Tag Archives: work

The stuff nightmares are made of…

15 Sep

This week I’ve been plagued by some crazy nightmares. Not the kind that involve monsters or death, but the kind that to me are infinitely more frightening: the kind that are based in reality and involve a total brainfart on my part.

For example, last night’s nightmare featured me blogging about how I’ve only had six vacation days this year – followed by a scene in which my boss tells me I’ve incorrectly tracked my days and have actually taken 24 days of vacation – PLUS the five I’m out on now – and as a result I need to pay the company back for my excessive absence. My favorite part was when I said, “Hold on. You mean you track this in a SPREADSHEET?” like it was the craziest thing an employer could do, and she asked how I tracked my days and I started to demonstrate by counting on my fingers.

At least, I’m pretty sure that didn’t actually happen. Yet.

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It’s not a job; it’s a vocation.

23 Jun

You hear people talk about callings and vocations all the time. “Oh, it’s not a job,” they tell you with a slight trace of superiority, “I would do it even if I weren’t paid.”

I’ve always been like, “Yeah, sure. Let me know how your mortgage works out for you.” That is, until today.

I think I finally was able to see it.

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My iPhone is a bigger bitch than I am.

16 Jun

Alan is coming in tonight to (hopefully) hang out. We’ve both been buried with a lot of work lately – hence the “hopefully” in that sentence. Anyway, his goal was to arrive at my place around 4pm so he could buckle in and wrap up his day here before we venture down to my old place to get some of the last few items out of it then off to dinner.

It’s now 6:15pm and instead of Alan, I get a text from him. The message is along the lines of, “Sorry! Running late. Day is a cluster. Moving as fast as I can!”

It’s nice of him to send me that, because generally I am stickler about punctuality. I plan down to the nanosecond, so if you’re even five minutes off, it has probably sent my universe into a tailspin and I’m pacing the floors or tapping my foot, getting decidedly bent out of shape.

But tonight, I’m  still trying to crank out some work and not eyeing the clock, so I’m not upset that he’s running 2+ hours behind schedule. Except, when I go to respond to his text, my phone has a mind of its own.

I try to write, “Jiggy!”

Steve Jobs decides to auto-correct me. So instead, my response to Alan’s news that he’s running late is: “Night!”

Hmmm. Is it possible for technology to be passive aggressive? If so, I think I might need more of it.

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Overheard: And I thought MY job was challenging…

5 May

This morning at National Airport, I stood in line at Fuddrucker’s to order breakfast for my flight to Chicago. Behind me, three flight attendants waited to do the same. They were talking shop and one of them said in a dramatically hushed voice, “Did you hear what we found on the plane yesterday?”

Another one said, “No – what?”

And the first girl mouthed something at her, with eyebrows raised.

The other one said, “Huh?”

And the first girl repeated her mouthing, only more dramatically this time.

The other one said, “I must be dense because I don’t understand you. Why don’t you just say it?”

And the first girl snapped, “Because I don’t want the whole public to know! I’ll tell you later!”

While I found this exchange funny, it was only once I boarded my plane and saw the same three flight attendants standing in the rear galley organizing sodas that I began to appreciate the irony of the woman’s attempted discretion. As they stood there sorting Sprite, they loudly shared work-related stories that might not have needed an audience.

Among the snippets…

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