I do not get stressed out easily or quickly yet I would still classify myself as one who "doesn't deal well with stress." When faced with a high-stress situation some people spring into action, phoenix-like. I freeze and wind up doing something like intensely analyze what color of socks would best complement my Halloween costume.
It's between blue or red and I can't decide.
I swear I am an intelligent human being. I went to a very good college where I got average grades without the benefit of studying or class attendance. Yet every now and then I am forced to question my self-perception as a smart female.
Example:
I spent the entire first month of my old job faxing things to people the wrong side up. Basically I was faxing people white pages and then acting huffy when I got phone calls informing me that no fax had been received.
"Well" I would say "My fax machine didn’t give me an error message."
There would be silence and I would let the implication that they were very stupid hang in the air.
It was a moment akin to man discovering fire when I first noticed the little symbol on the fax machine that pretty clearly signifies "Put your papers in upside down dumbass, otherwise you will be faxing people white paper." I got all the hard copies I could find of the items that were supposed to have been faxed in the past month. I re-faxed them all and I never confessed.
Now I am faced with what I fear will turn out to be a similar situation. My boss will regularly ask me to find numbers and figures to prepare for certain meetings. When at these meetings, other people will arrive with entirely different numbers and figures. The discrepancies are not minor ones, unless you consider 10 and 16,000 to be close in size. How is this happening? I have asked and I am typing in the right numbers and pressing the enter key at the right time. What more is there to using a computer program?
I am sure the answer to this conundrum is something as simple as turning the papers around before faxing them. But this time my stupidity is caught each week as boss looks at my numbers, listens to everyone else talk, and then shakes his head in confusion. I am sure that by now he is questioning his decision to hire me.
I tried out my corporate communication skills with Ex-Boyfriend last night. He called around nine.
Ex-Boyfriend: Hey, I think I'm just going to stay here tonight, but I wanted to know what you were doing tomorrow night.
Company Bitch: I don't really feel like leaving my apartment tonight, but I think we should get together tomorrow night.
Ex-Boyfriend: Definitely. So I'll give you a call after work?
Company Bitch: Why don't you give me a call after work?
Ex-Boyfriend: All right. We should go out downtown.
Company Bitch: I was sort of thinking we should go out downtown tomorrow.
Ex-Boyfriend: Okay, see you tomorrow.
Company Bitch: Okay, good night.
I swear, it was one of the easiest conversations I've ever had. Perhaps there is something to this corporate communication thing.
I haven't yet had to address the hurdle of when you actually do not agree with the other person at all. But maybe that is the point--to look good and be agreeable at all costs?
I'm going to implement my new found skills during work today.
I need to master the art of repeating what was just said. This seems to be the only reliable method of communicating with my boss, yet I repeatedly screw it up by throwing in different ideas that muddle the whole message. Repeating whole sentences with a slight change of tone in order to make it appear that you have just come up with that thought—in fact you were so busy coming up with that thought that you didn't hear the other person SAY that thought—is a skill that Perky was apparently born with.
A sample conversation between Perky and Boss
Boss: I think we need to do X, Y and definitely Z.
Perky: It's really important that we do Z and then we need to think about X and Y.
Boss: I think you’re right. (Perky nods vigorously).
Perky: But then what about A,B, and C?
Boss: A, B, and C don't really matter.
Perky: Because I don't think A,B and C really matter.
Boss: I think you're right.
I’m going to practice with my friends. They'll hate me at first, but in the end, when I get promoted and am taking them out to steak dinners, they'll forgive me for my annoying habit of never having an original thought.
I need your help.
This month’s Cosmopolitan promises to fill you in on the hottest, newest, craziest sex position ever. (My roommate has a subscription okay? Sheesh.) I was intrigued, but quickly became confused. Cosmo says:
"Lie on your side with your guy behind you so that you're both facing the same direction. Wrap your legs around his top leg and pull him close, pushing your butt toward him as he enters you. Once he's inside, straighten your legs in tandem with his so they're tightly sandwiched together, toes pointed. Stay connected as you simultaneously bend at your waists, while extending your legs at a 45-degree angle away from your bodies."
Now, to the best of my abilities (keep in mind, I am not an engineer), all I can come up with is that this is the standard side by side sex position with very complicated instructions. Am I wrong?
Our boss, like all bosses around the world, has a horrible habit of delegating tasks to his underlings that would be completed sooner had he done it himself. There are the mildly strange moments such as when he walks past the copier to hand papers to Perky and explain exactly how he wants them copied. (Minimum total time wasted: 5 minutes). Then there are the completely asinine instances in which our boss writes out addresses on index cards and brings said index cards to Perky's desk. Once at Perky's desk he'll quickly jot down a note asking Perky to copy the addresses onto labels and bring the labels back to his office. (Minimum total time wasted: 10 minutes).
The sheer stupidity of the address-writing finally got to Perky. She stormed by my desk on Friday, a fist full of labels in her hand. "Boss" she said, "I've brought you some labels since I assume you don't have any. Now you can write addresses on the labels when you want something mailed out. It takes just as much time as writing it on an index card." Then she left.
It was so simple yet so perfect and unexpected. I've never seen an assistant have the nerve to do something like that. Perky, I thought, you are not all bad.
I am getting a Brazillian wax after work today. This is quite alarming for two reasons.
1) It hurts
2) I have not gotten one in quite awhile and so will have to readjust to the embarrassment of having the small yet surprisingly strong Asian woman look at my crotch.
3) I will have to think of an answer to the inevitable question "Where are you going on vacation?" (They persist in believing that girls have innocent, once-a-month, tropical get-aways planned as opposed to boyfriends to impress).
Also, when I prepare for a meeting with a man in even the most basic of ways, I get incredibly pissy when things do not go my way. It’s the "I shaved my legs for this?!" syndrome. One can only imagine how much higher expectations get when hot wax and strange acrobatics are involved.
I think my roommate is mad at me. Two nights ago she asked "So, have you spoken to Ex-Boyfriend recently?" I stared intently at the television and replied "Not really." I thought this was a nice, middle-ground answer. I did not lie and say I was not speaking to him but I also did not break down and yell "I’m re-dating him! Fine, I admit it!"
I may have taken the wrong tact. She has not really spoken to me since. ("What time do you need the shower?" counts I suppose, but barely). The part about the not-speaking that truly bothers me is the constant fear that she will begin speaking (and demanding answers).
I realize my hiding of him may be a bit irrational but I feel that when in your twenties friends become a family of sorts. And Ex-Boyfriend is the high school guy who openly smokes and your parents have warned you against. Why introduce them to each other and create conflict?
This morning it rained. I left Ex-Boyfriend’s place without knowing this little factoid because he lives in what I like to call The Bat Cave. I made it halfway down his hallway when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet behind me. It was Ex-Boyfriend in his underwear, frantically calling "Company Bitch! Company Bitch! It’s raining! It’s raining!" I was led back into The Bat Cave where Ex-Boyfriend proceeded to crawl around on his hands and knees (still clad only in underwear), peering beneath each piece of furniture in search of an umbrella. One was finally located in the umbrella stand by the door. As he handed it to me, looking so proud of his accomplishment, I suddenly thought "Is he wearing tighty-whiteys? Why did I not notice this before? Perhaps they are white boxer-briefs that have ridden up?"
I should have left with the warm and fuzzies but instead left pondering why any man would still wear tightey-whiteys, especially in mixed company.
My office has a time-scam going on. All the phones are synced up to be five minutes slow. All the computers are synced up to be five minutes fast. This means that when it is time to leave, you want to believe the computer clock, but are scared to leave "early" according to the phone clock. When you arrive in the morning, you tell yourself you are not late if you arrive on time according to the phone clock, but you feel negligent anyway since you are late according to the computer clock. The end result is that you work ten minutes longer than you have to since there is no way of knowing what the "real" office time is. Accident? I think not. Evil company plan? Totally.
Then again, there are very few people here who work a strict 9-5 schedule, so perhaps no one has had the time to notice but me.
The woman who used to have my position came to visit the office today. She brought everyone fresh fruit. This made me feel uncomfortable because I don’t bring people fresh fruit. Should I be bringing people fresh fruit? Is that tacitly understood to be part of the job? Come to think of it, Perky brings in cookies. By not bringing people fresh fruit or home-made cookies do I appear to be unable to perform the duties of my job or incapable of understanding these duties? Probably both. I hate this job.
Then there was the fact that Perky wailed at her ex-colleague "Come back! I miss you! Why don’t you work here anymore?! Whhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?" While I understand Perky may have real emotions about this woman’s departure, must they be expressed 10 feet from me? And so loudly?
I now work in a society of rabid dieters and I have only myself to blame.
There were several warning signs that I ignored, first and foremost being the vending machine. Rather than stocking the standard variety of sodas, this one is strangely diet-centric. There is Diet Coke, Diet Caffeine Free Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Ginger Ale and one lone little button for regular Coke. When I interviewed, I thought this was a charming oddity rather than a large neon DO NOT WORK HERE signal.
I was unwittingly entering the Body Image Issue Club, where membership entails ingesting little else besides diet soda. (With all the varieties, you can almost trick yourself into thinking you have eaten--Diet Dr. Pepper for the appetizer, Diet Coke for the main course….) Aside from everyone’s general pissiness (it is hard to be friendly on an empty stomach) the culture of the diet affects me in two main ways, both of which anger me.
1) If I want a diet soda at 4pm I can never actually get one, because there are too many freaks in the building who consume Diet Coke for breakfast.
2) There is a lot of "sharing." As in, someone brings in cake or doughnuts for an office birthday. Share time! Every girl turns to another and says, wide-eyed and excited, "I really shouldn’t. But do you want to share a piece?" I would like, just once, to eat an entire goddamn serving of food here.
Maybe I'll eat some cake for lunch today and traumatize the office.
Last night marked the third time I have seen Ex-Boyfriend in the past two weeks and had very little sex or no sex at all. Strangely, I feel that this is somehow related to the fact that he cares about me more now and thus likes to cuddle and kiss my nose as opposed to ripping my clothes off in the hallway.
I am confused. Supposedly we could never be friends because the sex would get in the way. But now we are in some sort of pseudo-relationship and we are not having sex anyway.
I feel as though I have been duped but into or for what, I am not sure.
I had to work this weekend—"work" being a term I loosely use to mean anything the company makes me do. In this case, working involved being shuttled off to another city where my primary obligation seemed to be to drink with various consultants for the company. Ahhh, finally, some aspect of my job I can do well.
Still, even with so simple a task at hand, I managed to commit a few faux paus. First, there was the time I was to meet people at a cocktail party/reception. I became nervous about impressing these higher up colleagues of mine and so ordered a glass of wine, called my mother on my cell phone and grabbed a dumpling that had been floating by on a tray. Alcohol, mommy and food—how could I not feel better instantly?
Perhaps the triple-threat attempt to calm my nerves would have succeeded, but one will never know for sure because just as I had gotten my mother on the phone, the colleague I was meeting appeared before me. Trying to hold on to my alcohol, say good-bye to my mother, dispose of my dumpling and shake a man’s hand proved to be too much for me. My alcohol (red wine, of course) was the casualty, spilling all over the man’s shoes. His name was Jim. We got along after I blushed, stammered and apologized for two hours.
Second best in company bitch humiliation was my conversation with a rather lecherous old man who was clearly trying to shock me via various avenues. Any direct questions about my boyfriend and indirect questions about my sex life had been met with a confused look (not feigned—I am confused) and so he moved on to literary smut.
"Do you know Anne Rice’s pen name?"
"Oooo!" I exclaimed, happy to be off the topic of Ex-Boyfriend as Current-Boyfriend Or Something. "The Sleeping Beauty trilogy! I love those! She writes as A.N. Roquelaure!" The instant the words were out of my mouth I knew that they, as well as my marked enthusiasm, were a mistake. Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty books involve graphic sado-masochism with women being ridden around as horses and having kinky sex with all sorts of men to prove they are worthy of love.
The lecherous old man almost looked more shocked than pleased.
"How can you say that without looking embarrassed?" he asked incredulously. "I’m fascinated."
I said nothing and ran. Or rather, walked away very swiftly. (I was wearing heels).
Drinking, fending off strange men and attempting to charm others while making a valiant effort not to slur my speech is the best job description I have ever had. But now I am back behind my computer, already bored and still scared of my boss. Such is life.
Ex-Boyfriend has voiced a desire to meet my parents. He attributes my reluctance on this issue to certainty that the parents would not like him. While this is not exactly false, my refusal to take him home has more to do with the fact that I have not yet told my roommate about his reemergence, let alone my family. So while the underlying reason for the secrecy surrounding him is that people do not like him, the real, immediate reason he is not being paraded around in front of the parents is simple: He does not exist.
With my roommate, the issue gets a bit complicated. I would like to think that my roommate has simply not noticed that I have recently taken to "going out" on weeknights and returning from this "night out" at about 7am. However, it is more likely that my roommate is too exhausted or disinterested to broach the subject, having, as she does, a life of her own.
Then again, perhaps she is just confused. When I run into her upon my return in the morning, I generally act just as I would had I spent an innocent night alone in my bed. Except I am disheveled, wearing the same clothes I was wearing the night before and standing in front of the hallway door somewhat guiltily.
She's probably worried and harboring suspicions of drug use.
Okay, I realize that I am a new employee. I realize that others have had years to bond and learn intimate personal details about one another. I realize that if someone in the office were to get married they would most likely invite many co-workers to their wedding and I would not be one of these co-workers. Fine.
Still, one would think that when the entire office population under the age of thirty goes out for lunch to celebrate a birthday, someone could toss an invitation, just as a formality, in my general direction. I had my little chicken sandwich already unwrapped and positioned next to my keyboard. It is not like there was a great risk that I would actually attend the birthday lunch gathering. I clearly had my own "lunch plans."
It is not that I actually wanted to go. It is that I resent being made to watch company members file towards the elevator as I pick up the phone and pretend to be busy so as to downplay the shame of being an outcast.
In other news, my boss and I seem to be playing a fantastic game of make-believe. We are both pretending (and quite well, I might add) that he never had a meeting with the president and I am not nervous about said, non-existent meeting.
Boss has not shared with me the results of his and the president’s second meeting. I vacillate between thinking this is a good thing (If my actions were so awful, wouldn’t he want to come over and tell me to immediately cease and desist all action?) and thinking this is a terrible thing (If I were a commendable employee, wouldn’t he be speaking to me?).
As has been discussed, Boss scares me during the best of times and my newly found paranoia that I am doing a total crap job has not made me feel any more comfortable. I am terrified to walk by his office, let alone into it. As a result, I have been taking an alternate bathroom route all day and going to a different floor to use the water fountain.
Perhaps he is not ignoring me and it is simply that I have been skulking around like a criminal, making it difficult to say “Good job! President loves what you’ve been doing!” as I have been darting past him at breakneck speed and refusing to make eye contact.
A nice thought but somehow, I think not.
My boss got screamed at by the president of the company. Screamed. At.
Apparently everything the boss and I have been working on is asinine and ill-conceived. Thank God I am not high enough in the company to be held truly responsible for bad ideas. (Typos, sure. Bad photocopying, definitely. Bad ideas? I do not have ideas).
Now boss and president are in a meeting about something else I have been working on. I am sure this too will be met with total and complete disapproval.
At least I cannot hear the screaming from where I am. That would be very Silence of the Lambs.
I think I may have to scrap the whole September Resolution thing. Last night Ex-Boyfriend asked if I would get a pedicure. The simple answer would have been to admit I had been thinking about it anyway. However, the path of least resistance is rarely the most satisfying and so I looked at him as if he were crazy to suggest such a thing, acted offended, pouted a bit, etc. Then finally I told him I would be willing to think about it if he would pay for it, because, being a company bitch and all, I cannot exactly squander good money on such frivolous expenses.
"Okay" says the Ex-Boyfriend. "How much is a pedicure?"
Shit shit shit shit.
"Twenty dollars." I mumble.
"What?"
"Like twenty dollars."
Ex-Boyfriend starts laughing. "Only twenty dollars?"
I stare at my hands and say "Shutup."
I should have quit while ahead and not tried to make it sound as if getting pedicures was a rare, elusive service that only the truly rich and shallow could afford.
But clearly now I cannot get a pedicure. It is a matter of principle.
