It is a challenge to go to my job everyday and deal with the toxic bullshit that permeates the air of that place. I really don't want to dwell on it but it is a very uncomfortable place to work. Right now, I just need to vent.
My job makes me feel like Sisyphus. I'm rolling that boulder up the hill and when I get to the top. I say to my twenty-something year old co-workers, "Hey, I got this boulder all the way up here. But I'm stuck because of this here hole in the ground. Can you guys help me get it out?". My coworkers, all younger than I and so very lazy, just stare at me while smoking their cigarettes, not saying anything. Then bossman comes over and they complain to him that I'm bothering them. My boss will then scream, "Why are you bothering them, can't you see they have their own work to do?"
I look at them puffing away on their cigarettes and talking about how wasted they got the weekend before. My boss is with them and asking them if they want to get stoned after work.
I try to move the boulder but it gets loose, falls backwards and plummets to the bottom of the hill. I sigh and go back down the hill and my boss catches me, "What are you doing?" he snaps.
I tell him, "I couldn't keep the boulder on the hill because nobody would help me".
Then he will let me have it. It's my job to get the boulder up the hill. He expects me to find a way to get it all the way up that hill. I tell him that I'm one person and that's a 2 ton boulder and that's a massive hill to which he responds that he will get help for me. Why didn't I just ask for help? "But, I did," I tell him....
My boss never gets me help.... I just continue to roll the boulder up the hill only I've given up asking my coworkers. I keep rolling that boulder up and thinking about how great it will be when I am no longer rolling boulders up hills for a living...
I often wonder what's going on with my boss where he's looking for acceptance from a bunch of uneducated, immature twenty-something year old kids who do nothing to elevate his business to the next level. My guess is that he's got some deep psychological issue that stems back from high school which is probably why he's turned his business into high school. He is no longer the dork getting the shit kicked out of him at lunchtime. He is king.
On one occasion, during my first year there, I was forced to go to an office Christmas party and it was one of the most brutal nights I've spent in this town. They were so incredibly wasted, their eyes were barely open. It bothered me so much that I stopped drinking for a few months afterwards because I was terrified that I would end up like that and I had gotten into the habit of winding down with a few glasses of red every night. The coworkers droned on and on and on about themselves. Now, I wouldn't have much of a problem listening if they had anything interesting to say but they didn't. And, whenever I would speak, they didn't seem too interested in hearing what I had to say either.
I don't get them. They don't get me. My boss has criticized me for not hanging out with my coworkers. He said that I've built social barriers around my coworkers. I told him that I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work and most bosses would actually appreciate that quality in an employee.
One of the last company outings, the twenty-something year old poseur gothic chic got wasted and threw up on Boogerman's shoe. Gee, that sounds like fun. Sorry I missed it.
I actually have hung out with coworkers from that place but none of them work there anymore. In fact, I still keep in touch with a few ex-coworkers from that place---people who did not leave on good terms. People who cannot stand my boss and cannot believe that I'm still stuck in that place.
Back in LA, I worked at a major Hollywood studio for 5 years. I made some of the best friends of my life there. So, when I hear from my boss that I have to overcome these social barriers, I can't help but feel the urge to tell him to go fuck himself. But, instead, I just use that acting talent that God (and Tisch School of the Arts) gave me and say, "I'll work on it...." and then coincidentally come up with some cold or get food poisoning the night before the "get together".
I'm not popular there as a result. It's high school and they have made me the outcast. Normally, it would bother me but I just remind myself who these people are and why I should care what they think of me. That damn Ego is a bitch, I tell ya....
Almost a year ago, on my 2 year anniversary, my boss gave me a review. We sat down at a local diner and he told me what an amazing job I was doing. He was giving me a raise! Considering I was already making less than I was used to making, was highly underpaid for someone with my title and was well aware of just how good a job I had been doing, I came to the meeting with a $$ number in my head that I intended to get out of him. I had to be realistic in that he would never give me what the standard rate of pay is for someone with my title. He would never give me benefits like health insurance, vacation pay or sick pay; but, he just might give me just a little more than he wanted to.
He offered to give me a 10% increase which I had pretty much expected. I told him, though, that he would have to do better if he wanted me to not look elsewhere.
My natural born acting talent proceeded to kick into overdrive.
I went on to tell him how i was offered a job the year before for more money and I was forced to weigh the pros and cons of each position. The other position paid more but there was a commute plus there were certain things his company offered that I couldn't get elsewhere. Since I knew this raise was coming, I wanted to give him a chance to give me what I needed to make. I reminded him of the fact that, unlike the rest of his employees, I was in my 40's. I was totally independent. I had a degree from a renowned university and I had more than 20 years of professional experience working for some of the biggest corporations in the world. It's all true. While in both NYC and LA, I temped for some major players in both the music and film industries.
Of course, I shot high. 25% more than what he proposed my new rate of pay be. I, of course, knew that he wouldn't go for it. In the end, I got a raise of just over 22% of what I had been making. And that's exactly what I had entered that meeting wanting out of it.
I was one of the highest paid people in the office before that raise. The one person getting paid more than I quit so now I'm the highest paid person there. My boss is incredibly disorganized to the point that I have found coworkers paystubs simply lying around so I know how much they're making And I bet they know exactly how much I'm making.
Because he pays me so much, he rides my ass constantly and because he pays them so little, he lets them get away with whatever they want... I don't think they get paid "too little" as my boss has told me. I'm the only employee there with a college education. His favorite--- the poseur goth chic who doesn't even know who Bauhaus or Sisters of Mercy are---worked at Target as a cashier before joining his team.
I will probably get a lot of slack for this but people from my generation who were forced to reference Encyclopedias or visit the library when writing term papers or who drove to the video store to rent a movie are a lot more hard-working than the internet generation. The office "kids" are young and don't know what the world was like before .com. The internet makes things too easy and it makes people lazy. Just like poseur goth chic who, while knowledgeable when it comes to computers and web language, she can't spell worth a shit and is incredibly lazy. Before there was spell check there was... a dictionary and index cards!
About six months after getting that 22% raise, all those "pros" like being able to work from home, a flexible work schedule, not being forced to punch out for lunch were all taken away from me. He has put all his faith into Boogerman's mother's company who he's hired as business consultants. They're making all these changes, like hiring a "Human Resources Consultant", none of which I see benefit the bottom line of the company. But my boss is too much of an amateur to see that. His business is a sinking ship. I have no doubt in my mind that he's on borrowed time.
I can write a novel about that place. But, why? What's the point? I'm doing everything in my power to get out of there. I couldn't work any harder than I am. But when I'm hormonal and it's dark and dreary (like it's been most of this week), and Mercury is in retrograde so everything is at a standstill, it's hard to see the light.... It's hard to be optimistic. I feel tired and, when I think about going back to that place, I hurt all over... from my head to my heart to my groin.
There is a constant light in my life, though. Her name is Magic and she's my baby.
Magic is what gets me through days like these where there is no light in sight.
I adopted her a little over a year ago.
I love cats. ALL cats. There are 3 cats that were abandoned here by somebody who used to live in the chicken coop (yes, there is a chicken coop on the property that was converted into living quarters). My neighbors (and I, for a period) adopted the cats. Every now and then they would sleep over but they didn't feel like mine. My neighbor was also really attached to them and I could tell she was annoyed when they would hang out in my place. I started missing them when they would leave and disappear for days. I started craving my own cat... not one that I would have to share with the neighbors.
It was just over a year since Boo and Adam died and I thought I was finally ready to adopt my very own kitty. I went to a local shelter and hung out. This was the same place I adopted Boo and, for whatever reason, I just couldn't bring myself to adopt another cat from that place. I also wasn't really feeling IT with any of the cats there.
I had been looking online for local cats. Black cats are, apparently, the least adopted cats because of the stigma attached to them. There were a few that looked cute but one, in particular, reminded me of Sade and that's what took me to the neighboring county's shelter to meet her. While she does resemble Sade in many ways, Magic couldn't be more different.
Sade was an independent cat. She lived on the streets of NYC for at least a year before she was taken in by the lady I eventually adopted her from. Magic was taken to the shelter when she was about 2 months old. She was taken in with at least one sibling because, when I adopted her, she was in a small cage with her sister. She was so cute... so was her sister. If I was in a better financial situation, I'd have adopted them both but there was something about Magic.
Magic is needy. She's not used to being alone. She craves attention and meows incessantly. I get irritated sometimes but then I have to remind myself that she didn't live alone on the streets of NYC like Sade but spent most of her life before I adopted her in a small cage with her sister.
I am grateful for Magic. She knows me and she loves me. She is happy when I come home. She's happy when I sing to her. She even knows when mom is meditating and she leaves me be and goes to sit on her perch during this very sacred time.
No comments:
Post a Comment