Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Orders of Business:

1. Not everything is my fault.

2. Fuck you, place where I work, I'm allowed to take two days off in a year when I worked all the extra days you asked me to, I came in on my day off after I had to take a fucking standardized test I didn't even want to tell you about, so I can apply to something else and get the hell out of dodge; I can take two days off to visit my best friend and not have to make up one of them on my day off, thus giving me a six-day work week coming up, the shittiest of fates. Oh, wait, I can't? Okay, sure, I guess I'll work that day, too. I don't care what fucking program I get into, I'm leaving you.

3. Diplomacy implores me to go back and take out some of those fucks, but, hmm, no, I think not. I'll take out those fucks when you learn that it's not beneath your other employees to operate a cash register, when you decide that maybe you could hire enough staff to cover for my TWO DAYS OFF oh no, that's asking too much, that's when I'll take out those fucks, that's when.

4. I'm gonna start writing poetry again, that was the only thing that made anything worthwhile. Kinda.

5. Seacrest out!

6. I might also have the flu. Still I'mma leave in all those fucks. Also I don't blame B. for any of this; he deserves days off too. I'm just saying, there are other people in the world, and maybe some of them could help out from time to time. JUST SAYIN.

7. http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/2010/02/learning-to-write-the-mfa-poem-by-nin-andrews.html

SCENE.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

When I do something stupid, the problem is that I know I am always always always going to do it again, later on.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

1. It annoys me how "the current economy" conversation makes me feel like I should be excessively grateful to have a customer service job. Because it's a job, everybody says, and not everybody has one of those! And while I do cling to my weekly paycheck, the eight hours daily that bring it about sometimes make me want to kill myself just a little.

2. Then I wonder if it's really classist of me to dislike customer service so much. Because lots of people do it for a brief period, and lots of people do it forever, and they don't complain, right? Or maybe they do, and nobody listens. Or maybe they devise a system in order to not hate everything every day. Or maybe they get married, and they go home to their spouse and pet the little lambs and look out a window or something. Or maybe other people just have a better attitude, and I am a jerk. But you know what makes you a jerk? Being unhappy and resigning yourself to it.

3. And aside from whether this feeling is or is not more classist than other activities in my daily life, I think maybe I'm just not suited to it, this kind of work. (Like other people are? Well, maybe.) I see coworker R. buzzing by every now and then, and she's always smiling and even when the most annoying customers are thrown at her, she's listening and going "Hmm, good question, let's see!" and swishing by and improvising. I heard she used to be in computer programming or something. Maybe she's "project-oriented." But when somebody asks me for a recommendation, my mind just goes blank. And it doesn't help that I'm not really allowed to leave the desk, so I never see the shelves and sections people are talking about. But maybe the larger problem is that I'm not a person who likes to talk to just anybody, and especially not the everyday volume of people standing at a front desk necessitates. I'd rather shelve quietly by myself. That kind of isolation bothers some people, and I'd love to trade jobs with those exact people.

4. For a period of an hour or two virtually every morning after coming in, I am really mad. Like, grumpy and annoyed and generally fuck-you at every single person in the room. I think this is because I am realizing daily that I have come back to this benighted place! And I get mad about it. Then by 2pm or so I feel fine, and kind of embarrassed that I was so mad before. I know it's an office cliché, but sometimes a cup of coffee makes me feel less hateful toward everybody.

5. This one guy looking for Harry Potter books with his child was super-nice just now. My ire is largely irrational.

6. No, my ire is not irrational. I will not stamp your fucking stamp card, get out of my face. You are not entitled to everything you think you are entitled to.