Pick-Up Lines

According to my application spreadsheet, I have been officially on the job market for four weeks. I think it’s going pretty well, so far. I’m making several contacts, sending out résumés, and of course, combing job sites for postings. Because I’ve chosen to post my information online, I’ve had the pleasure of receiving my fair share of job-related spam in the past month with the following awesomely bad lines. Everything is verbatim, unfortunately.

Openers:

• Greetings,dear friend!
• I am trying to reach you!
• Are you blessed with a new child yet unable to attend work? Are you a college student with odd class schedules impairing regular work time? Well you’re in luck!!!
• You are invited to a people-intensive, on-the-edge of technology powered environment.
• You befit on our position.

Qualifications:

• Honest Workesr Needed!!!
• Basically, almost anyone can manage to handle the job, but you honesty and doing your best are of utmost importance for us
• You needn’t any education, qualification or any special skills. Everything you need is a great desire to work.
• Requirements: USA citizenship. Responsibility, diligence and honesty.
• General requirements: the ability to work in teamand good communicative skills. Ability to keep company’s interest s more than your own one. USA citizenship required.
• Age: from 18 till 70 years

Benefits:

• You DONT HAVE TO PAY FOR ANYTHING TO WORK FOR US
• Your monthly salary can amount to $1,800-2,300.
• DO NOT TURN THIS OFFER DOWN!! GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!! You can recieve a salary not less then 50 000$ a year!

Big Finishes:

• ... act now for this great intuitive job offer.
• If you are interested in this job and you really want to work with us, send us confirmation that you are ready to work in our company , then we will send you contract, you should sign it and we will begin to co-operate.
• If you have found this letter to be a nuisance, please accept our apologies.

- - -

P.S. I’m glad to report that I got the fun, relaxed weekend I wanted. JG and I spent a lot of time just hanging out together and I felt like I had woken up from a vacation this morning. Thank goodness for mental health days.

Honorary Tech Team Member

(Alternate Title: Why I Have Flowers on My Desk)

Among the host of frustrations that made last week a struggle, the greatest involved walking in to the office on Wednesday to find that we had no connectivity. That meant no access to e-mail, the server, intranet, or Internet. I don’t exaggerate when I say that my co-workers were essentially paralyzed.

My office is a satellite of a San Francisco-based company, so all of our technology resources are on the west coast. Also, I am the default tech person in my office. It’s not in any way part of my job, but when you work for a small company, you tend to do whatever needs to be done. For me, that usually means troubleshooting network or printer issues and setting up workstations for new hires. Whenever there’s an office tech issue, I’m usually on the phone with the tech guys because they know that I can understand their language and I try to be a quick study. It’s a friendly relationship and I enjoy being an honorary tech person.

So, at 9am Eastern, I found out which tech guy was on duty and reluctantly called his cell phone. From the rustling and murmuring, I could tell that he had been asleep prior to the phone ringing. “I’m so sorry,” I said, “but we don’t have access to anything over here. There is no connectivity.”

He told me to hang on, that he’d check out a few things and call me back.

With a cell phone pressed up against my ear, I stood in an ill-lit closet packed with servers and cords, trying to follow the instructions on unplugging, resetting, logging in, and writing rules. After five hours of troubleshooting, we finally had connectivity, and I was completely exhausted. I downloaded my e-mail and left for home. JG had called to check in on me and after I described the experience as “the worst day ever,” he had a bag of gummy bears waiting for me.

The next day, I came in to work and realized that, yet again, we did not have network access. People streamed out of their offices and asked me what was going on, why there was still a problem. I answered sharply, “I don’t know. I can’t even talk about this right now.”

I got back on the phone.

As it turns out, the previous day’s problem had reoccurred in the San Francisco office, but our configuration was such that the issue affected my office, too. It was small consolation that we didn’t have exactly the same problem – that is, that I didn’t break anything – but, oh, I was tired. Ultimately, we had access back by lunchtime and lost working hours for the week totaled at eight.

Yesterday, the UPS man brought me a surprise package that bloomed into tissue-papery irises in purple and yellow. Every time I look up at them, I notice a new petal uncurling and a fresh bloom exposed. The card reads:

You are our Superhero! We are so grateful – the Tech Team

Because I usually talk with this team about systems requirements, documentation, and software updates, getting a bouquet of flowers from them is simultaneously incongruous and completely flattering. I am so pleased and almost speechless.

I realize now that being so exhausted gave me a mindset based on survival. I’d grit my teeth and think, Must get through the day. But this week, I can look at this gift and be reminded that the effort doesn’t always go unnoticed.

Besides, I think it takes a lot for a tech team to send flowers to a girl. I’m enjoying these while they last.

Sometimes

Sometimes, your husband will ask how your day was and you can say honestly, “Fine, actually.” Sometimes, your brain is so exerted that you have no words for how much you dreaded driving in, how much you wished the day would end. Sometimes, you’re beyond griping or venting because even you’re tired of the story and it doesn’t quite seem fair to subject someone else to it, again. You might plop on the couch and ask for hug, but when the tension of the day washes over you, you can’t help it that your eyes fill with tears and dot your husband’s shirt. Sometimes, you have too many words for how hard the day was and you sting your husband with the barbs you kept inside for eight hours. You try to explain that you’re not mad at him, but it doesn’t feel that way at all.

Sometimes, you savor the time spent with co-workers because they are funny, smart people who are doing their best. Sometimes, a missed appointment here and a snide comment there will make you vacillate between being irritated and irritating. Raw emotions lie just under the surface, just waiting to burst out at the slightest prod. Sometimes, you say things you don’t mean and make faces you don’t intend. You’re mean. You hurt people.

Sometimes, you know what you’re doing for a living is making a difference and that no one could do the job as well as you do. Sometimes, you wonder if you actually like what you’re doing. You visualize something you’d like to do better and ask yourself if it’s really worth it to put yourself back out in the meat market. Sometimes, you think back to that time after college when the job search was more about survival and benefits than a fulfilling career path. You don’t relish retooling your résumé for every job possibility, tracking your application history, being rejected, and sneaking around to interviews.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to stay in a familiar situation, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore. Sometimes, the comfort of the known is so much more desirable than the craggy overhang of the unknown. Sometimes, you prefer your ergonomic desk chair to jumping off into thin air.

Sometimes, you reach the end of your rope.

And then you dust off the résumé.

Summing Up

• The conference is over.
• My feet hurt.
• My suitcase is packed.
• My flight back home leaves in six hours.
• I didn’t ever get to In-n-Out.
• I’ll get home at 7am.
• JG will be a sight for sore eyes.
• I’ll crash for two hours of sleep before getting up to run an event for my church.

And then sleep, sweet sleep.

From the Other Coast

Somewhere between bouncing back from vacation, reorienting myself to working, and preparing to leave town again, I completely forgot to mention that I was flying across the country. I’m in Los Angeles for a conference for work, so I’ll be surprised if I’ll get a chance to set foot on Rodeo Drive and window shop. This week will consist of suits, schmoozing, and shaking hands; in short, a whole lot of fun. Rolling my eyes.

I got a call from one of my co-workers last night, informing me that our flight was leaving at 8:30am the next day. This call wouldn’t have startled me so much, except that the flight was originally scheduled to depart at 10am. And I hadn’t packed yet. And I was covered in bread flour. I had to reschedule my shuttle pick-up for 5:45am – Heaven, help me – and I raced around to pack since I actually had to get to bed at a decent hour. Although I had interpreted the flight change as a bad omen for the week, I made it to my flight with plenty of time to eat breakfast and I managed to sleep during 4 out of the 5.5 hours on the plane. After a yummy lunch, I’m settling into my hotel room and steaming out wrinkles from my clothes. Oh, the glamorous life of a business traveler.

The major up side to being out here is that I have three whole evenings available for dinners out with my co-workers, so I’m trolling for restaurant recommendations. I did zero research before coming out here because I knew I’d be holed up in a conference center for 12 hours straight, but I forgot about dinners. What food is indigenous to Los Angeles? A girl’s got to eat, you know.

Frantic Wednesday

Recently, I was placed on a project that involves developing internal software. I was identified as the best person to be the Requirements Expert (doesn’t that sound smart?) and I was told that I would need to fly out to San Francisco to spend some time with the guy who is doing the actual developing. So, here is my itinerary for the next few days:

Wednesday

• 11:15am: get picked up to go the airport
• 2:30pm: flight takes off (hopefully)
• 5:30pm (Pacific time): flight lands
• 7pm: I call a co-worker to meet for dinner

Thursday

• 8am: arrive at the office so the tech guys can fix my computer
• 9am: get locked in a windowless room called the Bat Cave – seriously – with my development buddy
• 12pm: get released for lunch
• 1pm: back to the grindstone
• 5pm: out for happy hour (amen!) and dinner
  

Friday

• 9am-5pm: repeat Thursday’s schedule
• 5pm: coerce some co-workers to spend their Friday evening with me
• 10pm: take off on a red-eye flight back to the east coast

Saturday

• 6am (Eastern time): flight lands in Philadelphia
• 7am: arrive back home, most likely an attractive combination of disheveled and disgruntled
• 7:02am: fall into bed for a couple of hours of non-plane sleep

Doesn’t that sound great?!

As of this morning, I hadn’t packed at all, unless you count a chicken-scratch list on the refrigerator white board, so if you had had the misfortune of being at my house this morning, you would have seen me running around and muttering things like:

Don’t forget the phone charger! And those materials that consultant asked me to bring along! Wait, what’s the weather like in San Francisco? Do I need a heavy coat? What time is my ride coming? Oh, no, I forgot to run those reports from Monday! Can I finish twelve of them before 11? Will I have internet access at the airport? How many pairs of shoes do I need?

I’m happy to report that I was packed and showered before I logged on to my computer at 8:30, I sent out all twelve reports before 10, and I remembered to record an out-of-office voicemail on my work phone. Even though I ate Thin Mints for breakfast, I consider this morning a success.

A Bumpy Re-Entry

It didn’t occur to me until this year, but the worst part about hosting the New Year’s shindig was that I had to go back to work with no recovery period from mountains of dishes, loads of laundry, hours on my feet, and lack of sleep. Well, I should maybe correct that last one to excessive sleep, since I subtly (and stupidly) adjusted my internal clock so that I would believe that 10am was a reasonable time to get up.

On each morning of this shortened-but-didn’t-feel-like-it week, I woke up feeling as though gravity had a greater hold on me – especially on my eyelids – than it did when I went to bed. I simply could not drag my sorry carcass out of bed to join the living despite the nagging blare of the clock. I admit that I managed to get up on Tuesday morning and do 20 minutes of yoga, but that was a one-time thing and I blame it on New Year Unrealistic-ness. Even then, when my blood was flowing, I practically napped my way to work and it’s obvious that that is not a good idea when you are driving.

I trudged my way through the week with a thought bubble hovering over my head that read, “Don’t forget that you have to travel to the west coast office next week! Better clean up that desk, gather your travel arrangements, and make sure you can afford not to work for three whole days!” Groan. That explains why I spent the greater part of this absurd 70-degree afternoon composing an article that turned out to be torturous to write and ultimately sub-par. The only thing worse than working on the weekends is producing work that you know is crap.

As a child, I remember hearing that space shuttles would burst into flame (or at least get very hot?) as they entered into the Earth’s atmosphere. Why is that? Something about the heat from the sun inside the atmosphere? I have no idea. But man, I know how that shuttle feels. Houston, I do not enjoy this.

Despite the rough landing overall, I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in my inbox yesterday morning. Today is my two-year anniversary at my job (so weird to me) and the anniversary tradition at my company is that people write fun notes under a given theme. Well, my supervisor got wind of my reading ambitions for the year and I received a nice stack of book recommendations! I couldn’t be more pleased, though it was a bit eerie reading through the notes because I kept thinking, “Ooh, I loved that book!” or “I did always want to read that one.” They really had my number.

How I Roll

A co-worker of mine arrived at the office this morning and remarked, “It’s so quiet in here!” She proceeded to change that fact by exclaiming about the pile of mail on her desk, check her voicemail on speaker phone and talk very loudly to no one in particular so that we could all hear everything.

There are only nine people in my office, five of whom telecommute, so quiet is the norm. How loud can four people be? Why is quiet bad? Doesn’t it mean that we’re all working?

I’ve received feedback that I adhere too strictly to my schedule. I freely admit that flexibility is not my strong point, but I don’t see anything wrong with doing a full day of work and then getting the heck out of the office. That’s not to say that I don’t have longer hours at times or that I’m completely antisocial, but it’s frustrating to me when getting work done is seen as a hindrance to socializing, and then, something worthy of condescension. I’m all about having fun at work during a lull, but when the deadline looms, no amount of fun helps the job get finished. If I have a lot to do, I don’t need distractions in the form of random bursts of hip-hop music or someone else’s conference call on speaker phone, but my wearing headphones is viewed as exclusive or even rude.

Um, sorry? I have to write two articles this morning and I have a hunch that blocking noise would be helpful in that process. But that’s just me.

Whatever. Back to the grindstone.

Closing Up Shop

“It’s a circle of hell in here,” I e-mailed to JG. “I want to be anywhere else.” Send.

I was referring to my workplace, which has made getting up in the morning much harder than it normally is for me. Today held a morning spent fighting with a fidgety, shady web interface and mysterious formatting coming out of nowhere. I looked hopelessly at a desk covered in manila folders and white paper, broken up with glasses from bygone beverages. I glanced twitchingly at my to-do list with items that rebelliously refused to be crossed off.

My weekend was dragging me by the hair through a muddy Friday and it hurt. A lot.

But now, the folders are closed up, hiding all of the overwhelming paper. My list is magically checked off. My desk has returned to its normal state of calm and as a result, so have I. I take a deep breath and stretch out my arms to knock out the kinks from my body. It’s time to shut down the computer and zip on home in a day that is screaming for a walk around the neighborhood with its unseasonable warmth.

Hallelujah, it’s the weekend!

Slightly Pre-Crash

I’m tired.

I arrived home this evening after a two-day summit with consultants from my company. I came along because, for some reason, I coordinated the summit, even though event planning is miles outside my job responsibilities. Over the course of the summit, the consultants discussed important things like business development, revenue targets, and profit margins. I typed notes diligently on a laptop projected onto a wall, scurried to set up whiteboard easels and post-it pads, and made sure that everyone was properly sugared and caffeinated. It was kind of fun, but mostly exhausting. I’m not sure how long I’ll last tonight.

This week at work took something out of me. I had my annual performance review on Wednesday, and I cried the whole way through it for no good reason. It wasn’t indicative of how I was feeling, but I simply could not stop the tears. The feedback I received was almost entirely positive, but the few bits of negative feedback cut me to the bone. I wasn’t necessarily surprised, but seeing a comment in black and white is just plain hard. I know that my performance was very good overall, but I wish I had done better over the past year. I wish I could be less rigid and more approachable. I really wish I hadn’t cried through the whole darn thing, which left me with red, puffy eyes and a terribly raw nose.

And then I got a phone call. I didn’t get the job. I was deflated, the wind knocked out of me. They didn’t think I was “a perfect fit” and they were looking for someone with “different experiences”. The woman who called me was very gracious and she said that I was definitely the right material for their company. Apparently, she'll keep me on their “A-list” for new positions. Thank you, I heard myself say. I don’t have hard feelings because I know that they work really hard to find the perfect person… I just thought that I was the perfect person. I felt like the stars were aligning so that I could leave my job and take on something new. I was disappointed. I still am.

When I got home that day, I nursed my wounds with chicken noodle soup, which is strangely, magically curative in these circumstances. After all this and then the summit, I’m about done. Stick a fork in me.

Gathering Place

The hotel where I’m staying in San Francisco has free wireless internet access in the lobby, so I’ve come down a little bit before my ride arrives to catch up on a few things. Needless to say, this free internet situation has set up a strange phenomenon that I think I will coin as the corporate water hole.

We all circle around with our laptops, looking for one of those really good red cushy chairs, avoiding the backless ottoman-type things. Some people are on cell phones, others just reading a paper, and most annoyingly, some take a whole chair just for their computer bags. I’m stuck on a couch now between two people from the same company, and it’s a little weird. I feel like I’m eavesdropping on something, but hey, all the red chairs are taken! It’s even funnier because the hotel is hosting a conference, and there are so many people (men, mostly) with nice tech toys and event badges milling around, sniffing around for wireless access. Then, after a time, when someone has finished up getting hydrated (or checking e-mail, whatever), he’ll get up and slink away, and another thirsty laptop-user will come to share the wealth. Such is the behavior of business travelers in their natural habitat.

Afternoon Craving

It’s about that time in the afternoon when I get restlessly hungry. I can’t focus well on whatever spreadsheet or presentation is currently at hand, and I keep watching the clock to see if I can go home to dinner yet. My stomach growls and I wander into the office kitchen to see if anything has magically added to the supply of Wheat Thins, tootsie rolls, or pretzel stubs. Or whatever they’re called. No, nothing new! I’ve already had a handful and a half of Wheat Thins, and the rest doesn’t appeal to me. So far today, I’ve had some grapes, watermelon, and salad… How herbivore of me. Not that I want meat… No, I want carbs, glorious carbs! And not in the form of some dried-out pretzel/cheese ball variety! I want mac and cheese or a Cup of Noodles, carryovers from my hot pot-inspired diet of college days. Comfort to me is a Styrofoam cup of tangled-up yellow noodles (chicken flavored, please), with the gratuitous sprinkling of mixed, dehydrated veggies. I’m all about a balanced diet.

But I know that the drugstore down the way doesn’t even carry Cup of Noodles. It was a sad day when I made that realization on just such an afternoon. I'd have to get Easy Mac, another college revelation that was advertised toward 8-year-olds, but is actually most applicable for students, especially in its new handy packs. If I had had this in college, the number orange-encrusted dollar store bowls on top of my microwave would have greatly decreased.

Did I mention that my mom is the Queen of Making Things from Scratch? We absolutely never had mac and cheese out of a box, and I didn’t even know what Bisquick was until college. Forget about bottled pasta sauce, without which my baked ziti habit could not be fulfilled. I’ve quietly slunk over to the dark side. She would be mortified at my now-dependence on pre-packaged pasta-type products, but I can still make a mean pumpkin cheesecake from scratch. Doesn’t that count for something?

Mm, cheesecake.

That’s it. I have to go get a snack.

Sorry, Mom.