My imagination doesn’t just get the best of me; it is the best part of me.
I had a very typical mother’s day, splitting time, the meals and candy, cards and nice gestures. My mother insisted I donate to charity instead of gifting her this year, and I chose the Tennessee flood as my worthy charity.
I spent the afternoon in Newport Beach and took an autoferry to Balboa Island. I braved the wind, and enjoyed a burger and malt on the pier. At days end as I held my breath past the beach bathroom I saw a bit of plastic poking out of the public trashcan. Blame it on the crowd, a crowd full of the homeless and those in use of metal detectors, I reached my hand right in that trash can and pulled out – lilies. They were beautiful lilies, baby lilies, not yet to maturation or in bloom. I did a mental review of the 5 second rule, and be it mother’s day, lots of other mother sort of advice. Don’t pick that up. Look both ways. Don’t drive so fast. Cross your legs. Say your pleases and thank yous. I couldn’t recall a rule about retrieving perfectly lovely flowers from a trash can.
In the 4th grade my frog died. We had gone to Circuit City to get our family a new refrigerator, and when I arrived home, on the bookcase in the living room, stretched as far as a desert mile, was my frog. We learned in the days to follow that this particular genre of frogs needed to be fed live food, and my cheap bloodworms didn’t satisfy his hearty appetite. I’d killed him. If was too young to have murder on my hands, but I also too young to understand the frog burial process.
“Rebecca, we will need to dispose of it.”
These 8 words sent me in to a fury few save Naomi Campbell could replicate.
We agreed until I calmed down we’d keep it in a Ziploc bag in the garage refrigerator (remember we’d gotten a new one now!).
Every other day my mother would bring up that damn frog. And every time she would send me in to a panicked state. I have to imagine there was a point my Mom figured she’d have to send me off to college, when the time came, with Ziploc in hand. Or down the aisle to meet my groom, ziploc in tow.
Death is hard to accept.
Two weeks to the day, the day of the big refrigerator purchase, and of the untimely murder, my Mom tried yet again. This time she had a plan.
“Rebecca do you know what dispose means?”
I hadn’t. For 2 weeks every time she spoke that word, I imagined my little friend, frog legs being chopped up in our kitchen disposal, cutting in a continual circular sort of way.
“It just means throw away. Do you think we can throw away the frog today?”
Oh, when you put it that way, sure. Why didn’t you just come out and say that?
I’m not going to pretend like being my mom is the easiest job in the world. But then again I’ve never seen a mug that says that. “Motherhood: The Easiest Job in the World”. It wasn't easy when one of my first words was "damnit" and my mom learned of this as I yelled it repeatedly from our front porch trying to put together a puzzle. Or when I brought home a failed test in the 2nd grade for her to sign, and instead signed it myself in the biggest 2nd grader handwriting you ever saw, and returned it to my teacher. Or when my mother explained the birds and the bees to me in junior high, and not believing her theory on how all that works, asked for further proof from the library.
As I stood at the trash can, and I rewinded and flash forwarded 30 years of lessons and the difficulties of parenting me, I couldn’t recall anything wrong with snarking perfectly lovely flowers from a trash can, either through linguistic misunderstanding or otherwise.
I stood and held those flowers and my mind journeyed through a dramatic scenario that would have landed those flowers in a public trash can on a California beach. My embarkment to the car surely by minutes missed, what was probably a very public display of anger, yelling, hands being thrown and tossed about every which way. See being a mother, and being a daughter, or being a mother, and being a son, is never an easy relationship, and in no way is this the first time you have heard these words. My mom on a cocktail of Valium and Oxycontin (post surgery) enjoyed her day. But through the haziness of narcotics she will acknowledge it’s a bumpy road, and it’s also alright to say so.
So I took those flowers, in essence because no one was looking, and not recalling my lessons to the contrary - and left them that evening at my boyfriend’s family’s home. They had seen their origins and leaving them there was more convenient than lugging them everywhere I would be from that night until today.
This morning I got a text that read, “I just wanted you to know your trash flowers look great!”
I laughed – you know, because that’s funny. But also because I find my trash flowers symbolic of the beauty and the source of love flowers come from, and how that love can be so difficult to express, and to understand, and communicate.
So my wish for the universe is to whomever those flowers came from, and whoever they were meant for, shall you realize the depth and breadth of love the connects mother to daughter and sons to their mother.
Oh yeah, and thank you for my flowers.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Cat Heaven
It's been 2 1/2 weeks now since I lost Madi. She was my cat. My pint size kitten like cat. And just as anyone who has experienced loss, grief, losing a pet, will tell you, it gets easier. On day zero I laid horizontal on my couch and silently sobbed until I was dry. By the next day I had to return to work and on brief occasions, I had to sneak away to be sorrowful. Day two was better, and then came the weekend, where a passion for life and the warm nature of spring all but settled my woes and brought some joy, and distractions to my everyday. Come day seven and eight, eleven and twelve, the reminders faded away, and the flowers were cleaned from the coffee table. I was back in a routine, safely insulated in an almost cocoon like feeling of being able to remember her without being sorrowful. The cat that remained would search the house, and on one occasion I am sure I caught her crying. I tended more to her, and to other love in my life, and it did, as I started this paragraph describing, become easier.
I am not a things person. With $200 in my pocket I'd rather have a memory than a thing. A trip tubing down a river outside Austin, Texas than a plasma television. My apartment smells lovely, but it's simple, filled with a lot more remembrances of things I've done, and people I love, than it is expensive things. But I am a girl, in more ways than an affinity for lip gloss and couture footwear, and on everyday, and twice on Tuesdays, I round the stairs of my second story apartment and hope, hope to dear God there is a present waiting for me in front of my doorstep. It is a ridiculous wish. Why who am I to deserve a gift, on any given day, and more importantly more so on Tuesdays. But I do, and it is, and so it will.
So perhaps it was a will to the universe to send me a gift. Perhaps it was a God knowing I was moving on, afraid to do so for fear of forgetting her - when I arrived home Sunday, after a weekend away, with a box for me.
I was holding an overnight bag, and my purse, two days of mail, and it was awfully warm and stuffy, but I was bound and determined to open the box before I walked inside.
A book, from my friend Lisa, "Cat Heaven," with a card "a bedtime story for you and Sophie."
I think she'd probably be very upset to know it made me cry, but it did, so don't tell her. Ok? But it also was just what I needed. Two and a half weeks out, moving on, needing to know that she's alright, and remembering her is a sweet memory.
I am not a things person. With $200 in my pocket I'd rather have a memory than a thing. A trip tubing down a river outside Austin, Texas than a plasma television. My apartment smells lovely, but it's simple, filled with a lot more remembrances of things I've done, and people I love, than it is expensive things. But I am a girl, in more ways than an affinity for lip gloss and couture footwear, and on everyday, and twice on Tuesdays, I round the stairs of my second story apartment and hope, hope to dear God there is a present waiting for me in front of my doorstep. It is a ridiculous wish. Why who am I to deserve a gift, on any given day, and more importantly more so on Tuesdays. But I do, and it is, and so it will.
So perhaps it was a will to the universe to send me a gift. Perhaps it was a God knowing I was moving on, afraid to do so for fear of forgetting her - when I arrived home Sunday, after a weekend away, with a box for me.
I was holding an overnight bag, and my purse, two days of mail, and it was awfully warm and stuffy, but I was bound and determined to open the box before I walked inside.
A book, from my friend Lisa, "Cat Heaven," with a card "a bedtime story for you and Sophie."
I think she'd probably be very upset to know it made me cry, but it did, so don't tell her. Ok? But it also was just what I needed. Two and a half weeks out, moving on, needing to know that she's alright, and remembering her is a sweet memory.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The New Business Model
We're living in a new age. An economic age where the greatest risk you take is not taking one at all. So I'm 30 and doing all the normal musings of a 30 year old. Conversations with my mom that end in "you do realize you're 30." And waking up every day sure today is the day I make something of my life. But see I'm certain that when I shuffle through my imaginary mental scrapbook in the year 2070, when I'm terrorizing my kids and grandkids with my irrational requests, I can also say I've made something of this dear body and flesh and life and spirit and mind.
And if all else fails, one you readers must appear at my memorial with the words I need you to say, "Shit damn, f word (shake head) she did try."
The new business model doesn't ask for a whole lot of anything. Heck mom I can even do it! See the new business model is a truck, and a twitter account. The new business model is a roach coach. The sort you go to, and you wait. And you wait. And people, well me, we're obsessed. A quarter of my day, the quarter I'd qualify as the productive quarter is spent following these trucks through the 60-70 miles from north san fernando valley to south orange county. I've seen shaved ice from a roach coach, korean bbq tacos, and meals served only on frys. Home Depot roach coaches eat your heart out! It is a new movement, my new obsession, where a meal is completely uninteresting to me, until I've eaten it out of a roach coach on a crowded street corner, with plastic utensils, in uncomfortable heels.
But, and I was not looking forward to this point in my tale to you, I've never actually eaten at one. I follow them all, and I get excited when it's down the street, like one was today, but in the same line of thinking that I turn down every opportunity to meet my idol Miss Britney Jean Spears, I apply to the roach coach. Even if it was the best experience ever, like best ever, it would be over.
Perhaps I'm a girl of the chase.
And if all else fails, one you readers must appear at my memorial with the words I need you to say, "Shit damn, f word (shake head) she did try."
The new business model doesn't ask for a whole lot of anything. Heck mom I can even do it! See the new business model is a truck, and a twitter account. The new business model is a roach coach. The sort you go to, and you wait. And you wait. And people, well me, we're obsessed. A quarter of my day, the quarter I'd qualify as the productive quarter is spent following these trucks through the 60-70 miles from north san fernando valley to south orange county. I've seen shaved ice from a roach coach, korean bbq tacos, and meals served only on frys. Home Depot roach coaches eat your heart out! It is a new movement, my new obsession, where a meal is completely uninteresting to me, until I've eaten it out of a roach coach on a crowded street corner, with plastic utensils, in uncomfortable heels.
But, and I was not looking forward to this point in my tale to you, I've never actually eaten at one. I follow them all, and I get excited when it's down the street, like one was today, but in the same line of thinking that I turn down every opportunity to meet my idol Miss Britney Jean Spears, I apply to the roach coach. Even if it was the best experience ever, like best ever, it would be over.
Perhaps I'm a girl of the chase.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Happy Hump
I didn't make this up. I didn't even go searching for it. It landed in my in-box, and I laughed, and you probably will too. Unless you're not funny. And then in that case, I don't even know why we're friends.
1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this -ever.
15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run
away?
16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.
22. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?
29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.
31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!
1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this -ever.
15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run
away?
16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.
22. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?
29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.
31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
An Epidemic of the Tiniest Proportions
Everyone is having babies. Pregnant. “Prego,” cutely stated. “It’s an epidemic,” I told my boss, as I set out for Babies R Us for lunch.
I’m a baby person as much as the next guy. I’m an animal person, and I’m a baby person, and as long as they can sit still for three hours and nine innings of ball, I have no further comment on the issue.
However now, if this pertains to you, I mean you no disrespect. But as a non baby owner, there are some wrongs I’d like to right. Setting sail around the world spreading the gospel of someone who knows nothing about babies, and, you know, how it ought to be.
A visit to Babies R Us, just as the last time I went in 2008, is an absolutely bewildering experience. If I’d eaten this, and drank this, seen a smoking caterpillar, perhaps more sense it would have made. But I just had bad Panda Express, and the regret, coupled with the confusion, might have toppled me over the edge. The point I’m trying to make, perhaps I can only make when I just come right out and say it, and stop trying to be fancy what with my fancy language and fancy words is: I know nothing about babies.
I hold them and they look uncomfortable.
I listen only enough to straight forwardly say, “I don’t understand you baby.”
The last time I changed a diaper I put it on backwards. The mother asked if I was going for a thong look.
I was.
I know nothing about babies. Except that one day I’d like to have them/one/I’ll figure it out. In the meantime I have a lot of time to judge, and have opinions, time I most properly would not have if reversed.
I do not need to know the details of labor. Nope. Don’t.
I do not need to know the contents of your baby’s diaper.
Your kid is so cute. Really. But so are you. Please put your photo back up on social networking sites.
‘We’ are not pregnant, you are.
‘We’ are not going in to labor, you are. He’s gonna hit up the cafeteria, make some phone calls, and be back for the photo op.
But with this, comes assurance someday when I have them/one/I’ll figure it out, I’ll give you too much information and think ever burp and diaper is noteworthy. I’ll replace my picture with the fetus’ and remember if only by distant memory those days, when I had enough time to sit back, have opinions, and a laptop free of throw up.
I’m a baby person as much as the next guy. I’m an animal person, and I’m a baby person, and as long as they can sit still for three hours and nine innings of ball, I have no further comment on the issue.
However now, if this pertains to you, I mean you no disrespect. But as a non baby owner, there are some wrongs I’d like to right. Setting sail around the world spreading the gospel of someone who knows nothing about babies, and, you know, how it ought to be.
A visit to Babies R Us, just as the last time I went in 2008, is an absolutely bewildering experience. If I’d eaten this, and drank this, seen a smoking caterpillar, perhaps more sense it would have made. But I just had bad Panda Express, and the regret, coupled with the confusion, might have toppled me over the edge. The point I’m trying to make, perhaps I can only make when I just come right out and say it, and stop trying to be fancy what with my fancy language and fancy words is: I know nothing about babies.
I hold them and they look uncomfortable.
I listen only enough to straight forwardly say, “I don’t understand you baby.”
The last time I changed a diaper I put it on backwards. The mother asked if I was going for a thong look.
I was.
I know nothing about babies. Except that one day I’d like to have them/one/I’ll figure it out. In the meantime I have a lot of time to judge, and have opinions, time I most properly would not have if reversed.
I do not need to know the details of labor. Nope. Don’t.
I do not need to know the contents of your baby’s diaper.
Your kid is so cute. Really. But so are you. Please put your photo back up on social networking sites.
‘We’ are not pregnant, you are.
‘We’ are not going in to labor, you are. He’s gonna hit up the cafeteria, make some phone calls, and be back for the photo op.
But with this, comes assurance someday when I have them/one/I’ll figure it out, I’ll give you too much information and think ever burp and diaper is noteworthy. I’ll replace my picture with the fetus’ and remember if only by distant memory those days, when I had enough time to sit back, have opinions, and a laptop free of throw up.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Avoiding Loss
In the last five days I've experienced sadness, and guilt, deep and unutterable remorse and I've gone to extraordinary measures in those five days to ensure I never have to experience loss again. Why I can't even remember the right lose to use. Is it loss, lose, loose? I'm clearly not very good at it in physical or literative form. If I walk softly enough, keep my voice low enough, looking at no one, weaving from conflict, never forming bonds again, in a cave of fear and a shelter of security, I'd live forever and never speak again of the subject of loss.
See I don't even like when my baseball team loses. There's nothing good that ever comes from loss. On a shutout Saturday I attempted by every way one could, via text message, to negate that loss. But I do speak English, and you can't have bad reception by text message, and see, there's no one here leave a message, still doesn't get you out of the woods. A loss is a loss, and it will chase you down the leftfield line, over the foul pole and find the most faith held fan.
But in negating loss, even I eventually have to accept, life isn't lived. Pets can't be loved, and family would be an advantage never cherished.
So I have today to stay above the 500 mark. Win more than I lose, so that someday when I experience a shutout, in baseball, as in life, I can breathe in, shake my head side to side, and say, shit, that was one hell of a game.
See I don't even like when my baseball team loses. There's nothing good that ever comes from loss. On a shutout Saturday I attempted by every way one could, via text message, to negate that loss. But I do speak English, and you can't have bad reception by text message, and see, there's no one here leave a message, still doesn't get you out of the woods. A loss is a loss, and it will chase you down the leftfield line, over the foul pole and find the most faith held fan.
But in negating loss, even I eventually have to accept, life isn't lived. Pets can't be loved, and family would be an advantage never cherished.
So I have today to stay above the 500 mark. Win more than I lose, so that someday when I experience a shutout, in baseball, as in life, I can breathe in, shake my head side to side, and say, shit, that was one hell of a game.
Friday, April 16, 2010
81 Avenue 51, Indio, California; Coachella Valley
After months of job seeking, job seeking that included the bizarre, the mean, the illegal, the misleading, the disappointing, and the tiring, I had an epiphany.
What united all these employers, was the typical sorts of conversational exchanges:
1. Let’s go over your previous job experience.
2. Oh you’re a Dodger fan?
3. Are you good at dealing with difficult people?
My uncle owns a family business, one in which during the hiring process he subjects everyone to what he’s termed, “the nice test.” Simply put, you must before any critical skills, be a nice person. He’ll teach you to 10 key. Nice you need to bring all by yourself.
But I happen to live in a city where that’s the exception.
Working in the Los Angeles entertainment industry has been an experience – and a half, and nice is not something you find on any old 75 degree Friday. I have absolutely had nice bosses and big shout out to that one. But the rest, the rest, well the rest, yeah they’re something else.
I’ve had bosses throw file folders at my head and relay inappropriate personal voicemails from their, well, not their wives. I’ve had screamers, and door slammers, and I once procured the services of a friend to animate for personal entertainment my boss having a meltdown in his office as therapy for me. I’ve had experiences that live in separate parts of my brain, because having to think about them on any old 75 degree LA Friday would make my blood boil.
So unplanned, when asked if I was good at dealing with difficult people, I had an epiphany, being good at something and wanting to do that thing are two strikingly different questions.
“I’m not interested in working with difficult people, no.”
I didn’t get that job, but if the last thirteen paragraphs haven’t told you anything, I probably wouldn’t have wanted it.
For the horrible, for the terrible, for the clinging to the edge of sanity, comes some very decent stories. You know like the time my actually very awesome ex-boss called me his hotel set on the grounds of Florida’s Animal Kingdom, informed me a family of giraffes, baby, mommy, and daddy, were looking at him through the sliding glass window, and asked if I could do something about that.
From LA.
I’m not the 30,000 mile away giraffe whisperer, but I’d guarantee you’d have pretty accurate luck if you shut the drapes.
Who ever thought I was the voice of reason.
But on the eve of Coachella, I have my favorite story.
I worked for four people at this point, but the CEO was my main dude, go-to, report to, signs my timesheet honcho. He was going to Coachella, and for what it mattered to me, he could go to Saturn on his weekends, because I wasn’t on a blackberry and that was him time, and this was me time. We both returned from very awesome weekends, him Coachella, me probably something equally as terrific with little small talk and one request.
Him: “I went to Coachella this weekend.”
Me: “I remember.”
Him: “I lost my wallet.”
Me: “Bummer”
Him: “I’m gonna need that.”
Me: “Yeah”
Him: “Why are you still standing here”
Me: “Going”
I returned to my desk, pursed my lips and nodded very assuredly.
I’m very sure Coachella is a small place, where very few people go, very few honest people, who found that wallet, a wallet I’m sure you remember exactly where you lost it, and brought it to a location, staffed by more honest people, who will pick up the phone when I track down their phone number offer to (free of charge) Federal Express that wallet, and smile, to our office.
“Are you sure you don’t just want me to re-order a new wallet and cards for you?” I yelled across the office.
Crickets.
I want to be challenged at work (does not equal sign) tracking down a missing wallet in the Coachella valley.
By Friday I had delivered the bad news: I’m done with this nonsense. I’d found two phone numbers to two lost and founds, where the voicemail boxes were full. I’d talked to most of the staff, took reports, and interviews, and that wallet was long gone, being spent on beer and women in a better place and he just had to accept that.
So to my Coachella goers this weekend – enjoy. And if you find that goddamnit son of a __ wallet, just don’t mention it to me.
What united all these employers, was the typical sorts of conversational exchanges:
1. Let’s go over your previous job experience.
2. Oh you’re a Dodger fan?
3. Are you good at dealing with difficult people?
My uncle owns a family business, one in which during the hiring process he subjects everyone to what he’s termed, “the nice test.” Simply put, you must before any critical skills, be a nice person. He’ll teach you to 10 key. Nice you need to bring all by yourself.
But I happen to live in a city where that’s the exception.
Working in the Los Angeles entertainment industry has been an experience – and a half, and nice is not something you find on any old 75 degree Friday. I have absolutely had nice bosses and big shout out to that one. But the rest, the rest, well the rest, yeah they’re something else.
I’ve had bosses throw file folders at my head and relay inappropriate personal voicemails from their, well, not their wives. I’ve had screamers, and door slammers, and I once procured the services of a friend to animate for personal entertainment my boss having a meltdown in his office as therapy for me. I’ve had experiences that live in separate parts of my brain, because having to think about them on any old 75 degree LA Friday would make my blood boil.
So unplanned, when asked if I was good at dealing with difficult people, I had an epiphany, being good at something and wanting to do that thing are two strikingly different questions.
“I’m not interested in working with difficult people, no.”
I didn’t get that job, but if the last thirteen paragraphs haven’t told you anything, I probably wouldn’t have wanted it.
For the horrible, for the terrible, for the clinging to the edge of sanity, comes some very decent stories. You know like the time my actually very awesome ex-boss called me his hotel set on the grounds of Florida’s Animal Kingdom, informed me a family of giraffes, baby, mommy, and daddy, were looking at him through the sliding glass window, and asked if I could do something about that.
From LA.
I’m not the 30,000 mile away giraffe whisperer, but I’d guarantee you’d have pretty accurate luck if you shut the drapes.
Who ever thought I was the voice of reason.
But on the eve of Coachella, I have my favorite story.
I worked for four people at this point, but the CEO was my main dude, go-to, report to, signs my timesheet honcho. He was going to Coachella, and for what it mattered to me, he could go to Saturn on his weekends, because I wasn’t on a blackberry and that was him time, and this was me time. We both returned from very awesome weekends, him Coachella, me probably something equally as terrific with little small talk and one request.
Him: “I went to Coachella this weekend.”
Me: “I remember.”
Him: “I lost my wallet.”
Me: “Bummer”
Him: “I’m gonna need that.”
Me: “Yeah”
Him: “Why are you still standing here”
Me: “Going”
I returned to my desk, pursed my lips and nodded very assuredly.
I’m very sure Coachella is a small place, where very few people go, very few honest people, who found that wallet, a wallet I’m sure you remember exactly where you lost it, and brought it to a location, staffed by more honest people, who will pick up the phone when I track down their phone number offer to (free of charge) Federal Express that wallet, and smile, to our office.
“Are you sure you don’t just want me to re-order a new wallet and cards for you?” I yelled across the office.
Crickets.
I want to be challenged at work (does not equal sign) tracking down a missing wallet in the Coachella valley.
By Friday I had delivered the bad news: I’m done with this nonsense. I’d found two phone numbers to two lost and founds, where the voicemail boxes were full. I’d talked to most of the staff, took reports, and interviews, and that wallet was long gone, being spent on beer and women in a better place and he just had to accept that.
So to my Coachella goers this weekend – enjoy. And if you find that goddamnit son of a __ wallet, just don’t mention it to me.
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