employablog

So, my first and last office job is almost done, and along with it the most intense year of my life.

I studied Hebrew and Judaic Civilization back in collegeschool, it was a lot of anthropology and sociology using the Bible, mostly the first half, as a primary document. What was underscored, was that when times got rough, the Jews were waiting, a long, sad expectancy. Their temple got knocked down, and afer getting split and trampled there was finally the exile, and then waiting, the world seemed as bad as it could ever get, worse even, and getting ever worse.

That’s what this year became. I’d work feverishly on an application, a cover letter, a resume, a phone call, send it, make it, and wait. Hell, I waited so hard that I even waited tables. And now the waiting is over. I archived my med school applications folder, I made copies and filed my immunization records, and I drafted, stamped and sent the last of my “sorry, but no” letters to the med schools I’m withdrawing from.

That’s right, after a year of interviews—job and school—I got to write a few rejections of my own.

And now its done.  There’s no more waiting.

So why can’t I sleep?

And no more snarky Scrubs comments, I buzzed my head and grew a beard, so I in no way look like J.D.

I got rid of my backpack too.

Human Resources gave us nametags for our cubicles. It helps people navigate the fluorescent-lit maze of grey fabric walls with some purpose, but it also brings visitors.
This wouldn’t be a problem, except that I go to work to do work, and if I blow past someone in the hallway, whatever conversation I would have been stuck in automatically gets shunted to my cubicle, where I am even more trapped. Really—this problem has deeper roots, roots that reach down to the fact that when I walk around, I’m going somewhere, and it always to fulfill a basic need.

I don’t want to talk now, I have to urinate.

I don’t want to talk now, I have to poo.

I don’t want to talk now, I’m thirsty.

I don’t want to talk now, I’m hungry.

And as the fates would have it, whenever I’m walking back from satisfying one of the four drives that makes me walk to different places in the office, I never run into people. I like talking, but drives take priority. It’s why you teach children not to pester the dog while he’s eating. And it’s led me to increasingly awkward comments out of panic when someone traps me.

The last time it happened ended with me panicking and improvising.

“What are you up to?”

“Going to the bathroom,” I said, “that time of the week again.”

And I scurried off.

And I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, I think this is something that I should get used to.

I feel like there is something big going on tomorrow, but really there is nothing special — but at time same time, tomorrow is a big day.  Tomorrow is May 15th, the day that med school applicants can only hold one acceptance — mine is to Minnesota.  And so, even though everything finally seems to be in the works, I am marking off another big calendar date, the final end to all this application nonsense that has dominated my life, starting, really, in January 2005, when I realized I needed to make some lifestyle changes, make some knowledge changes and really figure myself out.

I did, and now I’m going to medical school, and I couldn’t be happier, and I think that is a perfect reason to not sleep.

Every once in a while, there have been nights like this over this past stretch (read: the densest part of my likkle life to date). A lot of stuff has gotten shaken up inside of me, and on nights like tonight it settles — hard. And I start to get buried in questions, some menial, some greater, from nit-picky romance to second guessery and happenstance.

But I finally have a solid anchor so it all doesn’t sweep me away into the heart-pounding nervous wreck it could before. So on my insomnia nights I can write, draw, read and … well … enjoy some me time, until … well you know

I took a survey today, about my employment satisfaction. One question was whether I felt that staying at my current career would be a way to advance it, and I marked, “Completely Disagree.”

It was not with any animosity, but my job was a nice stimulating way to pay the rent and add some bulk to my resume while eking last minutes with the people I’ve spent the last 4 to 5 years with. Then there was a bubble to fill, on why staying with my current company would not advance my career. I wrote, simply, that I want to be a doctor, surgery probably, and that I currently am not doing that, but that I am fine not doing it for a few more months, because honestly right now I wouldn’t make a great surgeon, since I have no idea.

But I’m ready to start on the next part of my life. My bags are starting to get packed, whether or not I try, and I can feel that in my stomach.

Today was a weird day. Everyone drifted into work full of mental fog, the kind of mental fog that settles in between your ears when you’ve too little, stuck inside during 48 straight hours of torrential rains. Call it a mass vitamin D deficiency, everyone in the office today was off, me heartily included.

But over the course of small talk it gets attributed to Monday or the weather. I won’t rant about giving Monday a break, I did that last week, and the weather seems a safe bet, grey skies = grey insides, no?

But there was something else at work today as well.

I went in and out of meetings today, I had myself together, and felt good. But the last meeting shook me a little. Not for fear, but for sadness and the bizarre timbre it cast.

My worker buddy who oriented me, and did a lot to help me settle comfortably into my new job got fired.  Everything was handled with padded walls and kid gloves, which really, is the only way to handle these sorts of things.

I feel fine about the whole thing, with a slight cast of being a leathery, salty veteran, but I also feel strange and sad. The office politics are fine, and my bosses are fine as well. But getting fired is akin to dying to a select group of people. It’s too bad, perhaps you went on to a better place, but apparently it was for the greater good.

I’m not cynical, or even upset, it’s just strange.

Coincidentally, on The Office, Roy got fired last week. But he tried to punch Jim.

So I think it has to be chalked up to coincidence.

The server where all my work is just went down. It could go up at any minute, but for now, it isn’t. Since all my work is there, that is why i am here. Server-down-day tastes sweet for the moment, but like any high-interest loan, we’ll all have to pay, and the sooner, the better.

BUT

In the meantime, I saw one of the higher ups, y’know, a guy who has not only an office, but an office with windows, walking by. I see him doing normal human things over the course of a week. Eating, getting coffee, washing his hands. He’s a normal guy, glasses, wavy short hair, mid to late 30s, but today he was doing something extraordinary.

He was wearing one of the best shirts ever. I instantly saw myself in that shirt. I was wearing my silver corduroy jacket, and a stylish hat, slightly askew. I was walking somewhere, nay — ambling. That was the kind of confidence this shirt exuded.

Or I was sipping espresso at an outdoor cafe, hiding behind a pair of aviators, reading something inspiring, like The Sound and the Fury … or Penthouse.

The shirt was bright pink, just a shade below overstated. It would never be called “pastel.” It had thin striping of a lighter shade of pink, just a shade above understated, and also definitively not pastel. Moreover, this shirt was anything but neon, rather it was classy. A cafe racer would don this shirt, he’d fucking don it with aplomb. And I want to don it too.

As I watched the boss-man swish away, I wanted to call out,

“Wait .. don’t go. Let’s talk, how are you?”

I would get him to see me as an equal, I would make small talk happen readily, dancing around the weather, Fridays and the weekend. It would be such great small talk that he would thank me before leaving and then I’d say,
“Wait … one more thing — where did you GET that shirt, I must have one.”

But it was too late. He had swished away, and with that, so had my dreams of that perfect shirt swished away like so many dried leaves on a windy November hill.

I do not hate Mondays.

I’ve also seen Office Space and refuse to become a parody of myself.

And beyond all that, hating 1/7 of all days starting at age 23, well, that gives me a long wretched span ahead of me, and I am NOT going that route. So when I go into work and get nudged into small talk while I’m washing my mug and hear it revolve around short weekends or “Monday again, you know how that goes,” I feel a pang inside.

Did she just say that? Will that be me some day?

I don’t try to be mean, but Monday-bashing smalltalk is worse than public masturbation, it’s just sad. Say what you want about Paul Reubens, but at least he went out and did something. Whining about Monday is just satirizing yourself and suddenly your life has been reduced to a sad cliché, a Dilbert cell, and there is never a good time to start doing that.

In a tense, team moment I shaved my head. It isn’t a skinhead thing, more along the lines of that guy from Maroon 5. A Daniel Day Lewis over a Moby. You get the idea, there is a tasteful amount of fuzz, augmented by an equally tasteful beard. But that isn’t the point, of course I look good. The point is the haircut + office phenomenon, and a phenomenon it is.

I caused a commotion, and I love attention, but even I was overwhelmed. I haven’t gotten this much attention from people who are, essentially strangers, since I broke my arm in 10th grade before Battle of the Bands. That and homecoming court. The point is, barring terrible injuries and high school popularity contests, nothing turns heads like a haircut. I walked into work, and right away my boss’ boss pointed and said, “Whoa, haircut.”

My friend crush in some other department said, “Wow, it was time. What do people think? Me, I like it, great improvement” (He is foreign).

A woman I had never talked to or seen in my life, but I knew worked there (since she was there, why else) said that she really loved my haircut.

This sort of thing went on, all day. When I walked into my section it was like Christina Applegate walking on the set for “Married With Children.” I didn’t blush, but I didn’t pull up my skirt either. I tried to divert attention to my new chucks that came in the mail, but to no avail. It was haircut this, haircut that, I had quite a day. Furthermore, this weekend seemed to have been some sort of haircut nexus. Cube neighbor friend also got a dramatic haircut. (Dramatic: read, when done, it looks like there is a dead Lhasa Apso on the floor). Amazingly clever cube neighbor friend also got a haircut this weekend. In one graceful and parsimonious gesture he pointed at his head, my head and winked.

The only thing you can do to get more attention at work, it seems, is have a baby.

I was on the subway today with someone I respect, someone much smarter than me—one of my roommates. He actually made it in the journalism world.  He had a job, he even had an intern that would do his beckoning.  Then, get this, while at the job, the job that gave him a minion (a girl minion at that!) another job called him, and plucked him away, a few blocks south and one avenue block over. This job gave him even more money and less responsibility.

The bottom line is, this guy is smart and he’s not a douche.  We eat together and talk about stuff and love and laugh and live. It isn’t gay, it’s just pleasant.

So, we were on the L train, rubbing up on every other 20-something being whisked from the tip of Brooklyn to some office somewhere in Manhattan to sit at a computer inside some building and do something that on its own doesn’t shake the earth very much, but if you sum it all, still doesn’t shake very much.

I told him that I felt high, I had a cold and had just taken some sudafed to trade my cold symptoms for sudafed symptoms, which are both fun and harrowing in a carpeted mid-morning cubicle.

“Thank God it’s Friday,” he said. And he meant it. Other people said that today at work, people I also respect and enjoy. They say it, and they mean it, not noticing what they’re really saying. T.G.I.F. is only appropriate if referring to the blockbuster lineup of Full House, Step by Step, Family Matters and Boy Meets World. Other than that, strictly prohibited, it goes hand-in-paw with douchebaggery and being a big ‘ol toolbox. But something happens after enough 9 - 5 I think where people forget, they get tired, and in a quiet moment of desperate relief, it slips out with a pathetic little splash into the cosmos.

Thank God it’s Friday.

It’s ruined the same way you can’t say “Can you hear me now?” trying to get bars on your cell phone because of that assclown with the thickframed glasses who shows up everywhere. Instead you flip the syntax, claw for synonyms. “Now you hear me?” “Your hearing of my, it is better?” “Improved sounds go to you?” Those bastards, they took the easiest one and pooped on its face.

But back to TGIF, this phrase is both ruined by certain chain restaurants and a history of desperate smalltalk at the coffee pot, water cooler, what have you. It means that you suffer five days to live two, that isn’t me.

And it’s a cliché, and you know what they say about those don’t you?

They’re bad.

I’m learning how to be an office worker, and it’s hard. I’ve worked from 9 - 5 before, or at least some incarnation of a job that occupies the best hours of the day and seems to start a little too early to be fun. But up until now they are jobs of brute force, not blue collar — no collar, hell, sometimes no shirt. But, even on hangover days I never felt the crushing weight of all the world’s pent-up slumber like I do in my cubical (though my office terms them, pods.

This isn’t an attack on officeland, or my job. I like my job. But something about sitting for eight hours each day is not natural, it’s not right. I’ll take it any day over landscaping or waiting tables (my last two 9 - 5s) but it is not something that my body likes doing. But I slip into these trances. They aren’t sleep, let me be clear, they are trances.

I am awake, my eyes are open — I’m not slouched over like some dry-mouth geek. I’m even doing work during these trances, of (validated by outside sources) decent quality. I try to stay away from trances, but on a sleepy morning, the gray columns of copy and equations zonk my conscious out and I turn into editing robot, somnambulically marking pages and verifying changes.

But I’ll still be my conscious is a better editor than my subconscious.

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.