Andee of Whimsy & All That Entails
I don't need the stress of figuring out what to put here, so I'll just leave it to your imaginations.
So, I finally have a permanent, full-time, salaried, almost pays what my old salaried job paid, benefits in 3 months job. It feels good. It also still feels unreal and like it will end at any moment. But that’s just me and the way I think of things.
I’m in my second week at the job so I’m still shiny and new and not too sure what my responsibilities are. They seem to be varied. One minute I’m working on a sales report, the next I’m finding a plumber for the leaky faucet. Oh, my office is in a house. The house is exclusively used as an office except when my boss or his West coast clients come in town for a meeting and then they stay in the bedrooms. And I make sure there are snacks for them.
So I’m an analyst, a manager and a hostess. I think I will like it. But the lack of definition is still a little unnerving.
When I was a teen, I went to an all girls camp in southeast Texas. I mostly enjoyed the camp, but there was one yearly tradition where the older girls were matched with counselors to have a supposedly fun day shadowing the counselor’s classes and being given treats and gifts from the counselor. Most of the counselors were giggly college-age girls so the teens matched with them felt the aspirational high of being around something they might one day turn in to.
Except for me. I was never picked by the shallow, made-up counselors, I was picked by the camp nurse. She was nice, but not bubbly. There was air-conditioning in her infirmary, but she was older than the counselors and more staid. I didn’t actually mind spending the day with her and she did give me the requisite treats and gifts, but I knew in my heart that I was picked last.
What exactly was it about me or my personality, or my karma that paired me with the bookish nurse instead of the cheerleader-like counselor? Not sure, but some version of this continues.
It’s almost Christmas so, of course we’re having a Secret Santa among the people of my level. We are essentially admins so most of us are women. But I was picked to be a Secret Santa to one of two men (the other man would have been easier) and I’m pretty sure he was picked to be my Secret Santa, too. We are the two new people. So we were picked last and paired off.
It’s not all bad. But, regardless, it feels like the day I spent with the nurse.
Now I’m not going to temp for the company I worked for full-time over five years ago, and contract for four months about a month ago because they worry it will “appear improper to hire me from a different company I contracted for before.” Really? When I was told my project had ended last, they recommended me to a new company that was supposed to handle long-term contract work there.
So at that time, it was ok for me to potentially come back through another company, but now it’s not? I call bullshit. I also suspect that the person who was my Team Leader from 2004-05 and never seemed to like me and seemed to be doing his best to get rid of me and is now the VP over the current Team Lead has a hand in this.
So petty for a man with a fabulous job who manufactured incompetence on my part and who would have virtually no contact with me to prevent me from working there. This is all conjecture on my part, but what are blogs for.
Maybe they all hated me and everything was a swerve to get me to go away. I don’t know. I wish I had some feedback other than the lame excuse I was given by the temp agency. The temp people thought it was normal as they had heard this excuse before. But, considering the source, I’m not sure.
So back to the jobless salt mines.
At least I think that’s what it will be. You see, the last contract job I had ended August 19. It was doing the category analyst job I usually do and for a decent (though for below previous salary) rate. When that job ended, the powers that be told me to contact a firm that they claimed would be handling their contract work in the future. I did, that company said they were still negotiating about the contract job and they would contact me as I seemed like a great candidate.
They never called, I called back and got the “going in a different direction with a different candidate” reason. Fast forward to today. I call a temp agency that I frequently check in with for anything (being jobless is just not profitable) and they tell me about a job as an admin (I’m willing to go backwards in my job path) at a rate that is less than half of most rates I earn (but really, it’s money and I can still get most of my UI benefits at this rate) for next week. I ask what company when they mentioned the geographic area and lo and behold, it’s the company I worked for in a different position.
I tell my temp agency contact a little of the story so she can tell them it’s me. I mean, maybe the reason my project “ended” is because they didn’t like me (though after four months, why only then) or that’s the reason they made sure I didn’t get the contract position through the other company. I don’t know. They have been uncommunicative, but I wanted to give them a chance to deal with their, what seem to be, conflicting feelings about me, before I show up Friday to train.
Trust me, it will feel totally awkward for me. I still don’t have a new job a month later, I’m willing to work at a much lower position and for people who have seemingly rejected me. But my family and paying our rent is more important than my feelings. Way more important.
To start I need to lay out two scenarios that are part of the routine in our house. First, I get up far earlier than my family so I can bathe, fritter, etc. Part of my early morning routine is to lie on the couch in my towel after my bath, close my eyes, listen to news, then get one with the rest of what I have to do.
Second, son used to show up in the middle of the night to sleep with us (still does every once in a while) but if he failed to wake up and then I woke him in the morning, he would cry (this was at age 5) because he hadn’t spent any part of the night in our bed. Weird. Lack of parenting skills. I get it. Even though he’s now 9, he still feels forlorn if he doesn’t get sleep next to a parent time. So to accommodate this oddness, I wake him 25 minutes before his actual getting up time and send him off to sleep with husband for the interim.
I’m so overexplaining all this. Yesterday morning, I was spending my time on the couch, and son, waking early, was making his way into our bedroom. He startles me a bit with a “Hi, Mommy.” I responded, then he said, “What’s this all about?”
He meant me lying on the couch and I understood but I also thought that was such a strangely adult question. To the point it embarrassed me a bit.
Earlier today, while at my somewhat tedious temp job, I wrote a brilliant, pithy diatribe against spoiled actors reacting bristly towards Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes hosting duties. Ok, I admit it wasn’t brilliant and only a little pithy, but you don’t know cause it doesn’t exist anymore. At the point I hit save, the angry, petty little servers ate it all up.
So I’ll only say that I was kvetching that rich, spoiled people who entertain for a living need to find the skin of a hippo and get the hell over being “hurt” by comedic comments from a funny man hosting what might be described as a frivolous waste of time. Not that I didn’t enjoy the Golden Globes, I did. Mostly because of Gervais and other funny people.
It’s funny how seriously people who shouldn’t take themselves and how cavalierly we treat those who should be taken seriously.
So I probably can just not go with the “poor pitiful me” routine but as I sit re-inputting measurements of soup cans because someone got them wrong, the rest of the office (and I mean everyone) all of whom are actually employed by this company and not just paid through an agency like me (what a run-on) are enjoying a free lunch in the conference room with the CEO who flew down from corporate for something or other.
I don’t care really. I plan to leave and eat at home. Catch up on Daily Show eps. Lie on the couch for a few. It’s just they didn’t say word one to me about this. Except, yesterday when I was told to tidy my cube and not wear jeans today like we usually do on Fridays. I don’t need or want to eat with them. But there was no attempt to even let me know what they were doing. But I do. Because all of their indoor voices (except when they are whispering, hopefully not about me) are loud.
I’ll go back to acting like a particularly useful piece of office equipment now.
Alyssa Milano posted something from the Sweet Beet on Twitter about healthy-looking foods that aren’t particularly. I enjoyed that, which led me to this site, which appears to have all sorts of food related things that I think I’ll enjoy reading. Thought you might, too.
Guess what? I can say that about her because a little, private citizen blog isn’t the same as a published newspaper or a cable broadcast show. It’s not libel. I’m not even sure it’s slander because considering the minimal number of people who will actually read this, no actual harm will befall the princess over my words.
That said, nothing that has actually been printed or broadcast about her (and the latter is still questionably considered libel/slander) has been untrue. Maybe some pundit did get heated and actually blame her, but all the things I’ve read and heard merely pointed out the potential problems inherent in HER printed words/graphics, which were followed up with gung ho spoken slogans at rallies.
Palin claims that she is the victim of “manufactured blood libel.” So much of that phrase is just wrong. Manufactured? If it were actual libel, in other words, untrue, I suppose the word manufactured would apply. But since people are merely pointing out her own words, it’s hard to infer manufacture from it.
Blood libel has its own definition of accusing a person or persons of blood sacrifice. Where does that enter into anything? That’s just absurd. No one claims she’s sacrificing anything. Except maybe her dignity. And if she never takes responsibility or apologizes, perhaps her future political life.
This nut Loughner may have never seen anything on Palin’s site. No one claimed her words or slogans caused him to do this. I think most pundits and journalists just felt, that as part of the discussion of this tragedy, a graphic showing crosshairs over Giffords’ district and her name in the list beneath the “lock and load” sort of rhetoric needed to be pointed out.
And, since the tragedy, I think anything directed at Palin is much like what’s directed at anyone using weapon imagery in politics - please stop. Please apologize. Please express regret. She can’t even manage that. Without taking any blame, she could just say, “I’m sorry those words ever came from me. I’m sorry I approved that graphic for my political site. I will tone down the rhetoric to help make this a climate of peace.”
Would that be so hard? Probably. Palin instead wants to paint herself as victim. Wants to equivocate and justify. And by turning the attention to herself, deepens the sadness of this event.
Last night as I was driving home from work, I listened to MSNBC on Sirius. I was hearing, I’m pretty sure, Hardball as Pat Buchanan was on there growling out his usual drivel. I lost count of the number of times he said repudiate. It’s how he explains everything about what he thinks are the opinions of the people of America.
Pat also repeats some very tired phrases such as “Nancy Pelosi is a San Francisco liberal.” So. You say that like it’s a bad thing. And, while I know it’s a bad thing to Pat, not so much to a lot of us.
I didn’t hear his whole diatribe, I’m not even sure what he was going on about, as usual, Pat just burped out his standard “I hate all things to the left” bumper sticker phrases.
I’m not even sure what my point is, except I’m tired of Pat, others like him, people who listen to them and find wisdom where there is none. What thing on the other side of the world can happen to attract Pat there permanently.
