilities) there is a corn dog in a bag. I love corn dogs as much as the next guy as long as I'm standing next to a guy that loves corn dogs, so I'm not confused about why the corn dog is there, but why it's been there so long. There's ice growing on it. Eat that corn dog, person who brought that corn dog to the office! Come on! You can't just leave a corn dog in a bag in a tiny refrigerator with a bunch of yogurt and a) expect it to maintain its corn dog goodness or b) be there much longer because, for my part, I really love and want to eat corn dogs. I also want to know which vaguely snobby, pseudo-healthy person who uses this refrigerator is responsible for cleaning it, because...umm...eww.

Note: In studying this picture after I posted it, I noticed that the yogurt on the bottom right was exactly same same as mine on the bottom left. So I returned to the refrigerator and confirmed- based on my Sharpied initials on the yogurt on the bottom right- that two of the five yogurts are my personal property. If I didn't think before that this blog could change lives, my own included, I just got back a yogurt I didn't know I lost, so it can. It has.

Spray Fan

2010-07-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Last Friday was a particularly annoying day at work. All the usual annoying things happened, and then I tried to book a flight online. Maybe I never tried to go somewhere so far (the East Coast) for such a brief period (2 days), but it seemed pretty impossible to wade through Kayak and JetBlue and finally United to get travel times that would actually put me on the ground for the days I needed without flying and being laid over for equally as long. Once I found my highly specific flights, I entered all my personal and billing information to book them. I hit Enter. United told me there was an error. Then it told me that five more times, and- because I really needed those particular flights, and they were only pulled up on my work computer, and it was Friday afternoon and almost time to go as far away from my desk as I could for as long as I could- it became clear that I was going to have to step back in time and book my flights over the phone. All was going well with the innocuous-bordering-on-pleasant computer voice system; I had the flights I needed, had listened to all the baggage and cancellation policies, and all I needed to do was enter my frequent flyer number by speaking it aloud. But the computer couldn't understand me. It couldn't understand me three times in a row, which meant that I was transferred to a real live person who was real live hard to understand, and I got to start all over again requesting the particular flights and listening to policies and wishing I could throw my phone through the window. I couldn't. It's a very strong window.

I did finally get my flight booked, but all of that frustrating back story was to explain why- when I heard that someone was giving free spray tans in the second floor bathroom across the building- I asked no questions other than, "Do I still have time?!" before I ran there. When I got to the bathroom, there was a small tent-type thing, a woman with a spraying machine, and a girl I kind of know who works down the hall from me who let me borrow her bathing suit top to go with the paper thong I was given to wear as bottoms. Interestingly, in a mathematical way, they were out of paper bras, but not paper underwear. A puzzle. Anyway, I took off all my clothes and put on a hairnet in the handicapped stall, as I felt that getting naked in a public bathroom with the threat of both colleagues and strangers walking in was totally worth it if it meant turning my stupid afternoon into a slightly less stupid, way more tan one. And I was right. When I, pretty naked with my eyes closed against the (harmful?) spray, finally got around to asking why exactly this was happening at my place of work and for free, someone said it was because the spray tan company really wanted to get their name out into the world. Then I asked what the name of their company was three times and no on answered me. Or it's possible that, with my new found tan awesomeness, I just didn't think that it was important for me to listen.

Job Slobs Slobs

2010-07-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Hey, sorry K and I have been blog slackers lately! At least one of you has mentioned missing our posts which is actually more surprising than anything else, but for those of you who might actually enjoy reading this blog and keep it in your "not work" online circulation repertoire, I know we're not holding up our end of the bargain lately, and I apologize. I haven't confirmed this with K, but I'm going to attribute our lack of posts to the following.

1) Laziness.
2) Not having anything to write about.

I don't want K to sue me for libel, so I will speak for myself when I say my own laziness befuddles and inspires me. I can not get something done like you would not believe. I went to Portland back in February, and before I left I noticed that a button on my winter coat was loose. I figured I could either sew it on myself, ask a craftier friend to sew it for me, or take it to an alterations place. Instead, I just wore a different jacket on my trip and the button is dangling by the proverbial thread in my closet right this very minute.

Also, my job's pretty basic right now. Sure, people are doing stupid things left and right, but they don't seem like the right stupid things for some reason. Also, while my posts might indicate something strongly to the contrary, I usually like my job. Well, I like Officemate, the Dean, and a good 70% of our students, which is enough for me most days. So sometimes, complaining about it nonstop doesn't feel great. Most times it does though.

Anyway, my boss is back next week and I am sure she will drive me right up the wall and back to the computer to vent to you on the regs.

Clerks

2010-07-08T14:22:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Well today I had to say an unexpected goodbye. The girl who works at our little local market is moving away. She is very nice, but I am not terribly sad about her departure. I'm sure her replacement will be able to sell me kombucha tea and Kudos bars just as effectively.

But then men in my general vicinity must be beside themselves. Dudes LOVE this girl. She is very pretty. She's Asian, tall and thin with flawless skin and shiny hair, and the kicker: Rivers Cuomo glasses. She looks better in those black hipster glasses than anyone else I have ever seen or ever will see. I'd be jealous of the way men are putty in her hands if I wasn't so amused. If I am ever in the market in the presence of man, I know I will have to watch him try to flirt awkwardly with the poor girl, who clearly had no interest in being hit on, as well as not the world's best understanding of English.

Today was no exception. I was holding my Pomegranate White Tea and mini-Toblerone anxiously while he tried to chat her up. I caught the tail end of their conversation. I'm guessing she said that she is moving back to her home country shortly.

Guy: Well I'll have to come back soon to say a proper goodbye (translation: try to make out with you).
Girl: Actually, today is my last day.
Guy: Oh no! And you go back to Viet--nam?
Girl: South Korea.
Guy: Oh....yeah. Well it's been great getting to know you, I'll miss you around here (goes in for hug)
Girl: (goes in for handshake, accepts awkward side hug instead) Yes, goodbye.

Our goodbye was less awkward and one sided. I told her it had been nice seeing her everyday and she said she liked to see what beverage/treat combination I got each afternoon (I like to mix it up: my only rule is that I cannot get soda or a full-sized candy bar); I wished her a safe journey home and promised not to tell any of the men who work in my building that today was her last day. She smiled the smile of true relief that only a girl who is constantly bombarded with unwanted male attention must be capable of feeling and thanked me. Bitch.

Week Gone By

2010-07-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

To answer your question that you didn't ask, more than likely because you don't care, I have no idea what I've been up to this week that has stopped me from Slobbing. Monday was a day off to celebrate my independence from my boss, and our country's from England. Tuesday there was the thing where we had to move back the furniture that the people who painted our office over the weekend left in the middle of the room, and Wednesday was our intern's 18th birthday, so I had to eat cake... All of which is to say: Nevermind. That sounds like a packed week.

The break neck pace of life continues today. Here are the highlights so far:

Because of a recent lapse in security in my building, I now have to remember to carry my employee badge with me every time I need to go through the doors that lead to the bathroom. This means that every time I need to get to the bathroom, I have to walk to the security doors, remember that they're shut, walk back to my desk, get my badge, then go back to the security doors, and finally get to the bathroom. This is annoying, but also one way to pass time in the day.

I have a bunch of rubber bands in my desk drawer, and my office mate chose one of them stretch out all day yesterday so that all day today he could hold it up like a carnival attraction and yell that it is the "biggest rubber band in the world." He's kidding (kind of) but that doesn't mean he'll stop any time soon. Again, kind of annoying, also something to pay attention to that isn't work. Draw.

Nine work hours to fill until the end of the day. Stay tuned. Maybe someone will get in the wrong elevator or find a quarter in their pocket from their birth year. That would be just the sort of craziness and insanity that this day it heading towards.

Lame/Not Lame

2010-07-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

It's time for a new game I've invented: Lame or Not Lame! (Not to be confused with Herpes or Not Herpes, a game my friends and I invented last night over sushi.)

Not lame: My annoying landords are going out of town for a month!

Not lame/mostly neutral: They asked me to water their plants.

Lame: To this end, I have received no less than 4 plant-watering/mail taking in phone calls and one 15 minute plant watering tutorial. "Oh, the hose is over there..." As my friend M says, "white people with money are the worst."

Speaking of M...

Not lame: She's moved back to the Bay Area from New York!

Lame: Most of yesterday. I may or may not have participated in a conversation where I said/whined "I'm either the Content Editor of this website, or I'm not!"

Not lame/cutest ever: Officemate's hilarious/adorable almost-6-year old daughter is in the office today! Apparently last night she wanted to play dress up with her 2 year old sister and the theme of the dress up was "Mommy and S." The older girl wanted to be Mommy and have Officemate dress the little one up as me.

Lame/insulting: To that end, Officemate put the little one in a huge pair of jeans and put a sports bra over her head and pulled it down so far that it held up the jeans because "you like to wear tank tops."

Not lame/vindicating: The 6 y.o. saw this ensemble and declared in my defense "that's not how S dresses!"

Lame: I've been playing phone tag with this woman in Oklahoma for the past two days who doesn't seem to know about time differences seeing as how this morning's voicemail was time-stamped at 7:08am.

Not lame: Germany v. Spain today at 11:30PST (that would be 1:30 your time, Oklahoma lady). Let's get this done, Deutschland!

Home Work

2010-07-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I'm writing this from home today, because, while I did go to work for a solid 3 hours, I forgot to post while I was there. I hope that my boss is so distracted by the DVD's that I forgot to order and the time card that I forgot to fill out that she hardly notices that I didn't write a thing about my deep dislike of her on company time today. Fingers crossed!

I won't be writing from work on Monday either, because we have the day off! Never has Independence Day felt so appropriately named. I will check with no one when I want to go somewhere for more than two minutes, and I probably won't even CC anyone on my e-mails so that they can make certain that I'm doing them right. Pursuit of happiness indeed. Until Tuesday. Happy 4th!

Wall Art

2010-07-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Somehow the sun, my blinds, and the hideously nineties era design of my office building came together a few days ago to form this heart-shaped light spot on the wall just above my desk. The weird thing about that is, and I know that I don't talk about this very often, I hate my job. So this heart seems... Out of place. At best.

Today I did enjoy the morning bagels in the break room, and I was pleased by the afternoon cupcake delivery. But not even the evening pastry box made me feel that I love anything here enough to deserve a miracle from the combined efforts of nature and industry to emblazon a heart on my desk wall. It's like if Jesus appeared in my French Toast. I'm not the right audience for that. Although, a heart on my French Toast... Or my bacon... Perhaps my morning coffee... That would be appropriate. That would be love.

Fast Food Nation

2010-07-01T13:59:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Well yesterday was quite a drive. 10 hours in the car with my dad, from Vegas to the Bay Area. At least the drive from Colorado to Vegas was mostly beautiful. The drive from Vegas to San Francisco is mostly Bakersfield.

My dad's a pretty healthy eater, and while he wasn't willing to drive around looking for Farmer's Markets or vegan restaurants, we tried to do better than McDonald's while on the road. Quizno's and Rubio's both offer healthy menu options and became our road trip staples. They also became fodder for two of my funnier conversations on the trip.

At Rubio's:

S: I'd like a fish taco.
Rubio's girl: You mean our world famous fish taco?
S:.....yes?

No, I want your underground fish taco that no one's heard of. Also, I know Rubio's is a pretty popular chain, and I do like their fish tacos, but I feel pretty confident when I say that they are not actually world famous. I am in currently in the process of asking every person in the world if s/he has heard of Rubio's fish taco. I'll get back to you sometime before I die.

At Quizno's:

S (on her phone from the car): Could I have your exact street address please?
Quinzo's girl: Yes.
S: Will you tell me what it is?
Quizno's girl: Oh yeah sure, it's (paper ruffling) XXXX. Are you coming in?
S: Yes, we're nearby, but are just having trouble finding you.
Quizno's girl: Oh yeah, we're not actually visible from the street.

And why would you be really, Quizno's? You definitely want to maintain that aura of mystique and exclusivity that you're so known for. Well, you're doing a heckuva job because my dad and I were at your store for half an hour at lunch time and saw no other patrons. Way to keep it old school.

I'd like to say that now that I'm back in my unnamed Bay Area university, I'm surrounded with a higher level of employee competence than I experienced on the road, but everyone who's read this blog (Hi, K's mom!) knows that I'd be lying.

Office Birthday Part II

2010-06-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today at work, the birthday fun continues. We finished the last of the birthday beer, and this picture is of my bottom desk drawer where we chose to store some of the empty cans rather than putting them in the recycling out in the open. And yet, the recycling will always be out in the open, so I'm not sure exactly what the end game is here as far as not leaving me with a desk full of empties until I somehow miraculously no longer work at this office. Maybe we'll rent an incinerator. There have been worse ideas. And if my boss falls in after the beer cans just because I push her, then so be it. All in the name of party clean up.

There is also a small bottle of Milagro tequila on the erstwhile-birthday-boy's desk that we all look at and joke about drinking all day except that none of us really does because it's probably more fun to joke about/role play what might happen if you pounded tequila at work than it actually would be to pound tequila at work.

There is also still ice cream cake in the freezer, and 2 bite cupcakes in my office that I have done my damnedest to make last for three bites. It fills the time.

Celebeeration

2010-06-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Wondering where I was Friday and Monday? I didn't think so, which is good. Because I have no real answer. Moving on...

This picture may have you asking yourself, "Ooh- What sort of hot espresso beverage is that? A latte? Cappuccino?" Well if that's what you're wondering, you're naive, my friend (Mom). You see, twenty-nine years ago today one of my office mates went and got himself born, and I personally could think of no better way to celebrate his life and its achievements than putting some real cheap but passably drinkable Trader Joe's beer into a coffee mug and having its foam mimic the froth of the sort of drink that is actually acceptable to consume in the workplace. Other friends and colleagues contributed balloons and cupcakes, cookies and cards to the celebration, but because I didn't know what my coworker wanted gift-wise, and also because I am cheap and like to drink beer, I brought some six packs to share as we worked today. If there's a more personal or sentimental way to say, "Happy day closer to death," than a drink that makes the man of the hour slur his words at a staff meeting, then I would like to know what it is. So Happy Birthday, Office Mate, and may you forget that you asked me to store some of the beers in my desk drawer.

Bright Light City

2010-06-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So I couldn't write yesterday because I was in a car with my father for over 12 hours. Yes, you read that right. 12 hours, 4 states, and 2 of Utah's finest fast food bathrooms (Arby's and Wendy's).

The drive was gorgeous, though. We started off in Colorado Springs after a great weekend of revisiting places I've been, but have no memory of: the hospital where I was born, the two houses we lived in, the Coco's restaurant where I apparently threw the most embarrassing fit of my entire childhood....good times.

My cousin is a coach at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, so he gave us a pretty cool tour of their athletic facility. Damn impressive. He's either lived abroad or on the East Coast my whole life, so I don't know him very well, but he's a cool guy. He went to college in the South and has worked in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas since graduating, so he's got a pretty serious accent despite growing up in Germany and Rhode Island. He also says things like "holy smokes" and "I tell you what." Solid.

Anyway, we got up at 4am yesterday and watched the sunrise over the Rockies--totally gorgeous. We saw Vail and other fancy ski towns that I can't even afford to look at, as well as the most deserty type beauty of Utah and Arizona before entering the desolate, soulless hell hole that is Nevada.

This is my 8th time in Vegas, and four of those times occurred before I turned 21. Yay for having family in Sin City. Anyway, I'm happy to be here, but it doesn't hold the level of excitement and appeal I think it does for others. We had a great dinner with my cousin, her husband and their sassy as hell 12-year-old son last night. Darling lamb guessed that I was 23. I love him.

So Pops and I are off to check out the newest hotels on the Strip and get his 10,000 steps on the pedometer he never takes off these days. I don't know if I'll be able to post tomorrow because we're driving back to the Bay Area, so please let me share with you the things I've learned from being in the car all day with my dad.

1. The only music we can agree on is: the Beatles, ABBA, and Johnny Cash
2. My dad will only eat at Subway if he is ABSOLUTELY sure there's not a Quizno's nearby
3. I am not allowed to put my feet on the dashboard

Next time I write, I'll be back at my undisclosed Bay Area location. I can't wait.

Sports Center

2010-06-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Holy cow, what a game! After the conference concluded yesterday, I got a freaking amazing Greek salad at one of Denver's many fine eateries and headed out to Coors Field for the big showdown. Colorado had beaten Boston in the previous two games, so many enthusiastic Rockies fans showed up at the game holding brooms, ready for the sweep.

Pops and I were sitting in the "Rock Pile" which are bleachers that are almost as high as the second tier of stadium seats and have great views not just of the field, but the Denver skyline and Rocky Mountains as well. The temperature was great and we were ready for some baseball.

I won't bore you with the play by play, but it really was one of the most exciting games I've seen. Lots of big home runs, a couple hilarious errors, an extra inning. But in the end, Pedroia and the Red Sox prevailed, much to the delight of the 25,000+ Red Sox fans* in attendance.

I don't know if Red Sox Nation just shows up in full force everywhere, or if there's an especially large contingent here in Denver, but good god there were a ton of Boston fans everywhere. I couldn't believe it. There was just as much "let's go, Red Sox...clap clap, CLAPCLAPCLAP" as there was the same cheer with "Rockies" to the point that I couldn't tell which side was cheering when. That was fine with me, because I like clapping and didn't really care too much who won.

Today the conference is DEAD. So dead and super boring and I don't even have any Nutter Butters. The only saving grace is that one of the exhibitors is geniusly showing World Cup soccer at their booth. My colleague from the East Coast university (the gay man who one lady thought had a crush on me) and I watched Portugal v. Brazil: Colonial Grudgematch 2010, and now are just killing time until Spain v. Chile: Get Your Shit Together, Europe/I Actually Have No Beef with You, Chile.

I'm really doing the lord's work for my school at this event. Stellar use of funding.

*Figure according to my dad.

Off Day/Day Off

2010-06-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Because I thought that yesterday was Thursday pretty much all day, it has given me great and profound joy to realize (multiple times with no diminishing surprise) that today is in fact Thursday, not Friday as it seems, and that I have tomorrow, Friday, off!

I really don't know how to spin that to match my generally wildly negative and complaining approach. I'm completely at a loss for how I might make that someone else's annoying fault or a miserable burden that I have to bear. Or how I might, as I so often do, treat it with cold dismissal as unimportant or demeaning or useless. But remembering I have an extra day in my life, and that it's a day off... Well that's really a tough one to put into my (whining) voice. I'll keep working on it. Stay tuned.

Rocky Mountain High

2010-06-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Guys, you'll never believe it: Denver is NICE. Like really quite nice. My expectations were super low and I have been very impressed. It's got a big long pedestrian walkway street like 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. There's lots of healthy eating options, cool breweries, live music, and the most amazing performing arts complex I have ever seen. Pops and I are going to try to get half-price tickets to a live version of Young Frankenstein for this Friday night. And let's not forget the gorgeous Rocky Mountains in the background. I am so pleasantly surprised.

The conference itself is pretty standard; I could do these in my sleep. My dad asked yesterday if I was nervous and I totally laughed. These things are all exactly the same and I've been doing about 8-10 a year for two years now, so it would be pretty sad if I were nervous. Since the conference isn't teaching me anything new, I try to learn things on my own when I can. So far I've learned:

-The Denver Post is a pretty decent paper
-People in elevators say stupid things sometimes
-The Hyatt Denver gym is the nicest I've ever seen
-Nutter Butters taste GREAT dipped in coffee
-It's hard to watch TV on Mountain Time

I'm here until 5:00pm (Mountain Time) and then back to the hotel for a quick change and the Rockies game. If people's choice of apparel is any indication, these Denver folk LOVE the Rockies. How will the fans stack up against Red Sox nation? I'll let you know tomorrow.

Chump Day

2010-06-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Ah, Wednesday, we meet again. I rarely think of you when you're not here, harbor no dread of you as I do with your colleague Monday, associate you with no joy as I do with your cohort Friday. But maybe that's how you got me, Wednesday. Maybe you've been lying in wait all these years so that toady, in my 27th year, you would rear your ugly day head and show me that you are a force, a terror, that I've been wrong to ignore you all this time. Let's review, Wednesday, what we've already been through in my five waking hours with you.

- I got up early to move my car out of the driveway so that I could move my boyfriend's car in. It's street cleaning day, and my boyfriend's out of town, so I thought I would try to get things in order before the construction guys working in the back house- who block me in every day- got in my way. But their truck was already there, directly in my car's path out of the driveway. They, however, were nowhere to be found, and I could do not one thing with either car. You got off to a quick start, Wednesday. Bold.

- Because of a number of crazy scheduling things that have to do with the out-of-town boyfriend, work starting an hour early (well, we'll get to that, right Wednesday?), a friend taking my dog for the day because I'll be gone forever, and my desire that my dog not destroy her house- It was imperative that I go to the dog park this morning, but also necessary that I be dressed in my work clothes when I went there, rather than my usual grubby morning-walk clothes. So of course I rushed to the dog park, and it was closed. Closed. Men were working in it, and I was at a complete loss to do anything active in my dumb office flats except let my dog loose on a baseball field and hope that he would chase after a bird and then, at some tired point, agree to come back to me.

- Since I chased the dog through that baseball field in an effort to tire him, when I dropped him at my friend's house he thought, I guess, that we were still playing that game and ran away from me over and over again when I needed to bring him inside. Also I almost fell when I finally did catch him, which is only important in that I looked stupid which was annoying.

- After rushing to work to do a quick assignment I didn't know how to do before our meeting an hour earlier than we usually meet, I sat at my desk for an hour waiting for the meeting to start. At least that gave me a chance to take the slowest elevator on earth back down to the parking garage to get my lunch that I left in my car.

- When the meeting was finally over, I dashed to the break room to get the morning bagels that they always put out on Thursdays. Because, as our show usually tapes on Thursdays, but this week is taping today, Wednesday, I got confused. And thought it was Thursday. Bagel day. I was starving, and there were no bagels because today is... well... I think you know.

On the Road Again

2010-06-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

NB: Due to my location's crappy free wifi, I am unable to load a picture at this time. I appreciate your strength, resilience and support and apologize for what I am sure is the biggest disappointment you've endured today.

I am writing to you today from the beautiful Oakland International Airport, fondly known as OAK. I am here waiting to catch a flight to Denver for a weeklong conference/father-daughter roadtrip.

Here's what's up: I was born in Colorado Springs (really? We're fascinated. Tell us more!), but moved to California when I was 2 and have not been back since. When I told my dad that I had a conference in Denver he came up with an amazing scheme to reunite me with my Rocky Mountain Roots. Itinerary goes a little something like this:

6/21: Dad leaves Bay Area by car.
6/23: S leaves Bay Area by plane. Dad arrives in Denver in time to pick S up from airport and bring her to conference hotel so she can check in and set up.
6/24: S goes to conference. Dad does who knows what until 7:30pm when S and Dad reunite for Rockies v. Red Sox.
6/25: More conference for S, more who knows what for Dad.
6/26: Depart Denver for Colorado Springs. Meet up with cousin and his wife for ice cream. Do nostalgia tour of hometown.
6/27: Take train to Pike's Peak. More nostalgia.
6/28: Depart CO Springs for Las Vegas. Yes, friends, I am DRIVING with my DAD from COLORADO SPRINGS to LAS VEGAS. Voluntarily.
6/29: Hang out on strip, visit with another cousin and her family (actual reason for Vegas trip; we are not gambling addicts).
6/30: Drive back to Bay Area.

Growing up, my dad and I took lots of driving trips. Sometimes day trips up to Mendocino or down to Monterey; sometimes longer trips up to Seattle to visit yet another relative (Catholics have mad big families, y'all). My mom never came because she doesn't like the car, being away from home, and sometimes, my dad and me. We haven't taken a long road trip in just about 5 years so I guess we're due for one, though I am little terrified of what we're going to do with all that time in the car together.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to post tomorrow and Friday, because if last year's version of this conference was any indication, I'll be spending a lot of time trying to look busy in front on my computer, but I don't know what my internet access will be like on the road. Never fear, I will regale you with stories from what I'm calling Father/Daughter Roadtrip Adventure Extravaganza 2010 when I return if not right from the road.

Wish me luck.

Big Love

2010-06-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Ladies and gentleman, I have a new comedy girl crush. Sarah Haskins, you're out. Same with you, Maria Bamford. My new love interest is a Mormon New Yorker named Elna Baker.

I was actually exposed to Elna a little over two years ago by a guy I was dating at the time. We were talking about our shared love of This American Life, and he told me about the funniest segment he'd ever heard on that show about prissy Upper East Side moms, FAO Schwarz and some pretty blatant racism. He retold the story pretty well, but I wanted to hear the full version and found myself sitting in front my computer, engrossed in this funny woman's story. (You can hear it, and all the other stories I'll reference by clicking on her name.)

I passed the story on to a couple friends, but didn't think much about the woman herself, other than she had a nice voice and was very funny. Then yesterday, as I was listening to several Moth podcasts to keep one of the workstudies from talking to me, I came across that familiar voice and sly sense of humor. This time, she was talking about her 80lb weight loss and how she hoped it would change her role in her family. Because of that story, the other workstudy (whom I like talking to, but also enjoys listening to podcasts) and I keep saying to each other in deep voices "NO! I AM PRETTY NOW."

So the good workstudy and I decided to blow a goodly amount of time today finding every audio and video clip of Elna's that we could, and once we devoured those, moved on to written pieces like her Glamour article, "Yes I'm a 27-Year-Old Virgin."

If you had told me that the funny girl telling the TAL story was a Mormon when I first heard it, I would have had a hard time believing you. I knew a lot of Mormons growing up, and don't doubt that they can be funny, it's just that most Mormon women don't make it to stand-up comedy age still single and childless and working at FAO Schwarz. Elna's a different kind of Mormon than the ones I grew up with (all married except for one that we've always thought was gay) and I'm glad I've been exposed to her, not just for the laughs and wasted work hours, but also the reminder not to pigeon-hole people. Who knew not working could be so educational?

Hope in My Heart, A (Rhythmically Questionable) Poem in My Head

2010-06-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

We're taping our show a day early this week, and now that I'm seven hours into my Monday, I'm already giddily thinking that maybe I'll get a glorious day off...

A poem on this theme:

This week is a quick week

So I want to shout-speak,

"Hooray, hooray

Maybe Friday

My world won't be so bleak!"

'Cause maybe I'll be off

Without a sick day cough

And free to spend

My hours on end

With no boss there to scoff

Ask, and You Shall Be Mocked

2010-06-21T11:58:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

A major portion of my job is answering questions. By email, in person, over the phone, I answer questions about our admissions criteria, application procedures, academic policies, course availability, etc. It's pretty hard to have a job in higher education administration without answering a lot of questions.

I like knowing things that other people don't. I like telling them what to do. It usually works out great. But sometimes their questions are so incredibly stupid that I cannot take any joy in having special knowledge. Usually I don't get bombarded with idiotic inquiries until our application deadline gets closer, but today has been an exception.

I had a 10:00am appointment with an international prospective student from Nepal. She arrived shortly after 10:00am and announced that she was looking for me. "I'm right here, you made it, have a seat." "I called on Thursday to meet with you but you said you didn't have time and didn't work on Fridays, so I should come at 10:00am on Monday." "Yep. And here you are. Have a seat." "You want me to sit in this chair?" "Please."

Now this part was fine; it's her first time in the US and I've worked with enough international students to know to make allowances for cultural differences. What followed though was evidence that while this student had done her research and knew a lot about our admissions requirements and costs, but was hoping that none of them would apply to her. "Do I really need to submit 3 work samples?" "Would I have to pay that money?" I tried my best not to be condescending as I assured her that no exceptions were made to either our admissions policies or our tuition, even for people who considered our university "a dream."

I also received an email from a prospective student asking if I could tell her her chances of being admitted to our program. I mean, technically they're about 1 in 5 because we admit around 20% of our applicants, but I think she meant that based on the 3 pieces of information about herself that she gave me, what chance did she stand in our applicant pool? I wrote back telling her that I am unable to speculate as to anyone's chances of being admitted and she wrote back wanting to know who could tell her if not me. It was all I could do not to just write back "Nostradamus".

Finally, I just responded to my least favorite kind of email, the super open-ended one. The phrasing may differ but the person is basically saying "do all my research for me." Today's came in the form of "can you tell me what information about your program is not on your website?" but most commonly comes as "is there anything else I need to know about your program?"

Yes. You're too dumb for it.

Blursday

2010-06-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I didn't get to post anything yesterday, but not for lack of desire. It was for lack of a minute to call my own, but while I didn't get to blog, here are some things that I did get to do:

- Sit in a dark editing bay for 5 hours "supervising" an editor who is completely self-sufficient and knows exactly what he is doing. I do not know what he is doing...Which makes it hard for me to supervise.

- Play games on my iPhone, really the only option while sitting in a dark room with no real work to do.

- Learn, after my iPhone ran out of battery power, that the computer in that editing bay (which my coworker was using for actual work or something, because it's not enough to have one of us with no clue sit there and watch the editor do whatever it is he does, but instead two of us are required) is too old to charge an iPhone.

- Sit and stare into the dark.

- Eat my dinner that had gotten cold as I sat in the dark in under two minutes before I had to go sit in the dark some more while we taped our show.

I mean, I guess I could have written something at 11:30 p.m. when we finished up, but then I would have had to put in for all that overtime. So instead I cut a few cupcakes on the community table in half to find the one I wanted to take home, and just called it a night.

Flip Side

2010-06-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

In the spirit of camaraderie and bloggy cross-promotion, I'm just writing to plug the blog of my high school friend Jill. She has recently, cleverly, availed herself of working (K's and my only goal in life), and is blogging about her adventures in joblessness. I think it will complement our job-related bitching quite nicely. Read it and feel jealous. I know I will.

http://thelifeofanunemployedgal.blogspot.com/

America! Kind of....

2010-06-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Even though it's my day off, I've been awake for 3 hours. Why? Because my two favorite teams in the World Cup, USA and Germany both played this morning. I'm not into MLS soccer, or even the European leagues, but when teams are playing for the glory of their country, I cannot say no. Also, if the World Cup happened more often than every four years, I probably wouldn't care as much. Who played in this year's Super Bowl?*

Anyway, I should have stayed asleep because that shizz was PATHETIC. Germany, who I have taking the whole damn thing in my World Cup Bracket, lost to Serbia. SERBIA. Do they even have running water in Serbia? Then, the main event, USA vs. Slovenia. After a pretty exciting tie with England (even though I thought the US played like shit in that game, and if our goalie wasn't the man and England's goalie didn't fuck up so royally, we would have lost like 3-0), I was expecting a swift victory that I could enjoy with waffles and Nutella. At least I enjoyed the waffles.

We were down 2-0 for a goodly portion of the game. That ain't right! SLOVENIA. A country full of people with the pale and sickly look that only Communism and no sunlight can achieve. As my friend A said, it was like the US "was afraid to see what happens if they kick the ball in the goal." And then, in the second half, my new boyfriend Landon Donovan kicked the most amazing goal I ever have seen. Seriously, even if you don't like soccer, look it up. It is bad ass. Then that semi-Albino Michael Bradley tied it up. We could have won if that idiot ref hadn't counted our 3rd goal offsides, but I can't get into why I hate that ref so much right now, because I'm all hopped up on Nutella.

*The Saints! That was a pretty great game actually. I made Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon that day.

Salud

2010-06-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So it's my turn to provide a drink for Thirsty Thursday, our weekly outdoor summer cocktail fest. Just like last year, I am making sangria, because I have easy access to cheap white wine and don't feel like coming up with anything else. Instead of just being happy that we have a weekly drinking ritual, other people in our office get really nervous that they might not like this Thursday's beverage usually around Tuesday and start hounding the person for details about their drink.

"I'm making sangria."
"Didn't you do that last year?"
"Yes."
"What fruit are you putting in it?"
"I don't know, probably peaches and limes...maybe melon?"
"Hmmm....I don't like peaches."
"You don't have to have any."
"Will you be bringing just regular wine for people who don't want sangria?"
"No."

Then today, as I was assembling said sangria in the staff kitchen, I received these 3 comments from three separate people who were bombarding the kitchen because there was a rumor spreading around the building that there were bagels and lox in the fridge. (There were.)

"Just peaches and limes? I thought sangria had like 5 different kinds of fruit in it."
"Why aren't you using red wine?"
"Is that going to be enough for everyone?"

It's free booze people. Come, have a drink, get back to your desk to make your emails even more riddled with typos than they currently are. I don't know if my colleagues' sense of entitlement is a reflection of our students' entitlement or vice versa, but what normal person looks a free drink in the mouth?

Lest I lump them all together, I just sent out an email reminding the crew that it was again Thursday and I hoped they were thirsty for sangria. I immediately got a reply from our HR lady and braced myself for her complaint and/or admonishment, but instead all it said was "Excellent." Indeed, ma'am. That is how you respond to the news that there is free alcohol for you. Cheers.

Pizza My Broken Heart

2010-06-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Last night, as so many of us do, I stayed at work two hours later than usual in anticipation of the arrival of one Eminem. Yes, that Eminem. That "Eight Mile" Slim Shady Eminem who was scheduled to shoot something for our show. And- as is so often the case when you find yourself sitting on the floor because someone in the art department took away the only couch there was in the common area, waiting for Eminem, eating your third piece of extra greasy pizza because you were so hungry from being at work past your dinner time that you ate the first two slices too quickly to realize that they had actually made you beyond full- he didn't show. Typical. The big boss sent out an e-mail to the whole staff saying that Eminem apologized to the star of our show- who was not in the building or affected by the wait- and would be calling the star of our show- who, again, was not in the building eating pizza on the floor for lack of a couch- to apologize personally. When the e-mail came in, I dusted myself off (no, literally, that floor is gross) and set to putting the leftover pizza away in the fridge. There was the small but meaningful consolation that I would get to have free pizza for lunch the next day (today), and that I seemed nice for offering to be the one to put it away when really I was just keeping close tabs on it so that I could stake my claim for the pieces I wanted.

So imagine my absolute devastation when I, after not packing a lunch for myself, and with great pizza hope it my heart, arrived to find that someone had taken the ENTIRE box of assorted leftover pizza slices. Someone went into the refrigerator in the break room between 9 o'clock last night and 10 o'clock this morning and thought to themselves, "Oh look- Here's an entire pizza that I didn't pay for that's been carefully saved. I should probably take the whole thing and make sure that whomever it belongs to doesn't get any." Who would do this? What adult would steal a whole pizza from his or her own place of business? Why didn't I do it myself?!

Loud and Clear

2010-06-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

More on the joys of working in my building: we have some sort of alarm that likes to go off every now and then for no reason we can detect. It's not the smoke alarm, or a burglar alarm, or even one of those new-fangled carbon monoxide detectors (I know those aren't that new-fangled). When it goes off, it's a loud, high-pitched, continuous noise that makes everyone crazy. Kind of like the vuvuzelas people are so into blowing at the World Cup right now. (Btw: those are so annoying. I am all for embracing the traditions and cultures of the home country, but that sound makes me CRAZY).

Today, the alarm has been going off several times an hour from anywhere between a split-second to about 5 minutes. It's annoying no matter what. It started while I was out of the office, picking up a document from my favorite central admissions lady in the world, partially because I wanted to get outside for a little bit, but also because our workstudy students seem beyond lazy today and neither one them seemed to willing to do it.

Anyway, I came back to the lovely sound I know so well, and our two workstudy students sitting in our office, looking agonized.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked.
"A long time, almost since you left," one of them told me.
"Why didn't you shut the door?" I asked, shutting it myself.
"I don't know! Wow that makes it a lot better!" said the other, after my shutting the door drastically lessened the the volume of the sound.
"Well from now on, never hesitate to shut the door when that alarm goes off. It's the worst."

Really? Neither of them thought to shut the door? Our university kinds of prides itself on the quality of student it admits, but neither of them attempted to damped a sound by shutting a door.

I mean, I did take a quarter of "The Physics of Sound" in college, and probably have a truly superior understanding of how sound waves work, and even considered becoming a speech pathologist for like 2 weeks my junior year, but I think even small children know that when something outside is loud, closing the door makes it better.

Maybe tight, tiny short-shorts are cutting off the circulation to her brain. Or her ears.

Badittude

2010-06-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today at my office is fairly unremarkable except for the fact that everyone is cranky out of their effing minds. Rolling chairs have been pushed for effect, voices have been raised, and a lot of super terse one word e-mails have been sent. In a way it's comforting because my fuse is short, too, today (despite having put myself to bed at 9:45 last night, I feel snippy and exhausted and have taken to bothering my already annoyed office mates in the middle of whatever they're doing to ask if they think I'm anemic. They don't), so it's nice to not feel as though I'm the stand-out difficult one. But boy- A staff wide meeting with a bunch of people who should be taking a time out was not delightful.

And now we're all waiting around, unsure if we are taping a part of our show tonight. Usually we order food if we're going to be here late, but my immediate boss says that no one can order dinner until 7 (putting it on our desks in the 8 o'clock hour) since we may not have to stay. So now everyone who couldn't even handle sitting around an office pleasantly enough is still sitting around an office waiting to find out of we are going to leap into rush-production-mode, or just have it called off after the dinner hour has passed. In short, it's going to be a long night. A long night of figuring out how to infuse the one remaining Cliff Bar in my desk with an entire bottle of wine. Stay tuned.

Change of Heart...Attack?

2010-06-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So this one faculty member has the reputation of being a curmudgeon with the heart of gold; a dedicated teacher who genuinely cares about his students, but will harass and insult them incessantly regardless. He often comes into our office to mock us for having yet another meeting, to tell us we send out too many emails, or to blame us for something that is totally not our fault.

I find him alternately annoying and amusing. I know his bark is infinitely worse than his bite, and as someone who likes to pretend to be meaner than she actually is, I respect his game and try not to salt it. However, sometimes he's just a genuine asshole. When he's in a relatively good mood, we have a fun, joking relationship based on mutual insults. When he's being a prick I cannot stop myself from yelling "GET AWAY FROM ME YOU COLOSSAL JERK!" He never can tell if I'm kidding or serious when I have these little outbursts, which is probably for the best, because I always feel guilty after being so rude to someone who's the same age as my dad.

Anyway, he's recently been super nice and pleasant to work with: responding to emails without the slightest trace of snark or resentment, volunteering to complete tasks instead of whining about being asked, and even sticking up for me when another faculty member criticized my work. I really don't know what to make of it. I'm kind of afraid that he's dying. He's diabetic and smokes like a chimney, so it's not totally out of the question.

I'm also disappointed because, with him being nice to people these days, I am totally a front-runner for biggest jerk in the building. I'm totally more upset about this guy potentially dying of course, but seriously I can't think of anyone meaner than me if he's out of the running. I might have to start baking shit for people, or at least looking them in the eye when I pass them in the hallway.

Help Wanted

2010-06-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

So, as I've shared, and as the subtext of every entry I've ever posted should suggest to you, I'm looking for a new job. The problem with that is that the whole process makes me feel as though I have two annoying jobs: The one I have, and the search for the one I want. And at least at the first job they pay me a shockingly small amount to get done what needs to get done.

I spent most of the weekend working on an assignment from the company that I want to go work for. Super exciting. Except when Monday comes (which it did today, for those not keeping track) and I feel as though I just banged my head against a wall all weekend trying to do a good job so I can get a new job so I can leave this dumb job (adjectives in italics, please). I'm not even up to my usual 50% effort around here, and at this rate someone might notice. I also have more work to do during the week on this hopeful-new-job-assignment, so I will be like one of those moms who works all day at an office and then goes to wait tables all night and then puts her baby in the freezer when it won't stop crying because she is so fried, only my baby will be my boss and the freezer will be a place of even lower esteem.

That's What We Said

2010-06-14T13:34:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I am once again at my desk while not one, but two workstudy students assemble IKEA furniture. We got the remaining furniture on another office field trip this morning and I'm "trophy-wifing it" as Officemate says, while one normally-dressed and one scantily-clad youngster put my office together for me. It's not a bad life.

It turns out that putting furniture together leads to some awesome "that's what she said" opportunities. Officemate and I are not at all above a workplace "that's what she said", but our workstudies are a little horrified our liberal use of the phrase. But come on, they're bringing it on themselves:

Upon seeing the completed filing cabinet:"Holy cow, this is huge!"

Trying to install drawers into filing cabinets: "I guess you just slide it in."

Handing the other one the hammer: "Allison*, wanna bang?"

Realizing the hammer is very large: "This thing barely fits in my hand!"

Trying to maneuver filing cabinet into corner of the room: "I just really don't think it will fit."

Realizing they need help moving the filing cabinet: "We're going to need 3 people to do it."

Come on! They're asking for it. And we are delivering. Then laughing like 12-year-olds while the not-much-older-than-12-year-olds roll their eyes and get back to work.

*Not her real name.

I Scream

2010-06-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Note: I totally thought I posted this yesterday. My bad, kids.

Today is Officemate's youngest daughter's 2nd birthday. Happy Birthday, little Officemate! Your current Jekyll and Hyde personality befuddles me, but it cannot be denied that you are damn cute.

Officemate took the day off to take her kids swimming in honor of little one's birthday and because the Bay Area seems to have gotten the memo that it's June and the weather is behaving accordingly, much to the extreme relief of people on Facebook.

The nice weather is awesome, of course, but it does not contribute to a productive workplace, as doing anything outside seems infinitely preferable to, I don't know figuring out how a student with a disability will be able to access our 100+ year old, totally in no way ADA-compliant building when she arrives this August.

We actually have more disabled people in our building than average, I would guess, but they can all walk by themselves, or with the assistance of a cane, or in one woman's case, the wall. (Seriously, watching her move makes me want to cry and thank some deity for my ambulatory body.) This student has some serious back problems that sometimes don't hinder her walking, but sometimes necessitate the use of a wheelchair.

Our building is one of the oldest on campus, and has multiple floors and lots of stairs and no elevator, so it's really kind of nightmare for someone with mobility issues, making me all the more impressed with my disabled coworkers who seem to navigate it expertly and without complaint. Anyway, for someone who uses a wheelchair to go from floor to floor, they have to leave out the one ADA compliant exit we have on each floor and go outside and around the building, up a pretty steep hill, to get in on the next level. I anticipate this being a nightmare for our student, and let's be honest, probably for me.

So that's why I'm not thinking about it and going to get ice cream.

I'll Take You Out

2010-06-10T16:44:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Sometimes my job world collides with someone else's job world, and sometimes that it adds to both our days in a fun commiserating-laughing-with-a-stranger kind of way. And sometimes, like today, we are both worse off for the interaction. And so, an open letter to the girl and the guy at the over-priced but super tasty Los Angeles hamburger place that we have ordered a staff-wide lunch from a disastrous three times:

Dear Girl and Guy at the Over-Priced But Super Tasty Los Angeles Hamburger Place,

Hey, your hamburgers are really good. Like, very delicious, which is why- despite my warning cries- on the rare occasion that the star of our show comes into the office for more than an hour, he wants to order everyone's lunch from your restaurant. Your tiny little pretentious hamburger restaurant. I thought, naively, that after you refused to put cheese on a burger because it didn't come with cheese on your menu, and wouldn't substitute a turkey patty for a beef one in either of the two hamburgers that our star ordered last time, that my days of listening to you sigh on the phone when I called in a large order for pick up were over. As did I think that my days of calling back and listening to you sigh once again when I listed off the many items that you forgot were also over. Alas, I was wrong.

See, today our star popped into the office and suggested that we order from your restaurant, as if he had completely forgotten the incident a few weeks ago when he yelled at you through me after you refused to put lettuce- which you serve- on a burger- which you also serve- because you said that they cannot be served together. With either no memory of the past, or a wide-eyed optimism that this time things would be different, he placed his order for two hamburgers that apparently- though they are on your menu- you don't serve anymore, and I knew that we were in for a lovely afternoon. Me, you, and all the people I work with who are prone to fits of rage when such things as their non-dairy dressing on the side get screwed up.

So after you told me that the kitchen was going to be "really pissed at you" when I finished telling you which burgers my company would like to exchange several hundred dollars for, I waited a few shocked minutes, and then headed over to pick up our food. Remember when I got there and I asked if I could use an empty counter to take the food out and double check our order? Remember how you looked at me as though I had just asked to use that counter space to drink the blood of your first born? I do. I also remember how you told me that you had already checked, as if pretentious burger place employees never make mistakes, and as if you and your cohorts in particular hadn't already wasted dozens of minutes of my time in return trips for forgotten items.

But, I have to say, that was one delicious burger that I wanted to punch you in the face over. So thanks. And stop being such an a-hole.

Somewhat yours,
K

Panic Elevator

2010-06-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I know that if you're in the entertainment industry and your name doesn't rhyme with Gleven Glielberg or Shmulia Doberts, you're going to have to do some seriously annoying, infuriatingly stupid work that you don't enjoy almost every day. And I don't know, maybe Gleven and Shmulia do, too. But it seems as if the wildly bothersome tasks have hit a peak around my office recently. They alternate between banal and high stress, and are condescending so as to demonstrate zero faith in my abilities as often as they are way above my pay grade with full freedom to fail all alone. In short, I'm not into it.

Enter this gem from some wonderfully prescient maintenance employee:

That's the elevator covered in padding. I have to share an office with, as of today, four other people which makes throwing myself against the wall as I scream at full volume a slim possibility. But an elevator- That I can commandeer. That emergency Stop button can't just be for natural disasters and equipment malfunctions, and I know a young assistant who could sure use 10 minutes alone yelling at people who aren't there and whom she will never actually yell at and who might really enjoy punching a soft surface so that there's no later need to explain the scabbed knuckles. I might even bring a book and a cup of coffee to wind down in there afterward, just to maximize the alone time. And I'll probably pick my nose. Just because I can.

Say Hello to Your Acquaintances

2010-06-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

It's been awhile since I've done an open letter, and today I've been inspired to write 4. Without further adieu:

Dear IT guy,

I don't know what happened to you to make you such a crank. Is it because we all think your Russian wife is mail order? Is it because you have no discernible neck? I've worked with well-intentioned IT guys with no social skills before, but you are actively unpleasant. We know you love to tell us everything that we're doing wrong and complain about doing any work at all, but it's making us all hate you so bad. So bad.

What do I need to do to get you fired?

Fondly,
S

Dear friend with a new baby,

I'm happy for you. I really am. This is nothing personal, but I am hiding you on my Facebook news feed because I cannot read any more posts about your baby's sleeping/eating/pooping habits. I totally get that you're home alone all day and totally focused on your baby, but I need you to understand that no one else cares.

XOXO
S

Dear phone repairman,

You cannot call me "sweetie." You just can't.

Sincerely,
S

Dear 19 year old workstudy student,

You are young and cute. This office is casual. But for the love of God, those shorts are way too short. We won't be wondering if your legs get magically fat at your crotch if you wear shorts that are just an inch or two longer. We all get that you have a nice figure. We do not need to see your ass to be convinced of that fact.

In solidarity,
S

Morning After

2010-06-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

You guys- Remember when you or your favorite early 90's evening soap opera queen Brenda Walsh lost your/their virginity and were totally sure that you somehow looked different after? Thought that you were putting off such a glow that it was amazing that strangers didn't just stop you on the street to ask what glorious (well, whatever) event had recently passed? Remember, guys?

Well, I hate to shatter any totally reasonable notions (especially given that I'm pretty sure that my mom makes up half of our readership), but I did not lose my virginity last night. But I did go to DISNEYLAND! With my gal pals! Almost until closing! On a Monday! And I couldn't believe, as I walked around my office today, trying to tamp down the residual joy and delight enough that I could do things like pour my coffee and ride the elevator like a normal person and not one who might, say, throw her hands in the air and shriek, "Yaaaaay!" at the sight of a balloon with ears, that no one noticed. No one. No one said, "Hey- Are you recently returned from the happiest place on Earth? Because you sure look like it!" Nor did anyone say, with a furrowed brow, "Are you not wearing any make-up?" which was an improvement from earlier this week, but how today did no one feel compelled beyond reason to comment on my actually somewhat happy state? It's almost as though a generally pleasant attitude is expected. Well no one better expect that from me any other day. This is some pixie dust shit, friends.

The Itchy and Scratchy Show

2010-06-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

K and I have both recently mentioned my ability to tan easily. It's one of the few genetic gifts I've received. I mean, I know I'm very lucky to have a healthy body, but I don't have like naturally long legs or poreless skin or what have you. I've got my ability to tan and my long fingernails working for me, and against me I have greasy hair, big ole' feet, and blood that mosquitoes love.

Yes, I am a mosquito magnet. If one is around, it will bite me. After a week of camp in high school, a girl in my cabin was complaining about her 13 mosquito bites. I did a quick tally of my own body and replied "bitch, please, I have 13 bites on my left arm." It was true. I had 57 altogether, including four on my face.

That was my worst case ever, and while this weekend in Yosemite wasn't that bad, I still have about 8 large visible bites on my arms, 4 on my legs, and two huge ones at the bottom of my neck. I didn't want everyone at my office to make a big fuss over how eaten alive I was, so yesterday I wore a sweater and jeans to work to cover up all my owies and suffer in silence. However, yesterday was crazy hot and I was pretty uncomfortable in my cold-weather outfit. So today I decided to deal with the comments and come to work in a sundress.

I walked into my office (after voting, of course!), shoulders, arms, and legs bared, and braced myself for the barrage of concerned comments I was sure were coming my way.

"Hi, S!"
"Cute dress. It goes well with your 'I Voted' sticker."
"You left your water bottle here yesterday."

All the fussing, all the "oh, you poor thing" type comments, all the motherly admonishing about bug spray I was expecting....none of it came. No one has said anything. I've even done some melodramatic scratching to draw attention to my plight, but nada.

I've decided their lack of response must be due to their knowledge that I am not the type of person who likes to attract attention or sympathy, and not to due to a genuine lack of interest in me and my itchy burden. Right?

Mince Meet

2010-06-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Hey- Pretend it's Friday, OK? And pretend that I wrote this then, and that I didn't forget to post for the second time in a week, and also that it's almost the weekend which is a super fun pretend for a Monday.

So "this morning" I realized that I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop with the follow-up-meeting-that-never-was with my two big bosses. I had exhausted my supply of Rescue Remedy (which, incidentally, if anyone is in the market for a homeopathic anti-anxiety medicine that tastes deliciously like scotch, let me point you in the direction of dreams come true) and had reached the place where washing down hard core sedatives with a break room Diet Coke sounded reasonable. Doubling over in fear, thinking I was being called to the chopping block every time my phone rang or a new e-mail came in was getting- go figure- hellishly exhausting.

Surprisingly though, no one had any Propofol just taking up space in their desk drawer, and I was struck with an incredible notion: I could call the meeting. There the big boss was, just sitting in his office. Here I was, just sitting in mine. And here the power of movement was, at my full disposal to just walk on in there and say something like, "Hi, I thought I would follow up with you about our last meeting." It was so simple! It was so inspired! It was so effing terrifying!

But with the wind of my office mates' breath saying, "Umm... Sure. You could..." at my back, I walked around the corner and into the big boss' office and asked if he had a minute. Here's the thing: He did. So I sat down, and we chatted about what had happened since last we met, and then about some other general topics of conversation, and then we told each other to have a good weekend and I left. It was totally painless, he was really helpful, and it gave me great closure.

But how could anything pleasant last forever? How could anything pleasant last for longer than five minutes? As quickly as I had felt relieved, I came to feel completely indignant. What is the point of doing something vaguely adult and fairly mature if no one is going go blue in the face and nearly pass out praising and thanking you profusely?! I mean, I took the initiative to have an actual conversation with my boss, and no one said, "You are so wonderful!" or "Thank you so much for being so great at communication and also for being so profoundly brave!" Nothing. As if I was just supposed to already be an adult just because I'm in my late twenties. As though just being employed in a professional environment should make me professional. I mean- If they all stop complimenting me for dressing myself and packing my own lunch every day next, we are going to have some serious problems.

Do It Yourself

2010-06-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Coming back to work on Mondays is never fun, but coming back after an amazing 3 day weekend in one of the most beautiful places on Earth is just painful. My long Yosemite weekend was a complete dream and I hated to leave.

Officemate isn't here today so I'm all alone in our newly painted office, watching a workstudy student assemble Ikea furniture. Our new office is really coming together and people have finally stopped commenting on how ugly they think the new yellow paint is (it looks great; they're crazy) and noting, enviously, that our office is coming together well and has the potential to become "the hippest place on campus."

My friend M is amused that I am sitting at my computer while my workstudy puts my office furniture together. "Personally, I don't know how you can stop yourself from jumping in. I love me an alan wrench." But that's the hierarchy of our office as far as I'm concerned. I'm my boss's bitch; these 19-22 year olds are mine. It's the office food chain. My boss is SUPER into maintaining the chain of command around here and will never do anything she doesn't feel is within her sphere of importance and I'm afraid that mentality is contagious.

Our dean, however, is the consummate populist and doesn't see things that way. He refuses to sit in the fancy dean's office, preferring the small, stuffy one he held for years as a professor. This morning, he came in and said "S, I got this email asking questions about our program for accreditation. I don't have time to respond; could I send it to you?" "Yes, you're the dean. You can just tell me what to do. Just forward me any emails you want me to handle." "Well that wouldn't be very nice of me!"

No, Dean, I guess it wouldn't. You're a good person. I gotta go pick up an alan wrench.

Just for the Spite of It

2010-06-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Something that S and I share is a true and meaningful passion for doing things out of spite. In college when we had an obnoxious and also pale roommate who wished that she could be tan, S, with a freakish ability to tan quickly, set out to sun herself daily. She had no deep personal desire to be more bronze, but if she could bother our roommate in the process of doing something pretty easy, then so she would. For spite. As for me, I have ordered food for spite, turned up the volume for spite, dressed fancy for spite, and pretended I was dumb for spite. And those are just some of the more sophisticated approaches. If something requires little effort, and turns out a medium spiteful reward, then that's usually where you can find me.

So you'd think that I'd be on board with this:

This is roughly half of the tapes currently taking up space in my office. There are also as many DVD's. My immediate boss ordered them to spite someone across the building- whom I believe she's never met- when that person couldn't accommodate my boss' request to get all this media in another way. So it's not that we need these tapes, but boy did they make someone who has other things to do kind of annoyed.

Here's the problem, though, with this endeavor: You know who had to fill out about a bascrillion forms to get these tapes and DVD's? Can you guess who has to walk across the building to pick up huge stacks of them and then carry those stacks back across the building? And whose office are the crowding up again? The answer to all of those questions is, "Definitely not my boss." And some- small as it often is/should be- personal effort going into making someone else's life harder or less pleasant seems that it should be required, doesn't it? If I had an office full of people to do my spiteful bidding, I could certainly get more of it done, but where's the pride? Where's the joy? Where's the sacrificial accidental sunburn or indigestion or blistered feet to balance the- hopefully bigger- problem you caused for someone else? I mean, there have to be rules. Otherwise it's just mean. And lazy. And yes if it were someone other than my immediate boss I wouldn't care one bit. So spite that.

S'more What?

2010-06-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...
First, a moment of silence for our fallen Golden Girl. Rue, you will be missed. Thank you for being a friend.

Okay, so I'm going to Yosemite tomorrow. I'm really excited about it; I haven't been since I was a kid. I remember it being really beautiful and impressive, but I was mostly pissed that my family "vacation" that year was just a buttload of hiking. My parents are super active and outdoorsy and love to hike. They wanted to instill that love of the outdoors in me by taking me hiking in some of California's most beautiful forests whenever they could. I guess their plan worked in the long run, because I love hiking now, but God did I hate it when I was younger. I whined, I complained, I dragged my feet. "Trees all look the same" I would say.

Anyway, I'm happy about it now and used my lunch break to do some pre-trip errands, including getting things for s'mores and going to the post office. I was standing in line with a basket full of chocolate bars, marshmallows and graham crackers and the girl in front of me went "Oh my god are you making s'mores?" "Yeah, I am this weekend." "Oh my god, are you going camping?" "No, but I am going to Yosemite." "Oh my god that is so cool." "Thanks."

Yes, she really said "oh my god" before everything. A couple of seconds later she asked if I'd hold her spot while she ran and got something. I said sure and she took off with a thing of mint chip ice cream and came back with a different thing of mint chip ice cream. "Thanks...you're probably wondering why I just did that." "No, it's fine." "Well my boyfriend doesn't eat Safeway brand anything. He refuses." "Oh...." "And then I realized my mint chip was Safeway brand so I had to go get another one." "Cool."

I mean there's nothing wrong with her or our interaction, I was just surprised by how much she wanted to talk to a complete stranger in the supermarket line. Also, Safeway brand ice cream is delicious.

Anyway, after getting my Ohmygod s'mores stuff, I walked over to the post office to get an international postcard stamp. I lived in Germany for a year after college and am still in touch with my host family. They love California and Yosemite and I knew they'd like to get a postcard. "One postcard stamp for the EU please." "Just one?" "Yes, please, one that goes to Europe." "That'll be 28 cents." "For a stamp that goes to Europe?" "No this is domestic, you need to specify that you want an international one." "I did, I said 'EU'." "What does that mean?"

What does that mean? I know I might have a leg up on some European terms because I lived there for a year, but don't we all know what EU means at this point? Especially people who work in a post office, where people often go to send things to the very European Union to which I was referring.

"It means European Union." "Fine, that'll be 98 cents." "Oh my god, that's so cheap!"*

*I may not have actually said that.

Elephants Do a Lot of Things Better Than I Do

2010-06-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I forgot to write a post yesterday. Just plum forgot altogether until I paused the true crime show I was napping through to answer S's phone call so that we could chat about S'mores, and that somehow triggered the realization that I hadn't complained publicly about my gainful employment for more than 24 hours.

See, the miracle of yesterday was this: There is truly nothing to do at my office this week that we couldn't do next week. We all came back from a shortened vacation for no reason that I can discern since we're not taping anything until next Thursday. But, in a glorious turn of events, it seems as though the big boss actually realized how useless every single person's presence was yesterday, and at the end of a staff meeting at around 3:30, he said, "And if that's it then I suggest that you all get out of here as early as you possibly can today. See ya." Well from his lips to God's ears to my foot to the gas pedal. Following that announcement I didn't even stick around long enough to even remember to eat the last of my snacks that I had put in the mini-fridge that morning. My departure was that quick, my nap once I got home that freaking awesome, and my forgetfulness that deep in the face of being at my home in the daylight hours on a Wednesday. And I would totally apologize. If I felt bad about it.

Don't Stand So Close to Me

2010-06-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

There is literally nothing for me to write about anymore. My boss and her ridiculous antics are away in South Africa. The students and their cloying questions are gone until August. The guys next door aren't around. All of my best fodder has left the building. Officemate and I are shells of our former selves, sitting around, getting work done with no crazy shenanigans to keep us going.

Our office is currently getting painted so we're in the library with laptops, click-clicking away with no phone calls or random people stopping by to ask us for information that we make readily available in a multitude of forms. It's all very normal.

With no news on the office front, I ask this question instead: why isn't everyone on the same page with personal space? I get that personal space is a pretty American concept, as we have the luxury to actually demand space from those around us, but I live in America and am almost daily shocked by how up in your grill folks like to get.

Two examples from yesterday. 1) I went to Safeway to get some groceries around 9:30pm when the parking lot is pretty empty. I parked about 100 yards from the store with about 3 empty spaces next to me on either side. I come out maybe 2o minutes later and there's a car right next to mine. Why? Why people? You have so many other options!

2) I was at the gym yesterday, using the stationary bike. I love the gym in the summer because it's a university gym and most of the students are gone so I never have to wait for the machines I want. No, machines aplenty! This was the case yesterday and yet a dude came and sat down on the bike right next to mine. I gave him angry face and made passive aggressive sounds, but he didn't budge.

I'm trying to become a faster biker, so I was doing speed intervals and getting pretty sweaty and warm on the bike and did not appreciate someone else's body heat and potential sweat so close to my own. Given the choice, don't we all want to put a little distance between ourselves and strangers? Especially when they're sweaty?

"Maybe he thought you were cute!" you might be saying now. To this I say, no he didn't and I don't care. I do not get that sexy exercise glow that Cosmo swears will turn your guy on. I get beet red, I sweat like crazy, and I breathe really hard. I want the endorphins and I'm willing to do what I need to to get them. Also, he was not even mildly attractive and rode his exercise bike like some foppish Brit on the back of a tandem and I cannot stand for that.

Tomorrow we're supposed to go to IKEA to get our new office furniture. Hopefully I'll have a good field trip story to relay. Until then, back the hell off.

Back to the Blech

2010-06-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today was my first day back at work after a week and a day away. The week and the day were as glorious as you might imagine when I tell you that they were really glorious, and the return was as miserable as you might imagine when I tell you to read any blog post I've ever posted. I tried to think of a good metaphor for how my vacation was like work... The obnoxiously persistent mosquitoes as my immediate boss, the constant threat of sunburn as her frightening wrath. When I reached the point, though, of suggesting something about the dead tarantula I saw on the ground outside a Belizean cave being like my hopes and dreams it seemed the metaphor was getting too thin. Or depressing. Either way.

So, after wishing unsuccessfully that I forgot how to get to my office and could call in lost and get everyone worried that I had gone totally loopy a la Kelly Bensimon on Real Housewives which I caught up on after too long away, I made it to work this morning and checked my work e-mail for the first time to find that our network celebrated a big anniversary during the week that my coworkers and I were away. In the spirit of celebration, each day there was some treat for everyone in the building. You know, the building I wasn't in for once. Free coffee, free ice cream, free cake; my e-mail cataloged the delight of the day for each day that I was away. As a small consolation, however, there was a red, plastic, network anniversary commemorative cup waiting for me on my desk this morning. And another e-mail in the midst of the daily treats one that asked all employees building-wide to please stop watering/dumping out plants in the bathroom sinks. So at least I know it wasn't all fun while I was away. (Incidentally- Doesn't everyone just get succulents and then never water them and then say that they're surprised when the plants die? I can't be alone in this charade.)

Then this afternoon we had a long meeting where we all heard about doing better at stuff. Where's my job where the assignment that we all have to do better at is longing to be back on a beers-before-noon-style vacation? That I'm very good at. Very.

Under the Sea

2010-05-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So it's another rough day off here at JS HQ. I slept in, drank coffee, ate Reese's peanut butter cups for breakfast and went for a swim. Now I'm watching a Say Yes to the Dress marathon on TLC in preparation for tomorrow's outing to help my BFF try on wedding gowns. I am learning so much! Did you know you can request a dress that is "Nicole Kidman/Sound of Music/traditional Korean?" You can. Also, you should be able to spend so much money on your dress that your mom stops taking public transportation to work and starts walking every day in order to pay for it. It's your day! Who cares who suffers?

Anyway, at the pool today, I was swimming laps poorly and slowly, as I do, but feeling great to be in the water, and not at work, on such a beautiful day when a lady asked if she could share my lane. "Of course!" I said, because I am nice and also it's a public pool. I didn't really pay attention to her because I was in a pleasant swimming groove, but when I stopped at the end of the lane to take a break I noticed that she was wearing a full-on wetsuit and snorkel! In a lap pool! Crazy!

She might be trying to familiarize herself with swimming in a wetsuit and with a snorkel for an upcoming vacation or in preparation for some ocean swimming, but I like to imagine that that's just her style. Just like Nicole Kidman/Sound of Music/traditional Korean was that crazy bride's style.

Movin On Up

2010-05-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So I've drastically failed at writing two posts a day....not even writing one yesterday. Our deadline to get all of our furniture out of our office and stuff off our walls in preparation for repainting was moved up to yesterday, so we were all about the manual labor yesterday.

The painters came by to put samples on our walls and EVERYONE who came through our office had a comment: "Why yellow?" "That looks ugly." "Why do you get your office painted?" To which we replied "shut up" "you look ugly" and "because we're awesome."

The facilities guys came to take our old furniture away, which was oddly sad, even though our furniture is beyond ugly. Then we moved all of our stuff into the office next door, which was actually not a prank, but a move of convenience done with the guys next door's blessing. As faculty, they don't work during the summer and don't care.

But one guy thought he had found out about a prank on the ground floor and excitedly took a iPhone photo of their junk-filled office and sent to them with some dorky text like "New prank, omg!!" This guy wants so badly to be part of their cozy little twosome, but it's pretty apparent to everyone in the building that he is just a loser 3rd wheel. Anyway, they both wrote back being like "nope, they have permission," and I imagine took the wind right out of his little sails.

Anyway, that's what we did yesterday, so I was not attached to my computer the way I normally am, thus preventing blogging. I went straight from work to baby-sitting Officemate's youngest who was so shockingly well-behaved and adorable the whole time I think my ovaries have swelled to twice their normal size.

Studies, People. STUDIES.

2010-05-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Phase one of Office 2.0 is cleaning out Office 1.0. We've been going through files from as early as 1997, and purging ourselves of all the things we don't need, no longer use, or had no idea were even there until now. As we were looking through files, I came across the one above and giggled like the 15-year-old boy I secretly am.

Officemate posed this question "what would a miscellaneous STD even be?" We decided the big 2 are AIDS and herpes; they never go away and one can potentially kill you. Syphillis and certain forms of HPV are pretty serious too. Maybe the ones that can easily be treated with antibiotics could be considered miscellaneous? Chlamydia, gonorrhea (which is the clap, I swear, despite chlamydia's phonetic similarities), those other ones that seem to basically be yeast infections.

I also have a NSFW photo of a safe-sex sticker that someone stuck to one of our filing cabinets long before either of us worked here. It's a picture of an animated penis holding a condom and smiling proudly. "Dress me up to protect me from Misc. STDs!" he seems to be saying.

Sound Mind in a Sound Body

2010-05-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Officemate just came from the dentist and is in a cheery mood. She loves her dentist. She loves her hygienist. Apparently, no one in her office ever chastises her for not flossing, even though she does not floss. This is a revelation to me. I, too, do not floss, though I often go through spurts of flossing, often when I have a dental appointment coming up, because I know my hygienist will give me shit about it when I get there. This floored Officemate.

"They can't chastise you; it's your mouth. If you took perfect care of your teeth all the time, their jobs wouldn't exist."

That's right, snooty hygienists! You livelihood depends on people fucking up their teeth so leave me the hell alone. I'm always trying to eat better, I exercise regularly, I'm recycling and composting as best I can, something has to fall by the wayside. I've been told that genetics don't really have my back when it comes to oral health: I apparently have weak enamel and my teeth are very close together, a perfect storm of flaws for cavities. That being said, I have an electric toothbrush and I rinse with Listerine (well, Target brand Listerine). I don't drink soda or eat hard, chewy candies. I could be doing worse.

Come to think of it, my eye doctor's gotten my case for stuff too. Not just sleeping with my contacts in, which I've done for 15 years with no real consequences as far as I can find, but once he told me I looked too tan. My annual appointments are in August; when I am probably at my tannest, and I am also of Croatian descent and am naturally darker and tan more easily than my Scandinavian/Western European counterparts. I didn't tell him that he looked too fat when I saw them, though he totally did.

Reader(s), do your doctors get on your case for stuff? If so, what? And remember Officemate's words: it's your body, get them to leave you the hell alone. I'm not advocating for heavy smoking and unprotected sex here, but I don't think anyone, including doctors, can lead the Spartan existence apparently necessary for perfect health. Wake up, eat fruit, lather self with sunscreen, run, have balanced meal, brush and floss, meditate, hydrate, farm own vegetables....oooh! Officemate just said there's cupcakes in the staff fridge! Later, fools!

Rain, Rain, I Accept You

2010-05-25T13:03:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So it's raining today. As usual, people on Facebook are going insane, as if the terms "May Gray" and "June Gloom" don't exist for a reason. The weather in the Bay Area is often nice when it should be bad, and bad when it should be nice. It's one of universally acknowledged truths of living in this region. Though much debate has surrounded who actually said "The worst winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco," it's a true statement. (And I think it was Dylan Thomas. Mark Twain was a great writer, but not that eloquent.) Anyway, it's just a roundabout way of saying that yucky, rainy weather in this part of the country at this time of year should surprise no one.

That being said, I'm not happy about it. I got my run in this morning before the drops started falling, but just barely. I don't have a personal vendetta against the rain like some people seem to, but I've made my peace with it. That being said, I don't want to spend more time outside in the rain than I have to.

So I was not pleased to be waylaid not once, not twice, but 3 times today by from the ACLU asking if I "had to minute to support gay rights." Look, I support gay rights. I support the ACLU. But I do not want to be stopped as I'm walking from my car to the office in the rain to be asked to sign a petition and/or donate money to anything.

You there, ACLU lady, in your North Face Jacket with your umbrella and rainboots, you seem quite comfortable in the rain, but I'm in a business casual outfit designed for primarily indoor wear, suitable for the rain only in quick jaunts between the parking structure and my office when I realize I forgot my water bottle and cell phone.

Here's the thing, folks. No one likes to be stopped and asked to sign something or give money to something. When I lived in New York, I perfected a trifecta of having my headphones on, sunglasses on, and cellphone out to appear just far too busy to talk to anyone about Tibet or Greenpeace. And I'm pretty liberal. I don't know how super conservative people deal with it.

When I first moved to New York, it was 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina. I was a new grad student and totally broke. Before I learned my smooth dodging techniques, I would respond to those clipboard people with one of the following "Sorry, I'm only donating for Katrina relief" (true, if you count buying a cupcake from a Katrina Relief bakesale "donating"), "I'm late for work/class!" (sometimes true), "I am so broke I cannot afford new underwear at this time" (sadly, very true).

Not the Mama

2010-05-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I'm primarily taking advantage of summer freedom by taking time off work, but Officemate is enjoying the ability to bring her kids into the office. When she told me she was bringing her youngest (almost 2) daughter in today, I was thrilled. She is so cute.

I started this job when Officemate was pregnant with this daughter and met the baby when she was just a couple weeks old. So tiny, so sweet. Officemate brought the baby in pretty frequently in the first six months and I loved it. She was so good! I had never met such a well-behaved baby. Sweet disposition, hardly ever cried, would let anyone hold her. It's been really fun watching her grow up.

So today when I came in (late), I was surprised to be greeted with the sound of baby screams. It's not that I've never heard her cry before, but it's usually pretty infrequent, and never at this decibel. I wondered what happened.

Turns out, she's just diving headfirst into those "terrible twos." The sweet little baby I adored so much is, as our dean calls her, a "little lunatic" now. When I greeted her this morning, she threw her baby doll at me, then took off both her shoes and hurled them at the wall. Officemate needed to run to the other side of the building and didn't want to bring the baby with her, so she asked if I could watch her for a couple minutes, which is usually my favorite thing ever. But this time, the second Officemate was out of eyesight, the baby went nuts.

"Mmmmmmaaaaaammmmmmmaaaa!"
"It's okay; she'll be right back." I go to pick her up.
"NO!" She swats my shoulder.
"Oh wow, you need your diaper changed."
"MAMA DO!!!"
"Yeah, I wasn't volunteering, just letting you know that it needs to happen."
"NO YOU DO!"
"Right, I'm not trying to."

But it's futile to try to argue with an almost-two-year-old. She really is a little lunatic. As soon as Officemate came back, changed the diaper, and give her some Cheerios, the baby was back to being the little sweetheart I'd loved so much. When it was time for Officemate to bring her to her daycare she smiled sweetly and waved "byeeeeeeeee!" in a way that melted my heart and got me to agree to babysit her this Thursday night. Because I am a big lunatic.

All By Myself...

2010-05-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Well friends, K has abandoned us for the beaches of Belize. It's just me holding down the fort all week long. I apologize in advance.

I'm going to try to post twice a day to make up for K's absence, but I can't promise either post will be any good. For example, all I can think of to write about today is the LOST series finale. I have a serious LOST hangover, which happens to have a lot of similar symptoms to an actual hangover: headache, nausea, memory loss, vague sense of regret.

I did it to myself though. I wasn't into LOST until the 3rd season. I honestly thought it was like Swiss Family Robinson before I started watching: they're lost on an island! Let's watch them make things with coconut shells! It sounded stupid to me. But a group of my friends were getting together each week to watch it and cook dinner, and I was the only one not participating because I didn't watch the show.

So I decided to take one for the team and get caught up. A coworker loaned me Season 1 on DVD and I watched the rest online until I intimately the storylines of Kate, Jack, Sawyer and the rest of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. By that point, I was hooked, engrossed. I was reading up on the many literary and historical allusions littered throughout the show, as well as the hidden significance of, well, just about everything.

And last night, it ended. The series finale was a let-down for me, but they all are. And this morning of course people are up in arms about the way it ended and how many questions are left unanswered and to them, I'd like to say: IT WAS PRETEND PEOPLE!!! IT'S A STORY. It was always made up and there are no answers, because the writers were just pulling shit out of their asses as they went along.

The point of LOST was not to get your questions answered; it was to watch and discuss with people and think about things like fate, good and evil, and the afterlife. Few shows have spawned the level of discussion and theorizing that LOST has; few shows have been as polarizing. It's the show you love or are proud to say you love to hate. Personally, I found it to be the most fun I've had watching TV in a long time and I'd do all it again if I could.

I Don't Know How to Say Slob in Spanish

2010-05-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I'm heading on my trip to Belize tonight. S asked me if I was going to post a grand send off of any kind for myself. As it stands, I've got underwear in the washing machine, and am trying to squeeze toothpaste from the big tube to the little carry-on size tube, so S- I think the answer is yes. That's as grand a send-off as I know, and writing about it publically makes it even more so.

I'll bring back something for everyone who reads this. No, seriously. That's probably possible. 5 key chains coming up! Adios!

Party On/Off

2010-05-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

When I was fifteen, I was super involved in planning my own surprise birthday party. My mom revealed that a secret sweet 16 was in the works after she mistakenly started to think- because of some ridiculous 15-year-old thing or another that I said- that I didn't want one. But boy did I really want one! And boy did I love making sure that she invited everyone I liked, and made just the cake I had in mind, all without me knowing when exactly all the Dr. Peppers and Tostitos and birthday balloons were going to drop. I dressed up in my high school finest every time that I left the house, always thinking giddily that the surprise party I had carefully planned for myself could be literally around the corner.

So now picture that surprise party as an evaluative meeting with my three bosses, and picture fun anticipation as stomach-churning agony, and you've got a pretty good sense of my week. At my meeting with my three bosses a few weeks ago, they said that we'd have a follow up some time this week. It was sort of like knowing that I was having a surprise party, but didn't know when, except that this was shitty. And I planned for it all I could, as I planned my guest list when I was 15, but this week's preparation was an exhaustive list of carefully phrased "I statements" as they related to my miserable experience with my immediate boss and what I would like the big bosses to know about it. I also, as I did in the weeks leading up to my party, wore some great outfits this week. Looking nice when people are going to look at me- be it for celebration or reprimand- is really one of my core values.

But here's the thing- My 16th birthday was an uber delight! I was completely surprised on the day, and had a magical time with my friends and my family. Because they all showed up! Which no one did for our follow-up meeting! And now the week is over, and we have next week off, and I think that they're just going to let it die, which is appropriate because it's killing me! All this lead up, all this anticipation and anxiety, and around 3 o'clock today, one of the big bosses poked his head in my office to tell my coworkers and me to have a great break, and he was out of there. I think that a terrible meeting would have been better than the anticipation of a terrible meeting, and then having no meeting at all. Now what do I do with this my-side-of-the-story presentation I wrote down and rehearsed with my mom? What happens to its three part structure? Where do the carefully phrased, thinly-veiled attacks on my immediate boss find a home now? A shame, to waste them. A real shame. Though not as much of a shame as it would have been to waste cake and ice cream, so there's that.

Haikus Are For Busy Days

2010-05-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Still at work at ten

Wishing that I were at home

Where the dog is boss

That's Not Amore

2010-05-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

In a good-faith move on both of our parts, one of the guys in the office next door and I got lunch together today. We just walked across the street to the nearby pizza place, but because it's summer time now, we got BEER with our slices instead of water. We are crazy. Anyway, as we were walking into the restaurant, a couple of guys sitting by the window apparently checked me out.

Office neighbor was like "wow, you just totally got checked out by those dudes." I tried to pretend to be flustered and uncomfortable, when in reality I was very flattered. I mean, we work at a university. Those guys are probably younger than me. And I am wearing one my cuter shirts today. I was feeling great and I hadn't had one sip of lunchtime beer yet.

Well after we ordered and went to get a table, I happened to glance at the table of fellas by the window to find out that they were considerably older than me, as well as speaking Italian. Gross.

Now I have nothing against Italy or the good people who live there, but my limited experience in that country has taught me that Italian men will leer, whistle, wink at anything, thus completing deflating the little self-esteem bubble I had just blown up.

I remember my old roommate telling me that she and her sister gave the Italian men "whiplash" when they were in Rome and I could not stop myself from saying "um, they are the grossest men I have ever met and will literally look at anything female." Then she got mad at me. But my old roommate is a whole other blog.

Before I get called a racist agorophobe, I know not every single Italian man acts this way. Yes, your dad's from Italy and he's a perfect gentleman. Your Italian boyfriend only has eyes for you. I know. But a lot of Italian men are super into leering and making kissy noises at strange women, so it was not surprising to me that these dudes were all up in my Kool-Aid. It's in their DNA.

As they were leaving, they walked by our table and once again gave me a really creepy once-over, prompting my office neighbor to look at them in shock/disgust. "Wow, I have never seen anything like that. I mean, you're cute, but I would never turn to look at you as I walked past."

Look in fairness, I wouldn't look at me either, and if I'm honest here, I definitely would never look at him, but that comment sucked any last bit of air remaining in my self esteem bubble, which I am dedicating the rest of my day to refilling with beer. Happy Thursday.

Do the Don't

2010-05-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Our department is pretty small; we have just over 100 students total. About 10 of the recent graduates are around this summer working on a special project, and another handful are helping out with a workshop that we run during the times when the students aren't around. I know which ones are here and which aren't. Because of the admissions aspect of my job, I also know very well who our incoming students are. So I can say with complete certainty that the three douchebags talking outside my office are not our students and I hate them.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes I hate my students too. But in that "no one in picks on my little brother kind of way." They drive me crazy, but I will defend them if anyone dares attack. But I am silently praying to any and all dieties that someone come and attack these tools because they will not go away. Here are some of the things they're saying:

"I mean, I know TA'ing helps with costs, but I just really want to focus on my research, you know? I'm not getting a PhD to help the undergrads learn the basics." Okay, tool bag, guess what? You were an undergrad once! Your TAs found you to be an incredible nuisance to their lives, especially since I bet you were super-annoying to have in class. It sounds like you're a recent graduate, so stop acting all superior to people who just happen to be younger than you.

"I just really want to be able to say I got into Harvard you know? I mean, I got to Stanford, but that's like 'whatever, it's just the Harvard of the West.' Big deal." BARF.

I've tried walking by them looking super judgmental, and it shut them up briefly, but then they were right back to it. I tried playing our music really loud, but they just talked over it. Now I'm being incredibly silent to make them feel self-conscious because they know for sure that I am here.

OH HELL NO! I had to abandon this post to do stuff for my actual job and in the time I was away a student told me that the guys opened our student fridge and used the students' hot sauce! Aw no they didn't! Apparently she was hopped up on Mountain Dew (sidebar: I used to LOVE the Dew. Now it makes me twitchy. People in your early 20s, do the Dew while you still can. Except it's actually really gross) and decided to get all up in their faces and they properly dispersed. They were math students from a nearby building, apparently. Nerds.

Other Things Are Wack, Too, Whitney

2010-05-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

It would be hard, really, to explain in this moment how much I wish that my boss would, on this very night, become one of those people that you hear about on the news as simply disappearing with no sign that she was kidnapped, no sign that she was seriously hurt, and with the possibility that she just walked away from it all. I would very much like her to walk away from me.

It is also hard to describe the current issues that she and I are having because- after a 30 minute meeting with just the two of us yesterday wherein she spoke in the circles and contradictions of someone who is just excited that their audience, me in this case, did not have the option to leave the meeting of their own free will- when she tried to sum up the sort of shift that she would like to see in me at work, she couldn't find the word for it, and I sure didn't know what she was getting at. When I pointed out to her that it seemed that she wanted me to be both completely dependent and also fully autonomous she stopped and said that she just wanted us to, "find our groove." Oh. That.

But, I would say, the hardest thing of all is trying to find my groove all day while I have to do things like constantly re-up my homeopathic anti-anxiety medicine doses and fix my resume to go out into the world where no one would suggest that we treat our work relationship like Stella and all those guys on that island or wherever it was that Whitney Houston sang about her Shoop-ing. But yes, Whitney, I am waiting to exhale. I am waiting until I am stricken with a plague of some sort that I can pass along to my boss in one big, sick breath.

Poetry Slam

2010-05-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

A Haiku for Today, and Most Other Days:

If my boss said, "Good!"

As often as she said, "Bad!"

She'd say, "Good!" a lot

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

2010-05-18T14:10:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

It's not very often that I am tempted to quote "Fiddler on the Roof" but today is one of those days. Why, you ask? Because today is my boss' last day in our office for TWO MONTHS. Two. Months. 9 weeks. She will not be back until July. All of you out there who have a boss must understand what incredible news this is. I honestly thought this day would never come.

She's a soccer super fan and decided about a year ago that she was going to go to South Africa this year for the World Cup. Originally she was planning to take about 6 weeks off, which back in May 2009 sounded a) amazing and b) way too far away. But then she had trouble booking a return ticket and now will be gone for 2 entire months, pretty much to the day. It's everything I could ever want.

Officemate and I took her to lunch today, ostensibly to wish her bon voyage, but it's just as much as celebratory lunch for us as it was a "have a great trip" lunch for her. I am going to drink the crap out of a beer when I get home tonight. These next two months are going to be so great.

Now, here's where I should add that my boss is very nice. She is very nice. However, her job is to tell me what to do, so her 2 month absence means virtually no getting told what to do at work, which is really the dream. Officemate and I are going to make all kinds of changes during our time of autonomy, ready to fall back on the "well it happened when you were in Africa" excuse if our boss is unhappy with any of the decisions we've made in her absence. "Remember that two month vacation you took? Well the school didn't stop running while you were away, and someone had to pick up the slack. Stick around next time you want things done your way."

But that's way in the future. Right now, all I'm focusing on is coming in to work tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can call me in for a 2 hour meeting, send me an email with the instructions "please advise" or have me completely redo a document only to decide she liked it better the way it was before.

L'chaim, l'chaim, to life!

"Letter Down Easy" is Worse Than That Belize Pun

2010-05-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

A day's worth of open letters from a glass half empty. Hey- Where's my refill?

Dear New Doctor I Went to This Morning,
Something that I feel is abundantly clear to both of us is that I, unlike you, am not a doctor, so next time would you kindly use our time together to do things like tell me I'm doing great at something that I have no idea about like my blood pressure, or give me shots and then say I was so brave and I will smile knowing that I would rather get shots than be at work? Could I please interest you in doing those things rather than rolling your eyes every time I ask you to clarify something you just said and taking apparent delight in lording your vast medical knowledge over me, a one-time Dramatic Arts major? Also- Your magazines suck. - K

Dear Person Who Left the Irish Whiskey Cake on the Community Goods Table,
You have to understand the kind of hope that filled me when I saw a treat up for grabs that involved both whiskey and cake, and you must also imagine the back story that I invented wherein the cake was so so good that you had to bring it to work because you'd already had two and you had to stop yourself before you ate a third during a single commercial break. Actually it just wasn't good. Next time could you make a note of that somewhere? Thanks! - K

Dear Chair Masseur That My Bosses Hired to Come to Our Office Today,
Thanks for being a really cool idea in theory, and thank you for saying that my shoulders are knotted because I always really like it when someone says that as though it means I do some sort of hard work, but no thank you for asking me about things like my work commute and my specific job tasks during the only 15 minutes all day that I spent away from my desk. It was almost as unsatisfying as being massaged through polyester in a conference room with my coworker pitching a pilot to your associate. But I do appreciate the spa tote! - K

Dear Person Who Left the Chocolate Biscotti on the Community Goods Table After I Had Already Been Disappointed in the Irish Whiskey Cake,
See Above. - K

Dear Two Men I Am Dining With This Evening,
The two of you love each other, and consequesntly I would love it if you both loved my hair and outfit. I am leaving work right this minute to try to make that happen. Tell me I look like a fabulous celebrity? - K

Be True to Your School

2010-05-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Work is pretty quiet and boring around here today, so I have been *gasp* doing personal online errands on work time. I'm contesting a parking ticket, I bought my next book club book on Amazon, and then, I finally did the thing I thought I would never do: purchased a ticket to my 10 year high school reunion.

This is shocking for a couple reasons: 1) I've always sworn I'd never go and 2) The event looks TERRIBLE. The website can kindly be described as a haphazard piece of amateur crap. It was not proofread, as evidenced by the welcome note written by our reunion "committe" and the invite to the optional "Met and Greet" the night before. If we were the Gossip Girl kids and our reunion was actually taking place at the Met, it would be kind of funny, but no, this classy event will be held at a local establishment called The Nutty Irishman, lovingly referred to by its regulars as simply "The Nutty".

And it's this Springsteeny blue collar aspect of our reunion that finally won me over. It's going to be such a ridiculous shit show that I feel I can't miss it. And, as another friend who works for this unnamed Bay Area university and graduated from my high school has pointed out, people like us, people who managed to escape the clutches of our hometown and bizarre high school social hierarchy, have to go to remind our classmates that there are other ways to live. Those of us who left town, went to college, read books, voted for Obama and have visited other countries have to be there to balance out the people who still live with their parents, had children before the age of 22, and go out and party with other people who went to our high school every weekend and post 146 pictures of their night out on Facebook. He says our town encourages and reinforces such behavior and this is our chance to remind them of the world outside our zipcode.

Also, I want to see who's gotten fat.

Closed Door Policy

2010-05-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I spent quite a lot of my adolescent energy, back when I was an adolescent, worrying about what completely strange and impossibly embarrassing thing my dad- whom I can't even kindly stretch to describe as eccentric; he's a really nice but really odd guy- would say to, well, anyone. One of his favorites that he liked to toss around was to tell people, sometimes because it related to them, oftentimes not, was that he is a "serious amateur photographer." I don't know if this sounds as odd here as it does when spoken in casual conversation, but trust me- It comes out goofy enough that recently my sixteen-year-old nephew spent an evening with my dad and made that quote his Facebook status. Because my dad is still saying it. And it's still pretty weird.

Anyway, I am not a serious amateur photographer myself, so if it's hard to tell what that picture above is, let me explain: It is my immediate boss' office with the door closed and the lights off- which is how it has been all day- because she decided that she- on the intern's second day, with a huge project looming, and one of the three assistants out- would only stop by the office long enough to ask my coworker to go all the way across the building to get her a blank CD that she wanted to burn onto for a wedding this weekend. When I say that I hope that she falls on her face dancing to that CD at the wedding reception this weekend, know that I also hope that the floor is made of wet cement.

Happy Friday!

Day Off My Rocker

2010-05-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed bed in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

That's right, bed. It's my first Friday off from work and I am not out of bed yet. I win! I did go downstairs to get a piece of cold pizza to eat while watching last night's Community on Hulu, but it's been all bed, all the time otherwise.

But I'm still doing some work. Not for my real job, oh no, for a side project, helping my uncle with this book he's writing about technology's role (or lack thereof really) in school law. Did you fall asleep just now? Well guess what: you're not editing an entire book on the subject! What the hell was I thinking?

I was thinking I like my uncle a lot (it's hard to say I love him because he married my aunt when I was in my early 20s and I have met him maybe five times. But he's a very nice man and I definitely prefer him to at least two, and up to four of my other uncles). I was thinking this could be good experience if I ever want to write/edit/somehow make my own book someday. I was thinking working in public education doesn't pay very well, so a little side cash never hurts, especially in these days of pay cuts and furloughs.

I was not thinking I'd be spending my first Friday off attached to my laptop wondering if we've already used the word "precedent" too many times and what's a good synonym for "precedent" and good lord my uncle likes semicolons even more than I do! I thought that was impossible but he used four, four, in his opening paragraph.

Time for another slice of pizza.

When I Was... How Old?!

2010-05-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today a new intern started at my office. She is the niece of someone vaguely connected to our show, a fact that I was not surprised to learn after my boss showed me her resume and it listed "Dancing and Cheerleading" on it. But I am trying not to prejudge, and also trying to conceal how much I don't want another girl to come into my office. The thing is that as much as I do wish I had someone nearby to compliment my shoes more often, I like pretending to be overwhelmed in the lonely lady fight against the crass boy energy (when really I think that they're funny). Also, there is second girl intern starting next week, and my fear is that I will spend the first month that they're both here watching my two male office mates try to have sex with them, the second month that they're here being a fifth wheel in my own office, and the third month diffusing an icy chill of screw-uppery and being the only person who is still speaking to everyone. I would prefer to avoid all of these things.

So today girl intern #1 showed up, cute as can be, slightly overdressed but totally in the way that someone should be overdressed for their first day at a new office, and she was very friendly and sweet. I showed her around a little bit and tried to get a sense of her life, but somehow in my questioning I missed what my office mate later revealed to me as some pretty big news: The new intern is seventeen. As in years old. As in holy hell that's a young intern and none of us in this office talks in any way appropriately for most civilized grown-up company and certainly not for someone who couldn't even go register for the army if I asked her to. That is a young, young lady. If she weren't wearing that cute little black cardigan in the picture I posted, I could be in danger of getting hauled off by Mariska Hargitay for putting that on the internet.

So while it will be a slight stretch to make daily chatter when I have no idea what TV shows she grew up watching or if she knew who Michael Jackson was before he died, at least I know that, by law, I will not have to watch my office mates put the moves on her. And, in one last mega-bonus, I can tell myself that it is only thanks to her teenagerdom that she is way skinnier than me.

Spice Girl

2010-05-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Tears are streaming down my face. I am breathing heavily. I am not embarrassed to say my chin and a decent part of my shirt are covered in my own snot. Did a family member die? Did my boyfriend break up with me? Did they stop showing free reruns of The Gilmore Girls online?

No, none of these things happened. I am not sad at all. I just ate some of Officemate's homemade curry with soba noodles and holy shizz it is the SPICIEST THING I'VE EVER TASTED. Oh my good lord it is spicy. My body is rejecting it.

Granted, I do not have the highest tolerance for spicy foods. My boyfriend loves to watch me eat any kind of mildly spiced food, say something like "wow, that has kick!" (because apparently eating spicy food turns me into my mother) and then quickly gulp down all of my water (okay, beer) while he orders the 5 chili-pepper version and doesn't bat an eyelash.

But this was a whole new level. The first bite was tasty. The second bite was too. I never got to the third bite because by then my throat closed up and I was coughing and my nose and eyes started spewing liquid in a way they probably haven't done since my infancy. I pounded all the water left in my reusable water bottle (Bay Area lives green, y'all) and raced out of the room to get more, coughing and sneezing all the way.

What's odd about this was that not one person in my office said anything about it. Not "are you okay?" or even "what the hell are you doing?" I can't decide if that means they don't care about my safety or have hearing problems, or if I have so many spastic freakouts that they no longer register with the people around me. I'm sad to admit I bet it's the former.

Having a You Know

2010-05-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

A fairly wonderful new game has taken root at my office. It's called Cube Ball, and it's as much fun as I've ever had with a beach ball, office cubicles, and a (hotly debated, but ultimately agreed upon) points system. There's a pitcher (see above) and a seated kicker (see below) and a lot of near misses with not totally sturdy light fixtures.

Because the cubicles we use as our outfield (infield? The vocabulary isn't fully developed as yet, but it's only a matter of time, I'm sure) belong to people who work on another show (as my coworkers and I are mostly in offices), we have to wait until our neighbors all go home for the night to get a serious game going. Enter my least favorite part of this otherwise great game: My office has been turned into the "driving range" where for practice- but never points- people stop in at all hours of the workday to sit in one of my office mate's chairs and kick the hell out of a beach ball which inevitably lands on my computer screen or person. But, as I demonstrate each day with my own work duties, I deeply believe in hard work and dedication to get the success and recognition you deserve, so how can I say no to Cube Ball practice? I can't. I will never. Play on, coworkers. Play on.

Brat Pack

2010-05-12T14:42:00.001-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Officemate and I are in full-on checked out summer mode. We're showing up late, we're leaving early, we're taking two hour lunches. We're leaving for 30 minutes to get ice cream sundaes without telling our workstudy students, little Type A darlings who freak out if faced with even a second of inactivity and lack of instruction. I came back to a note slid under our door and an email from a workstudy student wanting to make sure I gave her a new assignment as soon as I was back from getting ice cream and not inviting her.

As the day comes to a close, we've decided to take turns playing our favorite 80s theme songs.

S: "Greatest American Hero" theme song. (Also a bonus: George Costanza's answering machine based on the Greatest American Hero theme song: Believe it or not/George isn't at home/Please leave a message at the beep/I must be out/Or I'd pick up the phone/Where could I be?/Believe it or not, I'm not home)

Officemate: "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman (if there isn't a gay porn movie out there called "An Officer in a Gentleman" yet, someone please get on that)

S: "Man in Motion" from St. Elmo's Fire

Officemate: "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun

S: "Facts of Life" theme song*

*Fun thing that happened when this was playing: we both started singing along right at "to be liv-ing up to your dreams." We are so in love.

"You Better Belize It" Is a Bad Pun

2010-05-11T18:41:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Ten days from now, I'm going to Belize. Belize! The real place and not a frat infested LA club named that which, as far as I know, doesn't exist but I can totally picture that it would and there would be rum and "Rain Forest Wet T-Shirt" contests on Wednesdays or whatever, and if by chance someone dragged me there I would look critically at the other girls and call them ruins, like Mayan ruins, which is why it would be funny. But no- I'm going to the real and glorious country of Belize where my boss can't even e-mail me if she really, really needs something because this underpaid worker is shutting off her cell phone and all e-mails with it when she goes because that international plan stuff is way too expensive to pay for when all I anticipate getting is my daily Groupon e-mail.

The problem, however, about being so excited to go on vacation is that I am so excited to go on vacation! Like, so excited that I'm not getting anything done all day except deciding which dresses to pack and reading about sandwiches I could be eating... Eating on a beach! The other problem with being so excited about this impending delight is that I sit in a room all day with people who are not going to Belize and so are already done listening to me talk about Belize, and also they don't even know anything about Belize so what could I possibly want with them anyway? They're doing things during our time off like going to visit their families or bravely hiking a difficult trail for a week... But guess what: There are families and walking in Belize, and also that's where Belize is!

So, from now until ten days from now, every assignment I half-ass, and every Scrabble letter I play aren't for nothing. No. They are getting me one half-assed assignment and one Scrabble letter closer to a relaxing vacation where I don't have those kinds of stresses. Hallelujah.

Life Coach

2010-05-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Stupid emails are a common part of my day. I'm used to people emailing me asking for information that's readily available on our website. I'm used to stupid questions like "is your school good?" (The answer is yes, but if it wasn't, what do they think I would tell them?) But today I got the craziest email I've ever received (at work), subject heading: What Should I Do with the Next 10 Years of my Life?

This person eventually would like to graduate from our program, but can't decide if s/he should apply now or in ten years. I ran this by my trusty G-chat friend G who advised me to respond thusly: 1) Don't procreate, 2) Learn to think for yourself. It's a good start, but as I'm sure you expected, I've got more:

Dear Clueless,

Why the hell would you ask me such a question? You don't know me. You know nothing about me. I know nothing about you. Granted, I am the person to talk to if you want to know how to get admitted to our program, but when I answer admissions-related questions, I assume the people asking them know for sure that they want to come to our program, and are planning to do so pretty soon. Maybe that was naive of me, I don't know.

And dude, I can't even answer this question for myself. I can't decide if I want to stay at my current job or look for a new one, I can't decide if I should start saving to buy a place, I can't decide if I want to order a freaking dress from ModCloth! (I was leaning towards yes after two glasses of wine but then a friend told me it looked like an apron, so now I'm back to square one.)

I do not make enough money to be giving out life advice; I'm a bureaucrat. I can tell you how to navigate our admissions system and apply for grants, but I can't tell you how to live your life. I'm not Oprah or Dr. Phil. If you want to pay me an Oprah or Dr. Phil salary, I'll start handing out misguided life advice, but until then, get your shit together and come back when you want to know about letters of recommendation.

In solidarity,
S

Bananas-ing Around

2010-05-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Dear friends (hi, Mom!), I hope that I did not, in missing a post on Friday, send anyone into a weekend-long panic that something awful had happened to me. I mean, all the regular awful things happened- I showed up to work and the building hadn't burned down, I got to my desk and my computer password was still valid, my boss spoke- but nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a regular workday which- thank goodness!- my boss had prepared my office mates and me for the night before by coming into our office at 10 o'clock when we were all still here and saying, "Hey- We have a project to get done, so don't you guys show up to work tomorrow thinking that you don't have to do anything all day." Well- If the heavens didn't literally part to shine the glorious light of an angel's wings on a once dark and mysterious subject when she said that! People work? At their jobs? I have never met the Buddha or Dr. Phil, but it seems as though I lucked into having a glorious sage and savior of my very own right here at the office. And one who, as was made obvious by her instructions to us, really has faith in me.

So we did try this whole "showing up to work and knowing there's work to do" approach on Friday, and all went well. Because we don't have an intern as of a week and a half ago, we all took turns cracking ourselves up yelling to the empty desk where the intern used to be to ask him for help with certain parts of the project, or just requesting that he brings us various food items. But yelling into thin air became less funny at every shout, so we decided to go for comedy broke and make the office stuffed monkey, he of previous nap time decoy fame, into our new intern. He now sits at the intern desk with the computer on (someone gave him a little booster seat to make the whole thing believable, I mean- how could a stuffed monkey really be doing work if he couldn't see the screen? Think about it), and fairly regularly someone comes by to take the pen that we've placed next to his left paw (he's the creative type) and writes a note on his notepad, usually something banana or jungle related. And if all this work on our unpaid stuffed monkey intern creation doesn't show our boss that we know what it is to put our noses to the grindstone, then I just don't know what will.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

2010-05-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

One of my least favorite job-related questions is "do you get summers off?" The answer is no. I am not a teacher, and even though the school year is over, we still have work to do during the summer. That being said, summertime is calmer. We have very few students in the building and a smattering of faculty. Last year, after a stressful spring semester, I was really looking forward to a nice, relaxing summer.

But, no! My boss came up with stupid projects and plans that required meetings and deadlines and "goal spreadsheets." It blew. But not this year! Oh, no. She is going on an 8-week vacation and Officemate and are going to whoop it up. Here's what we have planned so far:

Thirsty Thursday: this is actually a staff-wide event that's existed for several summers. Each Thursday afternoon, a new staff member is in charge of creating a signature cocktail and sharing it with the group out in the courtyard. We have one boring old killjoy who vehemently opposes this summer tradition, but everyone else loves it.

Beer Thirty: We're going to pick a time of day during another day of the week that we designate as Beer Thirty, when we will go across the street to the pizza or Mexican place and get a beer.

Office 2.0: We're redecorating our office! New furniture, repainting and new wall decorations! As some of my photos may have indicated, our office is currently kind of a hot mess (and worse off now because of the pranksters' most recent endeavor), and we've decided this summer we're going to make it beautiful. We also decided that on the day it gets repainted, we're going swimming.

Ice Cream Showdown: We're all going to try that banana split challenge that our tiny little workstudy student was able to complete. Except we're probably just going to all go out for ice cream and watch her do it again because we kind of think it's gross.

Fridays Off: That's right, no worky for S on Fridays. I'll still be posting, but I imagine my topics will center around the following: 1) the best iced coffee in town, 2) why I hate Kelly Ripa, and 3) apologizing for not posting because I was too drunk.

Get ready.

Weighty Matters, Redux

2010-05-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

So today was another Costco day! It was a close call because first Officemate said she didn't think I needed to go, but then we decided that Officemate shouldn't go because she's not feeling well so she shouldn't waste valuable work hours getting supplies for graduation, but instead just do what she needs to do then go home and rest because we have to be back here at 7:00AM for graduation tomorrow.

Then, my boss said she wanted to come because she has a prescription to pick up from Costco. My boss is a very nice lady, but I do not want to spend any free/fun time with her if I can avoid it. This trip was about me, the dean's assistant, and a Polish sausage and soda for a $1.50. So I volunteered to pick up her prescription for her. She gave me her ID and Costco card (but no money!) and finally I was off.

While the dean's assistant was getting flowers for our special graduation people, I ran to the pharmacy to get my boss's prescription. While waiting in line, I pulled out her driver's license so I could be ready to go when it was my turn. I casually glanced at her picture and then noticed that the weight she has listed on her ID is only about 20lbs more than what I weigh.

I am not a good judge of people's weights, so I don't know if it's a lie or not, but if I am just 20lbs from looking like my boss, I will kill myself. Granted, I'm not planning to gain 20lbs anytime soon (I'm actually trying to drop about 5), but my boss is severely, dangerously overweight. It's been upsetting me ever since. I know it's totally possible that the weight she listed is no longer accurate and I know that muscle weighs more than fat and that I am a little taller than her, but SHIT.

Anyway, I was able to pick up her prescription, which cost almost $20, which was all the money I had, so I had to pay for my hot dog and Diet Pepsi in quarters. Cause I classy.

Pre-Tape Escape

2010-05-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

This is a picture of 3/5 of the most interesting thing that happened at my office today: Five, FIVE people were wearing gray vee neck tee shirts and jeans. It was epic. It felt as though every time I lifted my head from various social networking sites someone was turning the corner to reveal their participation in this shocking trend. As I, like most people, own a gray tee shirt and jeans myself, I briefly considered going home during the afternoon down time to change into it just to be a part of the joke.

Instead I went across the street to drink afternoon beers with my office mates. Thursdays are usually super important as far as in-office presence because we shoot our show at night, but this week we taped it remotely from New York early in the day. That left us all just waiting around the office- a full staff of us- so that we would be available in the evening hours to go sit in the studio where we usually tape and watch the prerecorded episode while the sound guys captured our laughing noises. That's right, a dozen people biding their time until they were asked to go down en masse to laugh at- for a lot of them- things they wrote themselves. So if, knowing that, today sounds to you like a reasonable time- while other staff members did things like went to the gym- to leave for thirty minutes to relax and be social before completing a 12 hour day... Well then you would have gotten the same wrathful e-mail that I got from my immediate boss about checking in with her if ever I plan to be gone for more than 10 minutes. So if anyone knows how I can get a gig as an imprisoned child let me know. I'm looking for more liberties.

Fanger

2010-05-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Fake Anger (Fanger) worked! I did such a good job chewing out/silent treatmenting our next door neighbors that they cornered the dean's assistant at Cinco de Mayo happy hour (which I backed out of because of laziness and not hatred for the boys, but they definitely took it as a sign of continued displeasure) to ask why I was so mad and what they could do to get me not mad at them.

She said they tried to act indignant like I would have no right to be upset with them, but were also scrambling to figure out what they could do to get me to forgive them and be their friend again. Ha, HA!

Now, if I were truly a prank master, I would keep this ruse up until I was presented with thoughtful, apologetic card or gift, but I felt so bad about making someone else feel bad that I texted them to say I was just kidding and there are really no hard feelings. But now I haven't heard back and am checking my phone obsessively like I'm waiting for a call after sleeping with one of them on the second date. Not that I have any idea what that's like...

Green with Revenge

2010-05-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...
Well they finally made good on their threats. Those sneaky bastards covered EVERYTHING in our office in green cellophane. They even took our pictures and clocks and stuff off the walls and covered THEM in green cellophane. They only left the area that they treat like their personal hallway free of cellophanehood. It was a great prank and my hat is off to them.

However, they kind of picked the worst time to do it. They're both faculty and the last day of classes was last Friday, so they're totally in summer vacation mode, but we're super busy this week trying to make sure our graduating students graduate and our students don't fail their classes, get their summer internships, don't get into debilitating debt, etc. So having to machete our way to our desks and all our necessary papers and tools was not ideal.

Officemate is being a good sport about it, but I'm pretending to be fuming mad. I blew up at one of them this morning, lecturing him about the one rule of the prank wars (the prank shouldn't interfere with the other party's ability to do their job) and how this was so irresponsible and immature of them and while I like to have fun at work, I actually care about our students welfare and I thought they did too and couldn't they have waited a damn week until graduation was finished? I'm giving the other one the silent treatment.