Category Archives: Gainful Employment

Them Chickens Is Ash and I’m Lotion

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DO NOT use these elevators. However, there is no indication that the numbers actually relate to the elevators the sign hangs next to. These signs are not on every floor. Additionally, the only elevators that open are the possibly-taboo elevators.

I could not resist the potential of the taboo elevators. What was in them? Doubloons? Narnia? $240 worth of pudding? An elevator operator saying, “ROOM FOR ONE MORE!”?

I stepped onto one of the verboten elevators and a panel hung menacingly from its hairlike wires. It did not go. I stepped into the next, illegal elevator that opened: it was perfectly well-behaved and lurched up to my floor and I dropped my item off.

On the return, finally, finally, the one of the non-taboo elevators opened and I stepped into it. It smells like electrical fire smoke. The stairs smell like solvent.

Without our daily tiny mindfuck, do we forget we are little cogs and begin to aspire to other things?

OOH Bitch That Ain’t Fair Give That Horsie Back His Hair

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Hey. Heeeeey. Sexy man on my vending machine. Baby, I like the way you eat that potato chip. I can see all the way back there. Kind of wish I had a dick to cram in there, but I could probably find something else in a pinch. Man, do you still have your tonsils? That’s pretty hot. I have mine in a jar at MAH CRIB. Yes, for reals. Do I look like the type of person who would just say I have my tonsils in a jar at MAH CRIB if that was untrue? That hurts, baby.

Yes, I know snacking is an important personal decision, or at least that’s that the sign next to your sexy head says. I still don’t want to pay two bone for a bag of peanuts with a weird sweet coating. You know, when I squint my eyes, you look kind of like my geometry teacher. Sort of like that, or one of my aunts. I really like your ethnic ambiguity. Feeling included is making me want to eat potato chips. Also not feeling like anyone else is excluded. That is making me want salty snacks as well. You sort of look like the dude version of a Bratz doll. What kind of accent would you have? HEY, you’re not a digital composite, are you? I think you might be.

That’s okay, I’m open-minded.

IN OTHER NEWS: Could I Please Have a Look at the Lyrics?

On Saturday I went to the Symphony. I had heard the Seattle Symphony was like totes casual, like we just need to keep it real and hear some damn music, there’s no time for peacocking. FALSE. Seattleites are lazy as hell with disgusting personal habits. I dressed up, but MY BADS it was Final Fantasy, so there were people there in costumes. Can people not contain their appalling personal problems for one night? No, they cannot. Bonus: I discovered that not only are they still manufacturing tuxedo-print shirts, a wall of unholy neckbeards wearing them can sashay toward you as you are innocently on your way to the bathroom. The composer was there with a giant fish and there was a huge screen behind the musicians. It was still pretty cool though, when you closed your eyes.

I am going to a wedding this weekend (not mine FTW) and Hazel is coming and sleeping at my house. I am her date. I didn’t see her for months and now twice in a summer. It’s amazing what a difference having a little extra money and not working constantly and odd hours makes. Also I am getting close to fleeing the country with my shiny new passport for a weekend with Franny. How happy I am to be traveling with her again so soon. She is back from her dad’s now after a two-week sojourn so I will probably be writing more now. I was sort of at loose ends without the routine she makes for me.

The conversation recap from breakfast was Franny recounting sacking up and asking her stepmother why she is not allowed to say “butt” when she’s there. Of course the butt-deprivation resulted in an acapella duet to butts and vulvas, and how awesome they are. It would be an overstatement to say I enjoy this. Let’s say I feel benignly toward this. Strudel is struggling with this as well. She wants to use the proper names for her body parts, and in her summer program these words are known as “bathroom words.” On one hand, I don’t like to hear the proper names for things referred to this way, on the other hand, Feral Dwarf, do you have to talk about your VULVA constantly? Do we need to hear that it likes the quesadillas? Does it need 27 sonnets and an epic? Why can’t my children rebel by aspiring to get an MBA?

So what we are working on now is APPROPRIATENESS. Yes, yes, my very existence is ironical now. I think Strudel is probably going to grow up to be one of those menstrual blood artists or something. I will come to her openings.

Things I cannot stop with today: 1. Shakira’s new single, She-Wolf, GOD HELP ME. LOOK at this PREVIEW. She is a Hooters girl up to her NECK and is in a cage. SO MUCH AWESOME. 2. The last Girl Talk album. 3. Seattle has awesome hiphop, even if people are slobs. 4. Also Tony’s Bitch Track.

“What you need is a fatty-boom-batty blunt, and I guarantee you’ll be seeing a sailboat, an ocean, and maybe even some of those big-titted mermaids doing some of that lesbian shit”

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On Saturday I went back to The Mall. Yes, that mall, my home-away-from-home and/or prison for five long months this winter. One thing that’s important for you to know, if you haven’t figured out already, is that I am a person at odds with myself. I wrestle with where I’ve come from and what my life is like as an adult. Every choice I’ve made has either involved me trying to improve myself, often to the point of putting on airs, like my decision to take le Fronch in le eighth grade instead of Spanish, which was a gateway drug to snobbier things; or it’s been a decision that has involved me tearing myself down back to where I think I belong, which is wearing a tube top to the monster truck rally while balancing a Solo full of SoCo on my giant pregnant belly. I dunno.

So when I was younger and first entered the horrifying world of work I made every attempt to find something dignified, or at least hip, to do. I wedged myself into the record store rat track early, and did not leave until halfway through college. I felt relieved and smug about the fact that I had avoided the mall morass that so many of my friends had gotten into, which left them glazed-looking, overly-chilled from the air conditioning, and smelling vaguely of corn dogs. And bitter about the entire human race. Very, VERY bitter. Because who doesn’t go to the mall? Especially in the middle of winter when it is pouring and the economy is utterly going to hell in the backseat of a Volkswagen?

Lesson: there is no uniting factor about who goes to the mall. The most specific thing you can say about a person who walks through the doors into the cool Muzak is that they are human beings. Probably. Other places I had worked in the past collected people with common interests. Record stores: music. Coffee houses: paying too much money to get fatter. Evictress: deadbeats. University writing tutor: weepy ESL students. You get what I’m saying here.

I had looked for professional work for about three months this summer and I was getting interviews but no offers. The closest I came was second-runner up for a company that did insurance-related stuff, which I was both relieved and disappointed not to get, since it looked like a dead-end, albeit a really comfortable one in an office downtown with plushy leather chairs, bookshelves, grandfather clocks, and potted palms. I spent more and more time on Craigslist and got increasingly farther from what I wanted to be doing category-wise: into part time and the dreaded “Misc,” which is like the job equivalent of “???” in the personals (“M seeks ? who enjoys rubbing and popping balloons, being submerged in mac-n-cheese, and Strap on Saturday“).

(On second thought this sounds kind of awesome. Email me at this domain.)

BUT I DIGRESS. Veering off into the other categories on ye olde CL led me off into exciting holiday retail opportunities. Here was a store I had shopped at for years that did not seem totally evil, and well, if it was at the crazy ghetto mall downtown, that would probably lend itself to some really great writing material later, right? I was sure if they offered me a job I would bounce out of there, having scored some rad professional gig by Christmas, tops. RIGHT? Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.

It was cosmetics work and I jumped into it with both feet and developed a sort of a persona and look to cope with what horrors were in store. Sasha Fierce: Mall Edition. Basically I was a busted-ass version of a MAC girl with doorknocker earrings. I did interviews and copious amounts of running and sleeping on my days off.

I was also lucky enough to face my fears and snobbery on one of my very first days at work. I was outfitted in my apron and my slut warpaint when someone I worked closely with in library school (but had lost touch with after) walked in and we came face-to-face. The last time I had seen her, she was attempting to help me launch myself into the PhD program at my school. (Ah, remember that? Ass zits FTW Y/Y?) 

“SJ!” she said, looking confused. “What are you…doing here?”

This was it. I had to own it. Where could I go, anyway? There was no hiding.

“I WORK here. Crazy, huh?”

“Wow, great,” she replied. “Okay, well, see you around.” She literally started backing out slowly with one of her besties whom I recognized from grad school as well, who was standing in the doorway looking sort of perplexed at me, like I was a bug. “Take care….”

My face burned. Six years of school. I had done…things. I was a published writer, MAAAAN. People recognized me on the street and addressed me as “Asshole.” (Okay, dubious pride over the last point.) What was I doing there? I was a thirty-one-year old mallbitch who worked closing and weekend shifts and rarely saw her children. I was supposed to be lecturing someone on hidden penises in Rococco clouds or working in an art library somewhere. I should have at least married a more ballin’ drug dealer. Left turn at Albuquerque and all that. There was a lot of OH GOD OH GOD what have I done, apply booze, rinse, repeat.

That was kind of a hinge for me. I stepped out of my notion of what I should be doing and into the reality of what I was doing. The “worst” had happened: I had been spotted at the most tragic mall in Seattle in an apron, not even allowed to work the register yet, and survived. Something else happened over time, too. I came to see the mall for what it was: its own little society, with a complex social system and hierarchy. Instead of just skimming the surface I got sucked in and became part of it. More on that later.

In Other News: Tell Your Bitch to BE COOL

I will spray you with some boring truefax before I get out of here. As usual, my blog sitch is hosed. I am working on upgrading WP and closing all comments, so you should be on the comment approval tip the first time through. Also I got this hilarz craigslist computer as a gift and it is popping and locking on me. I think I need moar ramz and am hoping I can pry them out of Hester Prynne’s corpse.

googleeyes

Googley eyes and fringe by MOI.

Not a Girl, Not Yet a Cougar

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Today I test well with the 18-24 demographic who enjoyed talking to me all day long about my pretty pink hair. Seriously, mall boys? I know you didn. I think I’m ovulating or something, except rather than planning to ruin the lives of these boys by leaving a trail of STDs, outstanding parking tickets, etc., I am instead focusing on inanimate objects or moods. Music is so beautiful today and everything smells so good. I am in love with the world rather than the people in it and this is disturbingly transcendent and non-carnal of me, so I assume it’s just a phase.

I kind of wish I could go on a rampage of Epic Rake proportions but I just don’t have it in me. I have that feeling like in dreams where I walk from room to room, immediately forgetting the previous room and being completely incurious about what’s going on with strangers I hardly know, who insist on dropping tantalizing tidbits before me. I used to feel like it was my duty as as a writer to actively rubberneck, to catch the essence of life, distill it, and bottle it into a few words that would actually make people give a shit about something and feel glad that they woke up this morning. Maybe it’s because I actually am writing more lately, so I am out of Humanity Research mode. If we are not already besties, I am probably not the best person to tell about your colon operation or your affair with your Esperanto professor. NO.

There is this little part of me that is concerned I am coming off as a giant feckless douchebag, and this other part of me that doesn’t care. How long is it reasonable to stay in survival mode? Is it ground gained and lost again? I usually do things more dramatically and decisively, like Wonder Woman gets her fucking powers back all the sudden and kicks out the wall. Now, I don’t know. I feel like I can do things by halves.

Thursday night I spent throwing up and my prime suspect is dodgy pub nachos, since everything else I ate that day was awesome and lovingly caressed by artisans holding degrees who are located within a ten-mile radius. It’s either the nachos or some stuff I ate off the ground after I left the pub. Tough call. While I was ill Franny’s stepmother came over and used the bathroom and no doubt took in the squalorous state of my sickhouse. Part of me feels judged by the smug contingent who have only been married once (Big ups, go Team Inertia) and the other part of me thinks, WELL WELL, just wait until you are a used up slattern with piles of debt and recycling that needs taking out. JUST WAIT.

Also, I want to tell you that the thing I forgot about retail is that you are absolutely trapped and are completely under the thrall of the public and their whims. I would like you to do a ten-point inspection of me and tell me why every time I work retail portly men in their fifties decide I am the fucking tits. Show your work. I keep getting older but these guys stay the same age. Cripes.

Today’s Horoscope: Today you will get caught sniffing your ring finger on the bus repeatedly, producing a look of shock and revulsion, but you will be unable to stop. You will find a pink hair in your food, which you will blame on me. DNA testing will clear my name, but what you don’t know is that the SPIT is mine.

Lucky numbers: FUCK RIGHT OFF.

P.S., Gave up and ordered a Vista recovery disk. I am a little afraid that Vista owns me now. OSes will move on, but Vista and I are tied, I fear. You never forget the one who made out with you at the movies, dented your car, talked you into London Bridging but then made you soup, and then got away. Despondent sonnets to follow; watch this space.

Dudes

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I have two things to tell you. One, after months of jonesing, I am finally listening to my very own Blossom Dearie CD. It’s really the little things. She makes my brane melt a little.

TWO my boss called me a bad swear today. My boss is the IRL version of Steve Carrell. I am quite sinsur. Also my coworker told me today she’s packing a heater. I don’t want to know these things. No I do not.

Three. (Bonus Round) I also got a Diana Krall CD of standards that I somehow missed in the last couple of years. There is something about her now. Something disconcertingly Sinatralike. I love Sinatra, but I don’t know if I need another one in my life.

Four. Mr. Klassy is coming back! He is laying eggs! MR. KLASSY COME HOME. ALL IS FORGIVEN. I am going to drive to his farmhome on Saturday and get her. Apparently she was a bit of a pariah. Polishes are really mellow birds, so I am not too surprised in hindsight. I offered my friends my dudlike Buttercups, but shockingly they declined. The Buttercups are laying now and they make smallish white eggs. Anyone want some fucking buttercups?

FIVE I had to work up to Franny’s bedtime, so I said hi to her when I came home. She went all babymush on me and stuck her arms out and said MAMA. I said, “Come on kid,” and she climbed into my bed, where she is snoring right now. She was at her dad’s for a week after Xmas and that makes her all weird.

Six. Speaking of weird, the threads continue to unravel. Have you ever put on an outfit that you are pretty sure is a bad idea, but you really want to wear it so you do it anyway? Dig if you will the picture, of pants too large and a top slightly too small and socks that keep falling down. You are fidgeting at your pants to keep them up and OH the socks are itchy and what’s this? The bastardy shirt flips up over your muffintop. This is bad. Did your bra strap just break? What the fuck?

I am feeling a little bit like that about life lately. I get one goo ball up and five more fall down. All this preamble is to tell you that I lost it a little in a sad fashion in the store I work in. I have this history with dogs. We’ve never gotten along too well. I realized recently, now that I have been running, that the feeling of unease I get when a dog is coming is fear. Problem: there are approximately 4.9 dogs to every human in Seattle. People in Seattle deem it appropriate to bring dogs into GROCERY STORES here. So of course people bring dogs into the store where I work.

It was all over the place, too. I felt totally trapped. Non-swearing boss asked me if I was okay, because apparently I turned white and started shaking. I had to step outside. The best part was that the dog was one of those floor sweepers that weighed about five pounds. I am now afraid of things that weigh less than my own head. I am officially crackers.

There, I said it. I just became a Larry David character. I predict that Kleenex box hands are about a year out. Spazzychow out.

Xmas for Jerks

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What’s up, Xmas humpers? Life is pretty good because my BFF is in town, and I may get to see her once or twice. She is a busy lady. I am on one of my cooking sprees, of course, due to being trapped in the house all holiday style. Yesterday I started drinking eggnog at about three NOM and it made me all sleepy by dinner, but my secret superpower is that I can take a wee tiny mininap where I just shut down, wake up in ten minutes, and can go five more hours. I do it a lot when I am flying or traveling. I jumped up and literally started doing high kicks, and then put the crab cakes in.

Xmas Eve means seafood. I have read that this is an Italian tradition, but for once when I was growing up they were out of the picture on Xmas eve. My stepfather was allergic to fish, but he would stay out getting tossed all Xmas eve, so my mom would serve it. Now I grow up and it is a happy tradition. Hell, it always was happy, because it meant he would be gone til the wee hours so I didn’t have to be mute and careful. I loved any meal where I was allowed to speak.

Years later it is no mystery why I hated holidays for years. I remember one year on his birthday, also December, we made a cake and wrapped his gifts and he didn’t show up. It got later and later and I was sent to bed. In the early morning he came home and my mom threw his cake at him. I slept through one of these messes, for once.

So I made crab cakes and quick boiled and chilled unpeeled shrimp to peel and eat with cocktail sauce and there was some funky rice mix thing and those fail carrots from the backyard. Also rolls that looked like little sofas. Tonight I am making Fucking Beef Wellington (scratch save the frozen puff pastry) and potatoes and trifle for dessert.

I used to make stock from scratch and everything from scratch, but I am taking shortcuts this year as I am not entertaining. Often that doesn’t matter, I will do it all from scratch anyway, but I am not quite fully in it this year. I’m really pretty happy right now (happy-ish…I could do with some more moneys) but I feel like I am in some kind of weird zen undead Bodhisattva Zombie Jesus phase where I am not quite here. I am one foot in the home and hearth, and one foot out in the world, and a mysterious third foot deep inside my head. The result of this is that my house is not very clean and the gravy is coming out of a jar, but this too shall pass. I will find my feet and know what I want to do again.

Speaking of moneys, I am officially hired for retail job, beyond Xmas. I think I can get forty hours, which means survival and a little beyond. There is this part of me that knows that I am competent and good with people face-to-face, and it turns out I can sell like a motherfucker (WHO KNEW?) so of course my boss pulled me out of the rest of the holiday rabble. There is this other part of me that is a little sad that this is what I am excelling at right now, but, you know, if I flunked out of my holiday job, that would be even worse for my self of steam.

Yesterday I applied for three more writing/editing positions. I see jobs I want, I see jobs I should be able to get, but I am sure they are being filled my ass kicking asskickers with like loads of experience on me. I am slumming it in retail and they are slumming it at my level. Craptacos.

Sunday Snowparty

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Oh lordy, the poor chickens. It is in the 20s here and the snow is not budging, surprisingly. The girls have been in and out all day and when they are in we peer at the chickens out the window and they peer back with a WHYYY? The Silkies are hiding in the broody box, Calliope and Veronica are walking around, and the Buttercups, which I understand are Mediterranean birds, are frantically trying to hide on/under each other. They don’t seem to have the clue that they could go in their house or to one of the many places in the yard without snow. Poor dumb bints. I am saving pictures up in my camera to show you from a month or whatever now. My USB cable is on the way!

Otherwise I am doing a short-term editing project that is pretty fun. Staying cozy until I have to pry myself out of my house to go to work. We sold so much useless crap yesterday that today has been declared “casual Sunday.” I am going to wear a dickie and a tube top.

Can I Get a WHAT WHAT, or Maybe Just a Erm, Well.

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What’s up, my dizzles? Nizzles? Frizzles? Whatever.

I am writing to report there is nothing much to report. Isn’t that the best? Maybe I am just checking in to say I have not hung myself in tiny pathetic despair yet. Today I met a man at the bank who asked me what I was listening to. “Those are some big headphones,” he said. I have the BEST answer to keep away guys who actually talk to me, especially when I am in my slightly punk rock but mostly retail bimbo mode (read: actual attempt at having…an appearance, there may be eyeshadow involved): JAZZ. Or hip hop. That dries things right up with Mr. No One Knows I Am Wearing Girl’s Pants. But Avast and Forsooth he took it to the next level.

“What kind?” he said.

At this point I was tempted to go all Candy Dulfer on his ass for lulz and victory, but I told the truth that I was listening to like 60s style stuff. And he was all, tell me moar, so I told him I was listening to Carumba by Lee Morgan. Then he was like, “OMFGBBQapocalypse” because he is all into the 60’s jazz trumpet as well.

Then I got quizzed, at which point a line was starting to form behind me.

“Do you have The Rajah?”

“Yes.”

“Last Sessions?”

“Yes.”

“Cornbread.”

“YES.”

“I think that one’s OUT OF PRINT.” A vein was bulging out in his forehead and I was kind of excited that there was bulletproof glass between us. He asked me if I use the internet to download music. Bitch, I downloaded YOUR MOM.

“Yeah,” I said. “I am notorious internet pirate.” It is important to start dropping articles when one speaks of these matters. He scribbled a website for me to get Blue Mitchell albums I am missing, and he invited me to come back many, many, many times. I am not kidding. And, duh, it’s my bank, so I think I will.

This seemed auspicious to me, because after drinking delicious godfathers and telling srcsmgrl that I would not be dating EVER AGAIN JUST LAST NIGHT, I decided to start dating again this morning. You don’t know me, I’m still a mystery to you. One thing I have discovered about my mysterious self is that, and this is not going to be what you expect, which is that as soon as I say one thing, I do the opposite–NO! This is to tell you that sometimes I wake up and I’ve just snapped. The switch goes off. Some people may call this behavior manic, and those people don’t know where their dog went or who keyed their car. Others call it DECISIVE, and those people have smoothly-surfaced autos and dogs that they can cherish in the right now, and not just the memory.

Meeting weird random man at the bank made me think that maybe I’m not a total leper and maybe I can have a conversation with someone. Because of my interests and likes (wine tastings, aforementioned Ye Olde Jazz, Broadway musicals, bed and breakfasts, reading socioeconomic analysis about China) sometimes I feel like my best match is probably a fifty-year-old gay man. Probably not going to happen. But, you know, it’s been like six months. W00t unassailable human spirit in the face of common sense and the actual possibility of me actually being happy! That’s cheerful. Yeaaah.

In other news, I was offered a fulltime job on the third shift, but I decided not to take it. I am already feeling fairly isolated as it is, and I think going graveyard will just up that. It pays less than retail job, so I think I will just stick out RJ since they are still threatening to make me fulltime there. I had a bubble tea today. GOTTDAM I LOVES THE MALL. Mall old friend I embrace thee. I will never leave you again, even if I get a better job, which I will soon.

P.S. It are snow here, let me out.

Your Frankly Vulgar Red Pullover

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Me: So, some people from grad school came into the store the other day, and they were all “OMG, what are you doing here?”
X: Yeah?
Me: Yeah, and I was like, “Working. Trying to get a professional contract.”
X: How was that?
Me: Weird. And then they sort of decided not to stay in the store at all and backed away and out slowly, with their eyes all wide. It felt bad. I’m just working.
X: Maybe they were thinking about how they could end up.

END UP! Have I “ended up”? Is it over? Does anyone, personally, think that they’ve ended up? Even if you use that term, you usually mean it like, “Now I am catching you up on the story of how I ended up working HR at a bank, ZZZ.”

My BFF has my back, though, about one of the women who were big-eying and backing away.

K: Wasn’t she phD FAIL and flailing for a good time there?
me: Yes, she got in and quit I think.
K: I rest my case.
me: Roffle
You have my back.
K: And I will cut a bitch.
me: Thanks
K: Don’t let the mean girls get you down.
me: I don’t think it needs to be awkward. I mean, I am prepared to run into people I know. It just felt like a scene out of Dickens all the sudden or something.
K: hee
me: People gotta work dude
K: Okay, I have a tiny cold and you made me snort snot down my face.
me: Master’s degree is not magic.

I know someday I’ll look back at this time, and I’ll say, A. if only I could have tricked someone into have sex with me and then to go home immediately after and B. why did I think that sweater looked good on me??

Tooodally at the Mall

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What is working at the mall like? I hear you wondering, you blessed three people who escaped this fate. It seems like young people who are not doing manual labor go one of two ways: restaurant or retail. I went retail, because although the work is dirty (in the sense of actual dirt) and the people are often jackasses, you don’t get food all over yourself. I did have a dalliance with coffee for a while, but it broked my carpals and made me smell like dairy barf. DAINTY.

1. My coworkers’ average age is 20. There are a couple of people who are near my age, but when I say things like NOOOO THEY TOOK MY BUCKET they just cock their heads and look at me funny. Don’t panic, I’m from the internet.

2. I am captive to whomever comes on off the street. I was alarmed the other night because someone came into the mall entrance and yelled, “LISTEN UP!” I was ready to hit the floor and crawl out the back, but then one of my coworkers said, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s a fraternity ritual.” He yelled his name or something and then walked out. We also had the meth heads who somehow got their mitts on a generic mall card that could be spent in any store. I guess nothing in our store looked resellable, because they left pretty quickly. This was a relief because though the girl was tiny (90 pounds, seriously) she smelled like she had shit her pants with a massive shit that you would imagine being produced by, say, John Goodman. Then there was the old letch who immediately upon coming in swooped up and put his arm around me. I backed away, but he kept touching me, until I almost bolted. I may look like a retail bimbo with my eyeliner and giant earrings, but don’t touch my bikini, doods.

3. There is a guy who works at the mall with a cool shiner. I am going to ask him if he will be my friend. I love shiners.