dammmmmmmn it

So the day has finally arrived. I knew this day was coming. I could smell it. I could feel it in my bones. And I was right.

Sue pulled me into her office just now. I knew it was serious because the head of HR was already in the meeting along with James who was quivering in the corner. Somehow I got the feeling that I was not getting promoted. Long story short- If I don't make sales calls I will be fired.

I realized as I was sitting there that the only thing that I haven't tried yet is actually making the sales calls. So will I cross over to the dark side? The answer is yes, yes I will. I will whore my services from 8:30am-5:30pm 5 days a week. I'm officially a prostitute. I will make the sales calls beginning next week. This blog may suffer from my productivity, but I will always return. I will come back to you.

Goodbye for now. (Let's be honest I'll see you Monday)

I Have A Dream...

As an African American, I am deeply offended by the fact that I am sitting and writing this blog post from..... (pause for effect)........ WORK. That's right. I'm at work. On Martin Luther King Jr Day. What kind of fucked up world is this where employers overlook the significance of this historic day?! Oh- is the owner of the company here? You know because alllll her employees most certainly are here (except the smart ones who are 'sick' today) and it would only be fair. It's funny. I haven't seen her. All day. I heard something about a ski trip. Interesting.

I heard the best story about this company. Apparently a few years ago our company did have MLK Day off. Nice right? Oh I forgot, you had to be blac AFRICAN AMERICAN to have the day off. Dead serious. So all us whities and Asians were just screwed. Um reverse racism much?

Soooo I don't mean to belittle the atrocities suffered long ago but I do feel the need to point something out.  I'm at work.... against my will.... confined in a small area... unable to leave or move freely. Does this sound at all familiar???????

Just sayin...

A Girl Needs Her Gay

For those of you poor souls out there who don't have a flamboyantly homosexual boss, I feel for you. I have had the misfortune of working for the heteros more times than I would like to admit. The straights are the worst. This is the first time I've had the extreme pleasure of working for a gay man. He is the light of my life day. Whenever the owner of the company gets all in my grill (which happens to be daily) over making sales calls, booking more interviews, or whatever has her panties in a twist that day- James always has my back. And not just in a "well I'll go talk to HR" kind of way- but in a "ahhh hell no she didn't say that to you" and then storms into her office to tell her off kind of way. My little gay man heart skips a beat every time he comes to my rescue. I love him. I want to hang out with him on the weekends and watch Jersey Shore marathons (it's his favorite show btw) while sipping strawberry margaritas and painting eachothers' nails. I want to go to Fire Island and Palm Springs so we can let loose and be all kinds of gay. In other words, he makes me want to be a gayer man.

Here are some highlights of James' amazingness: The other day our division received a scathing email from a very big client of ours. It ripped us a new one saying how he plans to take his business elsewhere because we weren't able to fill a position he needed, we suck, etc. I was horrified that James would be angry that a client was so upset and we would have to kiss the clients ass to get him back. I was wrong. James wrote us a long email about how this guy is a joke and we don't specialize in the type of position he wanted us to fill (I work for a staffing agency PS). This is the kicker... James ended the email by saying "don't worry guys you're doing a great job. He just sucks so POO POO to him." HA!! I peed a little when I saw this. This is an email I got today from him:

Noel

Noel

No L’s

NO L’S

All the L’s are done……

I literally have no idea what he's talking about. But all I know is that I love him. For those of you who are unhappy in your jobs ask yourself this- is your boss a raging hetero? because if he/she is you need to get out now. As in get yourself all dolled up in some hot pants and some sexy heels, put on the makeup (regardless of your gender), pound some shots, get yourself to West Hollywood and start NETWORKING SOME GAYS. It's the only way to survive this corporate bullshit.

Midnight Erotica

As much as I hate this expression I have to use it. I have a violent case of the Mondays. I'm honestly crippled with depression today because A- I know I won't be jogging on the beach anytime soon B-I'm not allowed to drink pomosas before noon whilst working and C- the owner is all over me to make sales calls.

Have I mentioned I hate sales calls? Well I do. I reallllly fucking hate them. I'd rather spend a week in a jail cell alone with J-Lo, Mark McGrath, and Antoine Dodson than make 1 cold call. Just explain this to me. Why would I want to call people while they're working, interrupt their work, and try to get them to do things they don't want to do? Not my idea of a good time. In fact, it's my own personal nightmare. These days my dreams consist of incredibly-erotic-dirty-novel-status-sex-dreams OR thrashing-in-my-sleep-wake-up-with-the-sweats-because-I'm-having-a-panic-attack dreams. Guess which one I prefer? Every cold call nightmare is then in essence robbing me of a night of erotica. Fuck that. Cold calls are ruining my life. Sue (the owner of the company) is on my ass everyday to make more and more calls. She makes me send in a list of the calls I make daily. Without fail, she always has something bitchy to say back. My anxiety level is at a code red. All because of cold calls. Pitiful. Last week was my first week of calls. Here are the responses Sue sent me regarding my daily call log:

We can try and meet tomorrow for a bit. Would like to see a few more calls made. How many are you making?

Stay on top of all the ones who tell you they have another agency. Also how many actually calls today?

Many of these names are not spelled correctly so always be ACCURATE

Ouch. Maybe I am dyslexic? But did anyone notice how she said "how many actually calls today"? Yeah.... not so accurate, are we? I'm now at a point where I can't figure out if I want to get fired or not. This job is obviously instrumental in our Great Escape  and.... you know... survival. But at what cost????? My midnight erotica? Ah hell no. Universe, can you hear me? Do you read my blog? All I need is about $30K to pick up and go. PLEASE send me $30K. I promise I will do good things in this world. Perhaps I should consider cold calling random people and asking for money? Eh?

A Touch of Class

Contrary to popular belief, I am actually an extremely classy broad. One of the classiest I dare say. I enjoy a fine wine, a strong cheese, an old map, leather-bound books, a good magnifying glass... you get my drift. And don't even get me started on libraries. Libraries are one of my greatest passions in life. The older and mustier the better. Perhaps my love of libraries stemmed from the famous scene in Beauty and the Beast-where Belle is swinging on a ladder over floor-to-ceiling books, or from my semester abroad in Paris, or perhaps it started in the 6th grade when I let R.J. Lemere go up my shirt in our middle school library. Your guess is as good as mine. My point is, I'm bringing some class into the lives of my readers starting today.

During one of my daily trips to our local book store, I picked up one of those sad self-help books that any reasonable person would deny reading. Well, I picked it up and read it proudly (OK I had it hidden within another book), but I found a little story I think we can all learn from... Enjoy...

It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub, so he could clean the tank. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them. He was astonished to find that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing containing them, nothing holding them back. Why wouldn't they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim?

This quiet yet stark moment stayed with us both for a long time. We couldn't help but see those little fish going nowhere but into themselves. We now had a life-in-the-tank lens on the world and wondered daily, In what ways are we like them? In what ways do we go nowhere but into ourselves? In what ways do we shrink our world so as to not to feel the press of our own self-imposed captivity?

Life in the tank made me think of how we are raised at home and in school. It made me think of being told that certain jobs are not acceptable and that certain jobs are out of reach, of being schooled to live a certain way, of being trained to think that only practical things are possible, of being warned over and over that life outside of the tank of our values is risky and dangerous.

I began to see just how much we were taught as children to fear life outside of the tank. As a father, Robert began to question if we was preparing his children for life in the tank or life in the uncontrollable world.

It makes me wonder now, in middle age, if being spontaneous and kind and curious are all parts of our natural abilities to swim. Each time I hesitate to do the unplanned or unexpected, or hesitate to reach and help another, or hesitate to inquire into something I know nothing about, each time I ignore the impulse to run in the rain or call you up just to say I Love You- I wonder, Am I turning on myself, swimming safely in the middle of the tub?

Hall of Shame

Let's go over some do's and don'ts for submitting headshots on one's resume.

First of all, don't. That's right, there's really no need to include a headshot of yourself when applying for a $15/hour Executive Assistant position. The only exception to this is if you are incredibly good looking and you know what I mean when we say that we need "polished professionals" for this position. No offense, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of polished professionalism going on. Legally, I can't discriminate based on age, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. When you submit a pic of yourself it puts us in an awkward situation. Plus, don't you want to get the interview? Based on these pictures I'm not sure what your objective is.

If you're going to send a picture, my advice is to make sure it looks something like the following:

This girl gets it. She's attractive. She knows it- great. What I'm mostly impressed by is that her rack is appropriately covered and she's not doing anything creepy. Sold.

... I can't quite say the same for the following headshots. Why anyone would want to send pics like these on a Resume is beyond me, but these are in the Don't category: (Remember folks, you're trying to get an interview/job.)

WTF? The most heinous part of this picture isn't the fact that he's sleeping, it's that he's wearing a puka shell necklace. There is never an excuse for puka shells. Shame on you.

If I can see the top of your titays.... it means you're not quite grasping the polished professional look we're going for.

Ummm yeah... not much to say about this one other than you're creepy and I'm not bringing you in for an interview

I Can See Clearly Now...

...The rain is gone!! I actually deeply love the rain. BUT I have plans to drive to San Diego tonight to spend some time with my Dad while he's in town for the Holidays, and we all know that Californians lose their minds when it rains. All the sudden everyone is swerving all over the place and their average speed drops to 12 MPH. It has been raining for the past 6 days non-stop, but it's done! This is the view from my office by the way- check out the double rainbow. If I wasn't caged in the office I would think that I'm part of some sort of elfish fairy tale.

As bummed as I am that I actually have to be at work so closely to Christmas, I'm comforted by the fact that I have accomplished almost zero hours of actual productivity. It's my own little Christmas gift to myself. It's so weird to me that a few of my co-workers are actually scrambling right now. People are actually stressed the fuck out in neighboring cubicles. Why? It's almost Christmas people. We're not supposed to be stressed, and we're certainly not supposed to be working. Jesus would have wanted us to be relaxed. Kristen was supposed to take the day off, but guess who just walked in? Megh. That much dedication to a job seems unhealthy. She's supposed to be on vacation. Now she's in the office pacing back and forth and ranting to herself. That is so not the vibe I'm going for today. I was hoping for a calm/falling-asleep-at-my-desk kind of day, not anxiety filled. Bitch is seriously giving me heart palpitations.

But my message today isn't one of griping and complaining. Quite the contrary. I'm grateful for so much this holiday season. I'm grateful that in 2-2.5 years I will begin the adventure of a lifetime. I'm grateful that I have this blog to spill to when I'm supposed to be working. I'm grateful for all the amazing people in my life and for all the love they give me everyday. I'm grateful that I can day drink for the next 2 days and it won't be frowned upon. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and you're with those you love.

Update- THE GREAT ESCAPE

I mentioned in my very first blog post that my boyfriend and I have plans for our "Great Escape". Basically meaning that the only motivation we have for spending 40+ hours/week trapped inside a cubicle is the knowledge that we will be leaving this all behind in a few years. As soon as we hit our financial goal we're off like a prom dress. No more LA traffic, no more goddamn memos, mostly importantly no more business casual attire. I think we're both ready to stop dressing like lesbians. Florescent lighting, timed lunches, carpal-tunnel, alarm clocks are all things we deal with because we know we have something incredible and life changing ahead of us.

This is our Goal:

$20,000 in our joint savings account and NO DEBT (other than student loans).

Here's where we are today:

$3,100 in our joint savings account and about $6,000 each in debt (not including student loans).

Sooo yeahh.... with our goal to pay off debt as well as save $20K, we're about $28,900 away from our goal. As far away as that may seem, I'm staying positive. 2010 was more of a trial run... like let's put $100 aside here and there. 2011 is a whole new ball game. We have a budget and a plan to pay off a chuck of our debt, while adding more to our savings. This means I'll have to get wayyy better at using the word "No"- which is not something I'm accustomed to. When we're bored on a Friday night and all the bars are closed, it's probably no longer prudent to drive to Vegas in the middle of the night, gamble all weekend, and stay at the Venetian. I mean, I'm not a financial wizard or anything, but that's just my guess.

Our targeted departure date is sometime in the beginning of 2013. That's about 2 years to really make this happen. And believe me, when I get something in my head nothing will prevent me from going. Anyone who has ever spent an extended period of time overseas knows exactly why I'm pulled to leave again. There's a pulse, a vibration that is only fully active when you're completely immersed in a foreign culture. You feel fully alive. It's the difference between living and existing. You actually look up and around when you're walking, hell- you actually walk everywhere- you're not closed off in your car. Everything is an experience, an adventure! I'm so ready. Anyone have $28,900 I can borrow??

Cold Calling

Late last week I received some less than ideal news. Some truly terrible, deplorable news. Sue, the owner of the company, is really starting to show her true colors and I can't say that I'm a fan. I'm starting to learn that she only cares about $$$. Such a cliché. So last week she pulls me aside and blurts out the words that every employee fears and dreads with their whole being...

"We're ready for you to begin cold calling."

Why couldn't she just fire me? Cold calling? I was under the impression that I was far too pretty to be cold calling. Why don't you just stick me outside on the corner with one of those flippy signs? I could at least get some quality time outdoors and get freaky with my ipod. Cold calling is the worst thing ever. Ever. I will do anything in my power to not cold call anyone.

Don't get me wrong. I knew this day was coming. During my interview Sue made it very clear that she only wanted someone who was comfortable with sales. So I may or may not have said something along the lines of "Oh that won't be a problem. I'm experienced with cold calling from a previous job and I really enjoy the challenge (big smile)." Vomit. So yeahhhh... I may have had this coming. But who doesn't lie in an interview?! It's like a first date. Do you think I let my boyfriend know that i'm about 4x gassier than your average obese male right away? Hell no. That's more of a third date situation. By then he's already hooked on my beauty and charm and he can't turn back.

Let this blog be my witness... I will do anything and everything in my power to get out of this. Luckily it's the week before Christmas so the owners are out of town and no one really expects anyone to get any work done... at least that's my plan.

.

Intervention

On one of my recent trips to the ladies room (I take about 37 per day-I find it's an excellent way to waste time), I stopped for my habitual glance in the mirror. Usually it's a very enjoyable experience for everyone involved. I know there are women out there who suffer from body image issues and like to pick apart every inch of their bodies... I'm not one of these women. I'm more of the check-yourself-out-in-anything-that-has-a-reflection kind of gal.

So you can imagine the horror I felt when I didn't see Gisele Bündchen staring back at me yesterday. Some sort of tired lesbian nun had taken her place and I was none-too-pleased with this discovery. After a closer look I realized it was even worse that I thought. My blue dress had pit stains, I'm pretty sure I forgot deodorant under my left arm, I had a piece of my breakfast bar on my lip, and I had black makeup under and above my eyelid. I didn't even know that was possible. Also, I have about a dime-sized section of my cheek that's breaking out. It's so weird. Why just that tiny section? And why my cheek? Did I fall asleep on a piece of cheese? I had pulled my hair into a bun on top of my head, and my bangs were greasy. My normally light-blond hair was now some sort of poop brown color (noo I didn't shower that morning.... I was way too tired for that shit). Who had I become? It was like an entirely different person staring back at me. I've decided to name this person Helen. No one wants to hang out with someone named Helen. She has cats and hasn't had intercourse with anyone other than her cabbage patch doll.

 I took a good long look at Helen and was like "GURL it's time for an intervention." That's right. I had an intervention for myself right then and there in the bathroom. Thank God. It worked too. I know this for three reasons: A- I showered this morning (applause anyone?), B- Both pits are rocking deodorant, and C-I caught myself looking at my reflection on my metal coffee mug this morning. Don't fret, people. All is well with the world again. Call me.