Be True to Your School

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.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

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.

Ups and Downs

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, given the frequency with which I talk about the elevators at my office, it must seem as though I used to live in some blissfully one-storied world where you could see the sun rise over the top of every building, and never had to say things like, "Excuse- What floor is that on?" because the answer, in that world, would always be, "One". But thanks today to my tardiness, selfishness, and unpreparedness, there is another elevator story to be told.

This morning I was running late because I'm someone who runs late (but just to work, never socially...figure that out).  As I was waiting impatiently for the elevator up from the parking dungeon, I saw a man approaching the nearby attendant to hand over his keys.  It was safe to assume, as there is no other way into the building, that this man's next stop would be the elevator.  But the elevator came, and he was still dropping off his keys.  And that was going to take up to maybe half a minute.  So I tried to hide in the corner of the elevator car, hit Door Close, and headed up by myself.

Ah but my employee badge wouldn't scan, which meant I couldn't light up the button for the floor I work on.  So the elevator went up for a moment, and then headed quickly back down.  To the parking level I had just been on.  And opened up to reveal the man I had abandoned there, the fallen soldier I had left to die alone on the P3 battlefield.  He recognized me, and went so far as to say curiously but secretly accusingly, "Oh.  I just saw you get on the elevator."

When I went to the security desk to have them help me fix my employee badge, the man at the desk looked it up and told me that it wasn't working because it had expired.  For one dreamy minute I thought that meant that I had been fired and could go home and eat pudding and take a nap.  Instead it just meant that I've been here for exactly six months and needed to be reauthorized.  You can only imagine the half-iversary party that my bosses threw me to celebrate, and how cleverly they disguised it as a regular day.  "Party on!  You're half a year into being here an entire year and disliking it roughly that same amount of time!" was probably too hard to fit on a banner.  Or it was sold out.

Bill Nye I'm Coming for You

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

Though I would not call myself a scientist per se, I did conduct a serious experiment this past weekend as a group of friends and I celebrated my boyfriend's birthday.  I set out to discover if one weekend can contain all the beer I would like to drink, all the ice cream I want to eat, and all the playing with Woody the Pup I can muster OR if one weekend can only contain so much fun (which could be a real property of, um, science).  Because if one weekend can't hold it all, a good amount of the buzz and the yum and the fun won't have anywhere to go but into Monday.  That's the simple principle of the conservation of liquid, the conservation of matter, and the conservation of delight.  I took physics in high school in the nineties.  I know what I'm saying.

So I really went for it, in the name of the birthday and in the name of science.  And I'm not sure if this crushingly strong body/stomach ache is from my hang-over, my sugar high come down, or all that jumping around with the dog, but I am sure that science ruins everything.  Stay out of school, kids.  And just say no to Mondays.

Ctrl + C, Ctrl + My Head Just Exploded

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

We just had a quick meeting in my office.  The big boss came in for a chat that was kind and measured, but carried this subtext:

"Hey, you three assistants, your entire job can pretty much be boiled down to seven menial tasks that rotate among you.  Today the copy and paste task was a failure."

Whose turn was it to copy and paste today?  Why, mine of course.  And how come I might I be particularly inclined to do a better job at picking the things that I copy and paste?  Why, because in December- following another serious copy and paste gaffe on my part- there was major overhaul of the entire copy and paste system that was negotiated during an emergency staff-wide meeting.  Why didn't they teach copy and paste in college??  If they couldn't offer copy and paste, why not at least a mind-reading elective?!  How could I ever have expected to successfully participate in the work force when I can't even intuit exactly what other people want copied and pasted?!  Oh wasted studies!  Money!  Life!

Additionally, I devoted a good deal of time the other night to making a real grody mess of a bug bite on my face to the end that I now look as though I have scabies, and so it's not as though I wanted to be here today anyway.  Cruel world.

Make Another Choice. A Less Dumb One.

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

S mentioned in her post about ridiculous coffee-mongering college students that "make another choice" is a phrase that I introduced to her.  I started saying that at my last job because- before I joined the respectable and noble ranks of television production whores- I was throwing my life away, frivolously shaping the future of America working as a preschool teacher.  And in that kind of setting, saying, "Stop licking that ketchup from someone else's lunch off the ground!  You are grossing me out so bad- What is wrong with you?!" or telling a child something like, "But if you hit the other children they will like you less than they already do, and being an outcast at four years old is not a good look, so shape up or wear cooler shirts or something," wasn't totally within our positive language guidelines as educators.  Instead we employed "Make another choice," and it's very close cousin, "That is not a choice."  And these expressions have served me well outside of the world of toddlers.  They can even be used with the kids' inferiors: People working in the entertainment industry.

For example:  "I would like half regular mustard, and half the red mustard that comes on the other turkey sandwich, but not on this one because they're out of it, but you should just ask, and then I would like to send you to walk three blocks with a 20 dollar bill for a lunch that will cost 20 dollars and 19 cents, and have you say sorry and that you will walk back with two dimes right away."  And that gets a big old "make another choice".

Or:  "I would like to have you do the job that I am supposed to all afternoon, and then have you tell me exactly all the things I would know if I had done it so that I can present them to the boss and the staff at our meeting as if I actually did do them, OK?"  A "that is not a choice" classic.

Such great expressions!  So easy!  So useful!  So something I would never ever say and fear that even writing this notion down in a totally kidding way (haha, right, coworkers from whom I work very hard to hide this blog but can't imagine I am totally successful because secretly maybe I don't even really care?) will get me fired!