Creature of habit that I am, I’ve been running for exercise now for almost 30 years. Keeping up an average of at least two miles a day over that stretch of time, I’ve traversed almost 24,000 miles, meaning that if I’d headed directly east when I started back in the ‘70s, I’d be all the way to, well, I’d be right back where I am now, I guess. Which probably says something about all the good this amount of mileage has done me.
When I started running shortly after college, it was at the beginning of what was then known as the jogging craze. I imagine I took it up to be fashionable -- to this day, I must admit I’m a vision in my beat-up torn t-shirt and short shorts -- but soon found it to be a great way to relax that didn’t involve showing up outside some vague acquaintance’s door asking if he had “any”. I didn’t much care for the pavement pounding and the midday heat of the Florida panhandle. However, like hitting yourself with a hammer or watching “Oprah”, it felt really good when I stopped, appealing both to my desire for a sense of accomplishment and my desire for being high.
Most of the early years of my running habit took place outdoors, since until the late ‘80s treadmills were reserved for cardiologists trying to stress-test their patients into cardiac arrest. It was a great way to see the sites in faraway places I visited for both business and pleasure. Looking back, I’m still amazed I navigated my way through traffic in places like Chicago, New York, London and Manila without being run over. I was always less concerned with the danger of being fatally injured and more aware of petty aggravation of running in public: drivers pulling up next to you and asking for directions, rude comments about my jiggling physique from passing teenagers, the nerve of cars showing up at a previously empty intersection just as you approach it. And a special irritation we have here in the South, too-polite drivers who wait for you to cross in front of them when you’re still a quarter-mile up the road, requiring you to increase your normal pace or risk the wrath of motorists lining up behind them.
The outdoor roadwork was probably essential when I hit my running peak around 1990, since I was working toward a goal of completing a marathon. I finally accomplished this after five grueling hours slogging through a rainy January day, and I have the tiny proof copy of me crossing the finishing line to attest to it. I remember the satisfying agony I experienced for days later, followed by the realization that approaching my 40th birthday, I was probably getting too old for this.
I still enjoyed exercise at a more moderate level so I found myself turning inward (to climate-controlled health clubs, not yoga). Finding a reliable facility that was going to be open today as well as tomorrow and the next day proved to be a challenge. These clubs tended to fold up and disappear like so many investment banks, though they didn't smell as bad. I finally figured that my best bet was to join a YMCA, as the whole Christianity connection lent an air of stability despite summoning up the disturbing image of Our Lord and Savior pumping away on an elliptical machine.
It took me a while to get used to running on a treadmill. Trading the fresh air and the constantly changing scenery of the outdoors for the mundane plodding on the same kind of belt your groceries enjoy at the checkout line was initially pretty boring. I was overwhelmed at first by all the options available on the control panel of the machine. There’s a so-called “safety clip”, which is basically a long piece of twine that attaches your shirt to a dead-man switch so that if you fall, the belt will stop before you’re propelled into the cluster of free-weight guys just waiting for an excuse to pummel those meek jogging nerds. There are helpful graphics so you can tailor your session to achieve goals like weight loss and toning. (I particularly appreciate the line graph showing how your target heart rate declines with advancing age, starting at 170 for age 25, falling to 115 at age 65 and presumably hitting zero shortly thereafter). I figured out the “quick start” option, which lets you pick a speed at the touch of a button, and the small built-in fan that cools while it disperses any offensive odors you feel like releasing. Instead of controlling your own pace and incline you can also choose from several pre-programmed regimens with evocative names like forest path, trail blazer and alpine meadow. We’re getting new machines soon with even more elaborate options, including built-in TV screens and more realistic trail options like rain-soaked mudpath and chased by dogs.
I must admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how welcoming the Y has been and how little they require of you spiritually. I’m able to crank up my iPod to drown out the Christian rock of bands like Puddles of Lamb and Boo to Boo-duh and replace them with my own upbeat and inevitably sacrilegious favorites, like the Village People’s “YMCA”. The wall-mounted TVs carry mostly news and sport channels, though in the corner there’s a primitive closed-circuit station flashing inspirational messages, urging viewers to “eat right,” “be responsible” and “don’t faint because we aren’t trained in CPR”.
I’m not sure how much longer my knees and other joints will allow me to continue my pursuit of exercise-induced endorphins. At my age and weight, most of my contemporaries have traded running for more sensible hobbies, like golf or permanent disability. I would seriously miss the so-called “runner’s high” and the feeling of physical accomplishment that accompany these daily workouts. I guess when the time comes that my legs can no longer carry me, I’ll find some other way to expend effort. Maybe Christianity.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Anticipating the election
The presidential election is a week away and I’m confident the results will break like I want them to. I’m also very nervous. As a lifelong progressive Democrat (one of about seven middle-aged white guys who fit that description in my suburban/rural county in one of the reddest – and I do mean reddest – states in the South), it’s obvious I’m looking forward to an apparently inevitable victory for Barack Obama. I also know how Democratic “locks” have been blown before, and I know how devious McCain and his operatives are likely to be in their final death throes.
The Republican strategy that seems to be playing out currently (and I do mean playing out) is to paint Obama as the socialist candidate. I’m not surprised that this appears to be failing just like the other scatter-shot initiatives that the Rove spawn have thrown up at the electorate. Are most McCain supporters and those still sitting on the fence even familiar with the concept of “socialism” anymore? I can see this being an effective slur to rile up the Silent Majority of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but among today’s audience it seems like only social science majors are even going to be aware of the term. I’d bet you anything that a poll taken today asking who Karl Marx was would generate as many correct answers as it would responses like “Dancing with the Stars finalist” or “the twin sons of Angelina and Brad”. You might as well label Obama as a “supercalifragilist” or a “Titleist” and just say those things are bad, and the faithful but not-all-that-bright right-wing base would start shouting these at McCain rallies.
The socialist-labeling strategy appears to be replacing last week’s theme of appealing to Joe-the-Plumber types with the warning that Democrats want to “share the wealth” (imagine McCain making air quotes here). Again, I don’t think that this is ringing quite the tone that was intended. As we’re bombarded daily with stories of outrageous executive salaries, bailouts for banks and Sarah Palin’s wardrobe malfeasance, I would imagine that most of us struggling to make ends meet believe a little wealth-sharing might be a good idea right about now. Maybe at one time we had some vague aspiration of owning our own business or making $250,000 a year. By now, though, that dream has become as relevant as the one where I’m riding a zebra over a waterfall in my underwear and then I’m suddenly in a class where I’ve forgotten to study for the test. These folks waving the signs reading “I’m Bob the Heating Guy” or “Remember Joan the Waxer” don’t have aspirations as much as they do too-easy access to permanent markers and poster paper. Soon enough, I hope, we’ll be reading election post-mortems explaining how John the Loser and Sarah the Historical Footnote thought such childish sloganeering could win them a national election during an unprecedented financial crisis.
The week before Joe the Plumber’s unlikely ascendancy from under the sink to the national stage, we got to hear how Obama’s palling around with now-geriatric leftists should cause us to question his judgment. William Ayers who, like many of idealistic but misguided radicals actually ended up devoting their lives to helping the underclasses they protested on behalf of 40 years ago, was equated with our modern-day definition of terrorist. Though Ayers might share the less-than-conscientious grooming habits of the bin Ladens and al-Zawaris, his radical tendencies were intent on changing America, not destroying it. And just because Obama served on some education improvement boards with him or attended a party at his house hardly makes them partners in bomb-throwing. No one would claim that McCain’s 5½ years in the Hanoi Hilton as a POW was some kind of inappropriate association with the wrong type (even though he probably benefitted from a boatload of Hilton Rewards points). I once pulled up next to Ted Bundy at a stoplight in Florida, but I’m not considering a coast-to-coast murder spree because of it.
It’s mostly because of already-existing political tendencies that I’ll be rooting hard for Obama next Tuesday. Because I’ve become so passionate, I doubt I’ll actually be able to watch the returns without becoming crestfallen at every scrap of potentially negative news. The race is being covered too much like a sporting event, and I’ve already wasted way too many Saturday and Sunday afternoons getting worked up as some guys I don’t even know crash into each other and advance a ball down the field in ways that may not suit my liking. Watching the election results, I’d end up yelling at states rather than players – “stupid Nevada”, “Missouri, why don’t you wear a skirt, you little girl”, “Colorado, you were wide open!” – and that just doesn’t seem right at a time when we should be pulling together as a nation.
I’ll probably just Ti-Vo the whole evening while I sit blind-folded in my car listening to my iPod so I’m not aware of the inevitable ups and downs of the TV coverage. Then, early Wednesday morning I’ll play the thing back on triple-speed, hoping the electoral vote count is kept as a running tab at the top of the screen just like the football scores and I can watch it advance quickly. I’ll still be able to urge on my favorite candidates (because I’ll be rooting for an outcome that’s actually already occurred, I’ll have to change my cheering to the past tense: “Have Gone!” not “Go Barack!”) but if there’s pain involved in outcomes I don’t like, at least it will be over as quickly as a pin prick (and I do mean … oh, never mind).
The Republican strategy that seems to be playing out currently (and I do mean playing out) is to paint Obama as the socialist candidate. I’m not surprised that this appears to be failing just like the other scatter-shot initiatives that the Rove spawn have thrown up at the electorate. Are most McCain supporters and those still sitting on the fence even familiar with the concept of “socialism” anymore? I can see this being an effective slur to rile up the Silent Majority of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but among today’s audience it seems like only social science majors are even going to be aware of the term. I’d bet you anything that a poll taken today asking who Karl Marx was would generate as many correct answers as it would responses like “Dancing with the Stars finalist” or “the twin sons of Angelina and Brad”. You might as well label Obama as a “supercalifragilist” or a “Titleist” and just say those things are bad, and the faithful but not-all-that-bright right-wing base would start shouting these at McCain rallies.
The socialist-labeling strategy appears to be replacing last week’s theme of appealing to Joe-the-Plumber types with the warning that Democrats want to “share the wealth” (imagine McCain making air quotes here). Again, I don’t think that this is ringing quite the tone that was intended. As we’re bombarded daily with stories of outrageous executive salaries, bailouts for banks and Sarah Palin’s wardrobe malfeasance, I would imagine that most of us struggling to make ends meet believe a little wealth-sharing might be a good idea right about now. Maybe at one time we had some vague aspiration of owning our own business or making $250,000 a year. By now, though, that dream has become as relevant as the one where I’m riding a zebra over a waterfall in my underwear and then I’m suddenly in a class where I’ve forgotten to study for the test. These folks waving the signs reading “I’m Bob the Heating Guy” or “Remember Joan the Waxer” don’t have aspirations as much as they do too-easy access to permanent markers and poster paper. Soon enough, I hope, we’ll be reading election post-mortems explaining how John the Loser and Sarah the Historical Footnote thought such childish sloganeering could win them a national election during an unprecedented financial crisis.
The week before Joe the Plumber’s unlikely ascendancy from under the sink to the national stage, we got to hear how Obama’s palling around with now-geriatric leftists should cause us to question his judgment. William Ayers who, like many of idealistic but misguided radicals actually ended up devoting their lives to helping the underclasses they protested on behalf of 40 years ago, was equated with our modern-day definition of terrorist. Though Ayers might share the less-than-conscientious grooming habits of the bin Ladens and al-Zawaris, his radical tendencies were intent on changing America, not destroying it. And just because Obama served on some education improvement boards with him or attended a party at his house hardly makes them partners in bomb-throwing. No one would claim that McCain’s 5½ years in the Hanoi Hilton as a POW was some kind of inappropriate association with the wrong type (even though he probably benefitted from a boatload of Hilton Rewards points). I once pulled up next to Ted Bundy at a stoplight in Florida, but I’m not considering a coast-to-coast murder spree because of it.
It’s mostly because of already-existing political tendencies that I’ll be rooting hard for Obama next Tuesday. Because I’ve become so passionate, I doubt I’ll actually be able to watch the returns without becoming crestfallen at every scrap of potentially negative news. The race is being covered too much like a sporting event, and I’ve already wasted way too many Saturday and Sunday afternoons getting worked up as some guys I don’t even know crash into each other and advance a ball down the field in ways that may not suit my liking. Watching the election results, I’d end up yelling at states rather than players – “stupid Nevada”, “Missouri, why don’t you wear a skirt, you little girl”, “Colorado, you were wide open!” – and that just doesn’t seem right at a time when we should be pulling together as a nation.
I’ll probably just Ti-Vo the whole evening while I sit blind-folded in my car listening to my iPod so I’m not aware of the inevitable ups and downs of the TV coverage. Then, early Wednesday morning I’ll play the thing back on triple-speed, hoping the electoral vote count is kept as a running tab at the top of the screen just like the football scores and I can watch it advance quickly. I’ll still be able to urge on my favorite candidates (because I’ll be rooting for an outcome that’s actually already occurred, I’ll have to change my cheering to the past tense: “Have Gone!” not “Go Barack!”) but if there’s pain involved in outcomes I don’t like, at least it will be over as quickly as a pin prick (and I do mean … oh, never mind).
Monday, October 27, 2008
Internet says ... I'm in good health
I must say, I think I’m in pretty good health for a 54-year-old male in the modern American South. This has been confirmed in the form of an 89 rating I just got from the online health assessment we’re required to take as part of our annual health insurance enrollment at work. I guess I shouldn’t say “required to take”, as we do have the option of skipping it if we’re willing to pay an extra $1,000 in premiums for not participating in this wellness initiative. So, in other words, we’re required to take the assessment unless we have no regard for the value of money.
I received the 89 rating – the Wine Spectator might describe me as a full-bodied white with just a nuance of ripe plums – for answering a series of inquiries about my health and well-being. I didn’t quite get what the two questions I answered as I was signing on for the exam had to do with how well I’m taking care of myself. The fact that my mother’s maiden name was Johnson and my first car was a Chevy Vega don’t seem terribly pertinent, though perhaps I got some kind of credit for surviving the Vega. But the rest of them, on subjects like cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, etc., did make sense, assuming I answered them truthfully, which I was under no obligation to do (except I believe I read somewhere that the Internet can tell when you’re lying).
So what this website does basically is assign values to the 50 or so questions you answer, apply some kind of intricate algorithm to the results, and come up with a profile of where you can stand to improve yourself. Because I reported that my weight was 220 pounds, for example, it somehow calculated that I needed to lose a few pounds. Because I said I didn’t floss as often as I should, the results I received at the end identified me as a member of the cohort that should floss more often. It’s amazing how they come up with such accurate insights.
When it comes to the part that lists the dozens of possible diseases you might suffer from, I’m always careful to read through every one of them in spite of the fact I know I’m going to answer no, no, no, no, no. I feel a little guilty not having had any kind of cardiovascular problems or mental breakdowns, so I’m eager to find some category I can admit to having. Sometimes I’ll agree to cancer, since I had a small skin lesion removed from my ear about 20 years ago, or perhaps asthma, since my mother claims I had this as a five-year-old. But it seems so inadequate when there’s so much misery in the world to choose from.
What I do suffer from are three maladies that I find to be pretty bothersome, even though actuarial exercises like this one apparently don’t think so. They’re not life-threatening, nor would you think they contribute all that negatively to my quality of life. They probably annoy my family, friends and coworkers more than they do me, so I actually consider them something of an asset.
For example, every tenth or twelfth breath I take, I feel the need to make it an extremely deep one that sounds suspiciously like a self-pitying sigh. I’ve had this odd pulmonary habit for as long as I can remember, and even mentioned it once during my annual physical. My doctor dismissed it quickly as being any cause for concern, pointing out helpfully that different people breathe in different ways. For example, I guess, creatures that inhabit dark-watered lagoons don’t even have lungs, and gills are notoriously difficult to sigh through (it’s really more of a rattle than a sigh). If I can’t catch this deep breath every few minutes or so, I’ll feel like I’m not getting enough oxygen. I don’t hyperventilate or pass out or anything like that; I find that if I sneak up on the sigh and turn it from a regular breath into a deep one at the last second, I can fool my lungs into cooperating. The problem, however, is that anyone within hearing range thinks I’ve become frustrated with someone or something, and that I need to tell the world about it in some sort of passive-aggressive format. Maybe I should ask for a note from the doctor that I could flash whenever I’ve annoyed a neighbor.
Another condition I endure is Restless Leg Syndrome, or RLS as it’s known in the acronym community. For as long as I can recall I’ve felt the irresistible urge to wiggle my feet when I’m trying to relax in the evening. I didn’t realize it was worthy of syndrome designation until just recently, when I discovered there’s a whole subculture devoted to the fight to conquer RLS. I’m sure the pharmaceutical industry had something to do with the mainstreaming of this condition, and I’ve tried several of their products to address the issue, but they just don’t work on me. I admire the well-dressed individuals I see in the magazine ads for these medicines – they’re reclined in their well-appointed sunrooms apparently not moving their legs (or at least the photographer was unable to capture the blur) – but I think I’m more envious of their sunrooms than I am of their tranquil limbs. Still, I don’t regard the malady as particularly difficult to live with. If you’re going to have body parts that twitch involuntarily, I’d say that legs are better than tongues or brain stems or genitalia.
Finally, I have to mention my occasionally overwhelming need to stretch. We all experience this feeling as we force our muscles into various uncomfortable configurations during the day, but what I experience seems to be of a different degree altogether. It may be related to the RLS or even the sighing, I suppose. I can accommodate the upper body stretches without drawing too much attention to myself. Throwing back your shoulders, bending your elbows high above your head and letting rip with a good stretch is not all that unusual. But I have these parts of my upper legs, specifically the muscles inside my thighs, that frequently demand the kind of extension you can’t really perform in polite company. I’ll have to excuse myself to the men’s room and hope no one comes in as I take turns placing each foot on the sink and thrusting forward in a rhythmic motion that can only be described as bizarre. I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do if I’m ever surprised in the midst of this exercise. Please drop me an email if you have any suggestions that won’t make me sound like the unfortunate love child of Larry Craig and Mary Lou Retton.
If I can ever figure out how to quantify these strange physical aberrations in the radio-button format of an online questionnaire, I’ll probably feel less guilty about being in such relatively good shape for my age. I may have to forfeit my 89, but it’d probably be worth it for the peace of mind.
I received the 89 rating – the Wine Spectator might describe me as a full-bodied white with just a nuance of ripe plums – for answering a series of inquiries about my health and well-being. I didn’t quite get what the two questions I answered as I was signing on for the exam had to do with how well I’m taking care of myself. The fact that my mother’s maiden name was Johnson and my first car was a Chevy Vega don’t seem terribly pertinent, though perhaps I got some kind of credit for surviving the Vega. But the rest of them, on subjects like cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, etc., did make sense, assuming I answered them truthfully, which I was under no obligation to do (except I believe I read somewhere that the Internet can tell when you’re lying).
So what this website does basically is assign values to the 50 or so questions you answer, apply some kind of intricate algorithm to the results, and come up with a profile of where you can stand to improve yourself. Because I reported that my weight was 220 pounds, for example, it somehow calculated that I needed to lose a few pounds. Because I said I didn’t floss as often as I should, the results I received at the end identified me as a member of the cohort that should floss more often. It’s amazing how they come up with such accurate insights.
When it comes to the part that lists the dozens of possible diseases you might suffer from, I’m always careful to read through every one of them in spite of the fact I know I’m going to answer no, no, no, no, no. I feel a little guilty not having had any kind of cardiovascular problems or mental breakdowns, so I’m eager to find some category I can admit to having. Sometimes I’ll agree to cancer, since I had a small skin lesion removed from my ear about 20 years ago, or perhaps asthma, since my mother claims I had this as a five-year-old. But it seems so inadequate when there’s so much misery in the world to choose from.
What I do suffer from are three maladies that I find to be pretty bothersome, even though actuarial exercises like this one apparently don’t think so. They’re not life-threatening, nor would you think they contribute all that negatively to my quality of life. They probably annoy my family, friends and coworkers more than they do me, so I actually consider them something of an asset.
For example, every tenth or twelfth breath I take, I feel the need to make it an extremely deep one that sounds suspiciously like a self-pitying sigh. I’ve had this odd pulmonary habit for as long as I can remember, and even mentioned it once during my annual physical. My doctor dismissed it quickly as being any cause for concern, pointing out helpfully that different people breathe in different ways. For example, I guess, creatures that inhabit dark-watered lagoons don’t even have lungs, and gills are notoriously difficult to sigh through (it’s really more of a rattle than a sigh). If I can’t catch this deep breath every few minutes or so, I’ll feel like I’m not getting enough oxygen. I don’t hyperventilate or pass out or anything like that; I find that if I sneak up on the sigh and turn it from a regular breath into a deep one at the last second, I can fool my lungs into cooperating. The problem, however, is that anyone within hearing range thinks I’ve become frustrated with someone or something, and that I need to tell the world about it in some sort of passive-aggressive format. Maybe I should ask for a note from the doctor that I could flash whenever I’ve annoyed a neighbor.
Another condition I endure is Restless Leg Syndrome, or RLS as it’s known in the acronym community. For as long as I can recall I’ve felt the irresistible urge to wiggle my feet when I’m trying to relax in the evening. I didn’t realize it was worthy of syndrome designation until just recently, when I discovered there’s a whole subculture devoted to the fight to conquer RLS. I’m sure the pharmaceutical industry had something to do with the mainstreaming of this condition, and I’ve tried several of their products to address the issue, but they just don’t work on me. I admire the well-dressed individuals I see in the magazine ads for these medicines – they’re reclined in their well-appointed sunrooms apparently not moving their legs (or at least the photographer was unable to capture the blur) – but I think I’m more envious of their sunrooms than I am of their tranquil limbs. Still, I don’t regard the malady as particularly difficult to live with. If you’re going to have body parts that twitch involuntarily, I’d say that legs are better than tongues or brain stems or genitalia.
Finally, I have to mention my occasionally overwhelming need to stretch. We all experience this feeling as we force our muscles into various uncomfortable configurations during the day, but what I experience seems to be of a different degree altogether. It may be related to the RLS or even the sighing, I suppose. I can accommodate the upper body stretches without drawing too much attention to myself. Throwing back your shoulders, bending your elbows high above your head and letting rip with a good stretch is not all that unusual. But I have these parts of my upper legs, specifically the muscles inside my thighs, that frequently demand the kind of extension you can’t really perform in polite company. I’ll have to excuse myself to the men’s room and hope no one comes in as I take turns placing each foot on the sink and thrusting forward in a rhythmic motion that can only be described as bizarre. I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do if I’m ever surprised in the midst of this exercise. Please drop me an email if you have any suggestions that won’t make me sound like the unfortunate love child of Larry Craig and Mary Lou Retton.
If I can ever figure out how to quantify these strange physical aberrations in the radio-button format of an online questionnaire, I’ll probably feel less guilty about being in such relatively good shape for my age. I may have to forfeit my 89, but it’d probably be worth it for the peace of mind.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Party time at the office
One affliction affecting social life in the modern office is the too-awkward, too-frequent staging of celebrations for the slightest of reasons. Whether it’s a birthday, a holiday, a farewell or even a death in the family, the employees at my company are like many others who feel compelled to commemorate these occasions with a gathering that includes food, a greeting card and standing around while shifting our weight from one foot to the other.
The latest of these events at my office was just yesterday when we lost a ten-year veteran who found a better job – that is, one that wasn’t in imminent danger of disappearing – working for a local museum. (You know you’re in trouble when your staff is being raided by the not-for-profit sector). Richard is a great guy, intelligent and well-liked by everyone he’s come into contact with. So naturally, we had to embarrass him in a public spectacle before he left.
The date for the party was set about a week before his departure by the luckless individual who is responsible for pulling these things together. She went around the office assigning everyone a food category that they were to bring for the luncheon – soft drinks, veggies, desserts, chips, all the major building blocks of the food pyramid. I was told “you’re bagels”. I bought a dozen the night before, not realizing until the morning of the event that this was assumed to include something to put on the bagels. Fortunately my wife saves condiment packs from fast-food purchases, so I was able to grab a handful of jellies and butters and, in my haste, some ketchup and vinegar.
On the morning of the event, we hurriedly signed a farewell card featuring a cartoon dog with a hang-dog look on its face. I think it’s the same dog I saw on a birthday card we circulated a few months back, and may even have been featured on the last sympathy card we gave out. Anyway, we all made our best shot at a meaningful message for Richard to remember us by – “good luck” and “we’ll miss you” were common themes – and passed the card onto whomever we could find who hadn’t signed yet. Although you want to have time to put some thought into your final goodbye, you have to balance that against the concern that the later you wait, the harder it is to find someone else to unload the card on.
Later in the morning we’re told to start gathering our foodstuffs and assemble them onto the party table, a low-slung counter normally used for sorting paperwork but now covered with a festive blue tarp. A manager called out across the office to summon the celebrants from their crosswords and cross-stitch. “Come eat, everybody”. It was only when we noticed Richard standing nervously next to the deviled eggs that we realized party time had arrived.
First, we took a moment to acknowledge Richard’s work. “You came to us over ten years ago,” said the ranking manager haltingly, searching for just the right tone. “And now we’re here to wish you well in your new job.” Brief and to the point, I thought, and very considerate of how hungry everyone was. And much better than the speech he gave six months ago to the bipolar retiree who’d had a reputation as a royal complainer: “You spoke your mind when you thought we were wrong, and we all appreciated it a lot.” Actually, we hated her, but that’s not something you can say at a retirement party.
Richard was handed his card, which he dutifully pretended to read, then was expected to make a brief speech. He graciously thanked everyone for their effort, said he’d definitely be coming back to visit (they never do), and urged the lurking hoard to dig in. We ate and ate till we were groggy, then spent the next four hours moaning about how Mexicans have the right idea with that afternoon siesta thing.
In addition to the send-off celebrations, we also used to have birthday parties. At first these were done on an individual basis on the day of the actual birthday, then later became group events at the end of the month, then seemed to happen only about every three months or so. (Only at a financial services firm might the staff wish someone a “Happy Birth Quarter”). At these events, we’d gather around a generic sheet cake, sing a dirge-like rendition of the birthday song – my favorite part was always the point at which we’d try to cram everyone’s name into the “happy birthday dear MichaelJenniferSamLindaAllenBertrand” part – then make one of the female celebrants slice up the cake up. Inevitably there’d be a joke about someone celebrating their 29th birthday for the 13th time, and of course the dog card.
Major holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are noted with the usual pot-luck response and a nod to the South’s lack of religious pluralism. The food is basically the same, with ham or turkey maybe replacing the Doritos. Someone will inevitably feel the need to inject a prayer thanking Jesus Lord for the bounty of His overcooked green-bean-and-mushroom casseroles. I don’t have any great moral objection to this kind of religious display in a supposedly secular work place; it just always makes me think of ‘60s TV actor Jack Lord, and I inwardly start humming the theme to “Hawaii Five-O”.
Finally I have to mention the peculiar social customs we observe when someone faces a major medical crisis or has a death in the family. The medical issues are often feted just like the birthdays and holidays, except without the “happy surgery” cards. The last one we did was an especially awkward affair for a very nice coworker who was going in for a mastectomy. The same Friday was also the last day for another woman who was having rotator-cuff surgery, a doubtlessly difficult procedure but hardly in the same league with breast cancer. Someone felt the need to call for a group photo – like the whole mortality question wasn’t palpable enough already – and the shoulder lady tearfully declined to be in the picture with the breast lady, not wanting to butt in on her moment in the spotlight. Everybody felt very guilty and tried to pull together a separate quickie celebration at the last minute, but it was all too transparent that we regarded a metastasized malignancy as somehow more noteworthy than being unable to lift your arm higher than this.
Even worse than this fiasco is the morbid practice we have when there’s actually a death involved. About a year ago, we endured twin tragedies in which one staffer was killed in a car accident and another lost her husband just a few days later. Anyone with half an ounce of humanity (even me) felt the need to do something at a time like this to show our concern, but our choice bordered on the bizarre: we took up a collection of money and offered the bereaved individuals a wad of bills. Because nothing says how our prayers are with you in your time of loss like a cash prize of $285.
I guess you could say that we don’t stand on ceremony in our well-intentioned attempts to recognize life’s milestones. Instead, we kind of sneak up and rub against it inappropriately.
The latest of these events at my office was just yesterday when we lost a ten-year veteran who found a better job – that is, one that wasn’t in imminent danger of disappearing – working for a local museum. (You know you’re in trouble when your staff is being raided by the not-for-profit sector). Richard is a great guy, intelligent and well-liked by everyone he’s come into contact with. So naturally, we had to embarrass him in a public spectacle before he left.
The date for the party was set about a week before his departure by the luckless individual who is responsible for pulling these things together. She went around the office assigning everyone a food category that they were to bring for the luncheon – soft drinks, veggies, desserts, chips, all the major building blocks of the food pyramid. I was told “you’re bagels”. I bought a dozen the night before, not realizing until the morning of the event that this was assumed to include something to put on the bagels. Fortunately my wife saves condiment packs from fast-food purchases, so I was able to grab a handful of jellies and butters and, in my haste, some ketchup and vinegar.
On the morning of the event, we hurriedly signed a farewell card featuring a cartoon dog with a hang-dog look on its face. I think it’s the same dog I saw on a birthday card we circulated a few months back, and may even have been featured on the last sympathy card we gave out. Anyway, we all made our best shot at a meaningful message for Richard to remember us by – “good luck” and “we’ll miss you” were common themes – and passed the card onto whomever we could find who hadn’t signed yet. Although you want to have time to put some thought into your final goodbye, you have to balance that against the concern that the later you wait, the harder it is to find someone else to unload the card on.
Later in the morning we’re told to start gathering our foodstuffs and assemble them onto the party table, a low-slung counter normally used for sorting paperwork but now covered with a festive blue tarp. A manager called out across the office to summon the celebrants from their crosswords and cross-stitch. “Come eat, everybody”. It was only when we noticed Richard standing nervously next to the deviled eggs that we realized party time had arrived.
First, we took a moment to acknowledge Richard’s work. “You came to us over ten years ago,” said the ranking manager haltingly, searching for just the right tone. “And now we’re here to wish you well in your new job.” Brief and to the point, I thought, and very considerate of how hungry everyone was. And much better than the speech he gave six months ago to the bipolar retiree who’d had a reputation as a royal complainer: “You spoke your mind when you thought we were wrong, and we all appreciated it a lot.” Actually, we hated her, but that’s not something you can say at a retirement party.
Richard was handed his card, which he dutifully pretended to read, then was expected to make a brief speech. He graciously thanked everyone for their effort, said he’d definitely be coming back to visit (they never do), and urged the lurking hoard to dig in. We ate and ate till we were groggy, then spent the next four hours moaning about how Mexicans have the right idea with that afternoon siesta thing.
In addition to the send-off celebrations, we also used to have birthday parties. At first these were done on an individual basis on the day of the actual birthday, then later became group events at the end of the month, then seemed to happen only about every three months or so. (Only at a financial services firm might the staff wish someone a “Happy Birth Quarter”). At these events, we’d gather around a generic sheet cake, sing a dirge-like rendition of the birthday song – my favorite part was always the point at which we’d try to cram everyone’s name into the “happy birthday dear MichaelJenniferSamLindaAllenBertrand” part – then make one of the female celebrants slice up the cake up. Inevitably there’d be a joke about someone celebrating their 29th birthday for the 13th time, and of course the dog card.
Major holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are noted with the usual pot-luck response and a nod to the South’s lack of religious pluralism. The food is basically the same, with ham or turkey maybe replacing the Doritos. Someone will inevitably feel the need to inject a prayer thanking Jesus Lord for the bounty of His overcooked green-bean-and-mushroom casseroles. I don’t have any great moral objection to this kind of religious display in a supposedly secular work place; it just always makes me think of ‘60s TV actor Jack Lord, and I inwardly start humming the theme to “Hawaii Five-O”.
Finally I have to mention the peculiar social customs we observe when someone faces a major medical crisis or has a death in the family. The medical issues are often feted just like the birthdays and holidays, except without the “happy surgery” cards. The last one we did was an especially awkward affair for a very nice coworker who was going in for a mastectomy. The same Friday was also the last day for another woman who was having rotator-cuff surgery, a doubtlessly difficult procedure but hardly in the same league with breast cancer. Someone felt the need to call for a group photo – like the whole mortality question wasn’t palpable enough already – and the shoulder lady tearfully declined to be in the picture with the breast lady, not wanting to butt in on her moment in the spotlight. Everybody felt very guilty and tried to pull together a separate quickie celebration at the last minute, but it was all too transparent that we regarded a metastasized malignancy as somehow more noteworthy than being unable to lift your arm higher than this.
Even worse than this fiasco is the morbid practice we have when there’s actually a death involved. About a year ago, we endured twin tragedies in which one staffer was killed in a car accident and another lost her husband just a few days later. Anyone with half an ounce of humanity (even me) felt the need to do something at a time like this to show our concern, but our choice bordered on the bizarre: we took up a collection of money and offered the bereaved individuals a wad of bills. Because nothing says how our prayers are with you in your time of loss like a cash prize of $285.
I guess you could say that we don’t stand on ceremony in our well-intentioned attempts to recognize life’s milestones. Instead, we kind of sneak up and rub against it inappropriately.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Is this finally the end?
I started keeping this blog about seven weeks ago as a sort of death watch over what appears to be the imminent demise of my job. My work for a financial services firm seemed more and more tenuous with each plummet of the Dow, so I felt some type of written therapy might help me work through this uncertainty. It looked for a while last Friday that the uncertainty would finally be gone, replaced with a severance package and outplacement counseling.
I imagine it’s rare for anyone being laid off these days to anticipate how and when the end times might happen, though I’d imagine Revelations’ Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will probably be replaced by a quartet of security guards to escort us from the building. When I first arrive each morning, the fact that I see none of their rent-a-cop vehicles in the parking lot is my first reassurance of the day, but it usually doesn’t last long. As soon as I walk through the door, I can see the tables where our work is supposed to be. They’re almost always covered instead by the Earth’s atmosphere and maybe a stray stapler.
If I can sign onto my computer without getting some kind of “see IT administrator and don’t forget to bring your ID badge” message, I’ll check the distant corners of the room to see if empty boxes have been collected. These would indicate that we’ll soon be collecting our personal articles – family pictures, a few office toys, maybe an old Lean Cuisine – and making the Lehman Brothers walk of shame out onto the street.
If I make it this far, I’ll check a “production status” email I get each day that contains transcripts of instant-message communications between our scheduling department and our production sites overseas. Usually these are full of mundane discussions like “does it look like you’ll meet all your deadlines today?” or “we are to most humbly call on your forgivitude for yesterday’s malcommunication regarding our temblor in Asia”. Occasionally there might also be a clue about who is now seeking opportunities elsewhere (specifically in the unemployment line) or what sites are scheduled to be “down”, as in down for the count.
Reading the tea leaves like this might be strangely appropriate, considering about 90% of our jobs are now in places like India and Sri Lanka. But it makes for a very edgy, very nervous workforce. So on Friday, when all three managers on day shift were seen leaving together, the rumors and tension began to build. They’re on a conference call with the VP of the division, one coworker claimed. Sarah took her purse and a notebook with her, someone else noted ominously. Lenny turned and went in another door when he saw me in the parking lot this morning, reported a third.
None of these seemed like good signs. Plus, it was Friday, which I think I read is the most common day of the week for layoffs to happen (I guess so you can have a whole weekend to psychologically recover before starting your job hunt on Monday morning). Plus, it was raining.
For some reason, what concerned me the most was that the shift supervisor closed and locked her door as she joined the others but left the light on in her office. In the past, she’s either partly closed the door with the light on, or closed it completely and turned the light off. What could this mean? Maybe I was parsing the details a little too closely, but seeing such aberrant behavior at a managerial level concerned me. I felt like the detective who had entered a room and found himself obsessed with a fork that was turned upside-down even though the adjacent spoon was right-side-up.
The threesome were seen leaving the office at about 8:30 am, headed all the way across the warehouse to a suite of offices on the other side of the building, which we call the Other Side of the Building. Nobody knows much about what goes on here, except that it’s dark and bad and very frightening. It’s home to John “Go to the HR Website” Gehrig, our HR coordinator who, despite the fact he’s at least 140 years old, has so totally embraced the Internet that he’s incapable of answering any questions we might ask. It’s also the home to our largest training room, which is about all any of us ordinary workers have ever seen of the Other Side. Here is where we receive the occasional safety, quality improvement or corporate development training, sessions so deadly dull that I once faked a seizure to get out. Nothing good ever happens over there.
By 10 am, the office had grown increasingly quiet and tense. I figured I’d walk through the warehouse to use the other restroom, in the hope I could catch a glimpse of whatever was going on across the way. There was no sign of anybody except the warehouse work crews, obliviously picking and packing their way to financial security. I used my lunch break to take a walk outside and call my wife to prepare her for the news that something was up. Was a longer meeting better than a shorter one? An increased length could indicate we’d need to plan to take over the work of other closed locations, and details needed to be worked out as to how we’d handle all that overtime and the big paychecks that would result. Or, it could be discussions of how managers should properly deliver the bad news, where to find the extra boxes of tissues, and how to defend themselves against blows to the head and face.
Nearly noon, I returned from my break. I had taken longer than I was supposed to but a reprimand seemed unlikely. I couldn’t imagine even the coldest corporate hatchet-person asking me to collect my belongings and don’t be surprised to see your final paycheck docked by ten minutes. As I walked across the parking lot, there was one of the three managers at her perch on a bench smoking a cigarette. The tea leaves indicated this was a good sign, as sometimes we’ve seen her hiding around the side of the building when she doesn’t want to talk with others. In fact, two of my coworkers had just finished chatting with her as I approached. They turned to leave before I could see the expression on their faces, but there seemed to be little wailing and/or moaning.
I walked up to Sarah and immediately saw the good news. She was wearing a “Hello My Name Is…” sticker on her chest. Whatever the nature of the morning-long meeting had been, it involved participants who didn’t know her name. This indicated that the session had been some kind of lame managerial training session with outside consultants who might tell you how to maximize your potential and that of your direct reports, but couldn’t be troubled to memorize a few names.
And to think I had been afraid the sticker would read, “Hello Your Job is Eliminated Beginning …”
I imagine it’s rare for anyone being laid off these days to anticipate how and when the end times might happen, though I’d imagine Revelations’ Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will probably be replaced by a quartet of security guards to escort us from the building. When I first arrive each morning, the fact that I see none of their rent-a-cop vehicles in the parking lot is my first reassurance of the day, but it usually doesn’t last long. As soon as I walk through the door, I can see the tables where our work is supposed to be. They’re almost always covered instead by the Earth’s atmosphere and maybe a stray stapler.
If I can sign onto my computer without getting some kind of “see IT administrator and don’t forget to bring your ID badge” message, I’ll check the distant corners of the room to see if empty boxes have been collected. These would indicate that we’ll soon be collecting our personal articles – family pictures, a few office toys, maybe an old Lean Cuisine – and making the Lehman Brothers walk of shame out onto the street.
If I make it this far, I’ll check a “production status” email I get each day that contains transcripts of instant-message communications between our scheduling department and our production sites overseas. Usually these are full of mundane discussions like “does it look like you’ll meet all your deadlines today?” or “we are to most humbly call on your forgivitude for yesterday’s malcommunication regarding our temblor in Asia”. Occasionally there might also be a clue about who is now seeking opportunities elsewhere (specifically in the unemployment line) or what sites are scheduled to be “down”, as in down for the count.
Reading the tea leaves like this might be strangely appropriate, considering about 90% of our jobs are now in places like India and Sri Lanka. But it makes for a very edgy, very nervous workforce. So on Friday, when all three managers on day shift were seen leaving together, the rumors and tension began to build. They’re on a conference call with the VP of the division, one coworker claimed. Sarah took her purse and a notebook with her, someone else noted ominously. Lenny turned and went in another door when he saw me in the parking lot this morning, reported a third.
None of these seemed like good signs. Plus, it was Friday, which I think I read is the most common day of the week for layoffs to happen (I guess so you can have a whole weekend to psychologically recover before starting your job hunt on Monday morning). Plus, it was raining.
For some reason, what concerned me the most was that the shift supervisor closed and locked her door as she joined the others but left the light on in her office. In the past, she’s either partly closed the door with the light on, or closed it completely and turned the light off. What could this mean? Maybe I was parsing the details a little too closely, but seeing such aberrant behavior at a managerial level concerned me. I felt like the detective who had entered a room and found himself obsessed with a fork that was turned upside-down even though the adjacent spoon was right-side-up.
The threesome were seen leaving the office at about 8:30 am, headed all the way across the warehouse to a suite of offices on the other side of the building, which we call the Other Side of the Building. Nobody knows much about what goes on here, except that it’s dark and bad and very frightening. It’s home to John “Go to the HR Website” Gehrig, our HR coordinator who, despite the fact he’s at least 140 years old, has so totally embraced the Internet that he’s incapable of answering any questions we might ask. It’s also the home to our largest training room, which is about all any of us ordinary workers have ever seen of the Other Side. Here is where we receive the occasional safety, quality improvement or corporate development training, sessions so deadly dull that I once faked a seizure to get out. Nothing good ever happens over there.
By 10 am, the office had grown increasingly quiet and tense. I figured I’d walk through the warehouse to use the other restroom, in the hope I could catch a glimpse of whatever was going on across the way. There was no sign of anybody except the warehouse work crews, obliviously picking and packing their way to financial security. I used my lunch break to take a walk outside and call my wife to prepare her for the news that something was up. Was a longer meeting better than a shorter one? An increased length could indicate we’d need to plan to take over the work of other closed locations, and details needed to be worked out as to how we’d handle all that overtime and the big paychecks that would result. Or, it could be discussions of how managers should properly deliver the bad news, where to find the extra boxes of tissues, and how to defend themselves against blows to the head and face.
Nearly noon, I returned from my break. I had taken longer than I was supposed to but a reprimand seemed unlikely. I couldn’t imagine even the coldest corporate hatchet-person asking me to collect my belongings and don’t be surprised to see your final paycheck docked by ten minutes. As I walked across the parking lot, there was one of the three managers at her perch on a bench smoking a cigarette. The tea leaves indicated this was a good sign, as sometimes we’ve seen her hiding around the side of the building when she doesn’t want to talk with others. In fact, two of my coworkers had just finished chatting with her as I approached. They turned to leave before I could see the expression on their faces, but there seemed to be little wailing and/or moaning.
I walked up to Sarah and immediately saw the good news. She was wearing a “Hello My Name Is…” sticker on her chest. Whatever the nature of the morning-long meeting had been, it involved participants who didn’t know her name. This indicated that the session had been some kind of lame managerial training session with outside consultants who might tell you how to maximize your potential and that of your direct reports, but couldn’t be troubled to memorize a few names.
And to think I had been afraid the sticker would read, “Hello Your Job is Eliminated Beginning …”
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Fun doing yardwork (the fall edition)
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy mowing my grass – the satisfaction it gives me to see such perfect results, the sweaty brow and the dirty clothes, how different it is from mowing through spreadsheets and seeing my 401(k) turn into so much mulch. But now the fall has arrived and the grass has mysteriously stopped growing (something to do with the credit freeze, no doubt). Time to run the gas out of the mowers, recall how I should also drain the oil but don’t know how, and turn my attention to a different kind of yard maintenance – stapling all those damn leaves back onto their trees.
Or maybe just gathering them up and putting them down by the road would be more practical. Our yard is actually pretty low maintenance compared to most others in our neighborhood. Though sheltered by trees, over half of the area is covered by a bark and decomposing leaf mixture that requires next to zero care, except for treating the chigger bites you get any time you walk near it. The few strips of grass are largely down by the road, so transporting the autumnal droppings only a few feet into the gutter shouldn’t be that difficult. We live inside the city limits, so we can count on a giant sucking machine (a type of truck, not the city council) coming by to dispose of the collected decay every week or so.
I tried the raking thing for several years, so I could righteously scoff at those gas-guzzling, noise-spewing leaf blowers that everybody else seemed to have. It was also easier to tell me wife I was going outside to rake rather than that I was going outside to blow. But even with such a small area to clear, it was taking me so long that during the peak of fall I’d have to start over again as soon as I stopped, like those painters of the Golden Gate Bridge. I finally invested in an electric leaf-blower, which is much better than the gas guzzlers because, if it’s anything like my understanding of the electric car, it doesn’t use any energy whatsoever.
The job became fairly easy to accomplish once I understood a few basics. My first few attempts though were pathetic. I didn’t know you had to stand there like a golfer with your wetted finger in the air to tell which way the wind was blowing. (When I saw my crazy neighbor doing this, I thought he was making a key point while speaking to the assembled foliage.) I was blowing the leaves into a stiff breeze and trying to figure out why I was getting so much blowback. Once I got the right idea, I had to learn that it takes a certain scooping motion to move piles taller than a few inches, and that you had to start in a corner and establish a cleared beachhead before fanning out from there and corralling the herd properly toward the street.
The thing I’m still not too sure about is how leaf-blowing and respect for your neighbors’ property are supposed to coexist. Before, I was mostly concerned that they were laughing at my feeble attempts to blow the stuff into a 25 mph gale. I’m sure they chuckled inwardly at my look of surprise when more leaves ended up in my hair than down the driveway, because they also chuckled outwardly, and did some pointing as well. Now, I’m worried that there must be some kind of unwritten rule that prevents you from simply jetting the debris into your neighbor’s yard. I’m right that you’re not supposed to do that, aren’t I?
On one side of our lot, there’s a bit of my grass adjacent to a “wild” area, which is adjacent to one neighbor’s yard. I don’t feel too bad about blowing leaves into this spot, especially since this is the guy who walks his leashed, pooping cat onto the edge of our property near the shed where he thinks we can’t see him. Since our house is on the corner, we have only one other adjacent neighbor who is mostly behind our house rather than to the side, so who cares what he thinks? Actually, I do, so I try to find the property line and aim away from it, though I’m afraid that looks too much like I’m being careful not to clear his grass in any way, but jeez I can’t blow the whole neighborhood.
Finally I maneuver the various piles closer and closer to the road. It’s rained recently, so the individual leaves stay mostly in place. The biggest hassle is working with the electric cord and its extension – if you try to stretch an extra foot to get one last area, you risk pulling the cord and having to walk all the way up to the house to plug it back in. To save extra steps, I’m probably being too careless putting the electric appliance on the wet ground, which I’m guessing could cause my death by electrocution, though on the plus side the ensuing fire would consume the leaf pile as well as my lifeless body. It’d be a good way to go, a fitting tribute to my corporate trainees in India who send off their dear departed on funeral pyres.
Now I’ve got to gather one last bit of bluster and deposit the leaves into the road. Does it have to be one pile – more work for me – or would three or four piles be OK? Or what about one long, thin pile all the way around the corner? Do I need to stay clear of the gutter? How neat do the piles have to be? Is it OK to blow the few orphans in the general direction of nowhere, like the professional landscapers I see swinging their machines back and forth? And what is my obligation in the hours or days after I’m done? Is every subsequent gust that comes along and undoes my work in the direction of a neighbor’s yard my fault?
I doubt the city cares but, as I said, I’m more concerned with the disapproval of my neighbors than I am with silly municipal ordinances. Having someone walk over and comment “you know, you’re not supposed to use the medium-high setting on a downhill lie during the third week of October” would be devastating. They (probably) can’t fine me, but they do know where I live.
Or maybe just gathering them up and putting them down by the road would be more practical. Our yard is actually pretty low maintenance compared to most others in our neighborhood. Though sheltered by trees, over half of the area is covered by a bark and decomposing leaf mixture that requires next to zero care, except for treating the chigger bites you get any time you walk near it. The few strips of grass are largely down by the road, so transporting the autumnal droppings only a few feet into the gutter shouldn’t be that difficult. We live inside the city limits, so we can count on a giant sucking machine (a type of truck, not the city council) coming by to dispose of the collected decay every week or so.
I tried the raking thing for several years, so I could righteously scoff at those gas-guzzling, noise-spewing leaf blowers that everybody else seemed to have. It was also easier to tell me wife I was going outside to rake rather than that I was going outside to blow. But even with such a small area to clear, it was taking me so long that during the peak of fall I’d have to start over again as soon as I stopped, like those painters of the Golden Gate Bridge. I finally invested in an electric leaf-blower, which is much better than the gas guzzlers because, if it’s anything like my understanding of the electric car, it doesn’t use any energy whatsoever.
The job became fairly easy to accomplish once I understood a few basics. My first few attempts though were pathetic. I didn’t know you had to stand there like a golfer with your wetted finger in the air to tell which way the wind was blowing. (When I saw my crazy neighbor doing this, I thought he was making a key point while speaking to the assembled foliage.) I was blowing the leaves into a stiff breeze and trying to figure out why I was getting so much blowback. Once I got the right idea, I had to learn that it takes a certain scooping motion to move piles taller than a few inches, and that you had to start in a corner and establish a cleared beachhead before fanning out from there and corralling the herd properly toward the street.
The thing I’m still not too sure about is how leaf-blowing and respect for your neighbors’ property are supposed to coexist. Before, I was mostly concerned that they were laughing at my feeble attempts to blow the stuff into a 25 mph gale. I’m sure they chuckled inwardly at my look of surprise when more leaves ended up in my hair than down the driveway, because they also chuckled outwardly, and did some pointing as well. Now, I’m worried that there must be some kind of unwritten rule that prevents you from simply jetting the debris into your neighbor’s yard. I’m right that you’re not supposed to do that, aren’t I?
On one side of our lot, there’s a bit of my grass adjacent to a “wild” area, which is adjacent to one neighbor’s yard. I don’t feel too bad about blowing leaves into this spot, especially since this is the guy who walks his leashed, pooping cat onto the edge of our property near the shed where he thinks we can’t see him. Since our house is on the corner, we have only one other adjacent neighbor who is mostly behind our house rather than to the side, so who cares what he thinks? Actually, I do, so I try to find the property line and aim away from it, though I’m afraid that looks too much like I’m being careful not to clear his grass in any way, but jeez I can’t blow the whole neighborhood.
Finally I maneuver the various piles closer and closer to the road. It’s rained recently, so the individual leaves stay mostly in place. The biggest hassle is working with the electric cord and its extension – if you try to stretch an extra foot to get one last area, you risk pulling the cord and having to walk all the way up to the house to plug it back in. To save extra steps, I’m probably being too careless putting the electric appliance on the wet ground, which I’m guessing could cause my death by electrocution, though on the plus side the ensuing fire would consume the leaf pile as well as my lifeless body. It’d be a good way to go, a fitting tribute to my corporate trainees in India who send off their dear departed on funeral pyres.
Now I’ve got to gather one last bit of bluster and deposit the leaves into the road. Does it have to be one pile – more work for me – or would three or four piles be OK? Or what about one long, thin pile all the way around the corner? Do I need to stay clear of the gutter? How neat do the piles have to be? Is it OK to blow the few orphans in the general direction of nowhere, like the professional landscapers I see swinging their machines back and forth? And what is my obligation in the hours or days after I’m done? Is every subsequent gust that comes along and undoes my work in the direction of a neighbor’s yard my fault?
I doubt the city cares but, as I said, I’m more concerned with the disapproval of my neighbors than I am with silly municipal ordinances. Having someone walk over and comment “you know, you’re not supposed to use the medium-high setting on a downhill lie during the third week of October” would be devastating. They (probably) can’t fine me, but they do know where I live.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Killing time at work, the final installment
The final installment of how I manage to make it through a do-nothing workday:
9:00 – I arrive in the conference room designated for our health insurance screening. It’s a good-sized meeting room featuring a large table surrounded by about ten executive chairs at the front, then another 40 or so straight-back chairs aimed toward the table. The two free-lance nurses sit at the table and direct those arriving to sign-in, weigh themselves, fill out an information sheet, and take a seat to wait their turn. My pre-set appointment time apparently means nothing, as there are about a half-dozen people signed in ahead of me. The whole scene does very little to reassure anyone who might be concerned about privacy as they discuss their health matters at the table. You basically have an audience watching as your blood-pressure is checked, your finger is pricked for a cholesterol test and you answer questions about your most private history. The numbers revealed in the screening will be used in an online questionnaire we’re required to submit as part of our insurance sign-up. Patients with the one nurse are moving pretty swiftly, but the second one has retained her patient for a good bit of time. We all wonder what loathsome condition her poor patient has that requires so much discussion.
9:45 – I finally get called up to the stage, er, patient table. I feel a little like Tom Hanks greeting David Letterman, though fortunately there’s no applause from the crowd. I’ve got the elderly nurse and, though a little slow, she plods through the procedures fairly well. I ask if the blood test will also measure blood sugar, which was included in previous years’ tests, but she says “not this year. I guess they’re trying to save a little money, but it doesn’t really make sense since we can use the same sample.” Apparently, making sense is something that’s done in the healthcare field. Interesting. My numbers are just a couple of points off what they like to see, so she goes through the pre-programmed routine of giving me advice on how to hit the numbers right on the dot. I need more salmon, preferably Pacific or Alaskan though Atlantic is still better than flounder, which is not as good as cod. She tells me where salmon can be bought, how it can be preserved, and how it can be cooked but, unfortunately, not how to afford it.
10:15 – I’m out of the screening and pleased with how it went. Normally, you might be annoyed to get tied up well over an hour for a medical appointment that could’ve taken ten minutes, but I’m just glad I’m that much closer to the end of the day. Perhaps a little dazed from the blood loss (or maybe it’s the thought of all those dead fish), I stumble into Dora in the hallway, the manager who wants me to review our training website. I tell her I’ll take a look after my lunch break.
10:25 – We’re supposed to have a total of 60 minutes of breaks each workday. Believe it or not, at one time there was a posted schedule of who was to go when and for how long. For example, I was required to take 15 minutes from precisely 6:30 to 6:45 am, despite the fact I had arrived only 90 minutes earlier. Fortunately, our corps of smokers, who were allowed to take their breaks in ten 6-minute sessions, undercut the master plan. Now, I typically take about 40 minutes to sit and drink coffee in a Greek diner. It’s the only nearby commercial establishment besides a heavy equipment rental outfit, and at the moment I’m good on front-end loaders.
11:00 – Back from my break, I need to make a vacation request so I can have a day off tomorrow. Rather than simply ask my manager, we are required to submit what’s called a “schedule variance form”. This overcomplicated piece of needless paperwork has no less than five places to enter a date and three places to include your name. You have to specify the type of day off you want: vacation, what’s called a “floating holiday” (though it can be used for activities other than floating), and “other”. I have 15 vacation days, plus these mysterious holidays designed I think to let people take off for personal religious days like Yom Kippur, Good Friday, or migraine headache day. We have no “sick days”, per se, just paid and unpaid time off. The bottom of the variance form has five full lines set aside for comments. We’ve given up on using the spot to complain about this perverted system, and instead add things like “please, please, please!” or “I think my dog is dying tomorrow”.
11:30 – A loud rhythmic shriek repeats a half dozen times from across the room. It’s not that Kim has discovered an even cuter cross-stitch pattern, but rather a test of the weather emergency radio. It goes off every day, so we’ve learned to ignore it as well as the tornado warnings it might be indicating.
12:05 – As I pass my supervisor’s office on the way to my mailbox slot, she calls out to me. Sandra has developed this failsafe management technique that allows her view to prevail in virtually any discussion. She has the patience and tenacity of continuing a conversation until your filling bladder or desire for food forces you to give in. In this case, she also uses the advantage of being seated at her desk while I’m forced to stand in her doorway. She wants to resume a talk we had a few weeks back about how a particular error was committed, which evolves into a dialogue about some similar errors, which turns into an exchange about coworkers we both know from other sites, and somehow eventually ends up focused on the Yuletide favorite “Away in a Manger”. Within 20 minutes my legs have tired to the extent that I’m literally slumping against her wall, taking every tone of her voice that seems to signal the end is near to inch further away. Ultimate, I give in to her position that errors are bad and Christmas is good.
12:30 – My loud, talkative neighbor is at it again: “When my neighbors get home from work, our dog runs over to sit and watch them.” Then, “we bought a ham last week.” Then, “isn’t orange juice good for settling you stomach?” Then, “Happy birthday, Bob. Are you 29 again? My husband says our daughter cried when I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her as a baby.” No doubt.
12:35 -- I’m thinking it’s time to take my last break of the day. I’ve discovered a secluded spot featuring a few large boulders near the back of our office park. It’s shaded, has a nice view of a parking lot for semi trailers and can just barely be seen from the road or sidewalk. I’ll take a book or newspaper down here to use up my last 15 minutes reading. My only concern is that I’ll be discovered by passing coworkers, a fear that is nearly realized when I start back to the office and pass Kim and Linda on the sidewalk. Kim would definitely find it worthy of loud commentary should she discover me in my spot. “You were sitting on a rock,” she’d doubtless observe. Her efforts to point out the obvious might then spiral out of control, noting how I have brown hair, that there’s a cloud up in the sky, and “we’re on the Earth!”
1:10 – Dora comes back to me desk to talk about the website review assignment. I’m ready with my all-purpose assessment – “looks good to me” – but before I can get it out, she tells me to put the project on hold, until she’s sure I’m looking at the latest version. Once again, my delaying tactics have paid off.
1:45 – Kim announces “fifteen minutes till you leave.” For the only time that day, I’m glad to hear her.
9:00 – I arrive in the conference room designated for our health insurance screening. It’s a good-sized meeting room featuring a large table surrounded by about ten executive chairs at the front, then another 40 or so straight-back chairs aimed toward the table. The two free-lance nurses sit at the table and direct those arriving to sign-in, weigh themselves, fill out an information sheet, and take a seat to wait their turn. My pre-set appointment time apparently means nothing, as there are about a half-dozen people signed in ahead of me. The whole scene does very little to reassure anyone who might be concerned about privacy as they discuss their health matters at the table. You basically have an audience watching as your blood-pressure is checked, your finger is pricked for a cholesterol test and you answer questions about your most private history. The numbers revealed in the screening will be used in an online questionnaire we’re required to submit as part of our insurance sign-up. Patients with the one nurse are moving pretty swiftly, but the second one has retained her patient for a good bit of time. We all wonder what loathsome condition her poor patient has that requires so much discussion.
9:45 – I finally get called up to the stage, er, patient table. I feel a little like Tom Hanks greeting David Letterman, though fortunately there’s no applause from the crowd. I’ve got the elderly nurse and, though a little slow, she plods through the procedures fairly well. I ask if the blood test will also measure blood sugar, which was included in previous years’ tests, but she says “not this year. I guess they’re trying to save a little money, but it doesn’t really make sense since we can use the same sample.” Apparently, making sense is something that’s done in the healthcare field. Interesting. My numbers are just a couple of points off what they like to see, so she goes through the pre-programmed routine of giving me advice on how to hit the numbers right on the dot. I need more salmon, preferably Pacific or Alaskan though Atlantic is still better than flounder, which is not as good as cod. She tells me where salmon can be bought, how it can be preserved, and how it can be cooked but, unfortunately, not how to afford it.
10:15 – I’m out of the screening and pleased with how it went. Normally, you might be annoyed to get tied up well over an hour for a medical appointment that could’ve taken ten minutes, but I’m just glad I’m that much closer to the end of the day. Perhaps a little dazed from the blood loss (or maybe it’s the thought of all those dead fish), I stumble into Dora in the hallway, the manager who wants me to review our training website. I tell her I’ll take a look after my lunch break.
10:25 – We’re supposed to have a total of 60 minutes of breaks each workday. Believe it or not, at one time there was a posted schedule of who was to go when and for how long. For example, I was required to take 15 minutes from precisely 6:30 to 6:45 am, despite the fact I had arrived only 90 minutes earlier. Fortunately, our corps of smokers, who were allowed to take their breaks in ten 6-minute sessions, undercut the master plan. Now, I typically take about 40 minutes to sit and drink coffee in a Greek diner. It’s the only nearby commercial establishment besides a heavy equipment rental outfit, and at the moment I’m good on front-end loaders.
11:00 – Back from my break, I need to make a vacation request so I can have a day off tomorrow. Rather than simply ask my manager, we are required to submit what’s called a “schedule variance form”. This overcomplicated piece of needless paperwork has no less than five places to enter a date and three places to include your name. You have to specify the type of day off you want: vacation, what’s called a “floating holiday” (though it can be used for activities other than floating), and “other”. I have 15 vacation days, plus these mysterious holidays designed I think to let people take off for personal religious days like Yom Kippur, Good Friday, or migraine headache day. We have no “sick days”, per se, just paid and unpaid time off. The bottom of the variance form has five full lines set aside for comments. We’ve given up on using the spot to complain about this perverted system, and instead add things like “please, please, please!” or “I think my dog is dying tomorrow”.
11:30 – A loud rhythmic shriek repeats a half dozen times from across the room. It’s not that Kim has discovered an even cuter cross-stitch pattern, but rather a test of the weather emergency radio. It goes off every day, so we’ve learned to ignore it as well as the tornado warnings it might be indicating.
12:05 – As I pass my supervisor’s office on the way to my mailbox slot, she calls out to me. Sandra has developed this failsafe management technique that allows her view to prevail in virtually any discussion. She has the patience and tenacity of continuing a conversation until your filling bladder or desire for food forces you to give in. In this case, she also uses the advantage of being seated at her desk while I’m forced to stand in her doorway. She wants to resume a talk we had a few weeks back about how a particular error was committed, which evolves into a dialogue about some similar errors, which turns into an exchange about coworkers we both know from other sites, and somehow eventually ends up focused on the Yuletide favorite “Away in a Manger”. Within 20 minutes my legs have tired to the extent that I’m literally slumping against her wall, taking every tone of her voice that seems to signal the end is near to inch further away. Ultimate, I give in to her position that errors are bad and Christmas is good.
12:30 – My loud, talkative neighbor is at it again: “When my neighbors get home from work, our dog runs over to sit and watch them.” Then, “we bought a ham last week.” Then, “isn’t orange juice good for settling you stomach?” Then, “Happy birthday, Bob. Are you 29 again? My husband says our daughter cried when I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her as a baby.” No doubt.
12:35 -- I’m thinking it’s time to take my last break of the day. I’ve discovered a secluded spot featuring a few large boulders near the back of our office park. It’s shaded, has a nice view of a parking lot for semi trailers and can just barely be seen from the road or sidewalk. I’ll take a book or newspaper down here to use up my last 15 minutes reading. My only concern is that I’ll be discovered by passing coworkers, a fear that is nearly realized when I start back to the office and pass Kim and Linda on the sidewalk. Kim would definitely find it worthy of loud commentary should she discover me in my spot. “You were sitting on a rock,” she’d doubtless observe. Her efforts to point out the obvious might then spiral out of control, noting how I have brown hair, that there’s a cloud up in the sky, and “we’re on the Earth!”
1:10 – Dora comes back to me desk to talk about the website review assignment. I’m ready with my all-purpose assessment – “looks good to me” – but before I can get it out, she tells me to put the project on hold, until she’s sure I’m looking at the latest version. Once again, my delaying tactics have paid off.
1:45 – Kim announces “fifteen minutes till you leave.” For the only time that day, I’m glad to hear her.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Nothing to do, part two
One way that many in my office have chosen to pass the seemingly endless nine-hour day of doing basically nothing is to chat. As I mentioned in some of my earlier postings about my general desire to be left alone, I hate chat. I can do it for a few minutes if it involves a halfway interesting topic and we get to inject just the right amount of cynicism into the discussion, but after maybe five minutes tops I start squirming and shuffling and wishing someone would set off a fire alarm.
We have two kinds of chat in my office: the one-on-one discussion spoken in quiet tones appropriate to the situation, and the wide-open gabfest that draws in everyone in the room whether they want to be involved or not. There’s one person in particular notorious for initiating the latter, and she sits about ten feet behind me. Her intended target audience is the woman to her left, which means she’s pointing her larynx directly at my back, so it’s hard to ignore as she spews out the tedious details of her life in a steel-guitar twang only slightly less nasal than the city of Nashville.
In continuation of the timeline begun in yesterday’s posting, I’ll be including random comments from Kim that might give some indication of how her beloved daughter, her deadbeat husband and her “mawm’n daddy” (parents?) make her existence a living hell, God love ‘em.
6 am – Kim arrives for her designated shift and offers the entire room a hearty “hah thay-er” (hello?). Since much of third shift is still here, nearing the end of their interminable night, they’re stirred awake and are able to get ready to go home. Whatever else you can say about Kim, she makes a great alarm clock.
6:15 – I’m finishing up the only job I’ll work on the entire day. The errors I’ve encountered not only have to be fixed but they have to be recorded in a hare-brained quality improvement scheme abandoned long ago but whose ruins still remain. The point of the project was to quantify the errors so they could be “bucketed” (meaning “categorized”, not “carried out to the compost heap”) and we could learn how to improve on our weaknesses. Instead, the error rate is viewed primarily in the way it potentially affects our paycheck – the more errors we have, the lower any bonus we might achieve at the end of the year. So part of my job has become weighing whether errors are serious enough to fix and record, or whether I should just look the other way. Probably not what the quality improvement folks had intended.
6:25 – Fragment of Kim's life: “Jessica’s school pictures are just darling, but you have to buy a whole package to get the discount. That pitcher company is smart.” Judging from the size of the print on her desk, she’s opted for the Mercator projection wall-mounted package.
6:40 – There’s a knock on the outer door that leads from the parking lot. Nobody ever wants to field these, as it’s usually lost truckers looking to borrow a phone book, but we can’t let them in for security reasons. Rick, the poor soul who responds, discovers the itinerant nurse who has arrived to conduct this morning’s insurance-related health screenings. Even though these were set up at least a month ago, no one knows what we’re supposed to do with this woman. We don’t even know where the screenings will take place -- maybe behind a large skid of boxes in the warehouse? -- so she can’t even get set up before her first patients arrive. Because the woman is elderly, Rick clearly violates company policy by offering her the option of coming in to sit in a corner, or to wait in her car for someone who knows what’s going on. She chooses to cool her scuffed white heels in the dark parking lot.
6:55 – “The fence is done. I painted the ceiling but it’s kinda blotchy. Then I started the vacuuming…”
7:05 – Time to dig up the first distraction of the day. I choose these carefully based on a number of factors, variety being one key but also the presence of upper managers. Since it’s at least a half-hour till the first of these arrive, I break out the newspaper for a little light reading. I’ll catch up on late-breaking news later online, when my intent stare into the computer screen could be mistaken for work.
7:30 – I clean my glasses, take my cholesterol medicine and eat some grapes. Later, I’ll slip into the restroom to cut my toenails. Wildlife studies have shown that grooming builds animals’ self-esteem, but I’m drawing the line at picking nits off my production coordinator.
7:40 – Kim is doing cross-stitch: “blank, blank, blank, space, blank, blank, space, blank … isn’t this beautiful?”
7:45 – The first of the dayshift managers arrive. It’s the one who sent me an email on my enforced day off this week asking my help in checking over a new corporate website. I’m delaying until personally asked, because I know how fast these must-be-done-yesterday projects evolve into something no longer needed. I’ve done way too much work in this job that ended up being wasted (see September posting about training temporaries for a week only to see them let go the following week). Now I’ll need to calculate all my moves around the office to either look busy or to avoid walking past her.
7:55 – Adam and I sign up for the October office refrigerator cleaning. There’s a sheet attached to the door with monthly sign-up slots, which means it hasn’t been cleaned since we last did it in March. It’s not something you’d think I like, but when we did it last spring it took only about an hour and we ended up with a nice take-home bag of abandoned frozen dinners, bottled drinks, and some exquisite condiments.
8:25 – I’ve got 35 minutes to kill until my 9 am health screening. I’ll try to get away with a little close-to-the-vest crossword puzzling, which hopefully won’t be noticed. Nobody cares if we’re seen goofing off, since management knows as well as anyone that our work has dried up. But I’ve got these off-line projects I’m trying to avoid. There’s another one out there somewhere – a different manager approached me last week about a procedure she wanted me to review – but the ball was left in her court when I asked her to email it to me, which she apparently forgot to do. So much of what goes on in the modern office feels like a rain-hampered game of tennis – as long as your last discussion got the sodden mass over to the other person’s side, you’re clear.
8:55 – “Some days Jessica carries her lunch to school and some days she doesn’t. I tell her, Jessica, you’re not allowed to get something extra except on Friday.”
8:57 – “My feet were big when I was young. They used to call me ‘bigfoot’. Kids can be so mean.”
8:59 – “… the bats flew down and landed on her head and tried to make a nest in her hay-ir!”
I’ll pick up at 9 am and my health screening appointment on the next posting. Four hours down and only five to go.
We have two kinds of chat in my office: the one-on-one discussion spoken in quiet tones appropriate to the situation, and the wide-open gabfest that draws in everyone in the room whether they want to be involved or not. There’s one person in particular notorious for initiating the latter, and she sits about ten feet behind me. Her intended target audience is the woman to her left, which means she’s pointing her larynx directly at my back, so it’s hard to ignore as she spews out the tedious details of her life in a steel-guitar twang only slightly less nasal than the city of Nashville.
In continuation of the timeline begun in yesterday’s posting, I’ll be including random comments from Kim that might give some indication of how her beloved daughter, her deadbeat husband and her “mawm’n daddy” (parents?) make her existence a living hell, God love ‘em.
6 am – Kim arrives for her designated shift and offers the entire room a hearty “hah thay-er” (hello?). Since much of third shift is still here, nearing the end of their interminable night, they’re stirred awake and are able to get ready to go home. Whatever else you can say about Kim, she makes a great alarm clock.
6:15 – I’m finishing up the only job I’ll work on the entire day. The errors I’ve encountered not only have to be fixed but they have to be recorded in a hare-brained quality improvement scheme abandoned long ago but whose ruins still remain. The point of the project was to quantify the errors so they could be “bucketed” (meaning “categorized”, not “carried out to the compost heap”) and we could learn how to improve on our weaknesses. Instead, the error rate is viewed primarily in the way it potentially affects our paycheck – the more errors we have, the lower any bonus we might achieve at the end of the year. So part of my job has become weighing whether errors are serious enough to fix and record, or whether I should just look the other way. Probably not what the quality improvement folks had intended.
6:25 – Fragment of Kim's life: “Jessica’s school pictures are just darling, but you have to buy a whole package to get the discount. That pitcher company is smart.” Judging from the size of the print on her desk, she’s opted for the Mercator projection wall-mounted package.
6:40 – There’s a knock on the outer door that leads from the parking lot. Nobody ever wants to field these, as it’s usually lost truckers looking to borrow a phone book, but we can’t let them in for security reasons. Rick, the poor soul who responds, discovers the itinerant nurse who has arrived to conduct this morning’s insurance-related health screenings. Even though these were set up at least a month ago, no one knows what we’re supposed to do with this woman. We don’t even know where the screenings will take place -- maybe behind a large skid of boxes in the warehouse? -- so she can’t even get set up before her first patients arrive. Because the woman is elderly, Rick clearly violates company policy by offering her the option of coming in to sit in a corner, or to wait in her car for someone who knows what’s going on. She chooses to cool her scuffed white heels in the dark parking lot.
6:55 – “The fence is done. I painted the ceiling but it’s kinda blotchy. Then I started the vacuuming…”
7:05 – Time to dig up the first distraction of the day. I choose these carefully based on a number of factors, variety being one key but also the presence of upper managers. Since it’s at least a half-hour till the first of these arrive, I break out the newspaper for a little light reading. I’ll catch up on late-breaking news later online, when my intent stare into the computer screen could be mistaken for work.
7:30 – I clean my glasses, take my cholesterol medicine and eat some grapes. Later, I’ll slip into the restroom to cut my toenails. Wildlife studies have shown that grooming builds animals’ self-esteem, but I’m drawing the line at picking nits off my production coordinator.
7:40 – Kim is doing cross-stitch: “blank, blank, blank, space, blank, blank, space, blank … isn’t this beautiful?”
7:45 – The first of the dayshift managers arrive. It’s the one who sent me an email on my enforced day off this week asking my help in checking over a new corporate website. I’m delaying until personally asked, because I know how fast these must-be-done-yesterday projects evolve into something no longer needed. I’ve done way too much work in this job that ended up being wasted (see September posting about training temporaries for a week only to see them let go the following week). Now I’ll need to calculate all my moves around the office to either look busy or to avoid walking past her.
7:55 – Adam and I sign up for the October office refrigerator cleaning. There’s a sheet attached to the door with monthly sign-up slots, which means it hasn’t been cleaned since we last did it in March. It’s not something you’d think I like, but when we did it last spring it took only about an hour and we ended up with a nice take-home bag of abandoned frozen dinners, bottled drinks, and some exquisite condiments.
8:25 – I’ve got 35 minutes to kill until my 9 am health screening. I’ll try to get away with a little close-to-the-vest crossword puzzling, which hopefully won’t be noticed. Nobody cares if we’re seen goofing off, since management knows as well as anyone that our work has dried up. But I’ve got these off-line projects I’m trying to avoid. There’s another one out there somewhere – a different manager approached me last week about a procedure she wanted me to review – but the ball was left in her court when I asked her to email it to me, which she apparently forgot to do. So much of what goes on in the modern office feels like a rain-hampered game of tennis – as long as your last discussion got the sodden mass over to the other person’s side, you’re clear.
8:55 – “Some days Jessica carries her lunch to school and some days she doesn’t. I tell her, Jessica, you’re not allowed to get something extra except on Friday.”
8:57 – “My feet were big when I was young. They used to call me ‘bigfoot’. Kids can be so mean.”
8:59 – “… the bats flew down and landed on her head and tried to make a nest in her hay-ir!”
I’ll pick up at 9 am and my health screening appointment on the next posting. Four hours down and only five to go.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
How to kill time at work, part one
In the last few years, I’ve become very skilled in my ability to kill time at work. It’s not something I wanted to be good at – for obvious reasons, superior abilities in enterprises like pro basketball, movie-starring and running Fortune 100 companies into the can would be better, at least for my sagging bank account. It’s an ability I’ve developed of necessity. Either I go mad, or I find a way to distract myself during long intercontinental business flights and treadmill workouts, both the kind at the gym and those in my career on the corporate Habitrail™.
The business flights have dissipated along with economic prosperity, like the vapor trail I’ve laid over large parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. But the treadmill rolls on and on, allowing me to build increasing frustrations in my workplace and then vent them at 5.6 miles an hour between a teenager jabbering on her cell phone and the elderly gentleman with carbon emission issues of his own.
At work, I’ve collected for myself an array of distractions to make the 9-hour shift pass as quickly as possible. This toolkit includes games, magazines, crossword puzzles, online reading of the latest news and opinion, snooping in on the work of other sites in the hope they’ll screw up, and walking back and forth to the breakroom and bathroom at least 80 times a day. (My doctor’s appointment for diabetes testing is noon Monday).
I thought it might be interesting, though, to chronicle a few of the other details that contribute to the length of my day. Some seem to shorten it while others lengthen it, but all of them together make what I think is a pretty good representation of how too many of us are coping during the work slowdown caused by the current economic climate.
* * *
Thirty-six seconds past 5 am – I arrive at work. I know it’s 36 seconds (one one-hundredth of an hour) past because even though we’re supposed to be a white-collar work force, we still have to punch a time clock. Actually, according to official clocks up and down the Eastern Daylight Time zone, it’s well before 5, but our two time clocks are set five and eight minutes fast, respectively. That might seem annoying to those who aren’t used to it, but for us it means you can clock in on the faster one and out on the slower one, thereby extending your time away from work if you play your clocks right.
5:10 – I’ve finished signing on to my computer, cleaning my workspace of the crumbs left by the second-shift omnivore who shares my desk, and turning on a portable fan to cool myself down. Because our office was built out of a corner of a warehouse, the heating and cooling system has created more microclimates than Napa Valley. The woman sitting no less than four feet to my right is huddled into her jacket with a portable heater blasting at her feet.
5:15 – I finish a quick review of my email. About three-fourths of the messages are from the tech group advising us of computer outages around the network and, five minutes later, the fixing of such outages. Occasionally these are interesting – the Hong Kong office has been closed because of a typhoon, the Sri Lanka office is on a two-hour delay because of civil insurrection, there’s some kind of seismic event in the Philippines – but that’s pretty rare. I’ve also got an email from my former supervisor who periodically borrows me for special projects (more about this later). There’s another one from Health Management Co. that at first glance appears to be related to our recent annual health insurance enrollment, but is unmasked by the subject line “you cannot discount the importance of size.” My guess is that it’s not the size of our health plan savings that they’re talking about.
5:25 – I ask the guy two desks down to my right if he’s heard back from the job interview he went on a few days ago; he has, and it’s good news for him. He’ll start work in two weeks at a local county museum heading up their graphics department. He’s young, smart and full of good ideas, so I take a few minutes to listen and congratulate him. The museum’s specialty is primitive Native American technology. I can’t help but imagine how we’d all fit right in if they wanted to open a new exhibit on the vanishing American office worker. I’d even be willing to pose for the diorama, mouse in hand and StupidVideos.com on screen.
5:30 – I am given some actual work! This is highly significant, considering that I spent two entire days last week not lifting my editing pencil once. The instructions for the 45-page document are encouraging: “please do not assign to vendor”. Despite the generally good job our teams overseas do, it’s always good to see someone still prefers to use a domestic site. The job is full of errors, most of them the fault of either the client or the customer service person who submitted the work to us. The quantity of pages submitted is wrong, the naming conventions for the files are wrong, and there’s evidence the wrong instructions were also given last time because the client has asked not to be billed for some of the changes. As I scan some of the numbers in the graphs, I see that one executive has earned “$6,4379,941” in compensation the previous year. A numerically impossible pay package, I suppose, though I really don’t know that it’s not some new mega-number (ka-zillion, perhaps?) designed specifically to pad executive pockets and outrage the American public. I also notice an error that one of our internal checkers has missed. I fix it but I’m not sure I have the heart to do what else I’m supposed to do in my role as a trainer, and that’s to report him to his supervisor.
Improbably, I find myself less than an hour into a description of my typical day and I’m already up to the length I wanted to devote. Hard to believe, but it looks like this will become a multi-part installment.
The business flights have dissipated along with economic prosperity, like the vapor trail I’ve laid over large parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. But the treadmill rolls on and on, allowing me to build increasing frustrations in my workplace and then vent them at 5.6 miles an hour between a teenager jabbering on her cell phone and the elderly gentleman with carbon emission issues of his own.
At work, I’ve collected for myself an array of distractions to make the 9-hour shift pass as quickly as possible. This toolkit includes games, magazines, crossword puzzles, online reading of the latest news and opinion, snooping in on the work of other sites in the hope they’ll screw up, and walking back and forth to the breakroom and bathroom at least 80 times a day. (My doctor’s appointment for diabetes testing is noon Monday).
I thought it might be interesting, though, to chronicle a few of the other details that contribute to the length of my day. Some seem to shorten it while others lengthen it, but all of them together make what I think is a pretty good representation of how too many of us are coping during the work slowdown caused by the current economic climate.
* * *
Thirty-six seconds past 5 am – I arrive at work. I know it’s 36 seconds (one one-hundredth of an hour) past because even though we’re supposed to be a white-collar work force, we still have to punch a time clock. Actually, according to official clocks up and down the Eastern Daylight Time zone, it’s well before 5, but our two time clocks are set five and eight minutes fast, respectively. That might seem annoying to those who aren’t used to it, but for us it means you can clock in on the faster one and out on the slower one, thereby extending your time away from work if you play your clocks right.
5:10 – I’ve finished signing on to my computer, cleaning my workspace of the crumbs left by the second-shift omnivore who shares my desk, and turning on a portable fan to cool myself down. Because our office was built out of a corner of a warehouse, the heating and cooling system has created more microclimates than Napa Valley. The woman sitting no less than four feet to my right is huddled into her jacket with a portable heater blasting at her feet.
5:15 – I finish a quick review of my email. About three-fourths of the messages are from the tech group advising us of computer outages around the network and, five minutes later, the fixing of such outages. Occasionally these are interesting – the Hong Kong office has been closed because of a typhoon, the Sri Lanka office is on a two-hour delay because of civil insurrection, there’s some kind of seismic event in the Philippines – but that’s pretty rare. I’ve also got an email from my former supervisor who periodically borrows me for special projects (more about this later). There’s another one from Health Management Co. that at first glance appears to be related to our recent annual health insurance enrollment, but is unmasked by the subject line “you cannot discount the importance of size.” My guess is that it’s not the size of our health plan savings that they’re talking about.
5:25 – I ask the guy two desks down to my right if he’s heard back from the job interview he went on a few days ago; he has, and it’s good news for him. He’ll start work in two weeks at a local county museum heading up their graphics department. He’s young, smart and full of good ideas, so I take a few minutes to listen and congratulate him. The museum’s specialty is primitive Native American technology. I can’t help but imagine how we’d all fit right in if they wanted to open a new exhibit on the vanishing American office worker. I’d even be willing to pose for the diorama, mouse in hand and StupidVideos.com on screen.
5:30 – I am given some actual work! This is highly significant, considering that I spent two entire days last week not lifting my editing pencil once. The instructions for the 45-page document are encouraging: “please do not assign to vendor”. Despite the generally good job our teams overseas do, it’s always good to see someone still prefers to use a domestic site. The job is full of errors, most of them the fault of either the client or the customer service person who submitted the work to us. The quantity of pages submitted is wrong, the naming conventions for the files are wrong, and there’s evidence the wrong instructions were also given last time because the client has asked not to be billed for some of the changes. As I scan some of the numbers in the graphs, I see that one executive has earned “$6,4379,941” in compensation the previous year. A numerically impossible pay package, I suppose, though I really don’t know that it’s not some new mega-number (ka-zillion, perhaps?) designed specifically to pad executive pockets and outrage the American public. I also notice an error that one of our internal checkers has missed. I fix it but I’m not sure I have the heart to do what else I’m supposed to do in my role as a trainer, and that’s to report him to his supervisor.
Improbably, I find myself less than an hour into a description of my typical day and I’m already up to the length I wanted to devote. Hard to believe, but it looks like this will become a multi-part installment.
Monday, October 13, 2008
The importance of men's room etiquette
Using the men’s room can be a problematic issue for some of us of the male affiliation. I’m not talking about those difficulties that come with age and certain medical conditions; rather, I’m talking about how the rules of social intercour--, er, etiquette, take on a whole new dimension once men leave the world of the multi-gendered and enter the chamber of necessity.
It seems this is particularly true in the office setting. The people you’re working with on a regular basis become very familiar over the years, and the familiarity and casual nature of that relationship is not one that translates well to the restroom. Being friendly, talkative and outgoing in the cubicle jungle is a great way to get ahead in the world of office politics. Getting ahead, however, is not something you even want to say in certain other settings.
I’ve designed an elaborate set of rules that need to apply to these interactions, and I’m working hard to get them universally accepted. It’s not the kind of thing you can put into an email or PowerPoint presentation, so I’m having to work in this roundabout way to get them widely agreed upon among the men I work with. Posting these guidelines on a blog instead, where they can be read by the entire online world, seems somehow more subtle.
The first rule, of course, is that there is to be no talking inside the men’s room. The risk of saying something that can be misconstrued is just too real, and you don’t want to take this chance with someone who could make or break your career. When some kind of communication is absolutely necessary, it should be undertaken using the non-verbal codes that I’ll detail below.
As you’re pushing the door to enter the room, it is suggested that you snort or sniff loudly, in a manner similar to the way you’d deal with a runny nose. This is to indicate to anyone already inside that another person is entering the room, and that any sort of activities that may be going on in what had been the privacy between you and your maker need to stop immediately. (I’m not talking about anything of a perverse nature, just stuff like examining your noseholes in front of the mirror, examining your tongue, digging wax out of your ear with a pencil, etc.). It’s also a signal to anyone about to exit the room that the door is about to move inward, usually in a very fast and determined motion, and you need to stand back in order to avoid jamming a limb.
If you’re already inside using the facilities, a quick clearing of the throat is a good signal to the newly entered that they too are going to have to share this space where the public world meets the private. Again, you don’t want either party to be embarrassed by what the other is doing or is about to do. There are many words and phrases that can’t be said in the men’s room, but certainly foremost among these would be something like “That’s disgusting”.
If one party is already inhabiting a stall, and doing all that entails, a “courtesy flush” should be used to cover any sounds you might be making that others don’t want to hear. If your particular facility has one of those motion-activated set-ups, you need to wiggle around enough to trigger activation.
The courtesy flush is NOT to be used to cover the sounds of you talking on a cell phone while you’re doing your business. This most grievous of social outrages has becoming surprisingly accepted in some quarters, but not in mine. You may not care if the person you’re talking to gets to listen in on your most personal of soundscapes, but I don’t want them hearing mine. How do you know that the other end isn’t hooked up to a speakerphone in a room full of Sunday school teachers? Plus, I can’t tell that you’re talking to someone far away and not to me, and I don’t want to think up responses to questions like “how’s it going” and “what’s up?”
If you find yourself indisposed and discover you need certain supplies that have become exhausted, just deal with it. Don’t expect me to be passing materials under the stall wall. It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that toilet seat covers can be substituted in an emergency. Too bad if they become jagged when balled up. The only way I’m sending a roll of tissue in your direction is over the wall and through the darkness when I turn off the light and leave the room.
A few other pointers in closing:
The handicapped stall is not the same concept as the handicapped parking space. Unless you’re wearing the blue wheelchair dangler as your necktie, the increased elbow room of this stall should be considered available to anyone. Not that you should be doing anything in there that requires increased elbow room, except perhaps stretching your legs like I occasionally do by putting my foot on the grip bar like a ballet student doing a dance exercise. (Never you mind that I have only one foot visible.) I reserve the right to change the rules on this point should I become handicapped myself.
If you find yourself at the mirror at the same time as another occupant, limit your preening to the bare minimum. A quick brush at your hair with your hand (no combs) or raising your chin to look at your neck is acceptable; applying any type of ointments or unguents is not.
Reading material is not to be taken into the men’s room with you. It sends the message to anyone who sees you heading that way that you’re planning on some type of semi-permanent occupation, similar to what we saw with Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia. Any visit that requires an entertainment add-on is one that is going on way too long. If you need something, look instead for anything that’s been abandoned by those who preceded you. You’ll be surprised how interesting otherwise dry reading (commodity quotes, baseball line scores, Target supplements) can become. And do not, under any circumstances, bring anything you found out of the bathroom with you. The only exception might be money on the floor, and even that carries another whole level of risk if you pick it up from beneath the wall of the stall.
The best approach of all is probably to do everything you can to plan your visits to minimize any and all chance encounters. Our men’s room door is conveniently located between a breakroom entrance to the left and an exit door to the warehouse on the right. So I’m able to abort any approach where room-sharing may be required by diverting for a snack or wandering aimlessly around the shipping dock pretending to be looking for something. If you’re already inside when someone enters to join you, you can slip into a (hopefully) unoccupied stall, and wait till they leave.
Or you can hold it for eight hours.
It seems this is particularly true in the office setting. The people you’re working with on a regular basis become very familiar over the years, and the familiarity and casual nature of that relationship is not one that translates well to the restroom. Being friendly, talkative and outgoing in the cubicle jungle is a great way to get ahead in the world of office politics. Getting ahead, however, is not something you even want to say in certain other settings.
I’ve designed an elaborate set of rules that need to apply to these interactions, and I’m working hard to get them universally accepted. It’s not the kind of thing you can put into an email or PowerPoint presentation, so I’m having to work in this roundabout way to get them widely agreed upon among the men I work with. Posting these guidelines on a blog instead, where they can be read by the entire online world, seems somehow more subtle.
The first rule, of course, is that there is to be no talking inside the men’s room. The risk of saying something that can be misconstrued is just too real, and you don’t want to take this chance with someone who could make or break your career. When some kind of communication is absolutely necessary, it should be undertaken using the non-verbal codes that I’ll detail below.
As you’re pushing the door to enter the room, it is suggested that you snort or sniff loudly, in a manner similar to the way you’d deal with a runny nose. This is to indicate to anyone already inside that another person is entering the room, and that any sort of activities that may be going on in what had been the privacy between you and your maker need to stop immediately. (I’m not talking about anything of a perverse nature, just stuff like examining your noseholes in front of the mirror, examining your tongue, digging wax out of your ear with a pencil, etc.). It’s also a signal to anyone about to exit the room that the door is about to move inward, usually in a very fast and determined motion, and you need to stand back in order to avoid jamming a limb.
If you’re already inside using the facilities, a quick clearing of the throat is a good signal to the newly entered that they too are going to have to share this space where the public world meets the private. Again, you don’t want either party to be embarrassed by what the other is doing or is about to do. There are many words and phrases that can’t be said in the men’s room, but certainly foremost among these would be something like “That’s disgusting”.
If one party is already inhabiting a stall, and doing all that entails, a “courtesy flush” should be used to cover any sounds you might be making that others don’t want to hear. If your particular facility has one of those motion-activated set-ups, you need to wiggle around enough to trigger activation.
The courtesy flush is NOT to be used to cover the sounds of you talking on a cell phone while you’re doing your business. This most grievous of social outrages has becoming surprisingly accepted in some quarters, but not in mine. You may not care if the person you’re talking to gets to listen in on your most personal of soundscapes, but I don’t want them hearing mine. How do you know that the other end isn’t hooked up to a speakerphone in a room full of Sunday school teachers? Plus, I can’t tell that you’re talking to someone far away and not to me, and I don’t want to think up responses to questions like “how’s it going” and “what’s up?”
If you find yourself indisposed and discover you need certain supplies that have become exhausted, just deal with it. Don’t expect me to be passing materials under the stall wall. It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that toilet seat covers can be substituted in an emergency. Too bad if they become jagged when balled up. The only way I’m sending a roll of tissue in your direction is over the wall and through the darkness when I turn off the light and leave the room.
A few other pointers in closing:
The handicapped stall is not the same concept as the handicapped parking space. Unless you’re wearing the blue wheelchair dangler as your necktie, the increased elbow room of this stall should be considered available to anyone. Not that you should be doing anything in there that requires increased elbow room, except perhaps stretching your legs like I occasionally do by putting my foot on the grip bar like a ballet student doing a dance exercise. (Never you mind that I have only one foot visible.) I reserve the right to change the rules on this point should I become handicapped myself.
If you find yourself at the mirror at the same time as another occupant, limit your preening to the bare minimum. A quick brush at your hair with your hand (no combs) or raising your chin to look at your neck is acceptable; applying any type of ointments or unguents is not.
Reading material is not to be taken into the men’s room with you. It sends the message to anyone who sees you heading that way that you’re planning on some type of semi-permanent occupation, similar to what we saw with Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia. Any visit that requires an entertainment add-on is one that is going on way too long. If you need something, look instead for anything that’s been abandoned by those who preceded you. You’ll be surprised how interesting otherwise dry reading (commodity quotes, baseball line scores, Target supplements) can become. And do not, under any circumstances, bring anything you found out of the bathroom with you. The only exception might be money on the floor, and even that carries another whole level of risk if you pick it up from beneath the wall of the stall.
The best approach of all is probably to do everything you can to plan your visits to minimize any and all chance encounters. Our men’s room door is conveniently located between a breakroom entrance to the left and an exit door to the warehouse on the right. So I’m able to abort any approach where room-sharing may be required by diverting for a snack or wandering aimlessly around the shipping dock pretending to be looking for something. If you’re already inside when someone enters to join you, you can slip into a (hopefully) unoccupied stall, and wait till they leave.
Or you can hold it for eight hours.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Economic downturn headed lower
It’s a nice quiet Sunday and, for at least one day, I’m not going to worry about our collapsing financial system. For the last several months, as my work for a financial services company became less and less, our once-routine weekend of overtime has gone the way of Lehman Brothers and AIG. The company still has a perceived need to put us on call for Sundays, just in case the recession ends overnight, but now we get an inevitable call on Saturday telling us basically “never mind, you’re still doomed”.
The drumbeat of bad news that’s been so incessant in recent weeks can really get a person down, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve tried several times to swear off checking the Dow every few minutes or so, but like a heroin addict I keep coming back to the sizzling spoon and needle stick of imminent economic collapse. I rationalize any less-than-horrible news into something that can give me hope: Friday, for example, I’m sure we were all thrilled that the fall was less than 200 points, far better than anything else we’d seen that week. I was just as thrilled to learn the other day that my health insurance is going up only 9% and that my gynecological checkups are no longer subsidized.
Still, down, down, down it spirals, and the media scramble to come up with ever-more alarming descriptions of how bad things have become. One website calls it a “tailspin”, while a newspaper opts for “catastrophe”, and the networks use labels like “disaster”, “calamity” and “tsunami”. Confidence is “sliding”, “plummeting”, “diving”, “tanking”. The market is volatile, disturbed, upset, deranged, explosive, troubled, distressed, unbalanced or unhinged. Any minute, I expect to see the news flash reporting that “moments ago, the Dow crashed through the trading floor, seriously injuring 12 in the sub-basement below.”
We scout about desperately for something reassuring, for some fringe economist willing to go on record with a prediction that the recession will last only a few more quarters. Here’s someone standing behind a podium and looking authoritative; he says the economy will be “fine”. Oh, shoot, it’s just the president, sounding like someone who’s just been asked how his weekend was. Here’s another politician expressing faith that we’re destined to see an improved economy in the long term because Americans are the hardest-working, most-innovative employees in the world. Obviously, someone who’s never been to Hardee’s.
To avoid all the repetition of how bleak things are, maybe we can turn the scales upside-down. I think I’d feel better to hear that recessionary trends are “sky-rocketing” or that the downturn has now “exceeded the fears of even the bleakest pessimists”. Instead of hearing that analysts on Wall Street are “looking for a bottom” (who isn’t?), we could think in terms of a “new peak in negativity”. Maybe we’ll hear soon that equities have fallen so low that 100 shares of GM are being given away with the purchase of every new Hummer, though I guess that still would mean no one is trading in the stock.
I’m also getting tired of the whole Main Street versus Wall Street dichotomy. This seems like a cynical effort to put the blame for the crisis in the laps of those who were silly enough to buy up our mortgages, rather than in our belief that we could move into a dream house for the down payment on a new pick-up. We pretend that failing banks and crippled investment houses are hurting only those snooty New Yorkers who probably deserve to be taken down a Cosmo or two anyway. What good does it do to focus instead on the deserted storefronts in our own dilapidated downtown districts? I couldn’t shop in a store on the Main Street of my town if I tried, unless maybe I was looking for some of that heroin I was mentioning.
I’m also growing weary of the visuals we keep getting from financial capitals around the world that attempt to put a human face on the misery by capturing the moment that some desperate trader has just learned that not only has he lost his investments, but his job and the love of his mother. We’ve all seen these pictures of crushed individuals putting their hands into various positions on their faces -- covering their mouths, rubbing their eyes, wiping their brows, blowing their brains out. They cringe, they scowl, they sulk and they make a variety of other frowny faces. Are these the only expressions of dismay these folks are capable of? Or is it just easier for a photographer to capture than the moment when Morgan Stanley’s floor manager stomps his feet, holds his breath and advises clients they should all sit in the corner and eat worms?
So we didn’t end last week with the Black Friday that many had predicted after the near-700-point drop in the Dow we saw on Thursday. Whether or not we’ll have a Black Columbus Day instead is yet to be seen. I thought we’d have a nice three-day weekend to catch our breath, but now I see the market will be imploding at its usual start time of 9:30 tomorrow morning. Can’t we even honor the memory of the western world’s most over-rated explorer without wondering what shade of ebony the day is going to be?
I’m still waiting for the media to point out that you can’t spell “confidence” without “con”, you can’t spell “Standard & Poor’s” without “poor”, and you can’t spell “Nasdaq” without “ack!” And you can’t spell “Dow Jones” without “down”, though you’re left with “Joes”, which I guess could be the name of a bankrupt diner on Main Street. While we’re at it, I might add that anagrams for Wall Street include “wallet rest”, “rat well set” and “law let rest”. But I’m not sure that adds anything to our understanding of why Western-style capitalism teeters on the brink.
The drumbeat of bad news that’s been so incessant in recent weeks can really get a person down, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve tried several times to swear off checking the Dow every few minutes or so, but like a heroin addict I keep coming back to the sizzling spoon and needle stick of imminent economic collapse. I rationalize any less-than-horrible news into something that can give me hope: Friday, for example, I’m sure we were all thrilled that the fall was less than 200 points, far better than anything else we’d seen that week. I was just as thrilled to learn the other day that my health insurance is going up only 9% and that my gynecological checkups are no longer subsidized.
Still, down, down, down it spirals, and the media scramble to come up with ever-more alarming descriptions of how bad things have become. One website calls it a “tailspin”, while a newspaper opts for “catastrophe”, and the networks use labels like “disaster”, “calamity” and “tsunami”. Confidence is “sliding”, “plummeting”, “diving”, “tanking”. The market is volatile, disturbed, upset, deranged, explosive, troubled, distressed, unbalanced or unhinged. Any minute, I expect to see the news flash reporting that “moments ago, the Dow crashed through the trading floor, seriously injuring 12 in the sub-basement below.”
We scout about desperately for something reassuring, for some fringe economist willing to go on record with a prediction that the recession will last only a few more quarters. Here’s someone standing behind a podium and looking authoritative; he says the economy will be “fine”. Oh, shoot, it’s just the president, sounding like someone who’s just been asked how his weekend was. Here’s another politician expressing faith that we’re destined to see an improved economy in the long term because Americans are the hardest-working, most-innovative employees in the world. Obviously, someone who’s never been to Hardee’s.
To avoid all the repetition of how bleak things are, maybe we can turn the scales upside-down. I think I’d feel better to hear that recessionary trends are “sky-rocketing” or that the downturn has now “exceeded the fears of even the bleakest pessimists”. Instead of hearing that analysts on Wall Street are “looking for a bottom” (who isn’t?), we could think in terms of a “new peak in negativity”. Maybe we’ll hear soon that equities have fallen so low that 100 shares of GM are being given away with the purchase of every new Hummer, though I guess that still would mean no one is trading in the stock.
I’m also getting tired of the whole Main Street versus Wall Street dichotomy. This seems like a cynical effort to put the blame for the crisis in the laps of those who were silly enough to buy up our mortgages, rather than in our belief that we could move into a dream house for the down payment on a new pick-up. We pretend that failing banks and crippled investment houses are hurting only those snooty New Yorkers who probably deserve to be taken down a Cosmo or two anyway. What good does it do to focus instead on the deserted storefronts in our own dilapidated downtown districts? I couldn’t shop in a store on the Main Street of my town if I tried, unless maybe I was looking for some of that heroin I was mentioning.
I’m also growing weary of the visuals we keep getting from financial capitals around the world that attempt to put a human face on the misery by capturing the moment that some desperate trader has just learned that not only has he lost his investments, but his job and the love of his mother. We’ve all seen these pictures of crushed individuals putting their hands into various positions on their faces -- covering their mouths, rubbing their eyes, wiping their brows, blowing their brains out. They cringe, they scowl, they sulk and they make a variety of other frowny faces. Are these the only expressions of dismay these folks are capable of? Or is it just easier for a photographer to capture than the moment when Morgan Stanley’s floor manager stomps his feet, holds his breath and advises clients they should all sit in the corner and eat worms?
So we didn’t end last week with the Black Friday that many had predicted after the near-700-point drop in the Dow we saw on Thursday. Whether or not we’ll have a Black Columbus Day instead is yet to be seen. I thought we’d have a nice three-day weekend to catch our breath, but now I see the market will be imploding at its usual start time of 9:30 tomorrow morning. Can’t we even honor the memory of the western world’s most over-rated explorer without wondering what shade of ebony the day is going to be?
I’m still waiting for the media to point out that you can’t spell “confidence” without “con”, you can’t spell “Standard & Poor’s” without “poor”, and you can’t spell “Nasdaq” without “ack!” And you can’t spell “Dow Jones” without “down”, though you’re left with “Joes”, which I guess could be the name of a bankrupt diner on Main Street. While we’re at it, I might add that anagrams for Wall Street include “wallet rest”, “rat well set” and “law let rest”. But I’m not sure that adds anything to our understanding of why Western-style capitalism teeters on the brink.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Misanthropy can be fun
I love humanity as a concept. It’s individual human beings that I can’t stand.
I won’t take credit for coming up with this as an original thought, assuming misanthropy is something you’d want to take credit for, but I can definitely echo the feeling. I have just enough Sixties vibes left in my soul to believe somewhere deep down that everybody’s beautiful, in their own way. Though it’s also important to point out this wasn’t sung by Bob Dylan or the Beatles but instead by novelty goofball Ray Stevens, who also claimed that streakers were “just as proud as they can be of their anatomy” and suggested that we give Gui-Tarzan “a hand”.
Certainly it’s not all human beings that I dislike. I love my wife and son dearly, and also care quite a bit for my parents, my sister and her family, and most in-laws. I have a small group of friends that I like, mostly from work and from the distant past, and there are a number of people in the public eye that I admire and respect. I’m also quite fond of our cats, though I guess they don’t qualify as “anthropes”. But 99.9999999999999% of the world I really just don’t care for as individuals.
I don’t think I can attribute this outlook to anything sociopathic. I’m certainly not about to go on some random spree of senseless (or even sensible) violence, which would be way more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t actively hate people that I don’t know. I’m just indifferent, and it’s bothersome when they encroach on that indifference by coming within 50 feet of me.
I think this comes largely from my upbringing. My mother was from a big family that was constantly infighting, so she and my dad decided to leave all that behind after they married and moved 1300 miles from Pennsylvania to Miami. There I could grow up peacefully with just them, my sister and an uncle. We weren’t the types to end every phone call with a needy “I love you”, like so many people seem to be doing these days. (I imagine annoyed spouses on the other end of these calls responding with a sigh and a “same here”, and checking caller ID before they answer the phone again five minutes later when they’re asked “How about now? Still love me?”). We’d see all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins once a year on summer vacation, when I could yearn theoretically for the warmth of a large family.
I say all this in preface to the hateful exercise I’m about to undertake. I’m sitting here in Panera this morning, watching a steady stream of patrons come and go. While I imagine that most if not all are upright citizens who have every reason to be loved and appreciated, it’s not going to be me who’s doing it.
Like this twosome that just came in: a guy in his late forties and a much older man. After they order, the younger guy says to the elder, “Where would you like to sit, young man?” I hate, hate, hate that patronizing tone that we older folks get from our age-impaired counterparts. And that phrase – “young man” or “young woman” applied to someone who’s obviously ancient – is just throwing your pathetic condition in your face.
And this guy who just walked in with his precious “Salty Dog” t-shirt and his backpack. We never had backpacks to carry our schoolbooks when I was a kid. The boys carried them on their hip and the girls clutched them to their chests, and that’s as it should be.
And this young Asian guy who just set up his laptop next to me. He plugged into the same outlet I’m using without even asking. Let’s see what he has up on his screen: he’s instant-messaging someone while reading a PDF in the background. We’re all very impressed by your multi-tasking skills.
And the aging hippie type who was already set up here in the corner when I arrived. He just left his laptop and cell phone at the table while he walked off to the restroom. The nerve of someone trusting today’s population not to steal his valuables while he’s stepped away for two minutes. If it’s swiped, that’s just higher insurance for me (just a second, let me go check if it’s the kind of Mac I’ve been yearning to get).
And the older lady who just put a clutch of used newspapers into the recycle rack next to the trash. It’s two local newspapers I already subscribe to, not the USA Today or New York Times I was hoping to pick up for free while I was here. How come people in the South are so provincial and care so little about what’s going on in the rest of the world?
Now there’s an older man and a younger woman, both dressed in business attire. They were already here, but he decided to leave while she’s raiding the free bagel samples. You know you’re supposed to use the tongs to pick those up, don’t you? Does it look to you like the rest of us want your germs?
Here’s a thirty-something guy who looks like a laid-off banker or something, scruffy and wearing those ridiculous cargo pants that go down below your knee and have all these unnecessary pockets. How in good conscience can he be wasting pockets like that when there are kids in the Third World that have no place to stash their change, IDs and iPods? We need to be donating pockets, not hoarding them.
And these two very short women, probably mother and daughter judging by their similar stature. I can’t really see anything offensive about either one of them, and it really ticks me off. No, wait – the younger one just propped her sunglasses above her forehead. She thinks she’s so cool.
Oh, and check out the young black guy wearing a black t-shirt and black pants, and a Blu-Tooth thing attached to his ear. Glad to see you young people making bulky electronic earpieces so fashionable. By the time I need one, I’ll be able to wear my hearing aid dangling jauntily from the side of my head.
And these two women dressed in the uniforms of healthcare providers. One of them just had her cell phone go off playing some song I’ve never heard before. Sounds like one of those latter-day R&B acts that are so inexplicably popular. What’s wrong with Ray Stevens?
Now here’s a group that’s taken over an entire table and seems to be talking politics. Surprising for this area of the South, it sounds like they’re talking liberal politics, about the origins of the word “redneck” and laughing at a pet magazine that has the headline “Dog is my copilot”. They’re all about my age and ideological temperament, and are even eating some of the same baked goods I enjoy here at Panera. But they’re all getting along rather than be antagonistic toward their fellow man. What a bunch of jerks.
Maybe it’s time to go. I seem to be in a bad mood today.
I won’t take credit for coming up with this as an original thought, assuming misanthropy is something you’d want to take credit for, but I can definitely echo the feeling. I have just enough Sixties vibes left in my soul to believe somewhere deep down that everybody’s beautiful, in their own way. Though it’s also important to point out this wasn’t sung by Bob Dylan or the Beatles but instead by novelty goofball Ray Stevens, who also claimed that streakers were “just as proud as they can be of their anatomy” and suggested that we give Gui-Tarzan “a hand”.
Certainly it’s not all human beings that I dislike. I love my wife and son dearly, and also care quite a bit for my parents, my sister and her family, and most in-laws. I have a small group of friends that I like, mostly from work and from the distant past, and there are a number of people in the public eye that I admire and respect. I’m also quite fond of our cats, though I guess they don’t qualify as “anthropes”. But 99.9999999999999% of the world I really just don’t care for as individuals.
I don’t think I can attribute this outlook to anything sociopathic. I’m certainly not about to go on some random spree of senseless (or even sensible) violence, which would be way more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t actively hate people that I don’t know. I’m just indifferent, and it’s bothersome when they encroach on that indifference by coming within 50 feet of me.
I think this comes largely from my upbringing. My mother was from a big family that was constantly infighting, so she and my dad decided to leave all that behind after they married and moved 1300 miles from Pennsylvania to Miami. There I could grow up peacefully with just them, my sister and an uncle. We weren’t the types to end every phone call with a needy “I love you”, like so many people seem to be doing these days. (I imagine annoyed spouses on the other end of these calls responding with a sigh and a “same here”, and checking caller ID before they answer the phone again five minutes later when they’re asked “How about now? Still love me?”). We’d see all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins once a year on summer vacation, when I could yearn theoretically for the warmth of a large family.
I say all this in preface to the hateful exercise I’m about to undertake. I’m sitting here in Panera this morning, watching a steady stream of patrons come and go. While I imagine that most if not all are upright citizens who have every reason to be loved and appreciated, it’s not going to be me who’s doing it.
Like this twosome that just came in: a guy in his late forties and a much older man. After they order, the younger guy says to the elder, “Where would you like to sit, young man?” I hate, hate, hate that patronizing tone that we older folks get from our age-impaired counterparts. And that phrase – “young man” or “young woman” applied to someone who’s obviously ancient – is just throwing your pathetic condition in your face.
And this guy who just walked in with his precious “Salty Dog” t-shirt and his backpack. We never had backpacks to carry our schoolbooks when I was a kid. The boys carried them on their hip and the girls clutched them to their chests, and that’s as it should be.
And this young Asian guy who just set up his laptop next to me. He plugged into the same outlet I’m using without even asking. Let’s see what he has up on his screen: he’s instant-messaging someone while reading a PDF in the background. We’re all very impressed by your multi-tasking skills.
And the aging hippie type who was already set up here in the corner when I arrived. He just left his laptop and cell phone at the table while he walked off to the restroom. The nerve of someone trusting today’s population not to steal his valuables while he’s stepped away for two minutes. If it’s swiped, that’s just higher insurance for me (just a second, let me go check if it’s the kind of Mac I’ve been yearning to get).
And the older lady who just put a clutch of used newspapers into the recycle rack next to the trash. It’s two local newspapers I already subscribe to, not the USA Today or New York Times I was hoping to pick up for free while I was here. How come people in the South are so provincial and care so little about what’s going on in the rest of the world?
Now there’s an older man and a younger woman, both dressed in business attire. They were already here, but he decided to leave while she’s raiding the free bagel samples. You know you’re supposed to use the tongs to pick those up, don’t you? Does it look to you like the rest of us want your germs?
Here’s a thirty-something guy who looks like a laid-off banker or something, scruffy and wearing those ridiculous cargo pants that go down below your knee and have all these unnecessary pockets. How in good conscience can he be wasting pockets like that when there are kids in the Third World that have no place to stash their change, IDs and iPods? We need to be donating pockets, not hoarding them.
And these two very short women, probably mother and daughter judging by their similar stature. I can’t really see anything offensive about either one of them, and it really ticks me off. No, wait – the younger one just propped her sunglasses above her forehead. She thinks she’s so cool.
Oh, and check out the young black guy wearing a black t-shirt and black pants, and a Blu-Tooth thing attached to his ear. Glad to see you young people making bulky electronic earpieces so fashionable. By the time I need one, I’ll be able to wear my hearing aid dangling jauntily from the side of my head.
And these two women dressed in the uniforms of healthcare providers. One of them just had her cell phone go off playing some song I’ve never heard before. Sounds like one of those latter-day R&B acts that are so inexplicably popular. What’s wrong with Ray Stevens?
Now here’s a group that’s taken over an entire table and seems to be talking politics. Surprising for this area of the South, it sounds like they’re talking liberal politics, about the origins of the word “redneck” and laughing at a pet magazine that has the headline “Dog is my copilot”. They’re all about my age and ideological temperament, and are even eating some of the same baked goods I enjoy here at Panera. But they’re all getting along rather than be antagonistic toward their fellow man. What a bunch of jerks.
Maybe it’s time to go. I seem to be in a bad mood today.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Hello, world, it's me
Congratulate me, somebody. This piece represents my 25th blog posting as FiftySomethingMan.
In an era when milestones both real and imagined are celebrated virtually every day, it seems like someone should be showing me some attention. If Two and a Half Men can mark its fifth anniversary and President Bush can now count 1,250 consecutive days of being the worst president ever, I’d like to be recognized for reviving a humor-writing hobby I had left uncultivated for over 30 years.
With the current economic recession depriving me of almost all work-related fulfillment other than collecting a paycheck, I’ve found myself once again turning elsewhere to feel productive. This has happened before during similar slowdowns – in the eighties I taught myself to play the “Navy Hymn” on the piano, and in the nineties I attempted to revive the Spanish-speaking skills I had learned growing up in Miami. Neither of these hobbies stuck once job satisfaction eventually returned, though if I ever lose my notebook, need to find the library, or like to eat meatballs in South America, I might be able to get by.
Actually, I’m not sure yet that I’m comfortable calling this “writing”. That seems a little presumptuous, considering the quality of these things. I sure don’t want to call it “blogging”, as that makes me sound way more contemporary than any 54-year-old white guy has a right to be.
Maybe “typing” is the correct gerund. I’ve always loved to type, ever since my parents bought me a portable typewriter for my thirteenth birthday. I was fascinated with the way I was able to put words on paper in something other than my impaired penmanship. I started by simply copying other works, banging away with a single finger and using an all-caps style that would be considered extremely rude in the current age of communications. After a while, I got tired of looking for stuff to copy and found it easier just to make it up as I went along. At least it was a more productive use of a 13-year-old right hand than what I could’ve been doing.
I’m glad to see the skill of typing is still in use, even if it does seem underappreciated. When we have a need at work to input a large amount of keystrokes, we send the project as far offshore as we possibly can. I’m not sure how skilled these developing-world typists might be, but I do know we pay them little enough that they could hire a thousand people to key one word each to produce a document of this length.
I bought a kids’ typing program for my son when he was young, and diligently drilled him through the exercises, even though I suspected voice recognition or some kind of brain-scan interface would be in use before he needed the typing. I eventually gave up on the program and thought all was lost, until he got his own laptop a few years later. With instant messaging as the impetus, he’s become a flash on the keyboard. Chatting up the latest film release with all the cool kids on the Internet is somehow more rewarding than Mavis Beacon’s sparkling animated stars.
When I got my first semi-advanced cell phone a few years ago, I was thrilled to discover text messaging. At last I could practice my love of typing anywhere – in a serene meadow, on the edge of the Grand Canyon, even at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I’m missing out on some fabulous vistas there, but we’re talking about pressing buttons and watching letters appear on a screen!
Which brings me to my newest fascination, instant messaging, or “I am”, as the younger generation calls it. Even as I’m working on this piece here at the Wi-Fi-equipped grocery store down the street from my house, I’m able to type messages to my wife asking if she needs anything and just generally bothering and distracting her from her own work. She hates it, of course, as any sensible person my age should. But as someone who’s always been a little uncomfortable with one-on-one human interaction, I’d love to see more of it. Maybe one day we’ll all be carrying around little “knuckle-tops” instead of laptops, and we can exchange pleasantries with store clerks without ever saying a word.
The big down side, of course, for such rapid written communication as this is that the quality of the typing suffers in the name of speed. I have to read through instant-message transcripts as part of my job each day, and there rarely seems to be any effort to correct spelling as long as the general idea is transmitted. Occasionally it’s so garbled that I can’t tell what was intended; fortunately, this is only work so it really doesn’t matter. Most of what I’m reading is from our outsource sites, and they seem mainly interested in having a written albeit imperfect record of whooo told thm whta 2 do.
It does bother me though when such sloppiness is used in casual online conversations with friends and former coworkers who’ve been transferred to other sites. I had a very nice discussion with an old associate the other day in which we discussed our families, life in his new city and generally catching up on mutual acquaintances. As I prepared to sign off to meet up with my carpool partner who was leaving for the day, he asked how she was and told me to “say hell” to her. (We talk about work on the way home anyway, so there’s already plenty of “hell” and “damn” and “bastard”. One more mild epithet won’t be a chore.)
I think I’ll settle on calling this current exercise “laptopping”. It’s definitely more advanced than just typing, what with the control-S-ing and the alt-F7-ing, not to mention gripping and clicking my mouse instead of the similar-in-texture bagel just next to it. Plus, there’s the whole Internet connection thing, which allows me to show my typing to the world.
Assuming there’s someone out there listening. If so, can you please give me an indication that you are? The only comment I’ve received thus far was on my jokey analysis of health insurance, to which “vegasguy” pointed out that I’m “allowed to contribute to the HSA and take a 100% tax deduction and then pay any qualified medical cost with dollars that were tax-deductible and grew tax-free.” In other words, he didn’t get the joke.
Is anybody else getting it?
In an era when milestones both real and imagined are celebrated virtually every day, it seems like someone should be showing me some attention. If Two and a Half Men can mark its fifth anniversary and President Bush can now count 1,250 consecutive days of being the worst president ever, I’d like to be recognized for reviving a humor-writing hobby I had left uncultivated for over 30 years.
With the current economic recession depriving me of almost all work-related fulfillment other than collecting a paycheck, I’ve found myself once again turning elsewhere to feel productive. This has happened before during similar slowdowns – in the eighties I taught myself to play the “Navy Hymn” on the piano, and in the nineties I attempted to revive the Spanish-speaking skills I had learned growing up in Miami. Neither of these hobbies stuck once job satisfaction eventually returned, though if I ever lose my notebook, need to find the library, or like to eat meatballs in South America, I might be able to get by.
Actually, I’m not sure yet that I’m comfortable calling this “writing”. That seems a little presumptuous, considering the quality of these things. I sure don’t want to call it “blogging”, as that makes me sound way more contemporary than any 54-year-old white guy has a right to be.
Maybe “typing” is the correct gerund. I’ve always loved to type, ever since my parents bought me a portable typewriter for my thirteenth birthday. I was fascinated with the way I was able to put words on paper in something other than my impaired penmanship. I started by simply copying other works, banging away with a single finger and using an all-caps style that would be considered extremely rude in the current age of communications. After a while, I got tired of looking for stuff to copy and found it easier just to make it up as I went along. At least it was a more productive use of a 13-year-old right hand than what I could’ve been doing.
I’m glad to see the skill of typing is still in use, even if it does seem underappreciated. When we have a need at work to input a large amount of keystrokes, we send the project as far offshore as we possibly can. I’m not sure how skilled these developing-world typists might be, but I do know we pay them little enough that they could hire a thousand people to key one word each to produce a document of this length.
I bought a kids’ typing program for my son when he was young, and diligently drilled him through the exercises, even though I suspected voice recognition or some kind of brain-scan interface would be in use before he needed the typing. I eventually gave up on the program and thought all was lost, until he got his own laptop a few years later. With instant messaging as the impetus, he’s become a flash on the keyboard. Chatting up the latest film release with all the cool kids on the Internet is somehow more rewarding than Mavis Beacon’s sparkling animated stars.
When I got my first semi-advanced cell phone a few years ago, I was thrilled to discover text messaging. At last I could practice my love of typing anywhere – in a serene meadow, on the edge of the Grand Canyon, even at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I’m missing out on some fabulous vistas there, but we’re talking about pressing buttons and watching letters appear on a screen!
Which brings me to my newest fascination, instant messaging, or “I am”, as the younger generation calls it. Even as I’m working on this piece here at the Wi-Fi-equipped grocery store down the street from my house, I’m able to type messages to my wife asking if she needs anything and just generally bothering and distracting her from her own work. She hates it, of course, as any sensible person my age should. But as someone who’s always been a little uncomfortable with one-on-one human interaction, I’d love to see more of it. Maybe one day we’ll all be carrying around little “knuckle-tops” instead of laptops, and we can exchange pleasantries with store clerks without ever saying a word.
The big down side, of course, for such rapid written communication as this is that the quality of the typing suffers in the name of speed. I have to read through instant-message transcripts as part of my job each day, and there rarely seems to be any effort to correct spelling as long as the general idea is transmitted. Occasionally it’s so garbled that I can’t tell what was intended; fortunately, this is only work so it really doesn’t matter. Most of what I’m reading is from our outsource sites, and they seem mainly interested in having a written albeit imperfect record of whooo told thm whta 2 do.
It does bother me though when such sloppiness is used in casual online conversations with friends and former coworkers who’ve been transferred to other sites. I had a very nice discussion with an old associate the other day in which we discussed our families, life in his new city and generally catching up on mutual acquaintances. As I prepared to sign off to meet up with my carpool partner who was leaving for the day, he asked how she was and told me to “say hell” to her. (We talk about work on the way home anyway, so there’s already plenty of “hell” and “damn” and “bastard”. One more mild epithet won’t be a chore.)
I think I’ll settle on calling this current exercise “laptopping”. It’s definitely more advanced than just typing, what with the control-S-ing and the alt-F7-ing, not to mention gripping and clicking my mouse instead of the similar-in-texture bagel just next to it. Plus, there’s the whole Internet connection thing, which allows me to show my typing to the world.
Assuming there’s someone out there listening. If so, can you please give me an indication that you are? The only comment I’ve received thus far was on my jokey analysis of health insurance, to which “vegasguy” pointed out that I’m “allowed to contribute to the HSA and take a 100% tax deduction and then pay any qualified medical cost with dollars that were tax-deductible and grew tax-free.” In other words, he didn’t get the joke.
Is anybody else getting it?
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The land of tea and terror
One of my favorite international business destinations is Sri Lanka. Located just off the southeastern tip of India, the island nation represented my company’s second step in its pursuit of the cheapest labor force in the English-speaking world. (We’ve since set up a third installation in the Philippines, after which I assume we’ll try Zimbabwe followed by Alabama). I’ve been asked three times in the last year or so to help with the training of this outsourcing operation.
Prior to my first trip, I knew very little about the country, other than that it used to be called Ceylon, it was most famous for its tea and rebel insurgencies, and it was way too close to India for my comfort. I had already been to India twice on business and I considered it to be – no offense intended – a spiritually rich but godforsaken hellhole. I had heard that Sri Lanka attracted quite a few European vacationers, so I hoped it might be a little more suitable to my spoiled Western tastes. When I checked out the bookstores for a travel guide and could find plenty about Laos and Myanmar but nothing about my destination, I became a little concerned.
My concern grew when just a few days before my departure, I noticed a small blurb in The New York Times. It reported that the rebels, who previously had been operating only in the opposite end of the island from where I was going, had decided to bomb an oil depot adjacent to the airport I was flying into. Gee, thanks a lot, rebels. I joked nervously with my coworkers that if I were killed in the line of duty, that maybe the company would name a conference room after me (an honor usually reserved only for deposed executives and shut-down sites).
I approached my manager to get a little reassurance, and a little is what I got. The attack was news to her. After a few phone calls, she advised me to visit a special risk assessment website we had contracted with, which advised me to travel only with drivers trained in ambush avoidance. The other advice I got from my manager was good to hear but not exactly sensible: I was to request an upgrade to business class to help ensure my safety. How exactly the insurgents would shoot only the coach class out of the sky was unclear, but I was glad to know I’d be too tanked up on free champagne to care.
The trip itself was largely uneventful, except for the fact that instead of 26 hours it took four days. The corporate travel agent had routed me through Chicago with a half-hour to change planes, which you’re instinctively supposed to know is insane. (“That would’ve jumped out at me right away,” said the agent representative when I called later to complain.) I scrambled to find a grimy airport motel to spend the night, then made it Frankfort, Germany, before discovering I’d again need to rebook, despite assurances to the contrary I had received in Chicago. The new itinerary, featuring a bonus change of planes in Bombay, was going to cost twice what I had originally been quoted.
Now that I had arrived late, neither my host nor the visa attorney I was told I’d need were to be found when I landed in Colombo. I had been given what’s called a “landing visa” by the consulate before I left the U.S., which inexplicably entitles you to land at the airport but not actually leave the airport. As I waited in the immigration line, reading the signs warning against lying about your travel status and the automatic death penalty for drug smugglers, I found myself with no choice but to sidle up close to the nearest Germans and make like a tourist. I had an emergency flower shirt in anticipation of such a screw-up, so I did manage to get waved through.
After making it to the hotel and recovering from my jet lag, I was ready for my first visit to the office. It wasn’t until I gave the address to the cab driver that I realized my office was located in Colombo’s center for international business, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Even worse than this unsettling reminder of terrorism just a few miles from where the airport had been attacked the previous week was the fact that the office was on the thirteenth floor.
The drive from the hotel to the office was a short one. Sri Lanka is a beautiful tropical country and reminded me a lot of my native Miami, with palm trees, natives dressed in colorful attire, and a heavy police presence on every other corner. The decades-long war against the Tamil Tiger insurgents had turned the city into an armed camp packed with security checkpoints. I had to go through no fewer than three metal detectors to get into the Twin Towers, but at least it always reminded me that I had remembered to bring my iPod.
I was treated great by my trainees and coworkers while in the office. Some brought me home-made food (I think it was food), some treated me to local specialties being served in the onsite canteen, some even invited me into their homes. I always felt safe and cared-for while I was in the office, except for one time when a trainee had to suddenly dismiss himself to run into the hall and get sick on the carpet. We later learned he had come down with Dengue Fever, so I had to maneuver past this stain in the rug each day to be sure I didn’t touch any Dengue.
Once I had settled into a regular routine, it wasn’t that hard to get used to the idea that my life was in daily peril. The hotel was within walking distance of the office so, rather than worry about the “ambush avoidance” skills of my drivers, I figured I could handle any incident just as well by running and screaming. And I did have a few incidents, too. One day I was returning to the hotel after work and saw an angry mob being pushed behind police barricades. These weren’t the Tamil Tigers -- who, to hear the government tell it, number about eight -- but instead a group protesting the lack of freedoms they had because of the insurgence suppression. I suddenly thought I had some of that tangy South Asian food repeating on me but soon realized I was whiffing the remnants of a tear gassing. A few evenings later, while having dinner at the hotel, we heard a loud boom. Wanting another story to add to my gas attack, I walked outside and looked down the street to see where a phone booth had just been bombed. Police and soldiers had already roped off the scene, but the next day I was able to stop and pick up a piece of shrapnel. Though I’m still not sure whether the vandalism of the booth was caused by Tamil Tigers or simply Troubled Teens.
I returned to the states after my three-week stint with considerable satisfaction that I’d done a good job as well as some great stories to demonstrate what a travel stud I was. I didn’t get many photos, though. I was dying to get a shot of the machine-gun emplacements just outside the office, but was afraid they’d shoot back. All in all, I had an enjoyable time in the land I now think of as “India Lite”.
Prior to my first trip, I knew very little about the country, other than that it used to be called Ceylon, it was most famous for its tea and rebel insurgencies, and it was way too close to India for my comfort. I had already been to India twice on business and I considered it to be – no offense intended – a spiritually rich but godforsaken hellhole. I had heard that Sri Lanka attracted quite a few European vacationers, so I hoped it might be a little more suitable to my spoiled Western tastes. When I checked out the bookstores for a travel guide and could find plenty about Laos and Myanmar but nothing about my destination, I became a little concerned.
My concern grew when just a few days before my departure, I noticed a small blurb in The New York Times. It reported that the rebels, who previously had been operating only in the opposite end of the island from where I was going, had decided to bomb an oil depot adjacent to the airport I was flying into. Gee, thanks a lot, rebels. I joked nervously with my coworkers that if I were killed in the line of duty, that maybe the company would name a conference room after me (an honor usually reserved only for deposed executives and shut-down sites).
I approached my manager to get a little reassurance, and a little is what I got. The attack was news to her. After a few phone calls, she advised me to visit a special risk assessment website we had contracted with, which advised me to travel only with drivers trained in ambush avoidance. The other advice I got from my manager was good to hear but not exactly sensible: I was to request an upgrade to business class to help ensure my safety. How exactly the insurgents would shoot only the coach class out of the sky was unclear, but I was glad to know I’d be too tanked up on free champagne to care.
The trip itself was largely uneventful, except for the fact that instead of 26 hours it took four days. The corporate travel agent had routed me through Chicago with a half-hour to change planes, which you’re instinctively supposed to know is insane. (“That would’ve jumped out at me right away,” said the agent representative when I called later to complain.) I scrambled to find a grimy airport motel to spend the night, then made it Frankfort, Germany, before discovering I’d again need to rebook, despite assurances to the contrary I had received in Chicago. The new itinerary, featuring a bonus change of planes in Bombay, was going to cost twice what I had originally been quoted.
Now that I had arrived late, neither my host nor the visa attorney I was told I’d need were to be found when I landed in Colombo. I had been given what’s called a “landing visa” by the consulate before I left the U.S., which inexplicably entitles you to land at the airport but not actually leave the airport. As I waited in the immigration line, reading the signs warning against lying about your travel status and the automatic death penalty for drug smugglers, I found myself with no choice but to sidle up close to the nearest Germans and make like a tourist. I had an emergency flower shirt in anticipation of such a screw-up, so I did manage to get waved through.
After making it to the hotel and recovering from my jet lag, I was ready for my first visit to the office. It wasn’t until I gave the address to the cab driver that I realized my office was located in Colombo’s center for international business, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Even worse than this unsettling reminder of terrorism just a few miles from where the airport had been attacked the previous week was the fact that the office was on the thirteenth floor.
The drive from the hotel to the office was a short one. Sri Lanka is a beautiful tropical country and reminded me a lot of my native Miami, with palm trees, natives dressed in colorful attire, and a heavy police presence on every other corner. The decades-long war against the Tamil Tiger insurgents had turned the city into an armed camp packed with security checkpoints. I had to go through no fewer than three metal detectors to get into the Twin Towers, but at least it always reminded me that I had remembered to bring my iPod.
I was treated great by my trainees and coworkers while in the office. Some brought me home-made food (I think it was food), some treated me to local specialties being served in the onsite canteen, some even invited me into their homes. I always felt safe and cared-for while I was in the office, except for one time when a trainee had to suddenly dismiss himself to run into the hall and get sick on the carpet. We later learned he had come down with Dengue Fever, so I had to maneuver past this stain in the rug each day to be sure I didn’t touch any Dengue.
Once I had settled into a regular routine, it wasn’t that hard to get used to the idea that my life was in daily peril. The hotel was within walking distance of the office so, rather than worry about the “ambush avoidance” skills of my drivers, I figured I could handle any incident just as well by running and screaming. And I did have a few incidents, too. One day I was returning to the hotel after work and saw an angry mob being pushed behind police barricades. These weren’t the Tamil Tigers -- who, to hear the government tell it, number about eight -- but instead a group protesting the lack of freedoms they had because of the insurgence suppression. I suddenly thought I had some of that tangy South Asian food repeating on me but soon realized I was whiffing the remnants of a tear gassing. A few evenings later, while having dinner at the hotel, we heard a loud boom. Wanting another story to add to my gas attack, I walked outside and looked down the street to see where a phone booth had just been bombed. Police and soldiers had already roped off the scene, but the next day I was able to stop and pick up a piece of shrapnel. Though I’m still not sure whether the vandalism of the booth was caused by Tamil Tigers or simply Troubled Teens.
I returned to the states after my three-week stint with considerable satisfaction that I’d done a good job as well as some great stories to demonstrate what a travel stud I was. I didn’t get many photos, though. I was dying to get a shot of the machine-gun emplacements just outside the office, but was afraid they’d shoot back. All in all, I had an enjoyable time in the land I now think of as “India Lite”.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Cleaning house, and then some
This being Sunday, I’ve spent the better part of the morning cleaning the house. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, my religious upbringing has instilled me with such guilt that I can’t spend the day of rest actually resting. Not that I would consider going to church – that’s way more effort than I had in mind, what with the communing and the benedicting and the beseeching and all. Instead, I’ve turned the old saw about “cleanliness is next to godliness” into something like “cleanliness is godliness”.
Today was a good example of my typical Sunday in search of salvation through housework. I woke up early determined to get a lot done before much of the day was passed, so perhaps I could spend the afternoon at a movie with my son or passed out in front a TV football game. I started in the laundry room by putting on a load of shirts, then sweeping the floor. Since the kitchen adjoins the laundry room, I branched out there using a dust buster to suck up clumps of cat hair (I’ve collected enough to build a new cat!), and sponge-clean the most obvious spots of dirt on the floor. Then I headed down the hall to work on our second bathroom, the one my teenage son uses.
Now the dangerous thing about house-cleaning is that it’s considered a “gateway” chore, one that can lead to more serious work. Once you get the blood and the sweat flowing, it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and attempt improvements that fall more under the heading of “maintenance”. As I’ve mentioned before, I am in no sense of the word to be considered a home handyman. Too often, I’ve started what for most would be a relatively simple project only to get about halfway through and discover I have no idea how to get out of my fix.
Once, I was successful at changing a light bulb in the ceiling of our home office. I know this sounds ridiculously simple, but it did involve removing a globe structure, taking out and replacing the wrong bulb before getting the right one, and then putting the globe back on without breaking it. Inspired by this success, I decided to change another bulb just outside our back door. I knew this was stepping up in class – it was outdoors where neighbors could witness my failure, plus there were cobwebs involved – but my judgment had been tainted by my indoor success.
The housing that enclosed the outdoor bulb was a bit more complicated to remove; I had to feel the screws in the lid and figure out which way to turn them. Usually I screw so hard the wrong way that I seat them so snugly that they’ll never come out. (I’m sure there’s some clockwise/counter-clockwise rule about screws that I should know, but even if I did, I can’t translate clock-faces into screws when I’m working at the top of a teetering ladder). After much effort, I removed all six screws, lifted the lid, and reached in to grab the bulb. It was a tight fit but I got the bad bulb out and the good one in. I flipped the switch to confirm my success, and the light came on. What a man I was in that bright shining moment.
All that was left now was to put the lid back on. Because my step-ladder wasn’t tall enough, I again was operating by feel as I attempted to align the screws with the holes they had come from. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get even the first screw back into position. I turned it this way and that, re-positioned and re-angled it, re-adjusted the lid, and still no success. Could I just sit the top on there with no permanent attachment? Why did it even need a top? Obviously light-headed from the frustration and the altitude, I had to finally give up and call my wife for help. Soon the more familiar feeling of humiliation had replaced my earlier sense of accomplishment. My wife discovered that four of the six screws I had removed were meant to be a permanent piece of the lid, and it was only two screws that should’ve come out. She spent the rest of the afternoon reconstructing the housing.
As Laura worked away at the top of the ladder while I helped by being nearby enough to call an ambulance if she fell, I flash-backed to earlier humiliations I experienced in the area of home maintenance. There was the time we needed to remove a pine tree from the back yard, and I had to stand by and watch from the ground as my elderly but extremely handy father-in-law shinnied up to do the necessary topping. There was the time I took a full week off from work to paint our house – a brick house, mind you, that needed only trim coverage – and I didn’t even get to the windows before the week was out. There was the time I hid in the kitchen during a plumber’s visit so he wouldn’t be tempted to explain to me what he had fixed. A shameful heritage, to be sure.
Back to this morning: As I sprayed the bathroom mirror clean, got the worst of this colorful but apparently undesirable pink stuff out of the bathtub and wiped down the counter, I noticed that the faucet knobs were especially grimy. I had gotten under there a few times with a toothbrush but it looked like the knobs would have to be physically removed to get at all the dirt that had accumulated. The “H” and “C” tabs (“hot” and “cold”, I guess) looked like they’d snap right out, and sure enough they did.
Underneath, I could see the head of a screw beneath a layer of rust. The head had a pattern I recognized as matching a screwdriver I once saw in our utility closet. Could it be that such a tool would remove the screws, allowing me to remove the knobs for cleaning? I retrieve the tool and stick it deep into the hole and starting turning. Slowly, one screw backs out and then the other. But the knobs themselves remained in place. You never know with these things whether brute force or some kind of subtle maneuver is required for removal, but since I’m no good with the subtle stuff, I figured I’d just try to power them off. And off they came! I tooth-brushed the posts that lay exposed, submerged the knobs in soapy water and wiped off the rust with a cloth.
They say that when climbing Everest, the hard part isn’t getting to the top, but getting back down alive. Now I had to put everything back together without suffering pulmonary edema. I tried to lay the screws back into their holes, but they just fell onto their sides. I then balanced each screw on the end of the screwdriver, pointing upward, and lowered the inverted knobs onto them. I quickly flipped them over and stuck them back onto their posts. I had to turn until I found the right position, then forced the knobs back into place. Incredibly, the screws went in and everything was clean and restored.
I called my wife in from the other room and woke up my sleeping son. Notice anything different about the sink? I asked. “It’s not disgusting any more,” my son said. I’ll take that as a “job well done”.
Today was a good example of my typical Sunday in search of salvation through housework. I woke up early determined to get a lot done before much of the day was passed, so perhaps I could spend the afternoon at a movie with my son or passed out in front a TV football game. I started in the laundry room by putting on a load of shirts, then sweeping the floor. Since the kitchen adjoins the laundry room, I branched out there using a dust buster to suck up clumps of cat hair (I’ve collected enough to build a new cat!), and sponge-clean the most obvious spots of dirt on the floor. Then I headed down the hall to work on our second bathroom, the one my teenage son uses.
Now the dangerous thing about house-cleaning is that it’s considered a “gateway” chore, one that can lead to more serious work. Once you get the blood and the sweat flowing, it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and attempt improvements that fall more under the heading of “maintenance”. As I’ve mentioned before, I am in no sense of the word to be considered a home handyman. Too often, I’ve started what for most would be a relatively simple project only to get about halfway through and discover I have no idea how to get out of my fix.
Once, I was successful at changing a light bulb in the ceiling of our home office. I know this sounds ridiculously simple, but it did involve removing a globe structure, taking out and replacing the wrong bulb before getting the right one, and then putting the globe back on without breaking it. Inspired by this success, I decided to change another bulb just outside our back door. I knew this was stepping up in class – it was outdoors where neighbors could witness my failure, plus there were cobwebs involved – but my judgment had been tainted by my indoor success.
The housing that enclosed the outdoor bulb was a bit more complicated to remove; I had to feel the screws in the lid and figure out which way to turn them. Usually I screw so hard the wrong way that I seat them so snugly that they’ll never come out. (I’m sure there’s some clockwise/counter-clockwise rule about screws that I should know, but even if I did, I can’t translate clock-faces into screws when I’m working at the top of a teetering ladder). After much effort, I removed all six screws, lifted the lid, and reached in to grab the bulb. It was a tight fit but I got the bad bulb out and the good one in. I flipped the switch to confirm my success, and the light came on. What a man I was in that bright shining moment.
All that was left now was to put the lid back on. Because my step-ladder wasn’t tall enough, I again was operating by feel as I attempted to align the screws with the holes they had come from. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get even the first screw back into position. I turned it this way and that, re-positioned and re-angled it, re-adjusted the lid, and still no success. Could I just sit the top on there with no permanent attachment? Why did it even need a top? Obviously light-headed from the frustration and the altitude, I had to finally give up and call my wife for help. Soon the more familiar feeling of humiliation had replaced my earlier sense of accomplishment. My wife discovered that four of the six screws I had removed were meant to be a permanent piece of the lid, and it was only two screws that should’ve come out. She spent the rest of the afternoon reconstructing the housing.
As Laura worked away at the top of the ladder while I helped by being nearby enough to call an ambulance if she fell, I flash-backed to earlier humiliations I experienced in the area of home maintenance. There was the time we needed to remove a pine tree from the back yard, and I had to stand by and watch from the ground as my elderly but extremely handy father-in-law shinnied up to do the necessary topping. There was the time I took a full week off from work to paint our house – a brick house, mind you, that needed only trim coverage – and I didn’t even get to the windows before the week was out. There was the time I hid in the kitchen during a plumber’s visit so he wouldn’t be tempted to explain to me what he had fixed. A shameful heritage, to be sure.
Back to this morning: As I sprayed the bathroom mirror clean, got the worst of this colorful but apparently undesirable pink stuff out of the bathtub and wiped down the counter, I noticed that the faucet knobs were especially grimy. I had gotten under there a few times with a toothbrush but it looked like the knobs would have to be physically removed to get at all the dirt that had accumulated. The “H” and “C” tabs (“hot” and “cold”, I guess) looked like they’d snap right out, and sure enough they did.
Underneath, I could see the head of a screw beneath a layer of rust. The head had a pattern I recognized as matching a screwdriver I once saw in our utility closet. Could it be that such a tool would remove the screws, allowing me to remove the knobs for cleaning? I retrieve the tool and stick it deep into the hole and starting turning. Slowly, one screw backs out and then the other. But the knobs themselves remained in place. You never know with these things whether brute force or some kind of subtle maneuver is required for removal, but since I’m no good with the subtle stuff, I figured I’d just try to power them off. And off they came! I tooth-brushed the posts that lay exposed, submerged the knobs in soapy water and wiped off the rust with a cloth.
They say that when climbing Everest, the hard part isn’t getting to the top, but getting back down alive. Now I had to put everything back together without suffering pulmonary edema. I tried to lay the screws back into their holes, but they just fell onto their sides. I then balanced each screw on the end of the screwdriver, pointing upward, and lowered the inverted knobs onto them. I quickly flipped them over and stuck them back onto their posts. I had to turn until I found the right position, then forced the knobs back into place. Incredibly, the screws went in and everything was clean and restored.
I called my wife in from the other room and woke up my sleeping son. Notice anything different about the sink? I asked. “It’s not disgusting any more,” my son said. I’ll take that as a “job well done”.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Blessed are the annoyed
Blessing seems to be a big part of life in the South. I’m usually glad I decided to live in a region where the weather is decent, the people are friendly and the economy – at least as of ten minutes ago when I last checked the financial pages – was somewhat healthy. Whether or not I’m “blessed” to be living here, I’m not sure. I made some overt choices that got me to where I sit this morning in a coffee shop just off Interstate 77, and “blessing” seems to imply that I simply fell off a passing truck and was fortunate to roll down the off-ramp to a comfortable table in front of a bagel and coffee.
I guess the obsession with blessings in this part of the country is rooted in the Bible Belt traditions most of my fellow Southerners subscribe to. Surely God had something to do with our fate being what it is. His invisible hand -- or “Hand” (I always forget how those spiritual capitalization rules work) -- guided me to this acceptable position of a fifty-something sorta-corporate type hanging on to a half-decent job and semi-comfortable lifestyle. I know I’m a lot better off than the guy I passed landscaping the shrubs on my way in here, but surely not enough to be blessed.
For example, the whole sneeze commentary thing bothers me a lot. Whenever I’m in public, and especially when I’m at work, if I feel the urge to sneeze I have to suppress the outburst or else endure the hail of “bless you’s” that rain down all around me. Maybe my family was too impolite to teach me this social convention, but it’s not one I’ve ever practiced and it embarrasses me to become a late-adapter at this stage in my life. I’m usually able to stifle the sneeze sufficiently to keep anyone from hearing. I hope it’s an urban legend that you can give yourself a cerebral hemorrhage by doing this, though that too would probably prompt a comment.
What is it exactly you’re supposed to say when your sneeze is blessed? “Whoa, thanks”, is usually about the best I can manage. A more definitive “thank you” might encourage a chorus of “you’re welcome’s”, and then I’m back to where I started, wondering if and how I’m supposed to respond further. Other options like “Woo – I think I might be coming down with something” or “I hope I didn’t get any of that on you” seem to be offering more information than anybody really wants.
I once worked with someone who waited till everyone else had said their “bless you’s” and then upstaged them all with a “God bless you”. It seemed like an unnecessary attempt to place his and God’s blessings a level above those of mere mortals. I suppose that should elicit a “thank you both” response, assuming he came from a monotheistic tradition, which I think Catholicism still is.
The only time I really feel required to offer some word of note on another person’s sudden, involuntary expulsion of micro-mucus is when I’m in a one-on-one situation with the sneezer. One of my carpool companions let one rip the other day and the silence that followed was more than I could bear. I tried out what I thought was an acceptable alternative – “gesunheidt” – but I don’t think it had the same affect. He looked at me curiously and then nearly rear-ended the semi in front of us.
Aside from the sneeze blessings, the other one we hear a lot around here is “bless his/her heart”. It’s really only the most rural of us that have the nerve to use this phrase in everyday conversation. Most of my coworkers have at least some non-Southern strain in them, or at least enough to avoid this condescending remark. Among those who do use it, the phrase is always intoned with sympathy even when meant with the most malice possible. They’d use it equally on someone who just stumbled over a vacuum cleaner cord and on Lee Harvey Oswald after he’d been gunned down by Jack Ruby. It implies that if only a particular organ could be rendered subject to the grace of the Almighty, that this person wouldn’t be such a poor excuse for a human being. I’ve always contended that the Yankee equivalent to “bless his heart” was something along the lines of “what an idiot!”, though that might be a bit harsh. Heart-blessing seems to imply that there’s a well-intentioned incompetence involved, which I can understand after meeting some of the Southerners I’ve come across.
One last use of the word that I’ve encountered recently came from a particularly mediocre one of my coworkers. This is a fellow I trained to be an inspector of others people’s work; his job is to review their output, find their errors and then indicate in writing how to fix them. Most of the errors he’s charged with finding are related to language usage, so you can imagine my concern when on the third day of his training, we learned that he couldn’t spell. “Oh, I’ve always been a bad speller,” he said in that tone of pride you hear only Americans employ when discussing how piss-poor they are at math, science or other academic disciplines. I huddled quickly with management after this discovery and, as is typical of the interpretation of work ethic at my company, they decided that it was more important that he showed up on time every day than know how to spell. He started as a temporary worker but has since showed up well enough to earn a full-time position.
Anyway, when anybody walks up to Mike and asks how he is, his response is always “I’m blessed.” Not “fine”, not “good”, not “here” or “great” or “HIV-positive” or anything else you might normally expect as a response. I take it he’s a very religious guy and views every life experience he encounters with a full appreciation for all the good and bad and wondrous and pedestrian that it brings. And so, he regards himself as “blessed”.
Some might contend, however, that he’s an idiot.
I guess the obsession with blessings in this part of the country is rooted in the Bible Belt traditions most of my fellow Southerners subscribe to. Surely God had something to do with our fate being what it is. His invisible hand -- or “Hand” (I always forget how those spiritual capitalization rules work) -- guided me to this acceptable position of a fifty-something sorta-corporate type hanging on to a half-decent job and semi-comfortable lifestyle. I know I’m a lot better off than the guy I passed landscaping the shrubs on my way in here, but surely not enough to be blessed.
For example, the whole sneeze commentary thing bothers me a lot. Whenever I’m in public, and especially when I’m at work, if I feel the urge to sneeze I have to suppress the outburst or else endure the hail of “bless you’s” that rain down all around me. Maybe my family was too impolite to teach me this social convention, but it’s not one I’ve ever practiced and it embarrasses me to become a late-adapter at this stage in my life. I’m usually able to stifle the sneeze sufficiently to keep anyone from hearing. I hope it’s an urban legend that you can give yourself a cerebral hemorrhage by doing this, though that too would probably prompt a comment.
What is it exactly you’re supposed to say when your sneeze is blessed? “Whoa, thanks”, is usually about the best I can manage. A more definitive “thank you” might encourage a chorus of “you’re welcome’s”, and then I’m back to where I started, wondering if and how I’m supposed to respond further. Other options like “Woo – I think I might be coming down with something” or “I hope I didn’t get any of that on you” seem to be offering more information than anybody really wants.
I once worked with someone who waited till everyone else had said their “bless you’s” and then upstaged them all with a “God bless you”. It seemed like an unnecessary attempt to place his and God’s blessings a level above those of mere mortals. I suppose that should elicit a “thank you both” response, assuming he came from a monotheistic tradition, which I think Catholicism still is.
The only time I really feel required to offer some word of note on another person’s sudden, involuntary expulsion of micro-mucus is when I’m in a one-on-one situation with the sneezer. One of my carpool companions let one rip the other day and the silence that followed was more than I could bear. I tried out what I thought was an acceptable alternative – “gesunheidt” – but I don’t think it had the same affect. He looked at me curiously and then nearly rear-ended the semi in front of us.
Aside from the sneeze blessings, the other one we hear a lot around here is “bless his/her heart”. It’s really only the most rural of us that have the nerve to use this phrase in everyday conversation. Most of my coworkers have at least some non-Southern strain in them, or at least enough to avoid this condescending remark. Among those who do use it, the phrase is always intoned with sympathy even when meant with the most malice possible. They’d use it equally on someone who just stumbled over a vacuum cleaner cord and on Lee Harvey Oswald after he’d been gunned down by Jack Ruby. It implies that if only a particular organ could be rendered subject to the grace of the Almighty, that this person wouldn’t be such a poor excuse for a human being. I’ve always contended that the Yankee equivalent to “bless his heart” was something along the lines of “what an idiot!”, though that might be a bit harsh. Heart-blessing seems to imply that there’s a well-intentioned incompetence involved, which I can understand after meeting some of the Southerners I’ve come across.
One last use of the word that I’ve encountered recently came from a particularly mediocre one of my coworkers. This is a fellow I trained to be an inspector of others people’s work; his job is to review their output, find their errors and then indicate in writing how to fix them. Most of the errors he’s charged with finding are related to language usage, so you can imagine my concern when on the third day of his training, we learned that he couldn’t spell. “Oh, I’ve always been a bad speller,” he said in that tone of pride you hear only Americans employ when discussing how piss-poor they are at math, science or other academic disciplines. I huddled quickly with management after this discovery and, as is typical of the interpretation of work ethic at my company, they decided that it was more important that he showed up on time every day than know how to spell. He started as a temporary worker but has since showed up well enough to earn a full-time position.
Anyway, when anybody walks up to Mike and asks how he is, his response is always “I’m blessed.” Not “fine”, not “good”, not “here” or “great” or “HIV-positive” or anything else you might normally expect as a response. I take it he’s a very religious guy and views every life experience he encounters with a full appreciation for all the good and bad and wondrous and pedestrian that it brings. And so, he regards himself as “blessed”.
Some might contend, however, that he’s an idiot.
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