Mince Meet

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.