employablog

I got a call a few weeks ago from a very tired, heavily accented voice.  It was Hassan, the general manager from the restaurant I pretended to work at while looking for work, money and validation.

He was calling to reserve me, apparently none of the restaurant staff was available on Sunday, Feb. 25.  I left on great terms, and I loved the multicultural characters I worked with at the restaurant.  The only thing I didn’t love was being a waiter.  I want to join tables, have a glass of wine and hang out.  Or I hate them, and wish they would go away.  Neither of those are waiterly traits, and the dichotomy killed me.

Also, I apparently have a panicked look on my face during any rush, and I spin around.  I don’t feel like crying, but I give off that vibe.  Also no good.  I’m much better at being served rather than serving, and luckily that’s how it is.

But I accepted, wanting to see my restaurant friends and help out Hassan, who, as most small-time restaurant managers are, is the most over-worked man in the history of Man.  But back at the restaurant, I felt it, I knew that I had put in my time, and I was right back where I started, doing real work, because waiting and bussing is real work.  But then something amazing happened — it was Oscar night.  I don’t care about Oscar night, but most people do, so come eight-O-clock, the restaurant was scant.  Very scant.

The other waitress and I drank, we ate, we ordered desert and we ate more. I caught up with Jesus, made sex jokes with Cesar, and talked family … and more sex … with Eddie.  I caught up everyone with my life, caught up on theirs, in a perfect snowglobe of a moment, preserved from the blizzard outside, candlight playing liquid off the wine glasses.

Waiting tables was never that bad after all.

I was a little nervous this weekend as I prepared to do my taxes. I made a cup of tea and found my calculator (previous use: Tetris, 12th grade calculus). I found a pencil, purchased a pencil sharpener, and I would have taken the phone off the hook, except I don’t have a phone with a hook. I settled for ‘Silent’: These were the steps I could recall from watching my parents do their taxes until sometime in the mid 90s when I guess they hired an accountant. The whole thing seemed like quite an operation.

Of course, my parents never had the benefit of tax software with deduction maximizers, so I had that going for me. I plopped my laptop on top of all the papers and fired up the software. It asked me a series of questions and the deduction total kept climbing. “Awesome,” I thought. “Doing taxes is fun!” About an hour later I was nearly done. As I was only fully employed for around 25% of 2006, the federal government apparently considers me basically impoverished and I am going to be getting back a lot of what was withheld from each paycheck over the past few months. What success!

I felt confident, I felt grown up. I had done it.

“There are only a few more steps to ensure you’ve maximized your deductions!”

“OK!” I was in a great mood.

“Good news!” the next box said. “The Telephone Excise Tax Refund (TETR) is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return. It is designed to refund previously collected long distance telephone taxes. Almost everyone is eligible!”

Everyone except those who have never had a home phone. “No,” I answered, and clicked my ringtone back to Final Countdown.

“Were you affected by Hurricane Katrina?”

Wow, buzz kill, tax software. “No.”

“Did you become a widow/er this year?”

There’s a box I hope I never have to check. I was beginning to understand why people don’t usually think of taxes as awesome. The thought crossed my mind that a real deduction maximizer would be a pretty tough character: “Not a widower, eh? BLAHM! You are now! Oh, and I signed you up for AT&T. In Biloxi.”

“No.”

A couple weeks ago, the viscous necessities of all sorts in my apartment began to run out.

I first noticed this when I was doing the dishes. My dish soap formerly featured an omnipotent blue luster, as if to say “I dare you to use me all.” Each day I squirted a small bit onto my sponge—taking the “ultra-concentrated” label to heart—and watched as the rest of the soap confidently oozed back into place until it appeared I had used none at all. Now, what’s left of the dish soap cowers at the bottom of its clear plastic container stained with faint traces dirty dishwater and dried suds.

There are other things too; laundry detergent, tooth paste, shampoo… all of a sudden items I formally dosed with abandon I am now rationing out in impossibly small quantities with the hopes of recreating my own personal Chanukah-style miracle.

Of course, this was bound to happen. With enough loads of dishes, trips to the laundromat, hair washings, teeth brushings, window scrubbings — eventually these things run out. The strange part is how they are all giving out at the same time, almost as if they were designed with my particular patterns in mind. But how could they know that the guy who uses a little dish soap and a lot of shaving cream, a tiny amount of laundry detergent and a copius amount of windex would have arrived at “empty” with so many products at the same time?

For lack of another credible explanation, I’m tentatively blaming Google. They know everything.

I got an important call on my way to the bathroom. A 612 number not in my library, so I picked it up, because there was only one person it could really be, somone very, very important.

It was the University of Minnesota Medical School, and they were just calling to tell me that they like me.

I interviewed there in mid-December, and I had heard nothing from them. Time passed and hurried, and it felt like I was being broken up with through silence: the easiest way to break someone’s heart.

But even though I’m a member of the Minneapolis Chapter of the Bleeding Hearts Club, my heart instantly recovered.

“I wanted to congratulate you on your acceptance to the University of Minnesota Medical School,” the University of Minnesota told me. I told them that they made my week, and they did.

Now, I am also in at a school in Brooklyn, where I keep my life, career and happiness, but I have to cosign that away, because the University of Minnesota is too good to turn down, maybe. So I have a nice interal 3-month debate to have, but overall, not a bad debate, more like choosing between Neapolitan and Spumoni, both good things.
But now that this medical school business is over I have six months to live life, save money, ferret it away, and blow it all on a summer of surfing, planting seeds of bleached hair and skin cancer and happy.

Then I will start to be a doctor.

And what follows is cryptic: I fought the law and I won.

At noon today came a note from the director: “Guys, please stop all work on Project Stingray effective immediately.”

Yes, we have codenames for some of our projects. No, I don’t get to assign them. Yes, I know assigning them would be awesome.

Projects get codenames when they relate to highly sensitive mergers and acquisitions. In fact, they’re so secret that Stingray isn’t even the real codename.* These sorts of assignments are different than the work I’ve done before in which the projects have a clear plan about what work will be performed in what amount of time. They are shorter, faster and more intense, and they have the potential to end at any time. Maybe this is what being on reality TV feels like?

“I’m fired,” and it feels good.

*Note that in the event that I did get to assign the real codenames, I would choose something better than stingray, but I wanted this particular example to be more reflective of what the actual codenames are like. If it were up to me, there is a strong possibility this project would be dubbed Project Team Discovery Channel.**

**Obviously, that’s just an example, since I couldn’t actually tell you what I would name the project, if I ever was able to do so.

In the midst of a soul-crushing project that continues to grind forward despite a lack of necessary data, I received this in my email today. The fruits of my labor have finally come to fruition! Oh glorious days of harvest! Reap!

Fittingly, I sealed the deal on a red-eye back from Silicon Valley. Unfortunately Elite status does little to blunt the trauma of starting a work day with a 6:30am touchdown at Logan.

Taking it back to Freud, back to basics, there are two kinds of people—those who hold it in, and those who fling it at the walls of their cage.

I am expulsive, or more palatable, exceptionally regular. And right now this is my salvation. I go to the bathroom fingers crossed that the handicapable (though their capability is lacking ability) stall is free. And if it is, I am set. This stall has it all. Room, a sink, a mirror and paper towels, though, curiously enough, no soap. So if I ever see some relieved guy wheeling out of the men’s room, I’ll know not to shake his hand.

So I wash my hands outside of the stall.

But I have learned two tricks to deal with slow times at work, and they have two logical handles:

No. 1

No. 2

Number one is an easy game.  I drink as much water and coffee as I can and see how many times I can urinate in one day, and as I am a runner, it’s also logical.  Number two, well, I’m just really, a really regular guy.

My twosies have become a form of yoga.  Western yoga.  I zen out, punching the middle out of the toilet paper seat guard and TPing up any other yogi’s leavings.  Then I sit, and think, and push a little until inspiration hits.  Sometimes it’s a way to wake up, sometimes it’s an excuse to leave the chair, and sometimes it’s a way to just get out when my area is too hot, too cold, too crowded, too something.

And the best part is, that legally, technically and morally I am getting paid to do this.

So for five to seven minutes a day, I have the best job ever.

And I drink a lot of coffee, see No. 1 for more information.