Yesterday was a pretty crummy day all around. I was just feeling out of sorts all day, and having that why-is-this-happening-to-me kind of overreaction to everything. I, like much of the Western hemisphere, hate my job and was really feeling it as soon as I got to work. And I let everyone around me know it too, snapping at my least favorite professor when he tried to take over unjamming the copier for me that, "I can do it myself!" I was in this mood most of the morning and it just kept growing as I thought about how much I want to be teaching or doing something else, anything other than answering phones and ordering supplies and directing lost students.
Then I had to hike across campus to pick up a tablet PC from our tech guys, who I already have a secret feud with - secret, as in they don't know we're feuding - because of the fact that they've put some stupid software on our PC's that means we can't update or download anything. Anything. Like I can't even change the time on my clock because I don't have 'administrative privileges' to do such a thing. This of course means no iTunes, which means that my office music listening is limited to Yahoo! Launch, or worse yet, the radio. The radio?! I don't even know how to use one of those anymore.
Anyway, the tech office is located in the basement of the honors' students dorms, and aside from being a half day's hike away, the only way to get into the basement is to have one of the uber sharp RA's let you down. So I had to stand at the elevators with this kid (who by the way had the nosehairs of a decades older man and needed to learn how to prune those babies, lest things get caught up in there) waiting for the elevators to arrive and the students to empty out completely so I could take my ride down to the secret tech fortress in the basement alone. I shouldn't complain. This part only took ten minutes. Finally, one of the elevators empties, Nosehair directs a couple waiting students to the other elevator, he turns his key to unlock the secret floor, he hits the button for me, and I am on my way. Except the elevator doesn't go down. It goes to the top floor, where a group of students gets on. And then it stops on every single floor on its way back down to the lobby, where Nosehair stands, staring at the elevator, completely befuddled. And yes, I just used the word 'befuddled.'
Eventually I make it to the secret fortress in the basement, only to find that the tech guys don't know anything about a tablet PC for my department. I remark about how amusing that is, considering that they called to tell me it was ready just a few hours earlier. Two of them wander around the offices and labs, randomly picking up laptop bags and sort of looking for it and asking me who the laptop is assigned for and when it was dropped off, to which I respond again and again that it was a tablet PC, not a laptop, and I don't know when it was dropped off, only that I was told to pick it up just a few hours ago. After fifteen minutes of this buffoonery, I tell them that they can just figure out what happened and I'll come back later. Upon hearing this, they suddenly find my tablet PC in plain site, sitting on a workbench three feet from where I stand (maybe they do know we're in a feud). I get some bogus explanation that it should have been sitting on another table - the "pick up" table - to the left of the work bench, which would have indicated it was ready to be picked up. Then I find out they tested it and nothing was wrong with it; the instructor who sent it over was just plugging the cord into the wrong slot.
Over an hour after I left my office for a twenty minute errand, I made it back and was immediately met by two professors who needed manila folders (on the top shelf of the supply cabinet - "See? Right here.") and whiteboard markers (also in the supply cabinet). Then the dean's office called looking for the chair, who needed to sign a form, and blah, blah, blah until it was almost three-thirty and too late for me to take the lunch I had planned to take when I returned from the super secret tech fortress.
So at four-thirty, like I do four days a week, I closed my door and changed into my khakis and freshly-ironed oxford shirt to head off for a night of table-waiting. And as I walked to my car, I told myself I had to get out of this funk, that I needed to hustle at the restaurant and be cheery and wonderful and score some big tips, and I was just starting to feel a little better as I rounded the corner into the parking lot and out of nowhere a bird pooped on me.
A bird dropped its load on my clean, pressed shirt and all over one of my shoes.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
The American dream ain't so dreamy either
At the restaurant where I work, there is a notable separation of employees by classification. For example, there are no female managers. Not one. Six managers and all of them are male. Three of the six are former servers, promoted through the company, and though the majority of servers who work for the company are female, and nearly half are black, all of our managers are male and, except for one, white.
Not surprising.
But what really hits me each day, whenever I have a moment to think about something other than who had a diet soda and which table still needs bread, is the status of the Hispanic or Latino employees in our restaurant. None of them are servers. And not one is a grill cook. Or a cashier. Or even a hostess.
A couple of the guys who are fluent in English work as back-up cooks. They make bread and soups and the foods that can be dipped out easily and slopped onto a plate – meatloaf, roast beef, macaroni and cheese. I often take smoke breaks with these guys, and one of them refers to me as “mi esposa” even though he already has a wife and family, with whom he was shopping when I ran into him once outside of work. On more than one occasion, he has made offensive and suggestive gestures with his tongue toward me, a practice which he quickly discontinued when I told him it wasn’t cool. He’s funny and adorable in a teddy bear kind of way, but obviously a cad.
In prep, the part of the kitchen where they make salads and desserts and “prepare” ingredients for back-up and grill, there are four different women, all women of color. Two are Hispanic and proficient, if not fluent, in English.
All other Hispanic employees work in the dish room. The men who have a basic understanding of English are bussers, but for the most part, the people in dish speak little or no English at all. Posted on the wall beside the bussing station is a Spanish-to-English translation chart, laminated, with the corporate logo in the corner, meaning that this set up is not unique to our particular location. Listed on it are basic terms and phrases that we might find useful, such as “caliente” = “hot pan” even if that isn’t the actual translation.
For the most part, dish employees tend to stay in dish and only converse with other dish employees in the break room, and though I know the name of every other employee in the restaurant within a few days of their employment, I seldom get to know the names of anyone in dish, even the men I sometimes tip out for bussing my tables so fast and helping me turn them over.
And it bothers me.
Without them, none of the rest of us can do our jobs. I can’t serve drinks. Prep can’t chop vegetables or make desserts. Back up can’t bake corn bread. Grill can’t plate food.
They are anonymous cogs in the machine of our restaurant. Separated from the rest of the employees in their little corner. Overlooked until we run out of clean glasses. And what they do in the dish room – sort out the dirty dishes in bus tubs, separate plates from wet napkins and half-eaten chicken and gum stuck to the insides of glasses by guests – I wouldn’t do again for anything (well, almost anything). They spend their entire work day standing, wet, elbow deep in the discarded bits of other people’s meals, and at the end of the day, when they go home to their families, probably in neighborhoods where they are separate too, do you think they wonder if this is the American dream they’ve heard so much about?
Not surprising.
But what really hits me each day, whenever I have a moment to think about something other than who had a diet soda and which table still needs bread, is the status of the Hispanic or Latino employees in our restaurant. None of them are servers. And not one is a grill cook. Or a cashier. Or even a hostess.
A couple of the guys who are fluent in English work as back-up cooks. They make bread and soups and the foods that can be dipped out easily and slopped onto a plate – meatloaf, roast beef, macaroni and cheese. I often take smoke breaks with these guys, and one of them refers to me as “mi esposa” even though he already has a wife and family, with whom he was shopping when I ran into him once outside of work. On more than one occasion, he has made offensive and suggestive gestures with his tongue toward me, a practice which he quickly discontinued when I told him it wasn’t cool. He’s funny and adorable in a teddy bear kind of way, but obviously a cad.
In prep, the part of the kitchen where they make salads and desserts and “prepare” ingredients for back-up and grill, there are four different women, all women of color. Two are Hispanic and proficient, if not fluent, in English.
All other Hispanic employees work in the dish room. The men who have a basic understanding of English are bussers, but for the most part, the people in dish speak little or no English at all. Posted on the wall beside the bussing station is a Spanish-to-English translation chart, laminated, with the corporate logo in the corner, meaning that this set up is not unique to our particular location. Listed on it are basic terms and phrases that we might find useful, such as “caliente” = “hot pan” even if that isn’t the actual translation.
For the most part, dish employees tend to stay in dish and only converse with other dish employees in the break room, and though I know the name of every other employee in the restaurant within a few days of their employment, I seldom get to know the names of anyone in dish, even the men I sometimes tip out for bussing my tables so fast and helping me turn them over.
And it bothers me.
Without them, none of the rest of us can do our jobs. I can’t serve drinks. Prep can’t chop vegetables or make desserts. Back up can’t bake corn bread. Grill can’t plate food.
They are anonymous cogs in the machine of our restaurant. Separated from the rest of the employees in their little corner. Overlooked until we run out of clean glasses. And what they do in the dish room – sort out the dirty dishes in bus tubs, separate plates from wet napkins and half-eaten chicken and gum stuck to the insides of glasses by guests – I wouldn’t do again for anything (well, almost anything). They spend their entire work day standing, wet, elbow deep in the discarded bits of other people’s meals, and at the end of the day, when they go home to their families, probably in neighborhoods where they are separate too, do you think they wonder if this is the American dream they’ve heard so much about?
Monday, September 24, 2007
A GI party isn't as hot as it sounds
Years ago, when I was resisting brain-washing at basic military training, I often looked for an excuse to get out of the day’s planned activities – running, marching, standing in formation, being yelled at by TI’s, more marching. There were very few opportunities to avoid these things, but fortunately for me, my mother had gone through the same abuse-filled summer camp just years earlier, and before I left for San Antonio, had given me two exceptions to the cardinal rule of not volunteering for anything. Ever.
My mother taught me that a GI party, while it sounded fun, was nothing more than a complete and thorough cleaning of the dorms, followed by inspection, which no one ever passed thus followed by laps around the training field. So, for example, I knew before I arrived not to volunteer for the “bunny patrol,” which entailed lying flat on one’s stomach and wiping dust and hair from under bunks and lockers, not as the name seemed to indicate, standing outdoors and watching for fluffy-tailed mammals.
Two things that at first might seem distasteful, however, I should by all means take part in. The first, it seemed, was road guard duty at chapel. This conjured up thoughts of standing at attention all day beside a traffic barrier on asphalt in the southern Texas heat. I was skeptical, but followed Mom’s advice and volunteered. It turned out that being a chapel volunteer got you out of most of the Sunday GI party, since you spent much of the day at church, where the chaplains, unlike every other non-trainee at basic training, behaved like actual human beings, and treated you as such.
And the actual work we did consisted of spending twenty minutes of the very early morning standing beside a barrier, waiting for the base commander to arrive for chapel service so we could move the barrier and salute his car as it drove past. Once he arrived, we were free to come inside and have a soda or snack and sit in the chapel courtyard until the first service was over, until it was time to go back out and move the barrier and salute again. The rest of the day we spent standing at the doors, handing out programs to our fellow airmen as they arrived for the various denominational services. During each service, we were free to either join in – and some time I’ll post about that – or again, sit in the courtyard and chat with the other ushers. At about six, we all marched back to our dorms, to be greeted by our flight-mates who had been working hard all day, glared at us, begrudging the fact that they had volunteered for the wrong tasks.
The other thing my mother urged me to volunteer for was KP duty. I had watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and Bob Hope comedies to know that KP was usually a punishment handed down to screw-ups; nevertheless, I again took Mom’s advice, and when the day came that our flight was tasked with the duty, raised my hand. KP sucked. The actual work of it anyway. For one thing, those on KP duty had to get up at three, knocking out two hours of sleep, a precious, precious commodity at basic training. And we didn’t get to do anything glamorous like peel potatoes or spoon slop onto airmen’s trays either. No, we spent our time washing dishes. It was hot, physical, gag-inducing work, but the upside was that in between meals, after all the dishes were cleaned and set out for the next meal, we were allowed to eat.
Chow time at basic on a normal day meant standing in line, at attention, and waiting to get into the chow hall. During this wait, any number of TI’s might approach you, ask a question from your Airman Training Order (the military bible which you were meant to memorize), and send you to the back of the line if you answered incorrectly. Or worse. Once you finally got your food and got to your table, you stood at attention behind your chair until the table was full, and the last airman to arrive announced that you could all be seated. Once seated, you were required to drink three glasses of water before picking up a fork (this was to prevent dehydration in the San Antonio heat).
The food, for the most part, was under-seasoned, and all condiments and other yumminess – like ice cream and beverages other than water – were located in the center of the diningroom, where we were welcome to venture once we’d polished off our water. The problem with this was that the path to the condiment and beverage bar went right past the Snake-Pit, the appropriately-named table where the TI’s sat and dined and randomly called upon airmen out of their seats to answer questions from the ATO, and just in general, humiliate us. Few were brave enough to get up.
Besides the fear of the Snake-Pit was the fact that chow time had a limit. A flexible limit that was often set according to how well the flight had performed that day or whether or not the TI had gotten any the night before. Sometimes, all we had time to do was drink our water before the TI called our flight back to attention and we had to bus our trays, throwing out all the food we might have actually liked to eat, so wasting time by getting pepper or a glass of milk was too big a risk to take.
Thus, spending a few hours scraping off plates of barely-eaten food and wet napkins seemed like a fair exchange for three leisurely meals. And ice cream.
My mother taught me that a GI party, while it sounded fun, was nothing more than a complete and thorough cleaning of the dorms, followed by inspection, which no one ever passed thus followed by laps around the training field. So, for example, I knew before I arrived not to volunteer for the “bunny patrol,” which entailed lying flat on one’s stomach and wiping dust and hair from under bunks and lockers, not as the name seemed to indicate, standing outdoors and watching for fluffy-tailed mammals.
Two things that at first might seem distasteful, however, I should by all means take part in. The first, it seemed, was road guard duty at chapel. This conjured up thoughts of standing at attention all day beside a traffic barrier on asphalt in the southern Texas heat. I was skeptical, but followed Mom’s advice and volunteered. It turned out that being a chapel volunteer got you out of most of the Sunday GI party, since you spent much of the day at church, where the chaplains, unlike every other non-trainee at basic training, behaved like actual human beings, and treated you as such.
And the actual work we did consisted of spending twenty minutes of the very early morning standing beside a barrier, waiting for the base commander to arrive for chapel service so we could move the barrier and salute his car as it drove past. Once he arrived, we were free to come inside and have a soda or snack and sit in the chapel courtyard until the first service was over, until it was time to go back out and move the barrier and salute again. The rest of the day we spent standing at the doors, handing out programs to our fellow airmen as they arrived for the various denominational services. During each service, we were free to either join in – and some time I’ll post about that – or again, sit in the courtyard and chat with the other ushers. At about six, we all marched back to our dorms, to be greeted by our flight-mates who had been working hard all day, glared at us, begrudging the fact that they had volunteered for the wrong tasks.
The other thing my mother urged me to volunteer for was KP duty. I had watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and Bob Hope comedies to know that KP was usually a punishment handed down to screw-ups; nevertheless, I again took Mom’s advice, and when the day came that our flight was tasked with the duty, raised my hand. KP sucked. The actual work of it anyway. For one thing, those on KP duty had to get up at three, knocking out two hours of sleep, a precious, precious commodity at basic training. And we didn’t get to do anything glamorous like peel potatoes or spoon slop onto airmen’s trays either. No, we spent our time washing dishes. It was hot, physical, gag-inducing work, but the upside was that in between meals, after all the dishes were cleaned and set out for the next meal, we were allowed to eat.
Chow time at basic on a normal day meant standing in line, at attention, and waiting to get into the chow hall. During this wait, any number of TI’s might approach you, ask a question from your Airman Training Order (the military bible which you were meant to memorize), and send you to the back of the line if you answered incorrectly. Or worse. Once you finally got your food and got to your table, you stood at attention behind your chair until the table was full, and the last airman to arrive announced that you could all be seated. Once seated, you were required to drink three glasses of water before picking up a fork (this was to prevent dehydration in the San Antonio heat).
The food, for the most part, was under-seasoned, and all condiments and other yumminess – like ice cream and beverages other than water – were located in the center of the diningroom, where we were welcome to venture once we’d polished off our water. The problem with this was that the path to the condiment and beverage bar went right past the Snake-Pit, the appropriately-named table where the TI’s sat and dined and randomly called upon airmen out of their seats to answer questions from the ATO, and just in general, humiliate us. Few were brave enough to get up.
Besides the fear of the Snake-Pit was the fact that chow time had a limit. A flexible limit that was often set according to how well the flight had performed that day or whether or not the TI had gotten any the night before. Sometimes, all we had time to do was drink our water before the TI called our flight back to attention and we had to bus our trays, throwing out all the food we might have actually liked to eat, so wasting time by getting pepper or a glass of milk was too big a risk to take.
Thus, spending a few hours scraping off plates of barely-eaten food and wet napkins seemed like a fair exchange for three leisurely meals. And ice cream.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Just a bunch of random stuff
Not having anything intelligent or even mildly entertaining to say today, I present instead a series of outtakes – snippets of things that, for various editorial reasons, were not included this week’s presentation. Enjoy. Well, probably not, but whatever:
My apartment is still filled with unpacked boxes. I know it takes a while to unpack, but I’m getting tired of going home to bare walls and cardboard everywhere. And since I get home so late, I don’t really want to piss off my new neighbors by pounding nails into the wall and being altogether noisy moving stuff around at eleven-thirty at night (even though the dog upstairs barks when I put the key in my door and then proceeds to gallop up and down the apartment for about an hour). The kid has done a little bit of work, but mostly in his own room, and I’d prefer to set things up myself (he and I have entirely different aesthetic senses – he likes black, and skulls, and anime, while I . . . do not). I finally hung some curtains last night and put up a couple of shelves, but I think this disarray is contributing to the general malaise I’ve been experiencing lately.
Of course, this could also be partially due to the fact that I’ve been sick and pushing it a little hard with work and, despite my so-so efforts, have stopped quitting smoking. It wasn’t so hard the first few days, when I was mostly sleeping and when I was awake, coughing enough that the fear of more coughing outweighed my craving for nicotine. But now that the cough has subsided and I’m back at the restaurant, where everyone smokes and there’s really no other way to get a break, well . . .
For the first few days, I only bummed a cigarette here or there. And I’ve only had two or three each day. But yesterday on my way home, I stopped at the Sev to buy my own pack, and before I could even pay, some guy popped out of nowhere and said, “Want a free pack?” Then he ripped a coupon off his pad and pushed it toward the cashier who put a second pack in my bag, while I paid and the guy scanned my id and apparently signed me up for some RJ Reynold’s mailing list, though I’m deeply suspicious it was something more sinister. Anyway, I got my change from the cashier, retrieved my id, and thanked the man for his contribution to my inevitable cancer. He laughed. I wasn’t joking.
Damn free packs of cigarettes when I’m trying to attempt to quit smoking!
My son refuses to wear a pair of jeans more than once. This, despite the fact that he gets dressed at the very last minute before school and once he arrives home from school, a mere six hours later, strips down to his boxers. Maybe I’m alone on this one, but I don’t thinks it’s such a big deal for him to wear the jeans once more before washing them. I mean, they’re denim, and barring any spills or . . . well, other stuff . . . I don’t see a problem. Regardless, he does. And since he gained a couple inches and lost a few pounds over the summer, none of his old jeans fit him, and he only has the three new pair I bought him for school. So last night I ran to the store on my way home from work and picked up a couple more pair so I could get away with not doing laundry until Saturday.
My real point is this – there is no way he could do the reverse for me. I mean, first of all he wouldn’t. He can’t drive and is to afraid of getting lost to take the bus anywhere. And anyway, I couldn’t in a million years send him to the store with cash and ask him to pick up a pair of jeans in my size and expect that they would fit. “My size” would depend on the brand, the cut, the weave of the denim, etc. So why is it that I can pick up any old pair of 36” x 32” jeans and they all fit the kid the same (ie, they all hang off his backside in exactly the same no-ass-to-speak-of sort of way)?
So Wednesday night at the restaurant we were really short-staffed: there were only six servers on the floor (there are usually ten, sometimes twelve on busy nights) which meant that we each had seven tables, plus a couple in the smoking section. In the middle of our dinner rush, one of the newer servers asked another server if she’d watch his section while he had a cigarette. Most of the managers don’t allow us to take smoke breaks during dinner rush, and definitely not when we’re so severely understaffed, but the kid got pissed off when the female server told him she couldn’t watch his section. I was standing at the Micros, putting in an order, and I heard him grumble something to her and she responded that she had seven tables on the floor and just got sat again. She wasn’t smart about it; she just flat out said she couldn’t right then. So he headed to the back anyway, and as he walked past me, he said over his shoulder, “You can suck my dick, bitch!”
I wheeled around, and lucky for him a manager was standing behind me as well. I exchanged looks with the manager, who then took the kid by the elbow and said, “Come with me.” I went about taking care of my table, but when I came back into the kitchen, there was the kid still working, so I took the manager aside and told him how completely inappropriate that was, how it was much more than breaking our ‘no profanity’ rule, how it pushed the boundaries of sexual harassment, and how I thought it constituted a verbal threat against a female co-worker and that more needed to happen than just an informal talking-to. And I meant, like writing him up or something.
They ended up firing him for it. I feel slightly guilty. But only slightly.
So then we only had five servers on the floor. And minus the slacker, things actually ran a lot smoother.
I’m in charge of ordering supplies for the department at job #1, and rather than have fifty professors stop by my office asking for stuff, I have a sheet posted on the outside of the supply cabinet for them to write down anything they need and can’t find in the cabinet. I also check it every morning and restock anything that’s getting low – pencils, chalk, notepads, etc. – from the supply closet down the hall. I keep ten boxes of whiteboard markers of assorted colors in the cabinet, yet yesterday when I was in the workroom, I watched as one of the professors opened the cabinet, took one of the ninety-five markers from the shelf, then closed the cabinet and wrote on the supplies to be ordered list “lots of whiteboard markers.”
Uhm, what?
My apartment is still filled with unpacked boxes. I know it takes a while to unpack, but I’m getting tired of going home to bare walls and cardboard everywhere. And since I get home so late, I don’t really want to piss off my new neighbors by pounding nails into the wall and being altogether noisy moving stuff around at eleven-thirty at night (even though the dog upstairs barks when I put the key in my door and then proceeds to gallop up and down the apartment for about an hour). The kid has done a little bit of work, but mostly in his own room, and I’d prefer to set things up myself (he and I have entirely different aesthetic senses – he likes black, and skulls, and anime, while I . . . do not). I finally hung some curtains last night and put up a couple of shelves, but I think this disarray is contributing to the general malaise I’ve been experiencing lately.
Of course, this could also be partially due to the fact that I’ve been sick and pushing it a little hard with work and, despite my so-so efforts, have stopped quitting smoking. It wasn’t so hard the first few days, when I was mostly sleeping and when I was awake, coughing enough that the fear of more coughing outweighed my craving for nicotine. But now that the cough has subsided and I’m back at the restaurant, where everyone smokes and there’s really no other way to get a break, well . . .
For the first few days, I only bummed a cigarette here or there. And I’ve only had two or three each day. But yesterday on my way home, I stopped at the Sev to buy my own pack, and before I could even pay, some guy popped out of nowhere and said, “Want a free pack?” Then he ripped a coupon off his pad and pushed it toward the cashier who put a second pack in my bag, while I paid and the guy scanned my id and apparently signed me up for some RJ Reynold’s mailing list, though I’m deeply suspicious it was something more sinister. Anyway, I got my change from the cashier, retrieved my id, and thanked the man for his contribution to my inevitable cancer. He laughed. I wasn’t joking.
Damn free packs of cigarettes when I’m trying to attempt to quit smoking!
My son refuses to wear a pair of jeans more than once. This, despite the fact that he gets dressed at the very last minute before school and once he arrives home from school, a mere six hours later, strips down to his boxers. Maybe I’m alone on this one, but I don’t thinks it’s such a big deal for him to wear the jeans once more before washing them. I mean, they’re denim, and barring any spills or . . . well, other stuff . . . I don’t see a problem. Regardless, he does. And since he gained a couple inches and lost a few pounds over the summer, none of his old jeans fit him, and he only has the three new pair I bought him for school. So last night I ran to the store on my way home from work and picked up a couple more pair so I could get away with not doing laundry until Saturday.
My real point is this – there is no way he could do the reverse for me. I mean, first of all he wouldn’t. He can’t drive and is to afraid of getting lost to take the bus anywhere. And anyway, I couldn’t in a million years send him to the store with cash and ask him to pick up a pair of jeans in my size and expect that they would fit. “My size” would depend on the brand, the cut, the weave of the denim, etc. So why is it that I can pick up any old pair of 36” x 32” jeans and they all fit the kid the same (ie, they all hang off his backside in exactly the same no-ass-to-speak-of sort of way)?
So Wednesday night at the restaurant we were really short-staffed: there were only six servers on the floor (there are usually ten, sometimes twelve on busy nights) which meant that we each had seven tables, plus a couple in the smoking section. In the middle of our dinner rush, one of the newer servers asked another server if she’d watch his section while he had a cigarette. Most of the managers don’t allow us to take smoke breaks during dinner rush, and definitely not when we’re so severely understaffed, but the kid got pissed off when the female server told him she couldn’t watch his section. I was standing at the Micros, putting in an order, and I heard him grumble something to her and she responded that she had seven tables on the floor and just got sat again. She wasn’t smart about it; she just flat out said she couldn’t right then. So he headed to the back anyway, and as he walked past me, he said over his shoulder, “You can suck my dick, bitch!”
I wheeled around, and lucky for him a manager was standing behind me as well. I exchanged looks with the manager, who then took the kid by the elbow and said, “Come with me.” I went about taking care of my table, but when I came back into the kitchen, there was the kid still working, so I took the manager aside and told him how completely inappropriate that was, how it was much more than breaking our ‘no profanity’ rule, how it pushed the boundaries of sexual harassment, and how I thought it constituted a verbal threat against a female co-worker and that more needed to happen than just an informal talking-to. And I meant, like writing him up or something.
They ended up firing him for it. I feel slightly guilty. But only slightly.
So then we only had five servers on the floor. And minus the slacker, things actually ran a lot smoother.
I’m in charge of ordering supplies for the department at job #1, and rather than have fifty professors stop by my office asking for stuff, I have a sheet posted on the outside of the supply cabinet for them to write down anything they need and can’t find in the cabinet. I also check it every morning and restock anything that’s getting low – pencils, chalk, notepads, etc. – from the supply closet down the hall. I keep ten boxes of whiteboard markers of assorted colors in the cabinet, yet yesterday when I was in the workroom, I watched as one of the professors opened the cabinet, took one of the ninety-five markers from the shelf, then closed the cabinet and wrote on the supplies to be ordered list “lots of whiteboard markers.”
Uhm, what?
Thursday, September 20, 2007
A post where I probably piss people off
So the other day at the restaurant I was talking again with the two grill cooks who are afraid of me. I couldn’t tell you what we were talking about, something mindless I’m sure, as they are pretty simple guys, a year or two out of high school each and not much life experience, so other than the restaurant, we have very little in common. But at some point one of them referred to me again as, “You feminist, you!” He was trying to get a rise out of me, as he does several times a week now, but I generally brush him off.
But he wasn’t willing to let me ignore him this day, and asked me something along the lines of why was I a feminist, what was it I wanted when, after all, I had all the same rights as him.
I sighed. Heavily.
His friend chimed in by rewording the same question, then the two of them stood staring at me, waiting for my response. I just shook my head.
Where to start?
First of all, these guys are grill cooks. And I mean no disrespect to grill cooks – or maybe I do – but they aren’t college students working as grill cooks in order to pay tuition, nor are they two guys who love to cook and are using this as a stepping stone toward a life in the culinary arts or toward owning a restaurant. They aren’t well read. They aren’t well-educated. And they don’t even care to be. They’re just two guys, fresh out of mom’s house, looking to work at the highest paying menial job they can find and make enough money for a nice car and beer.
And that’s cool. No judgment there. Well, just a little.
But the thing is, how do I explain a concept such as feminism to these dudes?
So when they ask me – no – tell me I shouldn’t be a feminist because “women have the same rights as us,” I know that they have no concept of feminism other than the ERA, and from previous conversations with each of them, I know that they are fond of regurgitating rhetoric learned from high school gym coaches, local newscasters, and their pastor, but they have never given much thought to anything.
And by thought, I mean critical thought.
Lest my moment of silence in the face of their question be seen as victory on their part, I ask them if they know what the leading cause of death is for pregnant women.
They do not.
I then ask them how many women are victims of sexual crimes.
Again, they don’t know.
I ask them how likely is it a woman will be a victim of violence in her lifetime.
I tell them the odds.
Then I ask them how likely a person is to be a victim of terrorist activity, in this country. I tell them the cliché – that they are more likely to be struck by lightning than die by an act of terrorism. And then, I ask them how much money we are spending to fight terrorism, compared to how much we aren’t to fight violence against women. And then I ask them why we were so willing to sign the documents to rush to war against a small oil-rich country, when we are so unwilling to sign the documents endorsing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). And I tell them ours is the only developed nation to refuse to sign.
They don’t even know what it is – few do – a fact which only reinforces my point, that our culture places more emphasis on reactions to a hyperbolic fear of terrorism than to the very real threats in our daily lives, one of those threats being acts of violence committed against women, because sexual assault and domestic violence are still viewed as "women's issues."
The grill cooks’ response to my rant: “Well, that’s why women shouldn’t go out alone at night."
“Uhm, yeah," I mashed out my cigarette in the ash tray (yes, I was smoking!) and said, "That’s why I’m a feminist.”
But he wasn’t willing to let me ignore him this day, and asked me something along the lines of why was I a feminist, what was it I wanted when, after all, I had all the same rights as him.
I sighed. Heavily.
His friend chimed in by rewording the same question, then the two of them stood staring at me, waiting for my response. I just shook my head.
Where to start?
First of all, these guys are grill cooks. And I mean no disrespect to grill cooks – or maybe I do – but they aren’t college students working as grill cooks in order to pay tuition, nor are they two guys who love to cook and are using this as a stepping stone toward a life in the culinary arts or toward owning a restaurant. They aren’t well read. They aren’t well-educated. And they don’t even care to be. They’re just two guys, fresh out of mom’s house, looking to work at the highest paying menial job they can find and make enough money for a nice car and beer.
And that’s cool. No judgment there. Well, just a little.
But the thing is, how do I explain a concept such as feminism to these dudes?
So when they ask me – no – tell me I shouldn’t be a feminist because “women have the same rights as us,” I know that they have no concept of feminism other than the ERA, and from previous conversations with each of them, I know that they are fond of regurgitating rhetoric learned from high school gym coaches, local newscasters, and their pastor, but they have never given much thought to anything.
And by thought, I mean critical thought.
Lest my moment of silence in the face of their question be seen as victory on their part, I ask them if they know what the leading cause of death is for pregnant women.
They do not.
I then ask them how many women are victims of sexual crimes.
Again, they don’t know.
I ask them how likely is it a woman will be a victim of violence in her lifetime.
I tell them the odds.
Then I ask them how likely a person is to be a victim of terrorist activity, in this country. I tell them the cliché – that they are more likely to be struck by lightning than die by an act of terrorism. And then, I ask them how much money we are spending to fight terrorism, compared to how much we aren’t to fight violence against women. And then I ask them why we were so willing to sign the documents to rush to war against a small oil-rich country, when we are so unwilling to sign the documents endorsing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). And I tell them ours is the only developed nation to refuse to sign.
They don’t even know what it is – few do – a fact which only reinforces my point, that our culture places more emphasis on reactions to a hyperbolic fear of terrorism than to the very real threats in our daily lives, one of those threats being acts of violence committed against women, because sexual assault and domestic violence are still viewed as "women's issues."
The grill cooks’ response to my rant: “Well, that’s why women shouldn’t go out alone at night."
“Uhm, yeah," I mashed out my cigarette in the ash tray (yes, I was smoking!) and said, "That’s why I’m a feminist.”
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
You should check this out
One of my uber-cool friends has started a poetry journal. And no, not her own personal journal of poetry (though her poems rock and that would be fabulous too), but a literary journal. And she (and her co-founder) solicited some really great poets for their first issue. Here's the link:
http://www.diodepoetry.com/
Go. Read. NOW.
All five of you.
http://www.diodepoetry.com/
Go. Read. NOW.
All five of you.
Compulsory education - almost no child left behind
So I spent much of yesterday finding ways to look busy enough that people wouldn’t bother me. Or at least that those who found it necessary to bother me would excuse themselves for interrupting (my trying to look busy-ness) and move along quickly once I barked out an answer. I hate being bothered. Especially at work.
But really, I was waiting all day to hear from my son who started his first day at his new school. Finally. School here in the river city started almost two weeks ago, but because I didn’t sign a lease on the new place until the last minute and therefore couldn’t prove residence to the new school, to any school, I couldn’t register him. Apparently, they don’t just let you ship your kid off to whatever school you find convenient – you actually have to prove that he belongs there, and this requires more documentation than it does to say, ship him off to war. Or get him a credit card.
So when I finally had a lease to show and knew which school the squirt would be attending, I requested his records from his old school be sent to his new school and I went to the new school to fill out paperwork and hand over the myriad of documentation required to register a child for free public indoctrination in the state of Virginia. This included a birth certificate (to prove he was indeed born in these United States and is entitled to a free government brain-washing, er, education), his last report card from his previous school (despite the fact that this very document will be included in his school records), the aforementioned lease or proof-of-residence, his social security card (to ensure that the correct serial number is recorded on the microchip to be implanted in his brain), and a copy of his shot record (to ensure that said microchip planting has been accomplished).
Failure to provide ALL of these records results in the inability of said child to attend school, which is by the way, mandatory (but only in the you-must-send-your-child-to-school-or-we’ll-charge-you-with-truancy-and-neglect kind of way, not in the we-the-government-must-provide-your-child-with-an-education-without-burdensome-complications kind of way).
Having submitted all such documentation to his school last year, I assumed this procedure would be relatively quick and painless. I found out of course that you can never underestimate the ineptitude of a government institution. Especially one meant to serve the public directly.
I showed up with said son on the first day of school, documentation in hand, assuming his records had arrived in the week and a half since my request. Again, underestimating. No such records and no child in school. I filled out another form, this time with his new school, to be faxed to his old school in order to request the records again. The woman in charge of enrolling new students said she would call me as soon as they arrived and I could bring him back then and she’d register him for classes. I assumed this meant his records would be faxed or emailed in a nice, tidy pdf document to his new school. I have to stop assuming.
After the second day of school had come and almost gone, I called the enrollment woman at his new school. She didn’t know if she had the records yet and that she’d have to call me back, and after taking my name and phone number, she hung up and was not to be heard from again until the next afternoon when I, tired of waiting to hear from her, called her back. Once again, she took my name and number and said she’d call back.
At this point though, I was on to her game and called his old school myself to inquire about his records. This required two phone calls and an email before receiving the response that his records had been sent on Tuesday (the first day of school, the day the request was faxed – not the day I originally requested them a week earlier). But apparently the school system is unaware of the wonders of modern technology, and my son’s records were instead sent via United States Postal Service. And not the one with the shiny new trucks and aero planes, but the one with the Conestoga wagons and foot messengers.
Still, by the fourth day of school, I assumed the records would have arrived. They were, after all, only being sent from one county to another. Forty miles. Another stupid assumption.
Monday morning I got the kid up, made the kid shower, brought the kid to work with me, and in between coughing fits, called the enrollment woman at the new school to say I was bringing the little monster in as I was sure she had received his records. She was not so sure and said she would call me back.
She did not.
Apparently, her phone only works for incoming calls.
By noon, I was suffering from full-on respiratory fits and dragged the kid home to our new, underfurnished apartment where I passed out on the floor until well past the time I could call this woman back. For the next three days, I made a phone call in the morning, only to be told she hadn’t received the records the previous day and would allegedly call me to let me know if she had them now. She seemed unalarmed that my fourteen-year-old was missing out on the first weeks of the school year, and seemed to imply by her nonchalance that I should be unalarmed as well.
Meanwhile, my bored yet happy not to be in school son kept me from squandering too much of my sick time on napping and complained about how he didn’t want to go to this school anyway, about how he didn’t have any clothes to wear, about how he wasn’t going to make any more new friends here, and about how the world had yet to bend to his glory.
Friday, certain that I was enjoying myself more than I had a right to, and desperately in need of nicotine, I dragged myself to work and left the child alone. I drafted a very pointed letter to the enrollment woman, detailing my every effort to resolve this records situation and get the kid in school, and I faxed it off.
Within twenty minutes I received a phone call. The records had apparently been placed in someone else’s box and that someone else had no clue what to do with a set of school records for a new student, so there they had sat. But now everything was fine, and he could come in on Monday. And by the way, he could just come in alone, there was no need for me to be there.
Like I was going to miss my chance to sit in her office and make her uncomfortable. Right.
Upon hearing the news that he would be starting school on Monday, the kid smiled and hugged me and thanked me profusely for all my hard work.
Okay, so he said something along the lines of, “Screw that. I’m not going.”
Of course, he assumed I cared what he thought.
I did not.
So I spent most of yesterday waiting for his phone call, waiting to hear about his first day, about how his teachers were all stupid and his classes were all stupid and the other students were all backward and completely unworthy of his time. What I got was this:
“Hi, Mom. I’m home from school. It was okay. My friend came over. Hope that’s okay. We’re going to the community center. I’ll call you later. Love you. Talk to you later. Bye.”
I didn’t even get a chance to respond.
But really, I was waiting all day to hear from my son who started his first day at his new school. Finally. School here in the river city started almost two weeks ago, but because I didn’t sign a lease on the new place until the last minute and therefore couldn’t prove residence to the new school, to any school, I couldn’t register him. Apparently, they don’t just let you ship your kid off to whatever school you find convenient – you actually have to prove that he belongs there, and this requires more documentation than it does to say, ship him off to war. Or get him a credit card.
So when I finally had a lease to show and knew which school the squirt would be attending, I requested his records from his old school be sent to his new school and I went to the new school to fill out paperwork and hand over the myriad of documentation required to register a child for free public indoctrination in the state of Virginia. This included a birth certificate (to prove he was indeed born in these United States and is entitled to a free government brain-washing, er, education), his last report card from his previous school (despite the fact that this very document will be included in his school records), the aforementioned lease or proof-of-residence, his social security card (to ensure that the correct serial number is recorded on the microchip to be implanted in his brain), and a copy of his shot record (to ensure that said microchip planting has been accomplished).
Failure to provide ALL of these records results in the inability of said child to attend school, which is by the way, mandatory (but only in the you-must-send-your-child-to-school-or-we’ll-charge-you-with-truancy-and-neglect kind of way, not in the we-the-government-must-provide-your-child-with-an-education-without-burdensome-complications kind of way).
Having submitted all such documentation to his school last year, I assumed this procedure would be relatively quick and painless. I found out of course that you can never underestimate the ineptitude of a government institution. Especially one meant to serve the public directly.
I showed up with said son on the first day of school, documentation in hand, assuming his records had arrived in the week and a half since my request. Again, underestimating. No such records and no child in school. I filled out another form, this time with his new school, to be faxed to his old school in order to request the records again. The woman in charge of enrolling new students said she would call me as soon as they arrived and I could bring him back then and she’d register him for classes. I assumed this meant his records would be faxed or emailed in a nice, tidy pdf document to his new school. I have to stop assuming.
After the second day of school had come and almost gone, I called the enrollment woman at his new school. She didn’t know if she had the records yet and that she’d have to call me back, and after taking my name and phone number, she hung up and was not to be heard from again until the next afternoon when I, tired of waiting to hear from her, called her back. Once again, she took my name and number and said she’d call back.
At this point though, I was on to her game and called his old school myself to inquire about his records. This required two phone calls and an email before receiving the response that his records had been sent on Tuesday (the first day of school, the day the request was faxed – not the day I originally requested them a week earlier). But apparently the school system is unaware of the wonders of modern technology, and my son’s records were instead sent via United States Postal Service. And not the one with the shiny new trucks and aero planes, but the one with the Conestoga wagons and foot messengers.
Still, by the fourth day of school, I assumed the records would have arrived. They were, after all, only being sent from one county to another. Forty miles. Another stupid assumption.
Monday morning I got the kid up, made the kid shower, brought the kid to work with me, and in between coughing fits, called the enrollment woman at the new school to say I was bringing the little monster in as I was sure she had received his records. She was not so sure and said she would call me back.
She did not.
Apparently, her phone only works for incoming calls.
By noon, I was suffering from full-on respiratory fits and dragged the kid home to our new, underfurnished apartment where I passed out on the floor until well past the time I could call this woman back. For the next three days, I made a phone call in the morning, only to be told she hadn’t received the records the previous day and would allegedly call me to let me know if she had them now. She seemed unalarmed that my fourteen-year-old was missing out on the first weeks of the school year, and seemed to imply by her nonchalance that I should be unalarmed as well.
Meanwhile, my bored yet happy not to be in school son kept me from squandering too much of my sick time on napping and complained about how he didn’t want to go to this school anyway, about how he didn’t have any clothes to wear, about how he wasn’t going to make any more new friends here, and about how the world had yet to bend to his glory.
Friday, certain that I was enjoying myself more than I had a right to, and desperately in need of nicotine, I dragged myself to work and left the child alone. I drafted a very pointed letter to the enrollment woman, detailing my every effort to resolve this records situation and get the kid in school, and I faxed it off.
Within twenty minutes I received a phone call. The records had apparently been placed in someone else’s box and that someone else had no clue what to do with a set of school records for a new student, so there they had sat. But now everything was fine, and he could come in on Monday. And by the way, he could just come in alone, there was no need for me to be there.
Like I was going to miss my chance to sit in her office and make her uncomfortable. Right.
Upon hearing the news that he would be starting school on Monday, the kid smiled and hugged me and thanked me profusely for all my hard work.
Okay, so he said something along the lines of, “Screw that. I’m not going.”
Of course, he assumed I cared what he thought.
I did not.
So I spent most of yesterday waiting for his phone call, waiting to hear about his first day, about how his teachers were all stupid and his classes were all stupid and the other students were all backward and completely unworthy of his time. What I got was this:
“Hi, Mom. I’m home from school. It was okay. My friend came over. Hope that’s okay. We’re going to the community center. I’ll call you later. Love you. Talk to you later. Bye.”
I didn’t even get a chance to respond.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Burn, Philip Morris! Burn!
Sorry for the long absence, but I grew up in a polygamist sect and I had this little court thing to attend. You’re right, incredibly insensitive of me. Especially when the truth is that I’m just lazy.
So, much has transpired since my last pseudo-post before the big end-of-summer holiday. For one, I spent Labor Day weekend at the beach. That’s right, the beach! And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of fool goes to the beach on Labor Day weekend? Isn’t it just full of all those amateur vacationers trying to squeeze a few moments of desperate fun/relaxation out of the last bits of summertime? Isn’t it crowded and noisy and just entirely unpleasant?
Hah! I say. First of all I say this because my last vacation was almost two years ago: I traveled to Iowa to spend a week with my son over his spring break. In March. In Iowa. Iowa. Let me recap: I traveled from Virginia, where the average temperature nears sixty degrees in March, to Iowa, where it is known to snow well into April. The weather did not disappoint that year, and while the folks back here in ol’ Virginny were enjoying days spent reading under early-blooming dogwoods, I was enduring a full-on blizzard, a term which, by the way, was first used by an Iowa newspaper to describe and Iowa snowstorm sometime in the nineteenth century. That was my last vacation.
The friends with whom I spent this summer, seeing how much I’d been working lately, insisted I come along with them for their weekend at the beach, and though at first I balked – I really should have been moving in to my new apartment, not to mention I missed out on a Friday night shift at the restaurant and my son was flying back on Labor Day – they convinced me that a free (did I mention they were paying for everything?) weekend at the beach was deserved by me.
So I went. And for three wonderful nights I got my own room in their suite, complete with surfside balcony and privileges on their oceanfront balcony. We played in the ocean with their kids, we flew kites, we ate at all their favorite restaurants (including one really plush one overlooking the sound), we took afternoon naps with the balcony doors open, and I sat in the hot tub and took a sunrise stroll along the near-deserted beach. That’s right, I said deserted. See, we skipped the commercial, big-resort, boardwalk baloney of Virginia Beach and instead headed to the Outer Banks. And I have to say, for Labor Day weekend, it was under-crowded.
Of course, all of that joy and wonderfulness came to a too abrupt end, and I had to be back in the RIC Monday evening to pick the kid up at the airport and then rush off to my evening shift at the restaurant. Of course, I didn’t realize I would have to go through the gate to pick up the unaccompanied minor, and I had a purse full of lighters. Now I know that last statement makes me sound a bit sketchy, but allow me to explain. I lose things. All kinds of things. Especially the kinds of things that can be stuffed into pants pockets and apron pockets and purse pockets and you get the idea. So I am constantly leaving the 7-Eleven in the morning with my nicotine, only to discover that I’ve left my lighter on the windowsill at home or the pants I wore last night. Consequently, I end up owning at any given time between five and ten lighters.
And since the friends I was staying with have two adorable little girls, impressionable little girls, I had to be very careful not to leave any such dangerous flame-producing tools lying around, and all of them (the Bics, not the girls) ended up in the bag I was carrying all weekend at the beach and then to the airport, where I had to go through the stupid security checkpoint to pick up the kid, and where I had to pause to throw out six cigarette lighters from the bottom of said bag. The scary thing is, when I got to work later and was digging through the bag for a pen, I found a lighter I had missed. A lighter the Transportation Security Administration workers and their high-tech bag x-raying machine had also missed.
So, as payback for enjoying myself for a few days, last week was incredibly busy with work and moving in to the new place and work and registering the kid for school and shopping for furniture at thrift stores (okay, that was fun) and turning on utilities and more work. Then Sunday I came down with a cold, which turned out not to be a cold, but the bronchitis and all I have to say to that is, “Screw the bronchitis!” Okay, in an email to a friend earlier, I used the F-bomb, but I’m practicing restraint. I’m trying anyway.
And the worst part of it is, and you all knew this was coming, I have to give up smoking.
Fuck giving up smoking!
I said I was trying.
Stupid pulmonary inflammations!
So I spent much of this week, sitting in my half-furnished, half-moved into, entirely unpacked apartment, staring at undecorated walls and the kid’s sour mug, and praying for the Philip Morris plant on the south side of town to catch fire and send tobacco smoke spewing into the air and for a freak wind to blow it north west over my apartment. Not that I would be able to inhale anyway with all the hacking and wheezing I was doing. But a TSA bypassing girl like me can dream.
So, much has transpired since my last pseudo-post before the big end-of-summer holiday. For one, I spent Labor Day weekend at the beach. That’s right, the beach! And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of fool goes to the beach on Labor Day weekend? Isn’t it just full of all those amateur vacationers trying to squeeze a few moments of desperate fun/relaxation out of the last bits of summertime? Isn’t it crowded and noisy and just entirely unpleasant?
Hah! I say. First of all I say this because my last vacation was almost two years ago: I traveled to Iowa to spend a week with my son over his spring break. In March. In Iowa. Iowa. Let me recap: I traveled from Virginia, where the average temperature nears sixty degrees in March, to Iowa, where it is known to snow well into April. The weather did not disappoint that year, and while the folks back here in ol’ Virginny were enjoying days spent reading under early-blooming dogwoods, I was enduring a full-on blizzard, a term which, by the way, was first used by an Iowa newspaper to describe and Iowa snowstorm sometime in the nineteenth century. That was my last vacation.
The friends with whom I spent this summer, seeing how much I’d been working lately, insisted I come along with them for their weekend at the beach, and though at first I balked – I really should have been moving in to my new apartment, not to mention I missed out on a Friday night shift at the restaurant and my son was flying back on Labor Day – they convinced me that a free (did I mention they were paying for everything?) weekend at the beach was deserved by me.
So I went. And for three wonderful nights I got my own room in their suite, complete with surfside balcony and privileges on their oceanfront balcony. We played in the ocean with their kids, we flew kites, we ate at all their favorite restaurants (including one really plush one overlooking the sound), we took afternoon naps with the balcony doors open, and I sat in the hot tub and took a sunrise stroll along the near-deserted beach. That’s right, I said deserted. See, we skipped the commercial, big-resort, boardwalk baloney of Virginia Beach and instead headed to the Outer Banks. And I have to say, for Labor Day weekend, it was under-crowded.
Of course, all of that joy and wonderfulness came to a too abrupt end, and I had to be back in the RIC Monday evening to pick the kid up at the airport and then rush off to my evening shift at the restaurant. Of course, I didn’t realize I would have to go through the gate to pick up the unaccompanied minor, and I had a purse full of lighters. Now I know that last statement makes me sound a bit sketchy, but allow me to explain. I lose things. All kinds of things. Especially the kinds of things that can be stuffed into pants pockets and apron pockets and purse pockets and you get the idea. So I am constantly leaving the 7-Eleven in the morning with my nicotine, only to discover that I’ve left my lighter on the windowsill at home or the pants I wore last night. Consequently, I end up owning at any given time between five and ten lighters.
And since the friends I was staying with have two adorable little girls, impressionable little girls, I had to be very careful not to leave any such dangerous flame-producing tools lying around, and all of them (the Bics, not the girls) ended up in the bag I was carrying all weekend at the beach and then to the airport, where I had to go through the stupid security checkpoint to pick up the kid, and where I had to pause to throw out six cigarette lighters from the bottom of said bag. The scary thing is, when I got to work later and was digging through the bag for a pen, I found a lighter I had missed. A lighter the Transportation Security Administration workers and their high-tech bag x-raying machine had also missed.
So, as payback for enjoying myself for a few days, last week was incredibly busy with work and moving in to the new place and work and registering the kid for school and shopping for furniture at thrift stores (okay, that was fun) and turning on utilities and more work. Then Sunday I came down with a cold, which turned out not to be a cold, but the bronchitis and all I have to say to that is, “Screw the bronchitis!” Okay, in an email to a friend earlier, I used the F-bomb, but I’m practicing restraint. I’m trying anyway.
And the worst part of it is, and you all knew this was coming, I have to give up smoking.
Fuck giving up smoking!
I said I was trying.
Stupid pulmonary inflammations!
So I spent much of this week, sitting in my half-furnished, half-moved into, entirely unpacked apartment, staring at undecorated walls and the kid’s sour mug, and praying for the Philip Morris plant on the south side of town to catch fire and send tobacco smoke spewing into the air and for a freak wind to blow it north west over my apartment. Not that I would be able to inhale anyway with all the hacking and wheezing I was doing. But a TSA bypassing girl like me can dream.
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