Lucy's Spleen

"Treats"

I find the office culture phenomenon of people anticipating, discussing (at length) and generally creaming their panties over the occasional company-sponsored “treat” depressing. 

And yes, this cupcake is delicious, thank you.

A Peek Into My Thought Process: The Workplace Paranoia Edition

When I touch base by phone with an older woman I admin for while she's out of the office and in saying good-bye she tells me, "Be good," is this a word of caution? Is she saying she suspects there's a possibility I might be other than good since she's not around? Is the underlying message that she finds me to be, generally speaking, no good?

Or is this just something she says? Like to be... grandmotherly, or something.

(UPDATE: Results are in- grandmotherly it is. Okay then.)

First Day at my New Job

Dear New Office Neighbor Who Reminds Me of Someone Dear to Me,

Thank you for the beautiful office supplies you surreptitiously piled on my desk when I was away in a meeting. You probably weren't aware of my particular affection for the stuff, but you clearly saw that my new space was lacking certain essentials. In a dragging hour of this what has been a long and kind of overwhelming day, for just a moment you made me feel like it was my emmer-effing birthday all up in this piece (wherein piece = cubicle).

Thanks, yo!

The New Girl

Final Conclusion: Maiden & Sabbath= Both Awesome

I have four days left at work and am feeling pretty ready to move on to the great state of Unemployment at this point, but I have been experiencing a few tender feelings for things I will miss about working at the Youth Brigade, including (certain among) the kids and the always-entertaining things they say and do and produce. For example, this exemplary "compare and contrast" writing assignment by Remi; Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath Part tWo The rewrite [Final Draft], which I lovingly present for your enjoyment:

The essay reads:

"The two bands I chose to compare and contrast are both metal bands. Metal bands have heavy guitar parts and insane drum and bass parts. The first one was Black sabbath and the second one w Iron Maiden.

The way that Iron Maiden and Black sabbath are similar is they are both english bands. Another way is they both have great musicians like ozzy and Steve hairison.

The First way that black sabbath and Iron Maiden [are different] is maiden is still together and Sabbath is not. Also sabbath has ozzy and maiden does not. ozzy is the guy who bit a bats head off onstage.

In my conclusion both bands are awesome. The way that maiden is awesome is for their song the trooper and Sabbath is awesome for their song warpigs. That is why I chose those bands."

(P.S. This post is dedicated to Chris.)

On riding a zip line*

"It's like flying through the air, without hitting a rock."

- 6 year-old Juan Who Visits Me in my Office All the Time.

* This zip line

According to my sources

A conversation between a tutor and student at the Youth Brigade where I work. Marla is seven and is learning to read.

Tutor: OK, Marla, what vowel makes the sound "eh?"
Marla: (silent, hunts for the answer in her book)
Tutor: Marla?
Marla: (emerges from book as though she's just been preoccupied with some really good reading) SO. You were saying?
Tutor: What vowel makes the sound "eh?"
Marla (authoritatively now): Well, according to my BRAIN, it's E.

Cubby

Cubby is seven. I'm trying to keep her entertained while she waits for her tutor at Youth Brigade, the learning center where I work. We are practicing our puppy-drawing techniques on a pile of Post-It notes and I tell Cubby we need to do that quietly because the student in the next room "is writing an essay and needs to concentrate because it's hard," which prompts the following conversation:

Cubby:   We did essay last week at my school.

Me:         Indeed?  What were you supposed to write about for your essays?

Cubby:   "What is the funnest place."

Me:         What is?

Cubby:   Zoo, California, Outer Space...
                Maybe Heaven.

Me:        Which did you choose for your topic?

Cubby:   Ummm- Heaven.  I would say essay is pretty hard, but it's not  the hardest thing.

Me:        What is the hardest thing?

Cubby:   Holding your breath under water for a hour.

Me:        Right.

Vocabulary Assignment

Isaiah is ten years old and is completing a portion of his schooling for the year at Youth Brigade, the tutoring center where I work. The following are sentences he composed for a vocabulary assignment he completed this week as homework for his tutor, Tommy:

Isaiah was watching Tommy farting attentively.

Tommy farted and Isaiah said it was almost palpable.

Isaiah pooped and Tommy was distraught because it was the size of Tommy.

Isaiah had to fart so bad for a year and he was so apprehensive; then when he farted it blew a hole through the earth.

Isaiah pooped on a salsa dancer and it was a transgression.

Isaiah said, "Fart," as he farted, so it was unison.

Tommy farted and Isaiah was fascinated.

Fascinated. No doubt!

It's a Queer Queer Queer (shudder) World

I'm downing this beer as fast as I can, having just come from an "interview" with one of the most stunningly inefficient people I've ever met. Having started ONE FULL HOUR after our scheduled meeting time, I was eager to get in there, talk myself up, get hired, and get out. Instead I got to wait. A lot. The first time my potential employer took a call from his lawyer regarding a health issue I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts, look around and see what needed to be done (by me, natch) to help get things organized, the second time I began to familiarize myself a little bit with the product. By the time he started actually placing calls to hammer out details regarding packaging I began to be somewhat peeved, and finally when he checked, then ANSWERED HIS CELL PHONE and sustained a lengthy conversation over whether or not he would skip out for the afternoon to, "knock off nine holes," I admit- I almost started to cry.

During the course of our meeting he was on the phone not less than six times, then wanted to make an appointment so I can come back and, presumably, wait around some more! Efficiency, I tell you! Adorably, he was also patriarchal and homophobic, and made great issue of my inclusion of the Queer Lounge on my resume, digging around to find out just how I feel about Those Kinds of People, and to make sure I haven't been recruited and am just not letting on about it. This fretting and probing went on at length, until he admitted experience with "an unfortunate intimacy on the subject," (like he's a big emmer-effing queer theorist or something) and I, flailing to steer the conversation off this course of doom, found myself explaining that, "it's not my pet cause," which is true, but still left me feeling sullied and traitorous.

The whole time I kept thinking this is a game, Em, treat it like a game, all you have to do is come here, and do your job, and PRETEND. You will be able to tell whether you're winning by how well you pretend, see? A game! And I know that I COULD play it, and it wouldn't be so bad. There are things I could do for the business and, having done them, I'd be liked, and in being liked I could influence the bigoted opinions of the boss I'd be interacting with every day. Maybe. On the plus side, the guy is anti-Bush Administration. Too bad he's also vociferously anti-immigrant- if you wouldn't mind not mentioning that to the Mexicans in the other room hard at work keeping his business running.

Anyway he's not all bad; in fact he's certainly charming in many ways. He has rather beautiful smooth skin for someone his age, for example. I could point out that his T's are beautifully articulated. And he's kind of sweetly lispy and precise, so that one can perceive the strong likelihood that he has endured a lifetime of being mistaken for a total queer gay fag cocksucker.

For example.

I don't mean to be so bitter, but part of the reason I came out to California was to get away from his Type, with their wide-eyed, patently offensive Good-Ol'-Boy "innocence." I thought I'd left that (and the lurking darnger of marrying into it) behind in Salt Lake City. Then I had to deal with this guy, and then there was this insane retarded angry homophobic letter to the editor in the local weekly (which is not online but I'll hunt it down and append to this post later), and it's all conspired to leave me feeling rather bruised and tender, to the point that I think I'd better leave it at this for the moment.

1.  I'll take it back if, in the next five minutes, everybody in the web cafe catches Smooth Jazz Fever and they launch a spontaneous, island beat-inspired orgy under the sultry blue glow of their laptops. But, barring such an occurrence, I maintain that, with the exception of "Smooth Operator," Sade kind of sucks.

2.  I confess, I had a really hard time taking the temp agency seriously. For some reason the way I want to describe it is as seeming "small-town," but what I mean to say is that their standards weren't exactly off the charts. I tried to come at it with a professional approach, but the girls in the office were so diffident/procedurally indoctrinated, and the testing so redundant/pointless, and the Welcome Aboard Video so painfully directed to the lowest common denominator/dimmest temp-to-perm bulbs that I could hardly bother to stifle or apologize for my egregious yawning. Yet, I speak English! Fluently! And I have experience- with actual employment! Prior to going in I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get a job at all, but by the end of my "interview" ("Are you willing to show up for work? Name something you enjoy about showing up for work. In the case that you were to show up for work, would you be willing to do actual work once you got there? Really? Good! Okay, name a skill- it doesn't need to be one you HAVE- just whatever you can think of....") I felt confidant enough to start saying things like, "So it looks like I've got a little room to be choosy here, right?" and, "You'll work with me on that then, Kirsten?" So if all my tax crap and paperwork go through it seems as though I've got a few assignments to choose from, and of course they are TEMP jobs, but that's kind of what I'm after right now and I'm (knocking on wood while optimistically) thinking that I may begin to garner actual income sometime in the sort-of-near future huzzah!

3.  The other day I sat down to pee, then started trying to multitask and forgot what I was doing there in the first place. About halfway through trimming my nails I said aloud, "Pee." in the imperative like that, and thought What the hell am I talking about? Why did I say that? and then I remembered- ah! I have to pee. So I peed. True story!

4.  Moving along, then.

5.  I'm kind of disappointed with how the Iraqi tribunal is going. I'm not a real rabid news junkie, but I used to be getting a kick out of the trial and now it's really hard to give a crap without sulky Saddam getting all truculent and bawling around bitching about his dinner not being yummy enough or whatever.

6.  This kind of game we used to play consisted of laughing about how "sleeping bag" sounds really funny to say, but is also great because that's what it is! It's a bag! And you sleep in it! Then we'd think of other kinds of things you could claim were for sleeping and which could or could not actually make sense for that function but were required to sound funny like, "...and over here is my sleeping pole," or, "Do you need to borrow my sleeping slice?" Anyway I had forgotten about this game but then the other day I watched An Officer and a Gentleman which has one line that goes something like, "Meet me in five minutes- in the blimp hangar!" which made me laff all by itself, but also reminded me of the game and since then I have been thinking, "This is my sleeping blimp!" and crack myself up every time.

7. Apparently my "fans" in "Alabama" weren't really fans at all. That, or they were offended by my "reply" to their email because they never wrote me again and all my Googling for the "Church of Spleen" they claimed to have founded has proved fruitless. I think it may be because I told their leader his name sounds like luggage. Oh "well". It was fun while it lasted!