Going Pro

There are times when work will make you cry. Not visibly, perhaps. But on the inside. On the cold, deadened, suffocating, demoralised and steadily more cynical inside.

Some of those times, I have listed here:

-working in any type of system with the word “pro” in the name. It is bound to promise miracles, but in truth be but a very complex way of achieving what was previously quick work.

-knowing that your best friend is sitting on her patio, in the sun, tanning her legs and nursing a cold glass of rosé wine while nursing her sweet smelling baby

-being confronted with the ”logic” of the previous “colleague” who worked in the system with the “pro” in the name – not compatible with your own sense of right and wrong

-knowing that, as you have you’re five o’clock coffee and buckle down for another six or so hours of work, your travelling Boyfriend sits in a sunny square, having his five o’clock beer: buckling down for another six or so hours of drinking and munching nuts

-getting so maddened by all of the above that you inadvertedly strike the wrong key in the “pro” system, undoing a whole day’s work and thusly adding another six hours to your previous six hours of over-time.

Foul.

You Tarzan?

Back when I was a student, I used to work part-time in a bookstore. It was a small, independent affair, specializing in biographies on forgotten Jazz musicians, old-school detective stories, and comics. We weren’t insanely busy.

My prime function was to wear low-cut tops and flirt in a non-threatening way with the few but faithful geeks that were the only patrons of the shop. When they were at their advanced physics lectures – either as lechers or students, depending on their age – there wasn’t much for my Satanist, mulleted, diabetic death-metal co-worker and me to do but share chocolate-bars and chat. Good times.

My co-worker (who has since taken over the store) specialized in comic-books. He was very knowledgeable in this field. When he wasn’t telling me about his girl-friend’s tendency to shag other mulleted, Satanist death-metalist on the “sly”, he would dissect, for my benefit, the plots, sub-plots and specifics of artwork of different cartoonists. In profuse detail – as a matter of fact, he would often re-tell epic sagas frame by frame.

Which story I tell you to let you know that I do know a little bit about cartoons. Like for instance: there is always an arch-nemesis.

Cartoons lead you to believe that an arch-nemesis can be quite easily recognized. He will be a physical oddity. His fist, or indeed, his Mega Death Blaster, is likely to make the sound KA-POW. He may live in a ruin, he may have been raised in a cave.

But beware children. Cartoons do not tell all. Your personal Arch-Nemesis may also be sitting right next to you, sipping coffee. He may wear a drab suit and a frown. He may be paying your wages. He may be (Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum): your boss.

For my part, in my first job, once I realized that I had face-to-face time with my own personal DOOM for nine hours a day, five days a week, I immediately started fighting the good fight. But it is tricky, with this type of villain.

I considered turning up at the office in a spandex body-stocking. But my cape would probably get stuck in the mail-cart. I pondered locking him Forever in the Cave of Doom that was our canteen. But then we’d all starve. I contemplated a Trap With Jaws of Death by the coffee-machine, but the few scraggly London Planes that passed for greenery at our office didn’t offer enough camouflage.

And then, another thing. In the middle of this strategizing (I was hard at work sharpening a few pencils into wooden picks to aim at “heart”) something dawned on me. There is one SURE way of recognizing a bad-guy – whether he be real or crayon.

He has minions. And the minions always die first.

And the minion, in this particular scenario, would be…

( BTW, this story applies to past boss, not my current one, which is eye-candy and inspiration rolled into one and wrapped in silk).

Kishmet

The term Clash of Civilizations is usually reserved for the my beard – your burger conflict of East and West. I do not know why – an equally portentous rift runs between the techy and the not.

 

My bet is, on the day of judgement, the knocking together of programmer and non-programmer skull will be seen to have given rise to as much strife as the knocking together of the texan and the turbaned.

 

Me – I am unapologetically analogue. The noughts and crosses system of programming makes no sense to me. I can only stare in abject terror as screens fill with HTML. Most importantly: I am convinced that anyone who can put their faith in explicitly non-humanist systems is borderline totalitarian. Code does not compromise.

 

This morning, I had the pleasure of having all my prejudiced confirmed. I was taken hostage by a band of technocrats, brought to their headquarters – replete with LED-lights and slick furniture – and subjected to gruelling torture; the point of which was to make me re-formulate my communicative goals in the reductive language of the web-site builder.

 

Oh, and did they ever have Methods of Making Me Talk – a process called SCREACH, SCRUNCH, SCREW, or SCUM. I will not go into sordid details, but it involved a lot of explaining the obvious while being left completely in the dark on questions of importance, all of which were answered by a verbal cannonade of abbreviations and Jolted jargon.

 

Worst of all, the pissing on the flag and drawing out of fingernails, was the way in which they insulted a symbol of great importance to an IRL like myself. They made me use paper. And pens. And “formulate in your own words” my needs for different functions on the site. Like if I said I wanted a printer friendly page, they’d make me write it down, and then they would sneer and say scribble something like [-] + ((-/) [dhl]. Or if I said I wanted a nice blue colour consistent with our logo – they would make me write that down too, and then jot down {djdj} // [ftp]: [ptf].

 

In the end, after two hours of watching human language being chewed out and spit out, the likes of which I hope to never see again this side of Ramadan, I was let loose. Broken of spirit, coffeed of blood, and probably having agreed to God only knows what.

 

And yes, I will pay through the nose.

 

Insha’Allah.

Twitter – The Cuckoo’s Nest

Last May, I read an article somewhere about this thing called Twitter. It was supposed to be the new Facebook. Always happy to find new ways of wasting my office Broadband I logged in. And was greeted by a big fucking Meh.

Exactly one person that I remotely cared to follow was on the damn thing. Since his desk faced mine, going on-line to see what he was doing seemed slightly overkill. I could tell well ’nuff  by IRL inspection whether he was typing, or going out for lunch, or bantering with the interns. Also, the giggles of the interns was a twittering in the truest sense, needing no www.backupchoire.com. 

Logging out again, I forgot all about it and went on to become a productive and contented member of society. Unfortunately this state of grace was not to last.

Lately, various Swedish media have been filled with I-have-bought-into-latest-time-waste-slightly-ahead-of-local-curve-and-want-to-tell-the-world-I-am-not-a-long-tail-(when-in-fact-I-am-rather-the-end-of-the-Great-Danes-wagger)-style articles.

Naturally, I have rejoined.

Which was foolish, really: for it turns out I have opened the door of a veritable Pandora’s chicken-coop. Twitter, it seems, is not something you can take in moderation. Twitter is not something riddled with Pirate invites that make you turn away in disgust. Twitter does not let you sleep, nor does it look kindly on bathroom breaks. In fact, if Facebook slightly crippled your work ethich – consider Twitter the avian flu of your career.

Abyhoodle. Not wanting to have sacrificed myself for no good, I have decided to make my experice into something that might be used to innoculate others against the disease. Or at least, serve as a warning example. I give you:

Eight Stages on Way to Being a Twittering Fool:

1) first, you have to re-add all the people you know on Facebook, re-add your profile picture from Facebook, and re-add your vitals from Facebook, leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu

2) then, to your horror, you discover you may  “follow” random famous people – like Stephen Fry, poor man. (At least they do not mince words at Twitter, the lingo is very up-front stalky).

3) as the number of famous people in the world is infinite, adding them will take from mid-morning through lunch.

4) after lunch, you realise realise that a lot of the feed’s you have added belong to blogs already in your RSS,  leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – with Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu.

5) then you realise that all the famous people you follow hoping to read about their latest brainiac adventures are also typing, going out for lunch, or chatting up the interns, leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – with Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu.

6) then you realise that everyone you know is posting non-stop. And that everyone, now, is rather a large number.

7) this is when you bury your head in the sand. but it won’t work. while you bury your head, the tweets will just keep amassing.

then you realise that something is profoundly wrong with a civ. that has turned its productive force into headless chicken. unfortunately, by now your feathers are coming off in lumps and your poo is toxic.

Solution? I can see only one stone that might kill this bird: luckily, it is hurling towards us with speed. It is only a matter of time before Media Agents across the world burst into simultanous seminars on ”Twitter – New Uses in PR”.

After which we can all happily attend its wake, downing great big beakers of virtual ale and eating roast fowl.

Bitches Brew

There is a certain demographic group that I despise. Unfortunately this type is, as a group, every bit as thriving as its individual members are wizened. I am talking about  female co-workers who haven’t gotten as far as they would have liked in life, forgot to have kids, and are now taking their daily struggles out on one.

Their chief strenght is sucking the will to live out of any and all.

Their  non fertile, dried up, shrivelled husks produce no more juice, only a thick phlegm, that can be coughed onto innocent standers by. 

They have awesome oral weapons: emitting a shrill, high pitched screeching, while simultaneously blinding victims with the uglyness of yellow teeth.

They move in packs, blocking acess to coffee-machine, printer and smokers corner. They tend to rant and have no sense of a phones silent mode. Most of all though, they Look at one, when one is not buttoned to the hilt.

Fortunately though, there is also another type of co-worker: elderly, male, and bringing choclates to one when one is stranded at desk and has no possible way of leaving in time for dinner.

Ring Out Old Shapes

I enjoy my work very much. But even Sisyphus probably found time for a quick ciggie in the afternoon. At four, I need to pour myself a cup of coffee space out for a bit. Otherwise I get cranky, and you don’t want that, seeing as sarcastic-self-righteous-bitch is my sunny side. 

 

 

Unfortunately, four o’ clock seems to be a general break time in my office. Which means that my fifteen minutes of oblivion are often interrupted by colleagues wanting to chat. As a shield against anecdotes about children’s parkas or neighbourhood watch politics (aka socializing) I have developed a ruse: staying in front of computer and pretending to be busy working. While really, I head over to the Sartorialist and FUG for a daily dosis of escapism.

 

 

These two particular sites are perfect for two reasons. First off, they let you gawk at pretty people doing petty things in pretty clothes. Secondly, all the images of perfectly tanned and toned bodies wrapped in the most minimal of sequined or gauzy sheets put an effective block on any coffee-related snacking. Such as muffins, crackers, or those delicious little toffees they sell in the cafeteria on the first floor (or so I have heard).

 

Unfortunately, the line between helpful sugar deterrent and battering ram against self-confidence is a thin (lucky bastard) one. After a weekend spent listening to the Better Man raving about the beauty of elder skinny sister and a young Pamela Anderson respectively (in all fairness, he did add as an afterthought “I do love you all the same”) – the pictures of hollow-cheeked Sienna Millers, Kiera Knightlys et al threw me into a bit of an early new years fervor. You know, the way you feel January 1 – broke, bloated and blue.

 

 

Now, as most of my female readers will know, feeling broke and bloated and blue is usually the start of a 24-48 hour all fruit but fruitless diet, after which the acute memory of whatever horrible vacation pic or old-boyfriend sighting that catapulted you into a frenzied state of half-a-cup of slimfast and skinless chicken has faded from your mind and been replaced with the smells of Bolognese from the office canteen.

 

 

But, this time, I think I have the upper hand. Heartbreak and repugnance at self are transient emotions and will only only help you shred so many pounds. A good solid case of food poisoning however, will broker no arguments. And tonight, I will be stuffing sausages. Given the 50-50 odds of them turning out edible, I think the chances of slimming down to a size zero before the lake freezes over are excellent. 

 

Oh, and hopefully you all caught the Tennyson reference – proof that though I may not be skinny, I do know my 19th centrury imperialistic poet laureates.

Mid-Week Fuck

Today is November. Today is Tuesday. Today is meeting day.

 

Normally, meeting day is the day when you sit in a room with your co-workers, staring daggers at each other and wasting each others time going through, in detail, the minute sideways steps your particular and unrelated projects have managed to tango in the past week.

 

Then everyone ahems and someone comments on bold-style font of page two heading.

 

Then someone asks about next meeting, and everyone starts leafing through their calendars, except for the one guy who’s got his calendar on his cell, and the batteries are low or something, and he has to jot things down on paper.

 

And then everyone agrees to meet next meeting day at same time and in same room as always.

 

And a week later everyone sits, staring daggers at each other and wasting time going through, in detail the minute sideways step your particular unrelated projects have managed to waltz in the past week.

 

Except for guy who has got his calendar on phone, who has lost piece of paper with time of meeting, who sticks his head in the door to ask weather there is a meeting today and who is just there to say he can’t make meeting, because he is double-booked and the guy he is booked with forgot his phone and alas his calendar at home so they would have a really hard time rescheduling.

 

Then everyone ahums and someone comments on italic-style font of page two heading.

 

Yes, normally, that would be Tuesday. But something has shifted in this the working order of the world. Someone has gone and cursed us with a Management Consultant.

 

The Management Consultant introduced himself by saying he feels especially qualified to work with us artsy types, since he used to be a semi-pro tennis player. And tennis is a form of art, innit? Then he got out his Power Point. Then he loosened his bright purple tie.

 

In the Power Point of the Management Consultant we got to know about the Highly Successful Habits for Pestering People, or some such. Frankly, I zoned out sometime around the picture of a woman sitting with a hot cup of tea and asking herself (in italic font, yes) what is the meaning of life.

 

Which shows zoning out to be a Highly Dangerous Habit of Bored Employees. Cause when the other people usually in my meeting day Tuesday meeting asked, today, if we shouldn’t found our meetings, from now on, on rule numbers five though seven  in the  Seven Ways To Rodger Will to Live Out of Cognisant Beings I had not the wits to scream loudly and throw myself out vast expanse of glass making office wall.

 

The new rule is that everyone has to add informed commentary and feedback on each others projects. Not only that. A point of discussion may not be left until everyone in the room has an emphatic understanding of all present speakers. And not only that. Each person has the right to decide weather or no he has been emphatically understood by all others present.

 

Well, you are no idiots. You see where this is all heading. The only thing that kept me sane really, was doodling pictures of burning teeth in margins of page two – now with bold italic style font – and think of lunch.

 

As soon as the last moronic misunderstanding of the last daft doofus had been mangled into something vaguely pass-offable as an emphatic you-know-what, I made for the kitchen freezer, digging for my box of home made lamb stew, all tender. (What I did was I put kale, wild cabbage, potatoes, aubergines, and browned lamb all in a pot, and then steamed it all through with minute amounts of mushroom stock and vinegar, adding some rather forceful chillies and some fish sauces.

 

Prying the lid off I was met with the uncooked chest of a duck.

 

(oh yeah, and for this to be a punch-line you need to read the past two or three posts also.)

Son Oncle

Michael Jackson, goldfish, and I: we do have a little something in common. Or have had, for I have been in a bubble of my own for a bit – in the lala-land of newly relational bliss. It has been burst though, and now am out and breathing big heavy gulps of fresh air.

Which feels rather nice. Yes, those first few weeks of hooking up are great, all consuming and obsessive, but also rather unhealthy in their way – pink glasses impairing vision. Anyhow, they are over for this time and I am slowly getting back to my old own self – going for a run in the morning, out with friends at night, and generally letting the world in.

Only I wish the glass would not shatter so badly. For it seems that the world and his uncle are getting handsy and all up in my bizniz. It seems, through no fault of my own, the twain that should never meet are mingling freely. Let me explain:

In my new job, it turns out that not only is the boyfriend of my closest colleague friends with my new interest – also: my boss is good friends with his recent, jagged, jarring ex.

Now normally, I think an integral part of the working day is talking relationships at the shop. I mean, the very reason for keeping work and play separate is that you can say whatever you like about your BF to your colleagues, in a way that would make your friends blush at meeting him. But the thrill of letting it all out over bad coffee and a fag round the corner is rather dimmed when you know every word is being reported verbatim to the lair of the enemy (and her cast-off).

Wherever shall I turn?  Oh, yes, that’s right. Blogwise.

Prepare for some juicy morsels.

Guns Blazing

Sometimes Monday is Monday. You know, uninteresting verging on the bland. That is to be expected, and not so very hard to accept – the dishrag unglamour of it can be even be quite enjoyable, in a self-flagellating kind of way.

Last night, for example, in an airy wave to financial crisis and the melting oceans, I spent cooking (calf’s liver and minced lamb, parsnip, fennel, carrots and half a pound of onions make for an excellent and cheap few meals – smoked ham, zucchini and India leek seeds an excellent risotto) and filling the freezer with the Tupperware of self-contentment.

However, when Tuesday dawned this morning, I was distinctly displeased to notice that it, too, had a Monday aspect. A Groundhog shade of grey slated the skies, the rye was stale and my reflection pasty pale and blurry. Grabbing a plastic container out of freezer and throwing myself down the garbage chute of a subway entrance at high speed seemed unappealing concepts. Also, this morning is the first in a number when I haven’t had the pleasure of waking in the soothing arms of another. And this break of routine -along with raging pre-period hormones - is giving me a distinctly shortened fuse.

In short: I knew from the moment I set eyes on it that this would be a bitch of a day. And, just as when confronted with the bitchiness of other she-dogs, I set about, in true slap-down fashion, beating it at its own game – to out-scratch and out-meow the Tuesday bloody Tuesday.

My first few pieces of armour I found in the closet – the most colourful underwear possibly, and a pretty dress. The next I located under the couch – a pair of shiny yellow heels who had their last outing on a wet wild night of heavy dancing and thusly bring back fond memories of warm beer and warm winds and warm arms twirling me round the deathtrap dance-floor of the summers best party. Sending a regretful thought to the bullet-red lipstick that’s AWOL since the move and scraping back my hair, I snubbed the freezer full of homely fare and decided to splurge on a ladies who lunch frou-frou salad.

Taking cover under the dog-eared covers of some escapist Bushnell paperback on the train and, securing by SOS-sms the derriere-guard of nighttime drinks with K, arrived at my desk, plugged my ears with the most uplifting tunes I know (you don’t want to know – the Pouges – but show me a better option for tapping a sharp heel-and-nail-tattoo to the detriment of collegial concentration).

And this is where I discovered a sometime forgotten resource of ammo: the absolute high I can get from doing my job. Faced with a in-box full of targets I charged, and am currently blitzing my way through the muddy trenches of mid-morning by way of digging deep into some very interesting projects that take not only focus, but a bit of guts to pull through. Full of the rush of giving all for god and company, I shoot lustily and not to maim, and am slaying great heaps of deadlines, leaving the bloody corpses of darlings behind me.

Now – here comes the scary part. That Rambo-style maniac used to be me. It used to be every working day was a bleak and bleary Tuesday to be subjugated. It used to be that nighttimes were for planning ahead, daytime for doing, and the hours inbetween for fretting and wowing to do better. But, introduce the peacekeeping forces of The Man between a girl and her need to prove herself to the world, and you get a marked drop in hits per minute. 

Which is not to say that all the yucky love stuff isn’t also great, good, and rewarding. But it is obviously so that the yucky love stuff puts me in a good mood, and sometimes, for the advancement of ones professional aims, one needs be more of a rabid dog than a petted puppy. And I guess The Man just doesn’t make me mad enough for productive purposes.

Which poses an interesting question. Is satisfaction on the softer sides of life limiting my professional fighting power? Do I need to be slightly weary of heart to be waving my professional sabre to best effect? Should up my levels of personal frustration in order to get that coveted raise?

And in that case…

Loose by Proxy

Quickly, in a lunch 30 min which have already almost passed in a flurry of salmon salad and moccacino: on the subject of licking and kicking.

The new job is all sparkly white desks and hidden light-fixtures, designer chairs and vibrant backdrops, view of the park and a bunch of hot pink flowers my new coworker got me as a welcome. Into this I try to stride with gusto and purpose, planning to set the tone of what I hope will be a quick and painless ascent to the glories of seniority. The tone, it turns out, will be very low indeed.

For though the office decorating seems to have been designed by someone OD-ing on early naughties visions of creative New York coked up lofts, most of my co-workers get their inspiration from somewhere decidedly more wholesome. They seem all to have tinies, all to be wearers of parkas, and all to be married to each other. They have been here for a long time, and they plan on staying put.

Into this calm pond of suburban oatmeal I drop like a rather sequinned stone. 

It all started when I discovered a previously unknown asset: in their wild seventies, my parents have evidently slept with half the management floor (certain circles in stlm being narrow). The same management floor which is now decidedly greyer, worn by their own years of tinies, parkas and marriage and which is perking up considerably by a brisk walk down memory lane.

Which means looking rather like an odd mix of old mum and dad puts me in the way of sundry kind smiles and misty eyes. And I am hoping, all the benefits of sleeping my way to the top without having to do more than occasionally mention the summer of -78 in conversation.

Also, I am noticing, that my skirts and heels are a very obvious contrast to the colleagues ratty cardigans. It is not that they are short or high per-se, more that they are not suited to the four-o-clock rush for the kinder-garten-pick-up-ballet-class-drop-off-veg-boiling life of my coworkers.

And, here is the final nail in the coffin of peer adoration: I have as yet failed to bring the slightly soggy leftovers of a family dinner in an old ice-creamjar in for lunch, having instead to do the canteen walk of shame, having probably spent the night before at some bar stoolor other, ripping my good stockings and wishing for fags…

In short: it looks as though I have been painted the office harlot – and this, I might add, without even having been present at a single after-work yet. And this is when a girl has to ask herself: what to do.

Should she milk the management slight shakinessof cuff for all it is worth, facilitating by the careful application of gloss the introduction of some novel ideas into the staid paces of the job? Or should she shroud her bushel, or maybe at least put a dimmer on it, and hope to be invited to the suburban gardens for springtime co-worker roly-poly? In the age-old question of getting ahead or getting pudding: what should she choose?

Me, I am leaning towards the professional approach. After all, all is fair in love and climbing, ain’t it?