I'll Take You Out

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

Say Hello to Your Acquaintances

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

"Letter Down Easy" is Worse Than That Belize Pun

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

The Final Countdown

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

Today is the deadline for our students to submit work for our annual Spring Awards competition. In addition to adding "award winner" to their resume, Spring Awards winners also receive a modest cash prize (usually somewhere between $100-300). I announced the submissions requirements and deadline 10 days ago, but of course it wasn't until about 1:00am today that I started getting emails with questions like: "Can I turn my submission after the noon deadline?" "How many copies of each submission do you need?" "Why aren't there any guidelines for how to submit?" To which I replied, "What do you think the word 'deadline' means?" "Read my damn email." and "Ibid."

Around 10:40 this morning they started coming in with sob stories of broken computers and competing deadlines for other school projects, and do I really need to have the submissions at noon? Isn't that just a totally arbitrary time I've picked?

Not that any of them will read this, but...

Dear Students,

Remember when I sent you that email that said "Spring Awards Announcement"? It had all the submissions guidelines right in it, including the fact that the noon on the 16th deadline was not in fact arbitrary but based on when I had to get your submissions to our judging committee. I acknowledged that yes, sometimes our deadlines are soft ones, but this was not one of those times and that you had to get your submission in by noon if you wanted to be included in the competition.

And I don't need to hear your sob stories or be told that I'm ruining your life. A) You did this yourself. "Deadline" means "absolute last minute." You could have turned it in anytime between the announcement and noon today, but you chose to wait until this morning. That's your call. B) I am not killing you, taking your house, or preventing you from graduating. I am telling you that you will not be able to enter this particular contest this year. It's really not that bad.

And to the young lady who turned in her submission on time only to come back and ask if she could switch it out for another because she realized she made a big mistake on the first one, but she'd need to turn in the new version after the deadline: you really didn't need to do the Charlie Brown/George Michael Bluth pout walk away from me when I said no. I didn't mess up your first submission. You did. Grow up.

Kisses,
S

Attack of the Machines

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

An open letter to whomever makes the executive stocking decisions for the second floor vending machine:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I've been using vending machines for as long as I can remember.  And let me start off by saying that if you or any of your colleagues had anything to do with the ample supply of Funyuns at a certain Northern California middle school in the early nineties, I thank you.  Truly.  It was a dream.

Today, however, I am writing to you to enlist your help with a problem.  I'm sure that you are a faithful reader of this blog (who isn't, right Mom?) and so are familiar with how I feel about treats in the workplace: Simply, devoted.  Which means, I think, that you and I have something special in common: Neither of us could do our job if snacks didn't exist.  Isn't it cool, how connected we are?  You work a physically demanding and thankless job, carrying food up stairs on your very back through nothing but your body's sheer force, and I sit at a desk complaining and eating that stuff!

But here's the thing:  Where the eff have my Rice Crispy Treats been and who in their right mind would put Pop Tarts in B1 in the vending machine in their place?!  Oh- There are other alternatives?  You're right.  C7 is a Cinnabon Bar that I didn't even know existed until I started working here, and then when I read the fine print on the back that suggested that I put it in the microwave for seven seconds my head almost exploded from the gooey deliciousness, and that would be a totally viable replacement for the Rice Crispy Treats... If the Cinnabon Bars hadn't been replaced with yogurt covered granola bars!  This is not reasonable!  That's like swapping out someone's dear child or beloved pet and leaving in their place... A much much less cool child or pet!

So how can we meet in the middle on this?  Which is to say, how can you go back to doing this exactly as I want?  I'm being torn apart.  Today I had to bring a bag full of baked goods from home and put it on the table in the communal area just to be certain that I would be able to eat my fill of sweets while also collecting thank yous and compliments from my coworkers.  It has been a trying time.  Please- Hear my cry.

B1 Rice Crispy Treats, C7 Cinnabon Bars.

Thank you for your prompt attention,
K

Stay thirsty, my friends

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

I know the last time I mentioned writing exceptional admission requests for international students, you were all clamoring with anticipation to hear more about what that entails. Wait no longer friends, I'm here to elaborate.

Sometimes an international student doesn't technically have the required credentials to matriculate into our university, and when that's the case, we write a letter saying that yes, we're aware of this and for XXX reasons, we want them in our program anyway. It used to be more of a formality than a real requirement, but that was before the central admissions department became THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD. (Not to be confused with the Most Interesting Man in the World.)

So anyway, last year I wrote a bunch of letters, sent them off, and our students were let in without a hitch. This year, however, there's a new sheriff in town and she apparently doesn't trust us to decide who we do and don't want in our program, so she's requiring supporting documentation (letters of rec, transcripts and the like) to justify our offering admission to someone that they deem unqualified. I told her that we never had to do that before and she said it's always been a requirement, which is a total lie, but I wasn't in the mood to talk to her about anymore after she yelled the following at me over the phone:

"You just sent these letters with NO SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS!! HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO SHOW THIS TO THE DEAN?!"

Oh, God, not the dean! He has the authority to kill people! Oh wait, no he doesn't. So, as I'm sure you were expecting, an open letter to the bitch who thinks special circumstance admissions processing is a matter of life and death:

Dear Bitch:

Chill the hell out.

XOXO
S

PS: Your requirements are super generic and apply to all disciplines, making the assumption that what makes a good chemical engineering student also makes a good modern dance student, but that's bonkers. Special circumstances exist. Please trust our admissions committee to know better than you what kind of student we want.

About 10 minutes after my little lecture, another woman from their office called me, not knowing I had already been berated for my lack of supplemental documents. Her voicemail went a little like this "Hello, S, I've got your exceptional admit letters, but it doesn't look like you have any supporting documents with them and we really need those before we take it to the dean. Could you please send some over? Thanks!"

Nice. Normal. A proportional response. She seems like a rational person with a clear understanding of the relative level of importance of what she does for a living in comparison with oh, say, a heart surgeon or President Obama. I give her 6 months in that office, tops.

This Is No Aerosmith Song

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

The other night- after we had taped our show and I had worked for 12 hours- I got into the elevator to go to my car, but realized I didn't have my ID badge to scan.  Without it, the elevator wouldn't let me access the level my car was parked on.  There was another woman in the elevator.  She would not swipe her badge for me. This is my open letter to her:

Dear Lady in the Elevator,

You almost had me at first, when you pretended you couldn't hear me- me, the only other person in a small elevator with you- asking if you would please swipe your badge for me.  And for a second, after you cocked your head in surprise that I was talking to you- you, the only other person in a small elevator- I could have sworn you said that you didn't have a badge either, which is so weird since you were able to light up the button for another restricted floor.  But I think I got your point pretty clearly when you threw your arms in the air, ran furiously out of the elevator, and yelled that I had to go to the lobby for help.  Point taken.  You and your shoulder bag are really super rule-sticklers for elevator and parking level access in corporate America.  And why wouldn't you be?  I mean, if you loosened the reins on that then what next?  Passing out your PIN and copies of your Social Security card?  Leaving the window to your child's bedroom open at night and cutting your own phone lines?  A slippery slope indeed.

But ya know what, Lady in the Elevator?  I'm not mad.  I totally get where you're coming from, because after I waited for the elevator to go all the way down and then back up again (as I've mentioned, they really are shockingly slow) to take me into the lobby where I then had to walk to the security desk and bother a security guard as he slept in front of six blaring televisions, I got to thinking.  I got to thinking about all the treasures that you were protecting on Parking Level 3 by refusing to let me down there without my credentials.  There are cement columns I could have really thrown stuff at pretty hard; there are florescent lights that I could look at, or even break with my Starbucks travel mug if I were able to hurl it ten feet in the air; and there are up to several other vehicles- none of which I had the keys to- that I probably would have broken into just for ducks rather than getting into my own car which had Party in the USA cued up and ready for the drive home.  Just because that's what I'm into.  So I guess it just hurt to really be seen as I am, and that's really about me, Lady in the Elevator, not you.

Until we meet again and I hit Door Close but you make it in the elevator anyway and I pretend I didn't mean to/don't know who you are,
K