It Can Always Be Worse
I told my boss that I'd given up on this week on Tuesday, and that I was just surfing the catastrophe curve until it ended. Today has thus far had a decided lack of chaos, and instead of relieved, I feel depleted. But in no way am I complaining. Whenever whining comes to mind, I can always think about my life in the post-boom New Economy just four short years ago:
- I was fired from a temp job for correcting the spelling and grammar on a job announcement before it went out onto the internet and into a newspaper. No, really. My boss handed me an announcement, and she'd put "Does this peak your interest?" I changed it to "pique" and asked if she'd approve my changes before it went out. I was let go the same day. For those of you who know me, no, I did not call her a monkey or even roll my eyes at her. I did try to explain that I'd looked it up, it was "pique," but the thought of a lowly temp questioning her skills caused an aneurysm.
- The temp agency I'd worked for ten years, off and on since I was sixteen, with glowing recommendations and references from every supervisor, actually dismissed me over the pique incident. When I asked why I was being dismissed over one incident, in which I had not technically been wrong, against a backdrop of a decade's worth of solid performance, I was informed that my old records had been lost in a merger between my company and another.
- I had a job picking staples out of old Navy memos. After the staples were removed, I photocopied the memos. Then I put the copies in boxes and the originals in binders. At least, that's what the job card at the agency said. Once I arrived I discovered they didn't want me to hurry or anything, so what I actually did was screw around in IRC harassing a friend who later came to be known as Guy 2.
- I was well prepared for my Navy job by my job with a major state university. My task there was to photocopy student transcript cards, from the years 1912 to 1972. The originals went into special storage and the photocopies went onto shelves. Of course, no one had alphabetized the cards in years, so half the job was just putting them into order. That job would have been great if I hadn't been yelled at repeatedly for not wearing makeup or pantyhose. The fact that I spent all day crawling on the floor, alone, in a windowless storage room, in the basement of a building with a hundred years of dust and mutant centipedes was apparently not relevant.
- Of course, all of that was nothing compared to writing porn. Those "letters to the editor" don't write themselves.
I had good jobs, of course. There was the lady at the utility company who deserves much of the credit for my current success, as she helped me to adjust my brain from "college" to "reality." I worked for a guy who could charm the paint of a wall, despite the outward appearance of a marshwiggle, and he taught me tons about marketing and humanity. There were a number of theater jobs, all of which gave me time management skills and great cocktail stories, albeit stories that rely too much on "So then this naked guy said, what do you mean?" And of course, I loved freelance writing as a career, which led directly to my present job.
But overall, I'm sitting in my jeans, brushing crumbs off my sweatshirt, with no makeup and hair in my face, instant messaging my incredibly cool supervisor, about thirty feet from the love of my life, and I know how good I've got it.
Even if this week sucked donkey wang.
- I was fired from a temp job for correcting the spelling and grammar on a job announcement before it went out onto the internet and into a newspaper. No, really. My boss handed me an announcement, and she'd put "Does this peak your interest?" I changed it to "pique" and asked if she'd approve my changes before it went out. I was let go the same day. For those of you who know me, no, I did not call her a monkey or even roll my eyes at her. I did try to explain that I'd looked it up, it was "pique," but the thought of a lowly temp questioning her skills caused an aneurysm.
- The temp agency I'd worked for ten years, off and on since I was sixteen, with glowing recommendations and references from every supervisor, actually dismissed me over the pique incident. When I asked why I was being dismissed over one incident, in which I had not technically been wrong, against a backdrop of a decade's worth of solid performance, I was informed that my old records had been lost in a merger between my company and another.
- I had a job picking staples out of old Navy memos. After the staples were removed, I photocopied the memos. Then I put the copies in boxes and the originals in binders. At least, that's what the job card at the agency said. Once I arrived I discovered they didn't want me to hurry or anything, so what I actually did was screw around in IRC harassing a friend who later came to be known as Guy 2.
- I was well prepared for my Navy job by my job with a major state university. My task there was to photocopy student transcript cards, from the years 1912 to 1972. The originals went into special storage and the photocopies went onto shelves. Of course, no one had alphabetized the cards in years, so half the job was just putting them into order. That job would have been great if I hadn't been yelled at repeatedly for not wearing makeup or pantyhose. The fact that I spent all day crawling on the floor, alone, in a windowless storage room, in the basement of a building with a hundred years of dust and mutant centipedes was apparently not relevant.
- Of course, all of that was nothing compared to writing porn. Those "letters to the editor" don't write themselves.
I had good jobs, of course. There was the lady at the utility company who deserves much of the credit for my current success, as she helped me to adjust my brain from "college" to "reality." I worked for a guy who could charm the paint of a wall, despite the outward appearance of a marshwiggle, and he taught me tons about marketing and humanity. There were a number of theater jobs, all of which gave me time management skills and great cocktail stories, albeit stories that rely too much on "So then this naked guy said, what do you mean?" And of course, I loved freelance writing as a career, which led directly to my present job.
But overall, I'm sitting in my jeans, brushing crumbs off my sweatshirt, with no makeup and hair in my face, instant messaging my incredibly cool supervisor, about thirty feet from the love of my life, and I know how good I've got it.
Even if this week sucked donkey wang.
posted by Sanya at 11:46 AM
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