Crushing the Possibility of Us Ever Becoming Best Friends

(Every time I arrive at Blogger and begin typing the title, it shows up in Hindi and I have to press the toggle button to turn off Hindi, lest the majority of you be unable to read my witty titles. Does this happen to anyone else who uses Blogger?)

I do a lot of reading. When I wasn't working, I read an average of a book every day and a half. Now that I am working, I read through my lunch hour, and then before I go to sleep. And sometimes after work if I'm hyper and want to calm down.

In walking distance of my apartment is a little tiny library with funky hours. There's a bigger library a little ways away, but it costs $2 to get there. Often when I go to the little library it seems I've already read all their good books and there's nothing left. That's how I wind up doing dumb things like reading Danielle Steel or (dead) V.C. Andrews and getting angry at myself for thinking they might not suck (they do, every time).

On good days I show up at the library and go to the Reserve Shelf to yank the books off the shelf that they've set aside for me based on reserving them online (I fucking love living in the future sometimes). On good days I stumble across a new author who it turns out has written 24 books. That fills me with the same feeling as when I open the refrigerator and see I have one yogurt for each day of the week. On good days I walk down to the little library with a list of books I've compiled. Maybe I saw someone on the bus reading something that looked good. Maybe a magazine wrote a blurb about a new book. Maybe Wide Lawns has been reading.

I can't remember how I found out about the book Malled, by Caitlin Kelly, but the second time I stumbled across the title I was in a position to pop online and reserve it at the library. I was excited! She's writing about working at the mall. I worked in a mall! She's writing about working in a mall in New York. I worked in a mall in New York! I envisioned a lot of smiling and nodding as I read. Then the e-mail came from the library that the book was waiting for me. So I trotted on down to the library as fast as my little legs would take me and fetched my book about a woman working in a mall in New York.

Yeah um.... the book fucking sucked you guys. This woman tried to imply that she was now on the "other side of the cash wrap" but the truth is, she worked one day a fucking week for the most part. Her editor must have HATED her to allow Kelly to come across as such an elitist bitch. She writes multiple times about how highly educated she is, how she's fluent in foreign languages (as if her co-workers from Spanish Harlem aren't?), how she can relate to her customers because she's so well-traveled. I mean, it's a fucking miracle her ego could fit through the mall doors.

She doesn't just mention these things once, at the beginning of the book, to introduce herself to readers and explain her circumstances, but over and over again. Kelly also writes more than once about how even though part of her job is to clean the employee bathroom, she flat-out refuses to do that.

Kelly clearly lives in some other world, because she seems surprised that she only gets one break in eight hours of working, and that working in a clothing store is physical labor. I was almost surprised she didn't bitch about her hands getting filthy from touching dollar bills for an entire shift. That's what I remember most about being a cashier - how dirty my hands got from touching money. Probably why to this day I come home from work and immediately wash my hands.

It almost seemed like this was meant to be a similar book to Nicked and Dimed, but missed. Where Kelly wanted the reader to feel sympathy for her, I was only able to feel disgust. If you want me to feel sorry for you that you work ONE shift a week in a mall, then don't talk to me about buying a $200 shirt from Saks and going to Paris on vacation.

In one spot, Kelly seems confused as to why, when she tentatively reached out to her co-workers by inviting them to her house, they blew her off. It doesn't seem to occur to her that perhaps the fact that she thinks she's better than them seeps through in her interactions with them.

When I worked at the clothing store (men's clothing) in the mall, I was lucky enough to be able to wear sneakers. My jaw dropped at reading that Caitlin Kelly got to wear shoes that North Face gave her. For free. To keep. You know those are high quality shoes right there. Actually, they're way more expensive than I can afford. Kelly talked about her experience with the horror one would usually reserve when recounting their time in a sweatshop. My utter disgust for her as a person distracted me from the story multiple times.

I know that some of you actually buy books, whether from bookstores or on those Kindles and iPads or whatever you've got. If you're intrigued by the story enough to want to read Malled, please don't waste your money on it. I know some people have Germ Issues with library books, but I read them all the time and generally only get sick once a year. Just get it from the library. Then go to the mall and be nice to the people who work there. It's not their fault their stupid company forces them to welcome you to the store and then tell you exactly what the 400 signs say that are plastered all over the store.

Smug (Un)Marrieds

Last Wednesday was the going-away lunch for the architect. By the way, lest I complain too much about this job, just let it be said that thanks to this job I now know how to spell architect.

So each time I looked over at the office manager, she seemed to be sitting kind of primly, and I knew she was not having fun, sitting across from the billing guy. He's a bit weird. He tries to make jokes and they're never funny. About half the time they're actually disturbing.

Anyway, somehow the topic of marriages came up. Yes, not really appropriate for a work lunch, but there it was. The Turkey's personal assistant (if you're wondering why she was invited to a firm lunch you're not alone), who is not married or in a relationship, mentioned that if she gets married she doesn't want to live with her husband.

I, owner and president of Big Mouths, Inc., immediately asked, "How would that work? You want to marry someone in the military who's stationed overseas? All the time?" She laughed, shaking her head no. She then described what amounts to a castle with a moat and a drawbridge, and she would live in the castle and the husband would not.

Now, I've never been married so I can't be sure, but ... that's hella weird, right? Like, doesn't not living with your spouse kind of defeat the purpose of marriage? Not that you have to be married to live together, but isn't marriage all about doing most of your living WITH the spouse?

She tried to act like this was la la la, just a little quirky but totally in a fun and loveable way, la la la. But what kind of guy would want to sign up for that deal? The kind of guy who has a second wife, that he LIVES WITH? My friend always says "there is a lid for every pot" and maybe there is some straight guy out there who wants to be married but not live with his wife.

Here's my thinking on that though: with some things, you've got little quirks and they're part of what make you that much more loveable. At a certain point though, too many quirks or too many big quirks stop being quirks and just make you weird, and not in the good way.

I kept my mouth shut. I'm certainly no expert on marriage, by any stretch. On the walk back to the office, I was with the WASP (married) and office manager (divorced). The office manager told us she chatted with the billing guy about books and movies, and the WASP and I agreed she had a much more appropriate firm lunch conversation than we did.

Then the WASP went off. Complete with f-bomb and everything. About what? About the PA's fantasy marriage. I believe her exact words were, "That's not a fucking marriage!" We all stopped walking, right there on the sidewalk, to stare at her in shock. I mean, she's a WASP! She simply doesn't curse. She wears turtlenecks and low ponytails.

It was really funny to hear her get so riled up. I was glad it wasn't only me who thought the idea of marriage that way was really weird.

It's Not ALL Bad

This is the architect's last week, so today we went out for a goodbye lunch. I know there's a heatwave going on in most of the country this week, and my heart goes out to all of you sweaty, crabby people, but it's cold and foggy in San Francisco. People are wearing coats and scarves here. Except for the tourists who think all of California is Los Angeles so they are wearing shorts, with a sweatshirt that says San Francisco that they bought in over-priced Fisherman's Wharf. Those poor tourists - someone should tell them they could buy the same shit in the Mission for half the price.

Anyway, it's cold. That's the point (so far). So when we went to our lunch the restaurant had turned on the outside heaters. I wound up having to sit right under one, although I'd have preferred to sit as far away from it as possible because I'm a sensitive snowflake who overheats easily.

While we were all getting settled and figuring out what we wanted to order, I apparently waved my hand in front of my face without realizing it. Turkey, who was sitting across from me, asked if I was hot. I didn't want to be a complainer, so I admitted I was, but added that I was fine. He told me the entire left side of my face was bright red. Within 30 seconds he'd flagged someone down and asked if they could turn the heat lamp off.

For all of the Turkey's drinking in the bathroom each morning, hiding jellybeans in the bathroom, losing checks from clients, lying and being passive-aggressive, he did something good today. I was really grateful the heater was turned off. Climbing over his personal assistant once I needed to puke probably would have resulted in a mess on top of her head.

When I overheat it's not just that I get a little uncomfortable. I truly get physically ill. Unfortunately Turkey is such an ego-maniac that I couldn't thank him as profusely as I'd have thanked anyone else, otherwise it'd have gone to his head and he'd bring it up to me any time he wanted me to do something corrupt in the future.

Probably Not What My Parents Meant

As a kid, I had no friends. Far to often for my enjoyment my parents would give me big speeches about how I needed to have friends. This was talked about a lot, and it made me feel like shit, because I didn't feel in control of the ability to make/keep/have friends. It apparently comes naturally to some kids. Not me. Even as an adult, it still doesn't come naturally. Now I'm pretty good at it, but it takes an inappropriate amount of effort and thinking. I am fascinated by people that make and keep friends without blinking an eye.

When my father was in San Francisco last year, he gave me a backpack he got from his company that he didn't need anymore. This was great, because I'd wanted one for years. At first I was overwhelmed by the choices, and then I wasn't in a position to buy one. So for someone else to take the decision-making away from me by just giving me one was perfect. Sometimes Tim, you really can just make it work. Now when I have to take my laptop somewhere, I'm not wrapping it in the towel I use after showers and sliding the whole thing in a tote bag. It's great. I love it. I thought seriously about sending my father a formal thank you card in the mail.

Then he came back to San Francisco this year. He had another extra backpack. Same as the first, but in another color. I told him I didn't need it. He said it was okay. I told him I might be tempted to give it to someone else. He said it was okay. So I started with my brother, since he'd shown interest in the first one. Golden Boy wasn't interested.

Every day on the way to work I walk past a homeless guy who stands on the corner near my house and has a big black dog. The dog is so mellow, that sometimes the homeless guy has to go somewhere, and he leaves the dog on the corner, and it just stays there. Sometimes the homeless guy ... receives guests on his corner.

I decided to see if this homeless guy was interested in the backpack. Then I realized saying, "Hey, you're homeless; want a used backpack?" probably wouldn't go over too well. I don't know why this guy is homeless. Usually most homeless people have obvious mental problems and it's easy to assume they're too nutty to hold down a job that would afford rent.

This guy doesn't seem crazy at all. Which is actually really impressive, when you think about it. I mean, screws were falling out of my head left and right when I was just contemplating becoming homeless!

So I spent a few days letting it roll around my head. How do you ask if someone wants something without implying you think because of their circumstances, they might need it? Finally I came up with something I thought might not be too insulting. So last Monday when I saw him, as I waited for the traffic light to turn green, I tossed out, "Hey, I have an extra backpack. Do you know anyone who could use one?" He immediately responded with, "Sure. We can always use extra backpacks."

Whew. Not only did he get my point (that thankfully didn't come out too clunky), but he responded in kind. Relief! So I said, "Okay. Tomorrow?" as in, you'll be here tomorrow, and I'll bring the backpack. He nodded.

The next day I brought the backpack and he wasn't there. So I hauled it to work. The next morning, when I saw him, I gave him a look like, "what happened?!" and he said he was sorry, but it was raining, and gestured at the dog. Okay, that makes sense. So I told him the backpack was at work, but if he could be in the area that evening, between 5:30 and 6, I could bring it by then. He agreed.

I hauled the backpack on the way home from work. He wasn't there. I was sweaty and frustrated and pissed. With him, for not living up to his obligations, and with myself, for assuming a homeless person would have a watch and be able to honor commitments. I thought about it all day, trying to see things from his perspective. Maybe I was making assumptions. Maybe there is a line in his eyes, between his people and other, non-homeless people. Maybe his people make plans in a more vague way, like "tomorrow" or "next week."

Maybe whatever it is that holds him back from being ... homeful, reared its' head in making regular plans, and it was just too much for him. I still wanted to give him the backpack. I didn't want to carry it to work yet again. The decision I made was to take a day off from making arrangements, and then just spring it on him. Maybe that would work better. The next morning as soon as he saw me, he started apologizing. "Sorry about yesterday; I had to meet with the police..." I waived him off and told him it was no problem, as if my plans often fall through due to police meetings.

The following morning, I brought the backpack with me. I guess the homeless guy's dog had been following our interactions, because it shoved its face in my hand and wagged as soon as I walked by. The guy was there, and I gave him the backpack finally. He thanked me. He stuck out his hand, and then ... kind of pulled it back an inch or two. The only thing I could think of was that he thought maybe I wouldn't want to touch him. I'm prissy, and I'm sure it shines through. But there's Dial soap at work, and I grabbed his hand before he could pull it back any farther.

Since then, every morning the dog wags each time I walk by, and the guy says hello to me, and we chat if the traffic light is red. I guess I'm kind of friends with a homeless guy now.

Living Up to Stereotypes

There are a lot of cliches about lawyers. "Ambulance chaser" come to mind for anyone? They seem to have a reputation of being difficult to work for. I've always been surprised by this. Granted, I've only ever worked as a legal secretary in my adult career (except for two years when I was also working part time at a tennis club), but overall I don't find lawyers, as a group, difficult. Precise? Yes. Upset when documents are not precise? Yes. But it's an environment where you know the rules, and if you follow them (very precisely) nobody gets hurt.

Forgetting things is not allowed. Forgetting to send out a cc? Unacceptable. Forgetting to remove the bcc page before sending a letter? Well, you could wreck an entire case doing that. Sometimes millions of dollars are on the line. Lives (literally) are on the line. A grin combined with a shrug and an "oops!" is not an adequate excuse. Nothing is.

Lest you be feeling sympathy pressure, please don't. You don't feel like you're being held to an impossible standard, because the attorney is holding him or herself to that same standard. They make sure the document they reference in a letter is attached to that letter. They make sure every character in the letter is spaced perfectly. All mistakes, no matter how little, are big mistakes, because they are attached to their name.

And then there's Turkey. Never mind the Answer we submitted last minute with the Valentine's exhibits. The office manager has informed me Turkey is drinking on the job. On both Thursday and Friday she smelled alcohol on his breath. I've worked at law firms that were laid back enough that on Fridays you'd sometimes see partners walking around without their shoes on, drinking a beer in the afternoon. But the cliche of keeping a bottle in the bottom drawer? Never saw it before Friday, when the Office Manager pointed out the open tequilla bottle in his bottom right drawer.

Turkey schedules lots of phone conferences. He's bad at staying on schedule, so when I arrange for Joe Schmoe and he to talk, I gently nudge Joe to be the one to initiate the call, since getting Turkey to do that is next to impossible, and getting him to do it on time never happens. Even with that effort, Turkey still misses them.

Last week he had a half hour meeting with a client scheduled. Three hours later the client walked out. Yeah. Not exaggerating. So almost every half hour I was saying, "I just wanted to let you know it's 4:30 now," because he kept coming out to ask me to copy things and let him know when it was time to do the next thing on his calendar.

He has me schedule in-office meetings in the morning, doesn't show up for them, doesn't answer his cell phone when I call, and then waltzes in late and has forgotten he's meeting them. Why bother having a blackberry synched to your Outlook calendar if you'll never check it?

You may think it's not a big deal to be late, but I disagree. It's so disrespectful to the other person who's carved time out of their life for you. Nobody shows up to work on time, because the Turkey never shows up on time. He routinely schedules a staff meeting once a week at 9:30, and routinely doesn't arrive in the office in time for it. Yet if I address the issue head-on by saying, "Do you want me to schedule next week's staff meeting for 11:30?" he'll say no.

Turkey doesn't chase ambulances because he doesn't do personal injury law. However. In the engagement letters he sends out, he gives prospective clients a deadline to sign and return the letters. On Friday he told me to contact a woman and "ask if she's hired someone else." Okay, if you know the slightest thing about sales you'll know that's not the way to save a sale. No need to suggest they hire someone else! But before I contacted her (to ask if she was still interested in having us represent her), I checked her engagement letter. Her deadline is weeks away! Why would we call her now? I e-mailed Turkey letting him know this and asking if he still wants me to call.

The office manager is fed up. At one point she was saying she would stick it out until she retires in a couple of years, but now she's saying she can't take it and needs to start her job search. Both she, and the WASP have asked me to schedule as many appointments for the Turkey out of the office as humanly possible. I do. I also try to schedule things around 4pm, in the hopes he won't bother coming back to the office, because he's known for pulling people into meetings at 5:26, or dumping a project he deems urgent on your desk at 5:28.

Turkey inspires me. He makes me want to send flowers to every great lawyer I've ever worked for, thanking them for being such a pleasure to deal with.

Give Me An Attitude Adjustment

Did you know I don't drink soda? Nothing carbonated. Ever. Once, in the 80's, my mom was sitting in the living room drinking what looked like water. I went over and asked, "Is that water?" She suggested, "Try it," and held her glass out to me. So I took the glass, took a sip, and ran into the kitchen to spit out the seltzer. My heart was shattered; why would she do that to me?

As I got older, maybe once every other year or three if I was really nauseous, my parents would encourage me to drink some Coke, and I'd lean against the kitchen counter, pouring half a Dixie cup's worth of Coke back and forth between two cups to get the bubbles out before forcing myself to take three or four sips.

One of the things that I like about living by myself is only having to clean up messes I make, and not any other people make. This philosophy should apply everywhere, don't you think? If you're walking down the street and you drop a piece of paper you've decided you no longer need, you should pick it up. Personal accountability is a beautiful thing.

At work, Turkey came up to my desk in the sunken living room after I got back from lunch to tell me that a Coke can in the refrigerator froze and exploded. "I started to clean it up, but then got some urgent calls I had to return so stopped." Then he asked me to finish cleaning up spilled soda all over the kitchen. You know how your dad would "suggest" you go clean your room? It was like that. Saying no was not an option.

I never, ever use the kitchen. One of the first few days I was temping, the office manager told me Turkey steals people's food if they leave it in the kitchen. So I just never use the kitchen. Because I know me, and me in a rage, will not end well for me who wants to stay employed. Stealing from me is definitely a good way to put me in a rage. So I just never use the kitchen.

It is part of my job to order the sodas. There are six people working there, and they aren't even all full-time. I order four different types of soda. To be honest, the first time I ordered, I fucked up the order. It was like when I was in second grade taking my very first spelling test, and didn't understand that the teacher was saying two different spelling words when she said "book" and then "books." I didn't realize that there was a difference between Diet Coke and Caffeine Free Diet Coke or some shit like that. Maybe it was Diet Zero Coke and Diet Coke? I don't know.

I was a cashier at a supermarket when I was 14, and some of the major foods had codes that you typed into the cash register (that's right, pre-scanners) instead of typing in the price. I'm 34 now, and it kills me that I remember that Coke was code 103 and Pepsi was code 104, but I can't remember which fucking bus to take to get to Crazy Girl and Golden Boy's house. By the way in case you're curious, as a cashier I was able to conclude that although people bought more Pepsi than Coke, when Coke went on sale and was less expensive than the Pepsi, it flew off the shelves. People like Coke better. Or, they did in 1991.

Anyway, I was royally pissed off about being asked to clean up someone else's mess. I'm not a fucking janitor, you know? Turkey is such a liar (he lies ALL the time) that I didn't even believe him about a soda freezing and exploding all by itself. Why would ONE freeze but others, right next to that one on the same shelf, not freeze? Why is the refrigerator freezing anything at all? Nothing else froze. I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey accidentally knocked the can over and it fell onto the floor and then he opened it anyway.

I was so angry that I needed to go calm down. I called Golden Boy and told him. The bitch of it was, I knew I needed to get over myself and just do it. You wanted a job? Here's a job - go clean Coke off the fucking floor and be happy you're getting paid to do it. This is what small firms are all about - having to run to the court house, having to change light bulbs, having to clean soda up.

You know what the turning point was for me? When Golden Boy admitted that it totally sucked. That was all I needed - for someone else to acknowledge the bullshit. We hung up, I futzed around for a few more minutes, and then cleaned up the floor, the counter, and the shelves in the refrigerator. It took less than five minutes.

This is a really shitty job. Today was shittier than most days. I told myself that I would just be amused at the ridiculousness of it all. Whatever wacky shit happened would just be viewed as blog fodder. Today I lost that perspective. It must stay with me, always.

Vote With Your Fork

I was reading this article by Marion Nestle where one of the phrases she says, is to vote with your fork.

One of the things she says is that you set an example, and make it social acceptable for others to care. There are no grocery stores in San Francisco that use plastic bags anymore. The smaller food grocery stores, like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods sell reusable bags, and most give you five cents off your bill or something if you bring your own bag. However, they also have brown paper bags for bagging food.

Maybe a year ago, a TJMaxx opened two blocks away, and because I'm an old lady, I went to check it out. I bought a frying pan, and they gave me a reusable bag for it. When I go food shopping, I try to remember to bring it with me. I can't even tell you how many people have commented on it. Always tourists.

I'm not the most environmentally friendly person around, but I'm always happy to promote doing something that's less damaging, so I'll stand there and talk about how no, it's not a huge inconvenience to go through life without plastic bags. Yes, it really is possible to remember your bags when going food shopping. Then I tell them how to get to Macy's, Old Navy, or Fisherman's Wharf.

It's almost like, because I do so little for the environment, I owe it to said environment to encourage others to do what I do. Because it practically is the least that can be done. I'd like to get better in this area. The whole bringing-my-own-bags and refusing bags in stores is not enough. Buying more organics, buying less meat, recycling, composting - these all need to happen. I would like to make sure I donate everything that can be donated, rather than throwing things out. Does it make sense that I want to set a better example for myself?