There’s something I’ve discovered when it comes to job hunting. Interviewing when you have a job = easy. Interviewing while unemployed = hard.
When you have a job in hand, you have confidence and lack desperation. It’s not a catastrophe if you don’t get the offer because you’re not pressed by the immediacy of bills.
Unemployed is a whole different bag. If you let too many pay periods pass, you achieve desperation and you lose confidence. Having an employed spouse might buy you some time, but even that won’t last forever. Sense the resentment when they come home and you’re on the couch, watching Judge Judy. See those shoulders sag when they’re suited up and off to another day as you spread yourself across their side of the bed, turning over for another cycle of REM sleep. Feel the anger burbling just beneath the surface as they hand over their debit card linked to their bank account containing their money so you can buy something.
Unless it’s part of the agreement, it’s not fair to burden one person with the title of “breadwinner.” In our case, it wasn’t part of the agreement and with the cost of living, it wasn’t up for negotiation. I needed to get out there and make some money, honey.
I had a few resources at the ready. One was the recruiting agency that had actually found jobs at the same company in the same office for the husband and me. We talked at length about that offer. Should we take it? Is it what we want? Would we wind up competing against each other for a promotion? Unsaid: If we lived AND worked together would we eventually end up hating each other?
We didn’t take the offer. Instead he took an offer from a competing recruiting firm. This was the job at the top of his list, in the area of the country where we were aiming to relocate and I told him to go for it. He took the job. And me, I took—
Well, I took nothing. I don’t even know why I attempted to make that seem suspenseful; if I took something the rest of this entry would be 100% fiction (vs. 50%, or more, depending on what line you’re on). I took nothing partly because nothing appealed to me. I had panic attacks about getting “trapped” in a job I hated and how awful that would be. Clearly this was before I experienced how awful it was to not have a job when you really needed one.
Fast forward past moving and getting settled. The agency that offered us the jobs we declined was still willing to work with me, but I sensed a reluctance. “We’ve already done found you a job and you didn’t take it, you ingrate” seemed to be the underlying current anytime I spoke with one of the recruiters. “Well,” (sigh), “For the moment, we can line up a few phone interviews. I’ll see what else we have available in that area and get back to you.”
The other agency, also aware of my predicament, and also aware that we had turned down the jobs from the competition, was much more helpful. “We’re having a conference in Hampton, Virginia. Come on down.”
We drove to their corporate office for an interview with a local supermarket chain that was hiring. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I was open and it would be mighty nice to have a paycheck again.
I hit it off with the woman who was interviewing me. We laughed until we cried, we talked about all of the possibilities that came with being a supermarket manager including a quiz about how I would handle things if we were running a special on grapes and ran out. We talked for an hour and a half, running long past the scheduled thirty minute block. She gave me a 12 disk CD booklet with the name of the supermarket across the front—a parting gift. I left that office feeling buoyant; I had it in the bag. The recruiter suggested I finagle an opportunity from a manager of one of the local supermarkets from the same chain to get a feel for the job. I nodded and agreed to this while thinking, “Not bloody likely, pal, let’s wait and see if I get an offer first.”
A week after the interview I heard nothing. Two weeks, nothing. “I haven’t heard from them either” the recruiter said, “but I think the company is going through some sort of reorganization right now.” Three weeks, nothing. Spin those clock hands ‘round to a full ten months later and an ominous message on the answering machine plays: “I heard you did great in the interview so if you’re still interested, give us a call.” It was funny only because by then I was gainfully employed. I would’ve been pissed if I had followed the recruiter’s advice and wasted a couple of hours on shadowing some unsuspecting produce department manager only to hear from them nearly a year later.
Since the interview process began, I noticed I did swimmingly when interviewing for jobs I couldn’t see myself doing. The supermarket interview was just one example of that, but there were many others. When the guys from the home building company mentioned there would be days when I would get dirty at the construction site, I quipped, “I’m washable.” How they laughed—how we all laughed—this wasn’t an interview, it was a cocktail party without the drinks. The line was swiped from Margaret’s grandmother in Judy Blume’s book “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret,” and it was also the funniest thing these guys had ever heard. They offered me the job, but I didn’t accept
(because who wants to move to New Jersey?)
Conversely, I bombed the interviews where I really wanted the job.
Medical sales representative making a guaranteed $90K the first year?
Kaboom.
Target distribution center shift manager in the itty bitty town where the only place your husband can work is at the Hershey Chocolate factory?
"You're hired!”
The pharmaceutical sales job with the unlimited use of a company car and perks aplenty?
Kaboom.
Transmission factory manager with 6 day a week/5 work weeks in a row/6th week off shifts for a salary that doesn’t come close to compensating for the bizarre use of time?
“When can you start?”
Eventually it seems like everyone else can sense the desperation radiating from your situation. When I saw that Staples was conducting a hiring frenzy at a store not far from my apartment, got myself onto the schedule and drove down to the place for my interview. When opportunity knocks, you gotta hustle to answer the door.
I was directed to the offices at the rear of the store—not the place workers go to see if they have something “in stock” (on a side note: does that place really exist?) but the place where people go to use the rest room, or to take a break or to handle manager-behind the scenes type stuff.
“Go in this room and answer the questions on the computer. It should take about twenty minutes, then someone will get you.”
I worked through a multiple choice survey of what ifs, mostly related to corporate ethics and whether I’d steal a ballpoint pen if no one was looking. I entered the responses I thought they were seeking and signed off. Then I waited. And waited. And waited well past my scheduled time. If I had an explanation, I’d say this was payback for the supermarket interview and instead of me being the one hitting it off and running all over someone else’s designated slot, I was the one waiting because someone else was hitting it off.
I perked up when I heard a male voice down the hallway. “Oh, I overscheduled these interviews,” it said. “Ha ha ha,” they laughed, two male voices in on the joke, except it’s not funny when you’re the one who got all dolled up for nothing. As the minutes ticked by, I got annoyed, then peeved, then indignant. This guy—this someone who was supposed to check on me one and a half hours ago--was taking advantage. He knew whoever was coming to interview with him was desperate. He knew he could make or break us and if anyone got impatient and left, there would be plenty of others, hungrier people who didn’t mind waiting an hour, two hours, three-- whatever it took. In fact, maybe the waiting was part of his weeding out process. After a full two hours of waiting, I gave in and left, fuming all the way home. Back in the sanctity of the guest room/home office, I fired off a complaint to the same email address that I had used to schedule the interview. “My time is still important,” I wrote, “even if I’m not working right now.” I could’ve been home watching Maury, I thought, still furious. I could have been comfortable in a tee shirt and shorts instead of sweaty in a Petite Sophisticate pinstriped pants suit.
“I’m so sorry, they’re not supposed to overschedule interviews,” came the emailed reply from the P.R. person, “would you like to schedule another interview?”
For what? To be a store manager in the same miserable place where I had already squandered two hours of my life? To you I say, good day! Staples*? What was I thinking? (*Before you ask "What's wrong with Staples?", keep in mind this was before they invented the Easy Button.)
Another instance where my desperation worked against me was when the recruiting company came back with an opportunity to be a movie theater manager.
Now, I like going to the movies but that doesn’t mean I want to work there. In fact, working there would probably make me hate going to the movies.
“You’d get Sundays and Tuesdays off.”
Not even two consecutive days? That’s like having two Sundays in one week. Are you aware of how I feel about Sundays?
“You’ll be working through most of the holiday weekends because that’s when we have the biggest premieres.”
In a world where most people work regular hours, the majority of my job offers were coming from industries that made up their own calendars. I.J.’s 9 day week might actually be feasible to some of these guys.
“You’ll be working nights pretty often, but let me tell you, having this schedule has been great for me because I see my kids off to school in the mornings.”
Okay, stop it. Just stop talking. Say no more.
I landed a follow up interview at the corporate headquarters.
“Now you’re going to have to buy the plane ticket to get yourself up there, but they’ll reimburse you.” The recruiter said.
When we interviewed for the company that offered my husband and me not one job, but two, not only did that company make the travel arrangements, mail the tickets, send a car to shuttle us to their office and host a posh dinner at a local restaurant, they paid for all of it without hesitation. “Did you ride on the corporate jet?” asked my mother. “No.” I replied, dashing her high hopes. They were good, but not that good. This, though, this was a far cry from “good.”
“Fine.” I told the recruiter. “I’ll look up the tickets.”
I looked up the tickets and thought, “Where am I supposed to come up with $600 for a flight to Syracuse? Don’t they know I’m unemployed?”
“He’s going to buy the tickets for you then.” Said the recruiter after getting back with the interviewer. “Except you’ll be flying into Albany instead. They’ll drive down and meet you there.”
Out of curiosity, I looked up prices for tickets to Albany. $120. I could have handled that. Funny how Albany wasn’t an option when I was the one buying.
I flew up to Albany, rode in a ramshackle cab to the mall, and met the interviewers. As they talked, all I could think was “Please let something else come along because this can’t be it.”
My husband looked hopeful when he picked me up from the airport.
“I don’t know.” I said.
“If you don’t want the job, don’t take it.”
He made it sound so simple. If our roles were reversed, I’d be nudging him towards that job with a quickness. “I’ll hang out in the theaters on the weekends you have to work, honey.” And “Holiday weekends, schmoliday weekends!” And “Can you bring home a bucket of that movie popcorn? Microwaved isn’t quite the same.” Despite footing the bills on his own for over a year, he said none of these things; he was still objective enough to understand if I decided not to take it. Amazing.
The movie theater people came up with an offer and the recruiter broke the news. “You can take the eight week course at the Germantown theater.” This was a major bargaining chip because the training was usually in upstate New York and they were setting it up less than ten miles away from my home. Then came the offer, for less money than I anticipated and with the niggling detail that it wasn’t actually an offer to be a ‘Manager”, but instead, “assistant manager.” After being in charge of thirty soldiers in an overseas location with a combat mission I wasn’t qualified to be a full fledged manager? Ouch.
“I didn’t interview for that. I interviewed for manager.”
“Yes, but—“
We all know a sentence beginning with those two words is the prelude to disappointment.
“—there was another candidate that was better suited to be a manager.”
So the truth comes out: I was the runner up. “I’m not going to take it.” I said.
Here’s where the recruiter showed his true colors. “Wait a minute--don’t feel bad—they really liked you, they just didn’t feel you were ready to be a manager.” And then, as if that wasn’t insulting enough, he added, “If I were you, I’d take the offer. I know you could use the money.”
Anything that came after that sentence was tuned out. I knew what happened--the plane ticket situation had revealed my hand; he knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. On the flip side, he was desperate too. In the post 9/11 landscape, these recruiting companies were having trouble finding “opportunities” where they could pimp their candidates. My taking this job meant his company got a cut.
I called him on it.
“No, no—it’s not like that. I don’t want to have you in a job you don’t really want and if you end up leaving, it reflects poorly on us.”
“Shove it.” I said.
Okay, I didn’t really say that, but wouldn’t that have been funny? In reality the conversation disintegrated into a verbal tug of war. In the end, it really was as simple as my husband had put it--I didn’t want the job and I didn’t take it. There were other places to look without relying on recruiters and I was just getting started.
6.09.2008
Nine Days A Week
At work, you encounter a number of people from different places, different upbringings and different ways of thinking. In my first job in the D.C. metro area, I was hired under the pretense that I would handle some administrative duties for our project team, but also that I would inherit work from this guy who was supposed to move onto other things.
True to his words from the interview, my boss, the program manager (an Army lieutenant colonel), insisted on making his own travel plans and processing his own travel vouchers. The ones who wanted help either approached me with a humble demeanor or else they were demanding. “I need you to do X, Y and Z, fax it and give me a copy.” Evidently they didn’t get the boss’s message that the administrative tasks were going to fall back on the individuals—that was why the secretary position was eliminated and I was hired. But when you’re in a secretary desk with a half wall, and you’re placed directly outside of your boss’s office, then it’s hard to shed that label. I looked like a secretary (sorry, administrative assistant), handled mostly secretary-like things, so therefore…?
This entry is also about the guy I was supposed to be working with—the one who was supposed to leave his job to me while he moved onto bigger and better things. Apparently no one told him this or what I tend to think is that he was perfectly aware of this, but he preferred to carry out his own agenda. It didn’t take long to discover that there wasn’t a whole lot to his job. The biggest duty was the daily “hotwash.” The term “hotwash” has nothing to do with the temperature in which you should wash your dirtiest laundry. It was a teleconference, scheduled daily at noon (just in time to interfere with the possibility of lunch plans), in the boss’s office. Having it here meant everyone strolling into the office took the liberty of dumping their stinking banana peels and odoriferous tuna packets in MY trashcan, which was just outside of the office.
After the guy (we’ll call him “Important Job,” or “I.J.” for short), took roll call, the boss took over the meeting and everyone talked about the newest developments in the product development since the last hotwash (only now do I see how close that word is to “hogwash”), 24 hours earlier. I had steno pads full of notes and assigned tasks, busy work to keep me gainfully employed. The daily teleconference was easy; it was the weekly video teleconference that was the big show. This involved an extensive slide show, and coordination of VTC facilities. The slides had to be printed and copied—color copies for the boss, full sized black and whites for the people at the table, and, if time permitted, handouts for the ones in the cheap seats. This would turn into an all day task thanks to last minute changes and no set deadline short of the meeting’s start time to make the changes. Once we finished preparing for the meeting, the next step was to gather everything together and schlep it over to the one building that had VTC capabilities. It was here where I assumed the role of “slide advancer,” another duty I.J. was probably more than happy to shirk.
After receiving orders from I.J. to make copies, shred the two tons of documents that he had exhumed from his rathole cubicle and do all the other suspiciously administrative-assistant-ish work, I eventually realized that I.J. was never going to give me any of the more important stuff. That was because there wasn’t a whole lot for him to pass on and because he had been doing the same job for 15 years and was coasting his way to retirement. Giving anything to me meant he was obsolete unless he took on a slew of new tasks. Why would he want to do that? Why would he possibly want ruin a perfectly good set up?
The thing that killed me most was that he had a daughter not much younger than I was. This girl was clearly the light of his life. He bragged about her field hockey skills and took obvious joy in the weekends when she came home. “Oh!” He’d announce at the end of the work week, “My daughter’s coming home with her friends! The scourge is coming! They’re going to clean out our fridge and do laundry!” All of this said with a twinkle in his eye. He didn’t mind it at all.
Upon her graduation, he bought her a brand new car and told us all how he was having a sunroof cut into it, because that was what she wanted. She was going to be commissioned into the Army as a second lieutenant. Here’s where I get confused—generally when you come to work there is someone out there who wants to help you succeed. Sometimes they’re assigned as a sponsor, sometimes it’s as informal as pulling you aside to let you know they are in your corner. Sometimes you learn from them through short conversations in the hallway, sometimes it’s out at lunch, away from the office politics. Given that I.J. was supposed to be teaching me the ropes, he seemed like a shoe in as my mentor. Given that he had a daughter who was going into the Army--much like I had done not too many years before--you would think he would look at me and make the connection. He was supposed to think “I wouldn’t want my daughter doing B.S. admin stuff when she wasn’t hired for that and she’s capable of doing so much more. Hey now, wait a minute," he was supposed to say, "the same applies to this person. If she were five years younger, she’d be in my daughter’s shoes." And that's where the synapses would fire and he'd rise from his cube shaking a fist and shouting about the injustice of it all--
"And if I don't expect my daughter to have this kind of crappy job, then I shouldn't expect her--" (he points to me slaving away in my half-walled cube)-- "to do it either!” Then we'd all break out into some ode to the working stiff musical, waving jazz hands and dancing on our desks and on the low pile carpet in moves so perfectly coordinated and yet, somehow completely natural in our fluorescently lit environment.
Mais non. That version of the story only happens in this blog.
He had no qualms about telling me to buy doughnuts for the next day’s meeting. Saw nothing wrong with sending me to the Xerox for a new set of copies after the nineteenth miniscule change in the slide presentation. Never once did he ever acknowledge that I was overqualified for the things he was passing down. Nope, to him, I was merely the one there to take over the mindless, unimportant parts of his job while he kept the interesting bits all to himself. When you realize the person who should be looking out for you isn’t, it’s time to take control of your fate.
My problem was that I had just come off of 1 ½ years of unemployment when I accepted the job. When you haven’t had a job in that long, your confidence wanes. But it took so long to land this job, you think, why risk it? But I kind of like having a paycheck, even if my dignity is taking a hit. Or: Well, at least it’s not a hard job.
It took the better part of a year to get angry enough to actively start looking again. Before I did I thought it was only fair to talk to my manager first—give the guy an opportunity to correct the problem. The odd part about being a contractor at a government site is that you have two bosses—the government people you work for every day and a manager who handles the company related stuff—the paychecks, your timecard, your yearly reviews, etc. I stopped by my manager’s desk and informed him that I was considering a move. My complaint was that I wasn’t doing much and thought I could do more (for more money, except I didn’t mention that part) elsewhere.
My manager was caught off guard, but he recovered quickly. I could see the wheels spinning as he promised me a solution.
"We're going to do something to change that." He said.
What was the solution?
“You’re going to Fort Bragg!”
Um, thanks? I didn’t have any excuse to *not* go, I just figured I would stay in the office and support everyone else who did go. It was a 5 hour drive and honestly, with the things I had heard about the place, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about going, but okay, I’ll take it for the sake of “professional growth.” I’d never been to North Carolina. Despite the "North" in the state's name, that was officially considered "The South," right? Maybe it wasn’t as terrible as I imagined.
When a co-worker heard this, she said, “Oh, yeah—they’re just sending you away so you can’t interview.”
Yes, that certainly made sense. I didn’t get any additional tasks, I just got sent to do—oh, I don’t know—we had a daily teleconference at the end of every day—that was important, right? We needed to pick up supplies to set up camp in the old building we were working out of--that was important, right?
I wasted no time getting to work. The first morning I was there, I posted my resume on the website of the company I worked for in El Paso. They had openings, I had internet access and a saved copy of my resume on a disk; it was worth a shot.
The trips to Bragg (yes, I said “trips”—I.J. and I worked out a schedule where we rotated after I made it clear that I wasn’t okay with being there for five weeks straight) were a waste except that I got to see my best friend from college, who was no longer the Army, but in the area because her husband was still on active duty. Her husband was deployed and she was in the last days of her second pregnancy. I wouldn’t have gotten to see her otherwise. This was the silver lining, so to speak. That and the realization that North Carolinians were vastly more patient and polite than the D.C. metro-ans.
Once I was done with the Fort Bragg stuff, it was back to business as usual. I.J. liked to fill the silence of the office by spouting off his crazy ideas, one of which was the nine day week. “Six work days and a three day weekend. That’s what I would do.” He’d say. How he planned to overhaul the entire world’s ingrained acceptance of the seven day week never came into discussion. And then what about the Beatles song, “Eight Days a Week?” It would be rendered obsolete—someone would have to change it to “Ten Days a Week.”
Another one he liked to share was, “I’d eliminate income tax entirely and put a flat sales tax on everything.” Not such an outlandish idea, but it’s a bit oversimplified. He would repeat these ideas loudly, maybe with the thought that saying them often enough would start a revolution right there in the heart of building 317.
In your life you have pivotal moments (commonly known by AP English students as an epiphany, or, for Oprah viewers--a "lightbulb moment")—these moments usually involve events that change your path irrevocably. My moment was not when my company canned a co-worker (one who, unlike me, genuinely seemed to enjoy her job) on a Friday, immediately after she arrived at the office. It was not when I drove 3 hours to get to work after the worst snowstorm of the decade, only to get sent home an hour later for a 2 hour trek back. It was not when an Army major flat out asked how much I paid for my car (Who does that?). No, it all went down when our boss had a meeting in a nearby building. I had gotten everything set up—60 cup capacity silver bullet of coffee with powdered creamer and sugar, doughnuts, and even fruit and juice for the health conscious. Thanks to me, all of it was in place before the ever-important attendees arrived. I got back into my car and drove back to the office thinking my work was done.
A few hours in, I.J. calls my desk and asks me to make more copies of the briefing; apparently that other building does not have any copy machines. Fine—I make the copies and shuttle them back over to the meeting location. I slip into the conference room, hand them off to I.J. and make my exit. As I’m walking down the hallway towards the doors, I hear I.J. call out my name.
“Yes?”
A flash of uncertainty passed through his eyes. Was he going to thank me? Tell me that everything had gone off without a hitch because of that morning's spread? I waited for his words.
“Could you make another pot of coffee? We’re all out.”
In a meeting of at least fifty people, he thought it was acceptable to call me over from my desk to make a fresh pot? Was he not capable of going down the hallway with the empty bullet and starting a new batch during a break? Was he for real?
I stood there for a moment, feeling the most speechless I had ever felt in my life. He had baited me over there with a request for additional copies and thrown in the “well, while you’re here…” to hook me.
Mais, non. Not this time, buddy.
Heart pounding, I turned away from him without a word. It was an unprofessional move, but surely anything I had said to him just then would have been infinitely more unprofessional than pretending not to hear what he had said.
Besides, what was more unprofessional than what he did? After doing the job I understand the intricacies of being an administrative assistant—it’s not as easy as people assume, but the hardest part about it wasn’t the actual work, it was the lack of respect that comes with the very moment you’re seated behind that half exposed cubicle. It’s the “Oh, she’s just the admin” mentality. Now if people had any sense at all they would take care of their admin assistants and I don’t mean giving them a wilted bunch of supermarket roses and a cheesy card for Administrative Assistant Day. Every day show respect to that person—or else it’s going to be, “Oh, I don’t know if you ever gave me that file,” or “I’m sure I entered your time for the week, what do you mean you didn’t get paid?” or “Hm, I thought I sent that voucher to the finance department last month, I don’t know why you haven’t been reimbursed yet.”
That moment has stuck with me and it probably always will. The moment that caused me to turn away without another word was the very thing that convinced me to leave. When you’re working in a place where people feel they are too good to do the most basic things for themselves because it is “beneath” them and the leadership does nothing to tell these people they’re wrong, it’s time to say “Mais, non” and move on.
True to his words from the interview, my boss, the program manager (an Army lieutenant colonel), insisted on making his own travel plans and processing his own travel vouchers. The ones who wanted help either approached me with a humble demeanor or else they were demanding. “I need you to do X, Y and Z, fax it and give me a copy.” Evidently they didn’t get the boss’s message that the administrative tasks were going to fall back on the individuals—that was why the secretary position was eliminated and I was hired. But when you’re in a secretary desk with a half wall, and you’re placed directly outside of your boss’s office, then it’s hard to shed that label. I looked like a secretary (sorry, administrative assistant), handled mostly secretary-like things, so therefore…?
This entry is also about the guy I was supposed to be working with—the one who was supposed to leave his job to me while he moved onto bigger and better things. Apparently no one told him this or what I tend to think is that he was perfectly aware of this, but he preferred to carry out his own agenda. It didn’t take long to discover that there wasn’t a whole lot to his job. The biggest duty was the daily “hotwash.” The term “hotwash” has nothing to do with the temperature in which you should wash your dirtiest laundry. It was a teleconference, scheduled daily at noon (just in time to interfere with the possibility of lunch plans), in the boss’s office. Having it here meant everyone strolling into the office took the liberty of dumping their stinking banana peels and odoriferous tuna packets in MY trashcan, which was just outside of the office.
After the guy (we’ll call him “Important Job,” or “I.J.” for short), took roll call, the boss took over the meeting and everyone talked about the newest developments in the product development since the last hotwash (only now do I see how close that word is to “hogwash”), 24 hours earlier. I had steno pads full of notes and assigned tasks, busy work to keep me gainfully employed. The daily teleconference was easy; it was the weekly video teleconference that was the big show. This involved an extensive slide show, and coordination of VTC facilities. The slides had to be printed and copied—color copies for the boss, full sized black and whites for the people at the table, and, if time permitted, handouts for the ones in the cheap seats. This would turn into an all day task thanks to last minute changes and no set deadline short of the meeting’s start time to make the changes. Once we finished preparing for the meeting, the next step was to gather everything together and schlep it over to the one building that had VTC capabilities. It was here where I assumed the role of “slide advancer,” another duty I.J. was probably more than happy to shirk.
After receiving orders from I.J. to make copies, shred the two tons of documents that he had exhumed from his rathole cubicle and do all the other suspiciously administrative-assistant-ish work, I eventually realized that I.J. was never going to give me any of the more important stuff. That was because there wasn’t a whole lot for him to pass on and because he had been doing the same job for 15 years and was coasting his way to retirement. Giving anything to me meant he was obsolete unless he took on a slew of new tasks. Why would he want to do that? Why would he possibly want ruin a perfectly good set up?
The thing that killed me most was that he had a daughter not much younger than I was. This girl was clearly the light of his life. He bragged about her field hockey skills and took obvious joy in the weekends when she came home. “Oh!” He’d announce at the end of the work week, “My daughter’s coming home with her friends! The scourge is coming! They’re going to clean out our fridge and do laundry!” All of this said with a twinkle in his eye. He didn’t mind it at all.
Upon her graduation, he bought her a brand new car and told us all how he was having a sunroof cut into it, because that was what she wanted. She was going to be commissioned into the Army as a second lieutenant. Here’s where I get confused—generally when you come to work there is someone out there who wants to help you succeed. Sometimes they’re assigned as a sponsor, sometimes it’s as informal as pulling you aside to let you know they are in your corner. Sometimes you learn from them through short conversations in the hallway, sometimes it’s out at lunch, away from the office politics. Given that I.J. was supposed to be teaching me the ropes, he seemed like a shoe in as my mentor. Given that he had a daughter who was going into the Army--much like I had done not too many years before--you would think he would look at me and make the connection. He was supposed to think “I wouldn’t want my daughter doing B.S. admin stuff when she wasn’t hired for that and she’s capable of doing so much more. Hey now, wait a minute," he was supposed to say, "the same applies to this person. If she were five years younger, she’d be in my daughter’s shoes." And that's where the synapses would fire and he'd rise from his cube shaking a fist and shouting about the injustice of it all--
"And if I don't expect my daughter to have this kind of crappy job, then I shouldn't expect her--" (he points to me slaving away in my half-walled cube)-- "to do it either!” Then we'd all break out into some ode to the working stiff musical, waving jazz hands and dancing on our desks and on the low pile carpet in moves so perfectly coordinated and yet, somehow completely natural in our fluorescently lit environment.
Mais non. That version of the story only happens in this blog.
He had no qualms about telling me to buy doughnuts for the next day’s meeting. Saw nothing wrong with sending me to the Xerox for a new set of copies after the nineteenth miniscule change in the slide presentation. Never once did he ever acknowledge that I was overqualified for the things he was passing down. Nope, to him, I was merely the one there to take over the mindless, unimportant parts of his job while he kept the interesting bits all to himself. When you realize the person who should be looking out for you isn’t, it’s time to take control of your fate.
My problem was that I had just come off of 1 ½ years of unemployment when I accepted the job. When you haven’t had a job in that long, your confidence wanes. But it took so long to land this job, you think, why risk it? But I kind of like having a paycheck, even if my dignity is taking a hit. Or: Well, at least it’s not a hard job.
It took the better part of a year to get angry enough to actively start looking again. Before I did I thought it was only fair to talk to my manager first—give the guy an opportunity to correct the problem. The odd part about being a contractor at a government site is that you have two bosses—the government people you work for every day and a manager who handles the company related stuff—the paychecks, your timecard, your yearly reviews, etc. I stopped by my manager’s desk and informed him that I was considering a move. My complaint was that I wasn’t doing much and thought I could do more (for more money, except I didn’t mention that part) elsewhere.
My manager was caught off guard, but he recovered quickly. I could see the wheels spinning as he promised me a solution.
"We're going to do something to change that." He said.
What was the solution?
“You’re going to Fort Bragg!”
Um, thanks? I didn’t have any excuse to *not* go, I just figured I would stay in the office and support everyone else who did go. It was a 5 hour drive and honestly, with the things I had heard about the place, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about going, but okay, I’ll take it for the sake of “professional growth.” I’d never been to North Carolina. Despite the "North" in the state's name, that was officially considered "The South," right? Maybe it wasn’t as terrible as I imagined.
When a co-worker heard this, she said, “Oh, yeah—they’re just sending you away so you can’t interview.”
Yes, that certainly made sense. I didn’t get any additional tasks, I just got sent to do—oh, I don’t know—we had a daily teleconference at the end of every day—that was important, right? We needed to pick up supplies to set up camp in the old building we were working out of--that was important, right?
I wasted no time getting to work. The first morning I was there, I posted my resume on the website of the company I worked for in El Paso. They had openings, I had internet access and a saved copy of my resume on a disk; it was worth a shot.
The trips to Bragg (yes, I said “trips”—I.J. and I worked out a schedule where we rotated after I made it clear that I wasn’t okay with being there for five weeks straight) were a waste except that I got to see my best friend from college, who was no longer the Army, but in the area because her husband was still on active duty. Her husband was deployed and she was in the last days of her second pregnancy. I wouldn’t have gotten to see her otherwise. This was the silver lining, so to speak. That and the realization that North Carolinians were vastly more patient and polite than the D.C. metro-ans.
Once I was done with the Fort Bragg stuff, it was back to business as usual. I.J. liked to fill the silence of the office by spouting off his crazy ideas, one of which was the nine day week. “Six work days and a three day weekend. That’s what I would do.” He’d say. How he planned to overhaul the entire world’s ingrained acceptance of the seven day week never came into discussion. And then what about the Beatles song, “Eight Days a Week?” It would be rendered obsolete—someone would have to change it to “Ten Days a Week.”
Another one he liked to share was, “I’d eliminate income tax entirely and put a flat sales tax on everything.” Not such an outlandish idea, but it’s a bit oversimplified. He would repeat these ideas loudly, maybe with the thought that saying them often enough would start a revolution right there in the heart of building 317.
In your life you have pivotal moments (commonly known by AP English students as an epiphany, or, for Oprah viewers--a "lightbulb moment")—these moments usually involve events that change your path irrevocably. My moment was not when my company canned a co-worker (one who, unlike me, genuinely seemed to enjoy her job) on a Friday, immediately after she arrived at the office. It was not when I drove 3 hours to get to work after the worst snowstorm of the decade, only to get sent home an hour later for a 2 hour trek back. It was not when an Army major flat out asked how much I paid for my car (Who does that?). No, it all went down when our boss had a meeting in a nearby building. I had gotten everything set up—60 cup capacity silver bullet of coffee with powdered creamer and sugar, doughnuts, and even fruit and juice for the health conscious. Thanks to me, all of it was in place before the ever-important attendees arrived. I got back into my car and drove back to the office thinking my work was done.
A few hours in, I.J. calls my desk and asks me to make more copies of the briefing; apparently that other building does not have any copy machines. Fine—I make the copies and shuttle them back over to the meeting location. I slip into the conference room, hand them off to I.J. and make my exit. As I’m walking down the hallway towards the doors, I hear I.J. call out my name.
“Yes?”
A flash of uncertainty passed through his eyes. Was he going to thank me? Tell me that everything had gone off without a hitch because of that morning's spread? I waited for his words.
“Could you make another pot of coffee? We’re all out.”
In a meeting of at least fifty people, he thought it was acceptable to call me over from my desk to make a fresh pot? Was he not capable of going down the hallway with the empty bullet and starting a new batch during a break? Was he for real?
I stood there for a moment, feeling the most speechless I had ever felt in my life. He had baited me over there with a request for additional copies and thrown in the “well, while you’re here…” to hook me.
Mais, non. Not this time, buddy.
Heart pounding, I turned away from him without a word. It was an unprofessional move, but surely anything I had said to him just then would have been infinitely more unprofessional than pretending not to hear what he had said.
Besides, what was more unprofessional than what he did? After doing the job I understand the intricacies of being an administrative assistant—it’s not as easy as people assume, but the hardest part about it wasn’t the actual work, it was the lack of respect that comes with the very moment you’re seated behind that half exposed cubicle. It’s the “Oh, she’s just the admin” mentality. Now if people had any sense at all they would take care of their admin assistants and I don’t mean giving them a wilted bunch of supermarket roses and a cheesy card for Administrative Assistant Day. Every day show respect to that person—or else it’s going to be, “Oh, I don’t know if you ever gave me that file,” or “I’m sure I entered your time for the week, what do you mean you didn’t get paid?” or “Hm, I thought I sent that voucher to the finance department last month, I don’t know why you haven’t been reimbursed yet.”
That moment has stuck with me and it probably always will. The moment that caused me to turn away without another word was the very thing that convinced me to leave. When you’re working in a place where people feel they are too good to do the most basic things for themselves because it is “beneath” them and the leadership does nothing to tell these people they’re wrong, it’s time to say “Mais, non” and move on.
Goth Girl Of My Dreams
The internet is an incredible thing. Even now that it’s a daily (hourly? minutely?) presence in my life, I continue to marvel at the possibilities that exist—accessing everyone, everything and anything you desire is just a simple Google search away. Thank you, Al.
My first days of internet access were as a cadet with my own computer, which was connected to the wall by a bright blue cord that looked something like a thick telephone line. An “Ethernet” cable, they called it. I had an email address consisting not of a name, but of a number and letter combination: my Cullum number plus academic company assignment. I had access to “bulletin boards”—West Point’s own version of Craigslist that existed before Craigslist--some portions of which were restricted to cadets only. Because plebes were not allowed to speak to each other in the cadet area, they often took their conversations to the boards designated for our class.
“Jokes” one person would title their post. From there you could use your mouse and open the entry to read the jokes or click again to add some of your own. In the more popular posts, comments cascaded down like intricate staircases made of bright blue hyperlinks. Many of the contributions were part of a collective effort aimed at making mealtimes easier for us all. If your table commandant demanded something funny, you could placate him by whipping out that printed page of jokes that good old “Smokestack” posted the night before.
That’s another plus of the internet—you could post as “Spider-Man” and none would be the wiser. In the readers’ minds you really were that guy in the red and blue suit spinning webs on the web. Most people used their actual names, but some thought it fitting to throw in their alter ego as if to say, I’m a generic plebe by day, but behind my computer I’m a superhero, and I’m letting all one thousand of you in on the secret.
Ghost that I was, I was petrified of heading out of my room at the end of the day. I didn’t socialize, I didn’t study, I merely lived in daily terror of the upperclassmen, who in retrospect weren’t really all that scary. My refuge was the local network and the cadet bulletin boards. It was there where I sparred with some yearling calling himself “the General” or poked around to find something clever or funny. It was there where I printed off trivia and menus for upcoming meals, or read debates about the fairness of the rules and whether the academy’s “toleration” clause in the Honor Code was worth following.
It was there where I discovered someone else who admired The Cure just as much as I did.
One of my classmates had posted an inquiry about the Cure—my favorite group. That post hung there, unanswered, as if it were beckoning for me and only me to respond. I was a worthy responder--I had every one of their albums in my Case Logic CD storage book, including their very first album, produced when I was 3 years old. The group’s lineup had changed over the years, but the one that mattered, Robert Smith, had been there from the start. I spent most of my high school years wanting to be that man’s lipstick, and even went through a phase where I carried a Wet N’ Wild tube of the closest knock off of the shade he wore. My Spider-Man wasn’t the one in the skintight suit, it was the thing from the “Lullaby” video. At one point I had five posters of the Cure on my walls in all, each one containing the aforementioned Mr. Smith with his porcelain skin, raccoon eyes, teased black hair and smudged red lips in what was to me at the time, a varying array of come hither poses. What my parents must have thought when they opened the door and looked at the walls—I’ve never asked, but I sometimes wonder.
“I love them,” I typed, excited to have found a kindred spirit, one that didn’t post about U2 or Jimmy Buffett or any of the typical cadet musical mainstays, no! This guy liked the Cure. And so did I! Finally, someone who got it! Who can ask for anything more?
We exchanged a few more messages until the guy decided we needed to meet. Things were rolling right along, why not? It might be a love connection or at least someone else to swap music with.
“Meet me by Ike Hall.” He replied.
See, this was the point where I should have politely declined because all of the magic, all of the conversational chemistry we had over the web couldn't possibly survive once we met. In fact, everything came to a grinding halt not long after we recognized each other and introduced ourselves.
He was attractive—tall, with well placed features on an oval face. Wire rimmed glasses framed inquisitive eyes and dress gray made him sharp. My first impression wasn’t the problem but I knew instantly from the look on his face that he was disappointed. "This isn't the Goth girl of my dreams," he appeared to be thinking. Here was the down side of the internet--left to your own devices, the person typing on the other side of that ethernet cable looked any way you wanted. Then you actually met them, the reality very rarely matched up to the illusion you created. I'm guessing he was imagining a female version of Robert Smith, with alabaster skin, a wisp of a figure and hair the color of midnight. I knew in my heart that the reality: tan skin, short curly hair and the lack of being able to carry on a conversation as effortlessly as I had done through a computer was going to be the death blow to anything that might have been, and ironically enough, "what might have been but never was" is the running theme of many Cure songs.
“Um, so it’s nice to finally meet you,” I said.
“Yeah.”he replied, though he probably felt like adding, "Get away from me, you impostor!"
Kill me—kill me now, and kill me quickly, I thought, when things fell so flat so fast. I wouldn't be able to rescue this meeting with small talk because I don't have that quality we all know as the gift of gab. I know you're thinking, "Nooo...not you. It can't be. I've read these blog posts and you are one wordy mutha (shut yo' mouth)!" Well, that's true, I can be wordy if it doesn't involve actual talking. I can work wonders with a keyboard and lag time to come up with something witty, but when it comes to a live performance I get stage fright. And God help me if the other person is cute.
“Well, the Cure, I mean, their intros are just sooo long.”
“Oh, yeah." he said, nodding, "They do have really long intros.”
We stared at each other, knowing that unlike a Cure song, this intro was likely to be very, very short. We both wanted this to work but we also seemed to realize that it wasn't. With just a few lines of conversation we found ourselves bogged down in that swamp known as “So what?” territory.
“I have all their stuff.” I said, while thinking: “Eject, Eject, Eject!”
We didn’t last five minutes. Maybe he had invited me to Ike Hall with the idea that at some point we could venture inside for a Coke and fries, but he never admitted it and I don’t blame him. Why continue the awkwardness when you could cut your losses? When we parted, we returned to the barracks with the smallest of goodbyes, and the unspoken promise to pretend it all never happened, to never speak of our meeting again. We didn’t even attempt to rekindle the magic over email because we knew it was futile.
It was a disappointment (not the worst) then but it’s funny now. What was I thinking? How did I ever believe that meeting was a good idea? How could I ever have thought, in my deluded teenaged mind, that if only Robert Smith met me would he truly know his soulmate when I couldn’t even get past a few sentences with a commoner--a non-famous fellow fan?
I’ve often asked and sometimes wonder.
My first days of internet access were as a cadet with my own computer, which was connected to the wall by a bright blue cord that looked something like a thick telephone line. An “Ethernet” cable, they called it. I had an email address consisting not of a name, but of a number and letter combination: my Cullum number plus academic company assignment. I had access to “bulletin boards”—West Point’s own version of Craigslist that existed before Craigslist--some portions of which were restricted to cadets only. Because plebes were not allowed to speak to each other in the cadet area, they often took their conversations to the boards designated for our class.
“Jokes” one person would title their post. From there you could use your mouse and open the entry to read the jokes or click again to add some of your own. In the more popular posts, comments cascaded down like intricate staircases made of bright blue hyperlinks. Many of the contributions were part of a collective effort aimed at making mealtimes easier for us all. If your table commandant demanded something funny, you could placate him by whipping out that printed page of jokes that good old “Smokestack” posted the night before.
That’s another plus of the internet—you could post as “Spider-Man” and none would be the wiser. In the readers’ minds you really were that guy in the red and blue suit spinning webs on the web. Most people used their actual names, but some thought it fitting to throw in their alter ego as if to say, I’m a generic plebe by day, but behind my computer I’m a superhero, and I’m letting all one thousand of you in on the secret.
Ghost that I was, I was petrified of heading out of my room at the end of the day. I didn’t socialize, I didn’t study, I merely lived in daily terror of the upperclassmen, who in retrospect weren’t really all that scary. My refuge was the local network and the cadet bulletin boards. It was there where I sparred with some yearling calling himself “the General” or poked around to find something clever or funny. It was there where I printed off trivia and menus for upcoming meals, or read debates about the fairness of the rules and whether the academy’s “toleration” clause in the Honor Code was worth following.
It was there where I discovered someone else who admired The Cure just as much as I did.
One of my classmates had posted an inquiry about the Cure—my favorite group. That post hung there, unanswered, as if it were beckoning for me and only me to respond. I was a worthy responder--I had every one of their albums in my Case Logic CD storage book, including their very first album, produced when I was 3 years old. The group’s lineup had changed over the years, but the one that mattered, Robert Smith, had been there from the start. I spent most of my high school years wanting to be that man’s lipstick, and even went through a phase where I carried a Wet N’ Wild tube of the closest knock off of the shade he wore. My Spider-Man wasn’t the one in the skintight suit, it was the thing from the “Lullaby” video. At one point I had five posters of the Cure on my walls in all, each one containing the aforementioned Mr. Smith with his porcelain skin, raccoon eyes, teased black hair and smudged red lips in what was to me at the time, a varying array of come hither poses. What my parents must have thought when they opened the door and looked at the walls—I’ve never asked, but I sometimes wonder.
“I love them,” I typed, excited to have found a kindred spirit, one that didn’t post about U2 or Jimmy Buffett or any of the typical cadet musical mainstays, no! This guy liked the Cure. And so did I! Finally, someone who got it! Who can ask for anything more?
We exchanged a few more messages until the guy decided we needed to meet. Things were rolling right along, why not? It might be a love connection or at least someone else to swap music with.
“Meet me by Ike Hall.” He replied.
See, this was the point where I should have politely declined because all of the magic, all of the conversational chemistry we had over the web couldn't possibly survive once we met. In fact, everything came to a grinding halt not long after we recognized each other and introduced ourselves.
He was attractive—tall, with well placed features on an oval face. Wire rimmed glasses framed inquisitive eyes and dress gray made him sharp. My first impression wasn’t the problem but I knew instantly from the look on his face that he was disappointed. "This isn't the Goth girl of my dreams," he appeared to be thinking. Here was the down side of the internet--left to your own devices, the person typing on the other side of that ethernet cable looked any way you wanted. Then you actually met them, the reality very rarely matched up to the illusion you created. I'm guessing he was imagining a female version of Robert Smith, with alabaster skin, a wisp of a figure and hair the color of midnight. I knew in my heart that the reality: tan skin, short curly hair and the lack of being able to carry on a conversation as effortlessly as I had done through a computer was going to be the death blow to anything that might have been, and ironically enough, "what might have been but never was" is the running theme of many Cure songs.
“Um, so it’s nice to finally meet you,” I said.
“Yeah.”he replied, though he probably felt like adding, "Get away from me, you impostor!"
Kill me—kill me now, and kill me quickly, I thought, when things fell so flat so fast. I wouldn't be able to rescue this meeting with small talk because I don't have that quality we all know as the gift of gab. I know you're thinking, "Nooo...not you. It can't be. I've read these blog posts and you are one wordy mutha (shut yo' mouth)!" Well, that's true, I can be wordy if it doesn't involve actual talking. I can work wonders with a keyboard and lag time to come up with something witty, but when it comes to a live performance I get stage fright. And God help me if the other person is cute.
“Well, the Cure, I mean, their intros are just sooo long.”
“Oh, yeah." he said, nodding, "They do have really long intros.”
We stared at each other, knowing that unlike a Cure song, this intro was likely to be very, very short. We both wanted this to work but we also seemed to realize that it wasn't. With just a few lines of conversation we found ourselves bogged down in that swamp known as “So what?” territory.
“I have all their stuff.” I said, while thinking: “Eject, Eject, Eject!”
We didn’t last five minutes. Maybe he had invited me to Ike Hall with the idea that at some point we could venture inside for a Coke and fries, but he never admitted it and I don’t blame him. Why continue the awkwardness when you could cut your losses? When we parted, we returned to the barracks with the smallest of goodbyes, and the unspoken promise to pretend it all never happened, to never speak of our meeting again. We didn’t even attempt to rekindle the magic over email because we knew it was futile.
It was a disappointment (not the worst) then but it’s funny now. What was I thinking? How did I ever believe that meeting was a good idea? How could I ever have thought, in my deluded teenaged mind, that if only Robert Smith met me would he truly know his soulmate when I couldn’t even get past a few sentences with a commoner--a non-famous fellow fan?
I’ve often asked and sometimes wonder.
6.08.2008
"Skiddoosh"
Yesterday I had the privilege of taking my 2 1/2 year old to the movies. We almost had to abort the mission when we arrived at 12:02 to an 11:45 showing. We entered the theater and as we walked up the aisle towards the seats, a scary part of a scene played. My initial thought was "WTF, it already started? I thought this was the 12:15 show!" For two year olds, you hear exactly what they're thinking, and in this instance it was:
"I WANNA GO HOME!"
I coaxed her towards the exit (which is the same door as the entrance) and went back out to the ticket taker, who then welcomed me, for the second time, to Loews. I thought, "Dude, you just took my ticket a minute ago." I said, "Um, this ticket is for the 11:45 show. It's already started and I wanted a ticket for the 12:15 show."
Without sending me back to the ticket counter for the correctly stamped tickets (thank goodness for common sense because toting an Icee, a bag of popcorn and holding a 2 year old's hand while trying to conduct a ticket exchange didn't sound appealing to me), he directed me to the right theater.
Take 2.
We entered again, me, spilling popcorn while dragging my kid, who was still hesitant about the whole movie thing. We made it up the aisle, and across the divide between the neck breaking seats and the normal seats. We settled into an island of three seats just behind the divide. I sat down, continuing to spill popcorn, while my kid, who was experiencing her first taste of the stuff, was grabbing for the kernels that plopped to the floor. "No, no, no, don't eat those," I said. The five second rule does not apply in the movies, but it was already too late. I find the best way to remind myself that a few germs won't kill her is to remember how much bacteria laden crap I must have consumed as a child. It's the "hey, I turned out okay," line of reasoning.
We sit through almost twenty minutes of previews. The Wall-E (Pixar) one is amazing. I am glad we're in a dark theater so no one can see the tears coming. Yes, I am a sap at the movies, but only for cartoon trailers, nothing else. Seriously, I just thought of how breathtaking the images were for that film and how much I look forward to watching the entire story. Other cartoons that brought tears: Iron Giant, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. (not anymore, I've seen it about 50 times)...yup I am a big ol' sap. Just for cartoons, though. You can show me real human sob stories and I'm hard pressed not to feel like I've been manipulated into crying. Cartoons, on the other hand--well they are just so derned innocent. I can't help it, I tell you!
The movie starts. I think "Oh boy, we have to sit through the scary scene again--maybe it won't be so scary the second time around." I get a few "I WANNA GO HOME!"'s throughout the movie, but mostly I get wide eyes and a hand shoved into the bag of popcorn or in her mouth. I get through it without tantrums, freak outs, or having to chase a wandering kid through the theater. It was an overall success. The funniest part is that she's more obsessed with the movie after having seen it. I've played the trailer many times now--so often that I say "Skiddoosh" and it results in a flurry of toddler laughter.
:)
"I WANNA GO HOME!"
I coaxed her towards the exit (which is the same door as the entrance) and went back out to the ticket taker, who then welcomed me, for the second time, to Loews. I thought, "Dude, you just took my ticket a minute ago." I said, "Um, this ticket is for the 11:45 show. It's already started and I wanted a ticket for the 12:15 show."
Without sending me back to the ticket counter for the correctly stamped tickets (thank goodness for common sense because toting an Icee, a bag of popcorn and holding a 2 year old's hand while trying to conduct a ticket exchange didn't sound appealing to me), he directed me to the right theater.
Take 2.
We entered again, me, spilling popcorn while dragging my kid, who was still hesitant about the whole movie thing. We made it up the aisle, and across the divide between the neck breaking seats and the normal seats. We settled into an island of three seats just behind the divide. I sat down, continuing to spill popcorn, while my kid, who was experiencing her first taste of the stuff, was grabbing for the kernels that plopped to the floor. "No, no, no, don't eat those," I said. The five second rule does not apply in the movies, but it was already too late. I find the best way to remind myself that a few germs won't kill her is to remember how much bacteria laden crap I must have consumed as a child. It's the "hey, I turned out okay," line of reasoning.
We sit through almost twenty minutes of previews. The Wall-E (Pixar) one is amazing. I am glad we're in a dark theater so no one can see the tears coming. Yes, I am a sap at the movies, but only for cartoon trailers, nothing else. Seriously, I just thought of how breathtaking the images were for that film and how much I look forward to watching the entire story. Other cartoons that brought tears: Iron Giant, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. (not anymore, I've seen it about 50 times)...yup I am a big ol' sap. Just for cartoons, though. You can show me real human sob stories and I'm hard pressed not to feel like I've been manipulated into crying. Cartoons, on the other hand--well they are just so derned innocent. I can't help it, I tell you!
The movie starts. I think "Oh boy, we have to sit through the scary scene again--maybe it won't be so scary the second time around." I get a few "I WANNA GO HOME!"'s throughout the movie, but mostly I get wide eyes and a hand shoved into the bag of popcorn or in her mouth. I get through it without tantrums, freak outs, or having to chase a wandering kid through the theater. It was an overall success. The funniest part is that she's more obsessed with the movie after having seen it. I've played the trailer many times now--so often that I say "Skiddoosh" and it results in a flurry of toddler laughter.
:)
6.06.2008
Elements Of A Sports Bar
So while I was stranded in the airport hotel last Thursday, I ventured down to the lobby to get myself a treat. Okay, I mean dinner, but I can’t help it, I had to follow through on the joke; I love that little jingle (as visions of smiling bags of popcorn, candy bars, and soda-filled, straw-poked cups strut through my head--click the title of this entry if this is now in your head too!).
As I was trapped in a hotel on a street with nothing but other hotels, the only thing going was the “Champions” sports bar on the first floor off the hotel lobby. I entered and looked around, knowing in seconds that whatever I was getting from this place was going to be gotten “to go.”
Let me add that I looked and felt like a disaster. I had missed my flight, which landed me in this predicament. I was a sweaty, stressy freakshow in scoop neck brown cotton t-shirt, black and white flowy skirt and Rocket Dog skull and heart flip flops—comfortable for a plane trip, cute in its own bohemian way, but not quite what you wear to a sports bar—or any sit down type place—for dinner.
The server arrived and gave me a menu. In the time between making my choice and paying the bill, I observed my surroundings. Sports Bar. Sports + Bar. Sports. Bar. Because nothing says “sports” like eating (even that’s a sport—competitive eating!), I suppose the concept of a “Sports bar” is a natural development. Sports bars have been around a long time, but to qualify as one, there are certain requirements. (Don’t get scared away by the whole “bar” definition. While these places usually do contain a bar, they also have regular tables and chairs and booths. “Bar” just sounds cooler than “restaurant.” “Pub” also works if you want to go for some Luck o' the Irish flair, but at a minimum, you’d better make sure you have Guinness in your drink selection).
And now I present the three universal elements that make up a bona fide sports bar.
1) Multiple TVs. You can’t just have the old 27” clunker hitched up in the corner of the wall these days—no! A sports bar requires no less than three flat screens clustered above the bar and a section of wall dedicated to the mother of all flat screens—five feet by six feet at least, consisting of a projection image or a collection of smaller monitors feeding into the big picture. A spattering of flat screens around the rest of the restaurant and the TV requirement is good to go. Oh, and I feel silly mentioning the obvious, but all of these TVs must be tuned into sports at all times. Don’t think of this as a restriction—think of the possibilities—softball, curling, poker*, basketball, hunting**, pool**, table tennis**, bowling**, hockey, fishing**! You can even watch all of those simultaneously if your peripheral vision is up to the task.
*Not a sport, but it has a World Series, so it gets in through some weird loophole, apparently.
**questionable—I’m not going to attempt to explain
2) The crap on the walls
No, no…not literally (I seem to have a running problem with using the wrong word to describe something perfectly innocent—just look at the blog’s title). I’m talking about photos of sports teams, framed jerseys, tools associated with various sports—crossed Lacrosse sticks hung strategically over an entrance, a football helmet strapped to the wall—you get the point. Nothing says sports like musty old sports equipment hanging from the walls of the place where you consume food and beverage.
3) The attire of the servers. Well we’ve gotten through the décor of the eating establishment, so the other piece of the puzzle—the people! In “Champions” the servers wore referee shirts. Nice touch, after my initial thought that they looked like cast offs from Foot Locker, I realized, hey, the servers are the refs, which must me—we--the patrons, are the “players,” the stars of the show, the ones getting all the “play!” Makes sense—the name of the bar is “Champions” so therefore “we are the Champions…”
Score!
As I was trapped in a hotel on a street with nothing but other hotels, the only thing going was the “Champions” sports bar on the first floor off the hotel lobby. I entered and looked around, knowing in seconds that whatever I was getting from this place was going to be gotten “to go.”
Let me add that I looked and felt like a disaster. I had missed my flight, which landed me in this predicament. I was a sweaty, stressy freakshow in scoop neck brown cotton t-shirt, black and white flowy skirt and Rocket Dog skull and heart flip flops—comfortable for a plane trip, cute in its own bohemian way, but not quite what you wear to a sports bar—or any sit down type place—for dinner.
The server arrived and gave me a menu. In the time between making my choice and paying the bill, I observed my surroundings. Sports Bar. Sports + Bar. Sports. Bar. Because nothing says “sports” like eating (even that’s a sport—competitive eating!), I suppose the concept of a “Sports bar” is a natural development. Sports bars have been around a long time, but to qualify as one, there are certain requirements. (Don’t get scared away by the whole “bar” definition. While these places usually do contain a bar, they also have regular tables and chairs and booths. “Bar” just sounds cooler than “restaurant.” “Pub” also works if you want to go for some Luck o' the Irish flair, but at a minimum, you’d better make sure you have Guinness in your drink selection).
And now I present the three universal elements that make up a bona fide sports bar.
1) Multiple TVs. You can’t just have the old 27” clunker hitched up in the corner of the wall these days—no! A sports bar requires no less than three flat screens clustered above the bar and a section of wall dedicated to the mother of all flat screens—five feet by six feet at least, consisting of a projection image or a collection of smaller monitors feeding into the big picture. A spattering of flat screens around the rest of the restaurant and the TV requirement is good to go. Oh, and I feel silly mentioning the obvious, but all of these TVs must be tuned into sports at all times. Don’t think of this as a restriction—think of the possibilities—softball, curling, poker*, basketball, hunting**, pool**, table tennis**, bowling**, hockey, fishing**! You can even watch all of those simultaneously if your peripheral vision is up to the task.
*Not a sport, but it has a World Series, so it gets in through some weird loophole, apparently.
**questionable—I’m not going to attempt to explain
2) The crap on the walls
No, no…not literally (I seem to have a running problem with using the wrong word to describe something perfectly innocent—just look at the blog’s title). I’m talking about photos of sports teams, framed jerseys, tools associated with various sports—crossed Lacrosse sticks hung strategically over an entrance, a football helmet strapped to the wall—you get the point. Nothing says sports like musty old sports equipment hanging from the walls of the place where you consume food and beverage.
3) The attire of the servers. Well we’ve gotten through the décor of the eating establishment, so the other piece of the puzzle—the people! In “Champions” the servers wore referee shirts. Nice touch, after my initial thought that they looked like cast offs from Foot Locker, I realized, hey, the servers are the refs, which must me—we--the patrons, are the “players,” the stars of the show, the ones getting all the “play!” Makes sense—the name of the bar is “Champions” so therefore “we are the Champions…”
Score!
6.04.2008
Leaving My Skin The Hell Alone
After much experimentation with make up and cleansers and lotions and potions, I have decided on a new routine--it's the "I'm going to leave my skin the hell alone" facial care system. I have had more breakouts in the past 2 months than I did when I did nothing—no foundation, no lotion at night, no scrub a dub dubbing of the face in the shower. I have a cluster of zits budding in the lower left quadrant, at the 4-5 o’clock position. I also have a few dark blemishes that don’t seem to be getting any lighter. All of these have started post Bare Minerals-Boots face cream (1 for day, 1 for night)-regular skin cleansing routine. What the hell?! It is taking every ounce of will to not poke and pick and pop. Instead, I am just going to leave my skin the hell alone!
"Big News!"
Yes, those were the words that started off the second half hour of the local morning news. “Big News,” a grinning Barbara Harrison declared, “Ashlee* Simpson is tying the knot!”
Now my question is: who in the world thought this was relevant enough to be a) on the local NBC affiliate NEWS program and b) at 6:30 a.m.? What, now I can start my day with a smile and feel that all is right with the world because I know Ashlee Simpson is having a shotgun wedding? Yippee! Hallelujah!
Right.
I am sad that we have sunk so low. I could see if there was a lull in the world—not much going on, nothing to see, or do, or talk about, but there is a war (two if you want to split the “Global War on Terra” into different locations) going on. There’s a recession. There’s an upcoming election. All stuff that is kinda sorta a bigger deal and infinitely more newsworthy than Ashlee Simpson. I get escapism but that is why you have Access Hollywood, People Magazine and the internets. Leave my morning traffic/weather/local crime report alone.
*You can't imagine how it pains me to type "Ashlee" instead of the proper spelling.
Now my question is: who in the world thought this was relevant enough to be a) on the local NBC affiliate NEWS program and b) at 6:30 a.m.? What, now I can start my day with a smile and feel that all is right with the world because I know Ashlee Simpson is having a shotgun wedding? Yippee! Hallelujah!
Right.
I am sad that we have sunk so low. I could see if there was a lull in the world—not much going on, nothing to see, or do, or talk about, but there is a war (two if you want to split the “Global War on Terra” into different locations) going on. There’s a recession. There’s an upcoming election. All stuff that is kinda sorta a bigger deal and infinitely more newsworthy than Ashlee Simpson. I get escapism but that is why you have Access Hollywood, People Magazine and the internets. Leave my morning traffic/weather/local crime report alone.
*You can't imagine how it pains me to type "Ashlee" instead of the proper spelling.
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