I can't say with any authority who wrote the policies at my company, but it would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be a certain mustachioed German dictator. Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living, and I always tell them, "It doesn't matter." It really doesn't. A trained monkey could do my job. Short version, I do data entry.
I sent out thirty to forty resumes (not the good one) when I was unemployed in January, and I got one call. One call. In April. So now I work for jackasses. It's okay though, because I get out of school in June, and I will hopefully have a job in my field by the end of March. But in the meantime, as I have mentioned before, I work for people who should be taking my drive-thru order. Or at the very least should be replaced by trained monkeys.
In the last four months, I personally have inspired several office-wide memos on such topics as not smoking in front of the building, and not talking loudly or offensively. I know the loud part was me, but I don't know if I was the offensive one. That memo did come out the day after I had announced, "You know, I think the Beach Boys are underrated," so maybe that bothered some doo-wop fan who is still mad that the Beach Boys changed the American music scene.
I have also gotten into trouble for using my empty Diet Coke with Lemon cans to build a beeramid on my desk, and for having a fly swatter hanging in my cube. Don't even ask. (There are four supervisors for less than ten of us-they need to keep busy somehow.) Unfortunately for them, then turnover rate is around 75% and I am good at my sad little job, so they can't really get rid of me.
If those don't seem like good reasons to dislike them, let me tell you about the baseball playoffs. During the playoffs, I got a call at work from LCG at 8:30 one fine Friday morning. He wanted to know if I could get off work early, because his mom had scored him a pair of tickets to the Twins game. The game started at 3:00. A real employer would have said, "Playoff tickets? On a Friday? Take some vacation this afternoon and have a good time."
At my place of business, I was informed that leaving early would be an unexcused absence. That would count as a sick day, and I have to hoard those for when I get sick during midterms and finals. My boss also said, "I could see it if it were the Vikings..." What? Sure. Grant time off for the local loser crap boring sports team, but not the baseball team. Oh, they might go to the World Series, but who would care about that? My boss then spent the day crying in her cube about her debt, and complaining to my co-workers about the destructive relationship that drove her to spend herself into that debt and also to overeat which is now why she is in Weight Watchers. Um. Yeah. But don't let me off at 2 o'clock to go to a ball game. They are dead to me.
But there are perks to my cube lifestyle. I, um, get to pick my break times. I have a direct dial phone line and when the "outside call" ringer rings I know it is LCG since he is the only person who has my work number and I feel just like Commissioner Gordon answering the Bat Phone. Then he and I can giggle about Andrew W.K. and wrestling and our favorite sports radio caller and I am reminded that my world is still out there. And I have high speed Internet access. That's it. Those are the perks. Oh, I could have a radio, but I pass because local radio is crap. But then, as you will recall, a while back I began taking advantage of my extremely fast Internet connection to enjoy VH1 radio, and I was happy as a trained monkey in a cube.
And then one day, not so long ago, I could not access the VH1 radio server. I could log on to VH1.com, but could not get the radio. Dang. I knew the day would come where I would get cut off, but I honestly thought they were too stupid to catch it. So I went to Plan B. I don't own a CD player, but my ex-husband had one, so I do own about, oh, ten CDs. Maybe fifteen. Plan B meant hauling in five CDs every day, trying to log on to VH1, failing, and then spending my day listening to the new Queens Of The Stone Age album instead of my beloved Soul City station.
That worked okay for a time. And then last week I placed a Hüsker Dü CD in the drive. And my computer shut off. Black screen. Couldn't turn it back on with the button on the front of the tower. Nope. I had to use the switch on the back of the tower. I guess my computer got sick of Warehouse: Songs And Stories before I did.
Then the email came out. "We have asked you in the past not to listen to Internet radio..." Not since I have worked there, but okay. I had figured out that I was banned six weeks ago anyway. But the email also told me to refrain from, "listening to Cd's," as well. First of all, CDs is plural and not possessive, so why is the apostrophe there? Second, what did you do to my computer? Is the system so drained that me listening to Rufus Wainwright will cause the network to slow down? I realize that I am running six programs at all times, but five of them I need to do my job. Let me have the damn CD player!
The morning of that email, I had tried three different CDs, which resulted in three back-of-the-tower restarts. That email also said no Internet surfing. Um. No? Lunchtime is DHAK time and I don't aim to change that. Actually, I think it said, "only use the Internet at lunch," while the Evil Queen thinks it said, "never use the Internet, not even at lunch." Well, I'm going to assume that I read it correctly until I get in trouble again.
But, I still got no tunes. What to do...what to do. You know what I did. I called the one on whom I can always depend. I picked up the Bat Phone and called LCG.
Me: "Are you going to be going to a Target today?"
LCG: "I am, actually."
Me: "Can you pick me up a walkman?"
LCG: "I was going to buy one for myself!"
(It's so cute when we match!)
I explained my dilemma, and within an hour he was calling me from the audio department and quoting me prices. So I only had to suffer in silence for one day. And this is actually working out well for me, because I didn't want to have to buy more CDs, and I already have six thousand tapes in my car.
So now I get to sit in my cube like an isolated and weird trained monkey. Because now I am almost 100% insulated from my co-workers. Woo-hoo! But I spent Thursday and Friday listening to nothing but The Smiths, so I'm starting to get weird. It's like, I'm sitting at my job that is so lame that if people could see me at work I wouldn't be all big in Austria or even big with my friends and I am starting to identify with Morrissey. Because his Smiths smarts are the only thing that are keeping me from going insane. Well, that and the Bat Phone.
So there I am on Thursday, minding my business, listening to Louder Than Bombs, when I realized that the song Shoplifters Of The World Unite kicks major ass. I always knew it kicked ass, but I noticed something the other day that popped it right into the kicks major ass category. Now you may be asking yourself, what can make a song that I have known for so many years all of a sudden get its category changed? Well, how about a double axe attack?
Yep. A double axe attack. I realized that when you think The Smiths, the first thing you probably think is either yuck, or Morrissey's a wuss, or something like that. Not double axe attacks. So I was listening to the bass heavy instrumental break in Shoplifters Of The World Unite and I thought to myself, "Isn't there a double axe attack coming up?" I don't know what part of my brain held that info, but it had been holding out on me! Sure enough, the guitar solo kicks in and it was a guitar solo, only doubled!
It isn't a classic double axe attack in the style of the greats, (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Queensrÿche) because there are no harmony lines, but it is still a double axe attack! Well, it is Johnny Marr's part, doubled. He seems to be accompanying himself. And that rules even more than a double axe attack, because who is the king of accompanying his own self? Brian May!
So. Shoplifters Of The World Unite. I have always loved that song because it has some of the most well placed background vocals ever recorded, and it contains one of my very favorite Morrissey lines. "I was bored before I even began." Ha! I may have used that line the day after I started my job. It fits almost every situation! See if you can fit it in to your conversation today! (Unless you also are a trained monkey or work for trained monkeys. They won't get it.)