Do Not Underestimate The Power of The Random Text

It was an all-too ordinary day. I was silently bemoaning the fact that I'd worked so hard in college only to become a glorified copy-paste monkey—and a Corporate glorified copy-paste monkey at that—and willfully wallowing in the twisted mire of overlying deadlines.

Loud Guy down the hall was carrying on as if the world were truly coming to an end, and I'd not only had to put my headphones on to counteract his jarring verbal spurts and spasms, but I'd had to turn it up to phone-jamming level as well.

(Not that anyone ever called me. At least, not that I'd really need to respond to promptly for some dramatic copy-paste emergency, anyway.)

In short, my imaginary friends, it was—as I said at the onset of this blather—an all-too ordinary day. And then the text message buzzed in, sending vibrations through my computer's docking station (atop which my cellphone rested), and breaching the audio moat that protected me from the interferences of the outside world.

I did not turn off my music, so I'm not really sure how loud my laugh was, or if it interrupted Loud Guy's rhythm for even a moment. But when I flipped open my phone and read this message from a dear friend:

Whenever im constipated, i think of u.

Well!

The all-too ordinary day became delightful, original, and fun. And the moment—that tiny, silly, spur of a moment—returned to me at irregular intervals throughout the day, making me giggle when nothing was funny, and easing the sting of its predefined ordinariness.

And it's STILL doing that.

Remember The Denim!

In my prime, I possessed a number of jeans somewhere in the vicinity of the number of pounds I am now past my prime. Now, 40 pairs of jeans might sound excessive, but as fond as I remain to this day of the variety and comfort level of the humble denim pantaloons, it was nowhere near what I would have liked.

Just call me the Imelda Marcos of Denim.

Yes, some ladies like handbags, and some like shoes, and while I'm not at all opposed to either of these addictions, what came naturally to me was a craving for denim. Because this was—back in the skinny day—a need easily (and relatively cheaply) fed by the local Goodwill store, I didn't feel bad about it, either.

While certainly the fact that I've FAR surpassed the maximum capacity of my favorite jeans at this point has something to do with me not wearing them on a daily basis anymore, the fact that Corporate does NOT approve of denim is actually the main reason. Gone are my comfortable days of goes-with-everything denim, and instead I find myself in the weird world of pants that need to be IRONED before wearing.

*shudder*

Corporate is not entirely without a soul, however. At least at our local office, they rent a soul for ONE DAY—one very special day—every month, and on that day, all us tired, hungry-for-denim masses yearning to dress comfortably are thrown a tiny little Corporate Bone: we get to wear jeans! As you might well imagine, I committed that date to memory immediately upon discovering it in the comprehensive Corporate Dress Policy.

There's even a person in our working group who, a day or so before the hallowed Monthly Jeans Day, sends a mass e-mail reminding people of the event.

In the tradition of long-established tradition, there are several corollary traditions that have sprung up around Jeans Day. One of these appears to be an inside joke featuring a woman by the name of Jean, and another by another name, and we were all let in when the Jokester hit "Reply All" to the regular monthly "Jeans Day!" e-mail, "And next month, it's Other Names Day!"

Another case is that of a fairly new hire, who is purported to track his time to retirement in terms of Jeans Days. I think this is just about the only way I could find to degrade the concept of Jeans Day: if I had to think, each month as I donned my beloved denim, that there were now "only" 368 Jeans Days remaining until I could WEAR JEANS EVERY DAY LIKE NATURE INTENDED, I might not enjoy Jeans Days much at all.

My primary objection to the concept of Jeans Day, though, is in relation to those reminder e-mails. Honestly, if you don't care about jeans enough to remember the ONE DAY A MONTH you are permitted to wear them to an office that NO OUTSIDER CAN ENTER WITHOUT A SPECIAL PASS FROM SECURITY, then by golly, I contend that you don't deserve to wear jeans that day, either.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Because I'm an erratic spaz—and a redundant erratic spaz, at that—my tales of Corporate Bathroom Woe contain a rather impressively huge GAP. Which is to say that I haven't written about The Puker yet. But because that story has more of an overall tone of desperation to it—and desperation just isn't that funny—I'm going to move right along, past the molehill mountain I manufactured out of this little incident, skipping over The Puker, and on to a more personal episode.

While I could just come out and TELL YOU that this here blather only happened as it did due to MENSTRUATION, I am really quite uncomfortable being that direct. Seriously. There are SO MANY WORDS in the world; why would I reveal my entire agenda for this post with just one? So instead of coming straight to the point with a straightforward—but suitably genteel, introductory CAUTION—I would instead like to suggest that those of you who are happy pretending that the female orifice otherwise known as "The Happy Place" is always pristine and ready for fun (you know, as opposed to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, THE AMUSEMENT PARK IS CLOSED DUE TO EXTREME FLOODING AND BY THE WAY I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KILL YOU FOR LEAVING THE @$*%$%@^&@$ TOILET SEAT UP AGAIN, YOU @#$*#@&%^$, GOD WHY DON'T THEY MAKE INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH MIDOL®?), well. This post may not, in fact, be for you.

(Mind you, I'm not going to go into excruciating detail about THE MENSES—no more than I just did, anyway—but the fact remains that without this particular facet of BEING A GIRL, I would have a story to tell here. Or here, but that little episode was supposed to be a surprise.)

ANYway, not long ago, in a Corporate bathroom not far away, I had occasion to use the feminine hygiene disposal unit situated handily in the stall. If you are unfamiliar with the stunning array of styles of such units—and if you are a BOY, you might well be—I shall briefly describe said device as, in this case, a metal box situated between the stalls, with flappy, swinging lids accessible from either stall, lined with plain brown paper bags. In this way, you see, efficiency of space is maximized, although a little assembly is required to cut a hole in the wall and install these ugly—but necessary—devices.

Anyway, there I was, with something to dispose in one hand, my stunningly unfashionable Corporate-approved pantaloons in some disarray, and one free hand. It's a typical issue for us females, so do TRY to have some sympathy for the awkwardness of the moment, while I rejoice—YET AGAIN—at the fact that The Pill permits me to experience these anti-joyous moments only FOUR times a year now, and then imagine what would happen if, in such a moment, one discovered that the swinging flap-door of the aforedescribed between-stall feminine hygiene disposal unit DIDN'T SWING.

Huh, I thought, grateful for the deadly silence of the bathroom (I was alone, thankyouverymuch), it's stuck or something.

It wasn't really even a conscious thought, being SOMEWHAT PREOCCUPIED as I was with the task at hand (so to speak), and so I rather distractedly and not-at-all thoughtfully prodded a bit harder at the non-swinging lid. Hello, I just wanted to trash the trash in my other hand and return to the copy-paste coma that WAS my task du jour! So in a matter of about a second, I went from a standard tap to a bit of a poke—certainly nothing to write the Ironman competition abot—and then, with a sound that can only be conveyed accurately as a SUDDEN SHRIEK, LIKE THE LAUNCH OF A GREAT AND POWERFUL ROCKETSHIP ...

... that entire between-stall box blasted out of its between-stall resting spot, flew into the commode in the next stall, and clattered to the floor with an UNHOLY metal-to-porcelain-to-tile racket that HAD to have transcended the hallowed, quiet, sanctity of the phone booth bathroom stall.

I crouched a bit, to peer through this new window—with intense and renewed gratitude for the resumption of crypt-like silence, and saw the formerly between-stall box lying haplessly on the floor directly in front of the next stall's toilet, which appeared to be injury-free. In fact, it had a bit of attitude, like, "Oh yeah? You think you can take ME? Why, your flappy doors didn't even have the balls to COME WITH YOU on your stupid attack, you dumbass feminine hygiene disposal unit."

As for me, I still had a problem. Well, now I had several problems, and it's surprisingly hard to concentrate when your pants are askew and you have something to dispose of but can't quite reach the garbage, because it went and JUMPED THE FRICK OUT OF YOUR STALL. My other problem was that, after briefly sputtering for the right invective for such a situation, I could NOT. STOP. LAUGHING. That's right, despite full-onset of menstrual mortification—also commonly experienced when a tampon falls out of your purse—and a rising tide of introvert embarrassment avoidance—OH MY GOD DON'T LET ANYONE COME IN HERE NOW—I was laughing like a hyena at the dentist. It was tear-inducing laughter, no less, which is the only thing that makes it possible for me to commit this tale to cyberspace.

Anyway, I did manage to one-handedly pull my pants together, wrap the other THING up in a wad of toilet paper, and zip into the other stall unseen. I made a deposit in the on-floor disposal unit and then shoved it somewhat crookedly back into place, not stopping to confirm that the flaps were flapping or that such a power-shift would not occur again.

And now, I'm on the hunt for a DIFFERENT Corporate bathroom. Because one's got The Puker and one's got Unstable Disposal Units, so despite a fairly major case of trepidation, I'm thinking there's got to be quite a range of bloggable features in the various other bathrooms on campus.

Who knows? Maybe one of them is even a NORMAL BATHROOM.

On a Certain Special Day, I am Awarded a Certain Special Cup

I have a little pop quiz for you guys today, and it doesn't really require its own title, which is a good thing, because I can't think of one that's appropriate and yet doesn't totally give the answer away. Although maybe stating the obvious would be just fine here, because I don't think there's anyone unfamiliar with Murphy's Law or its direct application to the days of the week.

Anyway, the object of the quiz is for anyone who so wishes to correctly identify the day of the week upon which the events I'm about to hyperbolically describe took place. Are you ready? Good, then wipe the sleep out of your eyes and the drool off of your chin and let's begin.

So there I was, class, heading straight to my very first physical therapy appointment for my fuckered-up shoulder. It was a lovely day, with a light breeze and a hint of itchy-eyes/watery-nose in the air—happy spring, and gesundheit!—and I'd never been to the Bent Building, but I had me some highly adequate directions from my referring physician and I was eager to make some progress away from not missing a single allowable dose of anti-inflammatory medications and sleep constantly interrupted by each and every ill-advised roll-over.

Up the stairs I went (and up and up), because there wasn't anything wrong with my legs, and into my appointment I was promptly ushered. My therapist was bright and smiling and efficient, and she showed me stuff to do and told me what was wrong—regular readers may recall that it was basically, "Your posture sucks and you could have dealt with the strain of that, but bashing your shoulder into concrete was just the last straw for those poor, abused muscles."—and then she massaged it. The massage was deep and intense, and it brought tears to my eyes as the therapist easily identified the tense, mottled ball of muscle that I'd been whining about for weeks.

Suffice to say, perhaps, that it was a very productive—if somewhat painful—appointment, and when it was over, I hauled ass back to work because I had a lot to do, fresh from my very first Corporate-sponsored business trip, where I'd done a LOT, but none of it the routine, mind-numbing, soul-depleting busy-work I was typically paid to do.

And there, dear snoring readers, on my keyboard, was a note. The note was from Boss Lady. And the note said: "When you get back, see me."

Being a sensible person and a mature adult, I experienced a moment of sheer panic, rapidly overwhelmed with anticipatory pissed-offedness. She's going to tell me I'm laid off again! I'D BETTER NOT BE FREAKING LAID OFF AGAIN! What? Common sense? I would have none of that stuff, thankyouverymuch, but I had no interest in prolonging this unexpected, shoulder-tensing, stress-laden moment, either, so I promptly made my way through the Cube Maze and stopped inquiringly at the entrance to Boss Lady's substantially-proportioned workspace.

"Hello!" she said with a warm smile that I copied with only an entirely overt air of suspicion.

She folded her hands and continued to force a grin, which didn't do much to ease my concern—nothing, in fact, which is rather less than "much"—and she offered me a seat, which I promptly took.

"Well, you're it today!" she said.

"It?" As in, "TAG, YOU'RE IT?" I hope I won something. Because I'D BETTER NOT BE FREAKING LAID OFF AGAIN! I thought, as I continued to grimace grin.

"Oh?" I said, with unstated benignness, and I neatly folded my hands on the table in front of me. And then forced my knuckles to unwhiten by methodically relaxing my hands.

"Yes," Boss Lady nodded, her smile still in force. And then she sighed, and I could finally smell the hint of wryness behind the smile, JUST as the Boss Lady got down to the task of Revealing The Truth:

"You've been selected for a random drug screening."

And I tell you—HEY! WAKE THE HECK UP! This is where it gets funny!—I was never so happy to have my civil rights trampled upon by Corporate's Self-Righteous NEED To Know What I'm Ingesting On My Private Time. Because, HEY! I'M NOT GETTING LAID OFF AGAIN!

Yet.

I was smiling now in earnest, but I quickly shook off my sudden and over-happy relief, and paid attention. Which was good, because Corporate had quite the well-structured "random" drug-testing procedure, of course, and I had a mere hour to accomplish my second Pee-Test inside of my not-quite-six-months of employment. At which point I was intensely grateful for my on-going Morning Diet Pepsi habit.

"Do you know where the Bent Building is?" Boss Lady sweetly inquired.

"Actually, yes! I just came from a physical therapy appointment there."

Whereupon Boss Lady—who was already aware of my graceless, shoulder-smashing incident and the flurry of medical follow-ups—kindly inquired how that had gone, and I briefly but enthusiastically answered her.

"You just need to go up to the Xth floor ..."

"I just came from there!"

"... and go to the Occupational Therapy desk ..."

I truly couldn't help myself now, and I laughed.

"That's right across from the Physical Therapy desk!"

Boss Lady laughed, too.

"I could have called you there!"

(And she could have, except I hadn't given her my personal cell phone number, and I still haven't.)

"Well, I'd better get going, then," I said, still chortling, and obviously not concerned with the fact that Corporate had their suspicions about me.

(Little Girl's daddy, when I relayed the story to him, simply said, "They must know what music you like. Hell, I'd drug-test you, too!")

And so, off I went. Back to the VERY BUILDING I'd come just from, back to the VERY FLOOR I'd just been to—though I'd never, in 39 rather odd years, been to that building OR that floor before—and at the desk across from the desk where I'd just been, I marched up and grinned at the guy behind the desk, and I said:

"Hi! I just won the prize at Corporate! Do you have a cup for me?"

(He laughed, and not even in a "Oh great, another freak that thinks she's funny" kind of way.)

AND NOW, class, pray tell ... what day of the week was it?

(As if you didn't already know, but the answer's in the comments just in case.)

Class dismissed.

Doubt

It's been a full week since I've written anything in novel or blog. That this unseemly lack of productivity was due more to physical than psychological inability does little for my morale, as the end result is the same: a glut of words in my brain, crowding my low-functioning synapses in their abruptly arrested stampede to escape.

They sit there, gibbering and cross-breeding in unnatural ways, their offspring happily sterile and sadly far less interesting than a liger. If I wasn't already feeling the effects of bitter cold January, dark and lingering and multiplicative with the sheer inelegance of a back rendered throbbingly sensitive by a wrongfully-directed sneeze—with an innocuous little SNEEZE, I caused myself this week-plus of posture-warping back pain ... a SNEEZE ... WTF?—then I should certainly be brought down by a clogged mental pipe of unraveling, unreleased thought.

As in most cases of depression, albethey minor and major, I found that stacking just a few less-than-ideal blocks upon one another resulted in a skyscraper of pointlessness. It wasn't just my back and midwinter that sucked, see, it was everything, and in the deep sea of craptasticness, I more-or-less willingly drowned, spending my heating-pad-relegated time in crushing despair, reiterating every little thing that is wrong in my life and berating myself for it, whether I was solely, mostly, minorly, or not at all responsible.

(Except for most of Saturday, where I was wrapped up in the warm thrall of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, the latter two books in the series that begins with The Golden Compass ... THAT time was deliciously and quickly spent, and not even the odd angle at which I was forced to extrude myself from my chair could warp my spirit during those lovely, escapist hours. DAMN, but I liked those books quite a lot!)

Anyway, you get the idea, my back is a giant wuss and my brain is into self-mutilation, and the past week without writing was largely unpleasant, like mental constipation with cramps. Or something. The one productive—if I may glamorize it by calling it such—thing I did was get to the root of my "I hate my job" issue. I can't say it was so much of a cheery "A-HA!" experience as it was a gloomy "Ohhh" moment, but at least I finally got out of that particular thought-circle and onto the downward spiral away from it and on to the next one.

What happened was this: I was getting ready for another day on the job, and the dread welled up like whines out of the most recently ousted team on The Amazing Race and I paced around my usual depressive loop while barely retaining sour tears. But then it occurred to me to consider—to really, deeply ponder—the WHY of the loathing, rather than simply flop around in my sweltering unhappiness like a fish voluntarily leaping from water.

It seems like an obvious thing to do, I'm sure, but remember the frozen January mire in which I am trapped, please, and top that dreary, sludgy sundae off with the great, big, maraschino-cherry nastiness of stabbing, labor-esque back pain. Mmmm, tastes just like ipecac!

So I finally dug to the root of my problem, and oddly enough, it wasn't just corporateness and having to dress like a grown-up and bland, day-after-day routine and repetitiveness. No, past all that and the mourning of faded on-the-job friendships and the griping of all-executives-are-really-backstabbing-bastards, under the doom and gloom and a thousand other surface complaints, what I found a tiny little pea of a problem that was the root cause of my discomfort under the lovely padded mattresses of regular paychecks and my very own cubicle just down the hall from a double-doored bathroom in which people feel comfortable enough to talk on the phone whilst relieving themselves. And HUM! Yesterday I heard someone HUMMING while she pooped!

But I digress—in an obvious procrastinatorial attempt to escape this self-dictated confessional—so here it is, the truth: I don't like to work hard.

Not satisfied with being a mere lazy slob, I went from the main root to the first branches of it, and there I found that I don't like being challenged. I don't mean because of my many mental impairments either, but rather because of being assigned tasks that are outside or even just hanging off the edges of my warm little ring o' comfort. I don't like having to work hard because I don't like trying to rise to a challenge, and all of that is, of course, because I am afraid that I won't be able to, which means, of course, that I'm as full of the title of this entry as a political debate is full of calculation and blather.

Ouch. The realization of the depths of my lack of personal fortitude struck me like a 2x4 between the eyes, and left a mark in the shape of an "L."

It shouldn't be a surprise, and it's certainly not unique. I don't know anyone who doesn't have their doubts, often about even their own most well-documented strengths. Even an elite marathoner realizes s/he might not finish any given race, and when one isn't a top-level competitor—say, in going on down to the grocery store to purchase a little Gerber® jar of pureed ham for one's much-loved, very ill Old Lady Cat who has refused to eat anything else—there is no guarantee of success. I could have broken my leg after slipping on the flurry of "Winter Storm Warning" flakes outside the store (I didn't), someone could have stolen my wallet (no), or the store might have been flat-fucking OUT of that one variety of sloppy goo (oh yes, they were).

(Thankfully, Old Lady Cat seems to like the fine-ground chicken just as well. And I think what she's got is just a cold, although when you're roughly 92 in people years, there's really no such thing as "just a cold.")

So. Doubt. It would appear that this crafty beast is actually worse than depression. It feeds on anything it can, of course, discriminating not between physical disabilities and mental ones, and it loads every worry with more than its own weight, making it more ferocious and intimidating—as in panic and anxiety—or more inflated and crushing—as in weakness and depression. That I'm no exception to the general rules of human existence should be encouraging, I expect, but with doubt as my monkey on my already-aching back, I cannot be expected to believe that which I so glibly spout into cyberspace.

Really. As if I could just get over it and find my grown-up panties, which I DON'T EVEN LIKE, much less put those things on.

Still, I remain of the opinion that knowledge—however apparently pointless—is intrinsically powerful, I must conclude that as hopeless as my work mood and my general attitude seem, the fact that I've glimpsed their awkward ass ends is, I think, a good thing. Now that I know the true extent of the problem, I have increased my chances—however slight—of putting these bloated issues on a crash diet, so that I can send them packing with one well-placed kick. Or maybe 40 or so of them, like at the end of that GOD-awful Tae Bo® video that I still dredge out on increasingly rare occasion.

Maybe.

Chapter 590, Wherein I Hypothesize That Size Does Matter

The corporation by which I am currently employed is the most massive non-governmental organization by far ever to appear on a paycheck with my name on it. I clarify it that way because I did work for a certain state government at one time, and I'm too damn lazy to go Google the total number of governmental employees in that state to confirm—although I strongly suspect it's true—that my current employer is larger than even that.

I mention this because I've been notably reticent—even for my antisocial self—to be more than casually social with my coworkers at this new place, and (of course), I've been overanalyzing that hesitancy. I thought perhaps it was an illusion wrought by the passage of time—that I wasn't really any more reserved now than I was seven-plus years ago when my last job was new. I considered that perhaps I was making a volcano out of a bump in the road—that hesitancy following personal difficulty is only natural. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something just wasn't right, and there was something subconsciously more to the situation.

That may or may not be true—my subconscious isn't ever going to write a "tell-all," or even a "tell-most"—but I've decided that even if there is a bigger paranoia behind the scenes, the fact that the organization is so massively huge is enough to explain this one of my issues. And religion helped me understand this.

Note to The ListMaker: It's not as bad as it sounds. Keep reading.

I spent a lot of this weekend getting caught up, not in all of the blogs I like to read—although I did some of that, too—but in a few fast-moving current debates at a certain religious debate board that I haunt, all silent and lurking-like. There was some good stuff going there, too, for some newbs unfamiliar with the regulars had made some grossly incorrect assumptions about those folks, and although they initially crowed over their self-defined zingers, they were quickly and sharply zinged themselves, for knowing not a single shit whereof they spoke. So that was good fun, even if the self-satisfied newcomers did not learn a thing, or even read enough of the responses to them to understand that they were very, very wrong in many of their characterizations of the regular posters.

But then there was a little sidebar in one of the longer threads that drew my attention, as it was addressing the question of how much private information—if any—posters revealed at their respective places of employment, past and present. I was fascinated to see how many different perspectives there were on such a seemingly minor point, because I would think that everyone would reveal pretty much the same bit, but some folks were quite emphatic about sharing absolutely as little as possible, all the way down to what sort of car they drove to the street they lived on. And while their reasons seemed superficially paranoid, it became clear to me as the discussion fizzled on, that it was less about fear and more about boundaries.

Some people—particularly those in smaller companies, like the one I used to work for—seemed to feel that work was less like a place they had to go to make money and more like a place they went to visit friends. I'm not saying that these people didn't work, either—just that their workplaces had a different overall "feel," and I think the size of the organization has a lot to do with that. If there's a few hundred or thousands of coworkers inhabiting the same real estate as yourself, for eight or more hours a day, five or more days a week, it's less likely that you will even have a chance to get to the point where you might consider "dropping by" a coworker's home, or razzing them about the richness of their new ride. Hell, in a company with a global presence—and a comparatively large local footprint—you aren't necessarily going to know even the marital status your "closest" coworkers, because there's just so many other people with whom you might interact in any given day.

In other words, if Joe Coworker says "Let's go out to lunch." in a company where the entire workforce could do that without overwhelming a restaurant, you're a lot more likely to get to know personal information about your coworkers than if your building actually has its very own restaurant in it. Although, technically, that's not going "out" to lunch, is it. Well, let me just fix that with a little backtrack of a scratch-out. There. All better.

Anyhoo, in addition to the inherently greater difficulty of making friends with coworkers in a corporate environment, there's certain of us that aren't so much naturally comfortable therein, too. Once I made the size comparison between my current, non-governmental employer and my past governmental employer, I remembered—with a great deal more clarity—how uncomfortable I was starting out in That Place, too. There are a lot more structures and procedures and hideous, vile, NASTY-messy paperworks at such a place; that's just the nature of the increasingly massive corporate/governmental beast. To a certain extent, I think these things tend to lower the chances of forming friendships, by virtue of the way they depersonalize the very possibility of individual personalities.

Granted, not everyone—and I would venture to say not MOST people—"gets" this feeling of alien probe-like discomfort from learning that there's a defined means by which one should organize one's files, a procedure by which one should set one's "personal development" goals, and a means by which one's hours are logged that really should have its own category of "accountable time," because an employee could easily spend more than an hour each week inputting time into it. But I do. I really, really do. And what I gathered from the religious debate board's completely secular discussion of keeping work, work and private, private is that I'm not alone in this.

So, while I'm quite sure that I'm holding back even more than I otherwise would because the layoff scar in the middle of my back is still itchy—yes, as in not QUITE healed, and no, not because I'm picking at the scab, thankyouverymuch—I'm also quite reassured that I wouldn't be all Care-Bear S-H-A-R-I-N-G anyway, much less hearts and flowers and singing birdies.

That stuff is probably not approved by Corporate anyway.

Good WTF Times

I'm having a fair number of "WTF?" moments at Ye Olde New Job, which is, of course, a common hazard of most every new job. Although, because of the errr, "non-standardized" nature of some of my quandaries of terminology, I haven't actually shared many of them with my coworkers, who have been almost obnoxious about letting me know I can ask them ANYTHING about the corporation by which we are all blanketed—nearly to the point of smothering.

I guess I'm just not sure when they say "anything," they really mean to include the warped observances of a perpetually adolescent mind.

Anyway, I discovered one of these issues within the first eight hours of work, though I can't say "on my first day," because fully half of THAT time period was occupied with forms. And more forms. And forms that clarified that I'd been handed still other forms, not to mention their attending explanatory documentation. Truly, if there were any more forms, this place would graduate from corporate status and slide right into governmental territory.

I was on the receiving end of a certain division/complementary organization—it walks a fine line, if you ask me—and even though it HAD been spelled out for me early on, I had that little precursor-to-a-snicker lip twitch every time someone mentioned the acronym, which was POD. You might think that my association of the term would be to the band of the same abbreviation—theirs stands for Payable On Death, which isn't as grim as it might sound, for it is directly tied to a core Christian belief—but no. In my mind, POD means, first and foremost, Princess Of Darkness, which is the nickname give to me by Mr. X.

In case you're wondering, POD in corporate-speak means a much more mundane—and socially-acceptable—Print On Demand.

But truly, even this silliness could not compare with what I discovered later in the week, as I reviewed some non-demand-printed technical information, and I actually snort-barked with only slightly-suppressed laughter—not unlike Beavis and Butthead, but with just a bit of self-consciousness. For there, following page after page of product specifications and variations and sale prices, was a chart, and this chart was conspicuously and—I thought—hilariously titled: "Orifice Chart". Because, you know, if you're going to do, ummm, pretty much anything with an orifice, you'd better know darn well exactly which orifice you're dealing with. And that there chart, well! It could help!

It went especially nicely with the "Unit Size" column.

If I could just encounter a few more "WTF?" moments like this, I just might forgive them for making me dress like I cared about ironing. Good times, I tell you; good effing times.

A Delicate Little Question of Etiquette

The perils of corporate employment are like entering a child's room: you know there are going to be nasty things in there, but you never know exactly when you're going to walk right into them.

And so it was that it came to pass that I had to enter the corporate women's room, again. This zone had already proven problematic for a number of reasons; for example, I don't know about you, but I'm still not certain of the etiquette involved when you discover that the stall you favor is the same one preferred by your boss. Obviously, entering a stall that's already occupied is not an option, but should you then eschew that stall altogether? Or would that be overthinking a non-issue?

Anyway, on the occasion about which I intended to speak when I began this entirely pointless insomniacal interlude was this: I'd entered the bathroom and was immediately assaulted by loud, rapid-fire conversation that was both annoyingly animated and inconveniently incomprehensible, as it was being conducted in a language with which I was entirely unfamiliar.

Not being a fan of stall-to-stall discussions, particularly when the participants are not located in adjacent stalls, I nonetheless assumed a position between the two closed doors. While preparing to do my business—hey, dressy pants aren't as easy to undo as jeans, what with their multiple means of closure—I couldn't help but notice that aside from a very brief pause or two, Loud Talker #1 had not given Silent Participant #2 a chance to get a word in edgewise.

There was also something else bothering me about the entire scenario, but I couldn't quite figure it out ... I searched my limited repetoire of visits to this particular bathroom, trying to isolate the niggling concern, and that's when it hit me: the other closed door had been the handicapped-accessible stall at the end of the row, and due to the outward-swinging nature of its door, it was always closed, regardless of its state of use or non-use.

The full horror of the situation hit me like a slap on the cheek—no, not THAT cheek—a moment later when, during a very brief silence in Loud Talker #1's stream of foreign language consciousness, I heard the small but unmistakable sound of a slightly tinny version of "Silent" Participant #2's voice emanating from ... the cellphone in Loud Talker #1's stall.

Now I was not only reluctant to attend to the actual, room-appropriate reason I'd entered this bathroom, I wasn't entirely sure I could do it if I tried. The idea of taking a leak in the echo-y confines of a bathroom—corporate or not—that was already in use as a telephone booth was both ooky and uncomfortable. But as I pondered my options, Loud Talker #1, without skipping a laughing, loud-talking beat, did a little business herself.

Oh yes. She "went" there.

My decision instantly and irrevocably made (however silly), I stood, reattached the buttons, hooks, and zipper of my very businesslike pants, and exited without passing "Go." That I had to walk past the still-talking and occasionally going Loud Talker #1 was, I felt, more than close enough, and not having accomplished anything but the dropping of drawers, I did not even feel the need to wash my hands. My own BATHROOM needs were attended to quickly on another floor of the building, thanks to the standard structure of large buildings which tends to stack bathrooms in direct vertical proximity to one another.

But I still don't know what would possibly pass for the proper etiquette response to an utterly improper and rudely presumptuous reassignment of a bathroom stall as a communications facility. And goodness only knows what would Silent Participant #2 would have thought if Loud Talker #1 would have had her statements punctuated by an industrial-strength roar of a FLUSH—hell, with a noise THAT loud, she could have driven right off the road!

No matter how you look at it, or what the "right" thing to do is in a wrong situation, I think it's safe to say that talking on a cellphone in the bathroom is not only a bad idea, but it's a downright crappy thing to do. (Yes, I know that's bad and obvious, but it's also justifiable: you gotta work with the material you're given. Because otherwise, well, you're writing fiction, I guess! Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

War Paint and Battle Scars

The reason for my unexplained absence from both my blog and its conjoined twin—my morning exercise routine—is simple, if not particularly enthralling: I've been assimilated into the corporate realm. On the surface, this may not seem to be as relevant as, say, writer's block and general sloth, but that's only because the obvious positive point of renewed employment—a paycheck!—has been totally eclipsed by the laundry list of routine wage-slave gripes that I'd conveniently dismissed from consideration during my unemployment.

Of all the things I could complain about, though—and there's plenty, with the starring role going to the overnight business trip that I was "strongly urged" to take on my third day of employment, which also happened to be Little Girl's birthday—the most surprising (to me) has been how very badly my feet have taken the transition. Without weekday runs to pain them, one would think they really ought to be grateful—if, indeed, one pondered ridiculously improbably scenarios like sentient appendages at all—but one look at their blistered, broken, and bloodied appearance promptly corrects that mistaken assumption.

Because of the "refined" nature of my new employer's dress code, 94.5% of my existing wardrobe was entirely unsuitable (so to speak) to be worn there at all, even taking into consideration the once-monthly "jeans day." Now, I did have a few shoes that passed muster—constituting the vast majority of the corporate-approved, afore-alluded 5.5%—but said shoes were somewhat cobwebby, attesting to my long-standing tradition of taking full advantage of the ultra-relaxed dress "standards" of my former employer. With tennis shoes and anything resembling tennis shoes cast haughtily into the Thumbs Down column by my new employer, however, I was forced to not only dust off my existing "appropriate" shoe set, but additionally, to purchase some new shoes.

Unlike the purchase of non-denim pantaloons and—may the deity of your choice and also that of your neighbor help me—like-fabricked skirts, though, the hunt for new shoes was something I could actually look forward to! After The Exotic Neurotic minimized my pain in selecting properly fitting and pleasantly LONG slacks by providing invaluable suggestion and direction, I had hoped to top off the shopping experience with some deliciously fun shoe-shopping, but alas, this endeavor, too, was to be tainted with corporate scumminess. For while I had—after years of high-heeled revelry—come to the realization that flats really are not a bad thing, my lovely new LONG pants snottily begged to differ, insisting that their crisply-lined creases not be RUINED by height-challenged footwear ... little realizing that my non-existing ironing skill set would make the entire point moot after the very first post-sale laundering.

While I did possess a pair of contradictorily comfortable and perfectly proportioned heels, I could not, in insecure and newly-corporate employee conscience, wear them for the duration of the entire week, and thus, I found myself de-dust-bunnying some of the beautiful but pinch-prone shoes from my old collection and grimacing my way through the days. The insertion of a poorly-selected "just a tiny bit too small" but ON SALE! shoes did not help the situation, either. Truly, the discount of a half-size—while not seeming all that remarkable—is not even worth a moment's contemplation, leading as it does to hours of discomfort, eerily reminiscent of the marathon that preceded the loss of four toenails (it may have been five, but I've fortunately for any readers who may have lost their way to a FUN blog, I've forgotten the finer details).

At any rate, this is how, at the end of my first exhausting week at my cube away from home, I found myself with various and sundry wounds all over my poor feet. That these much-abused things were not especially attractive in the first place did little to soothe my pain, especially since the equally-busy weekend that followed my first week of corporate dressiness called for some serious foot-travel—although not, at least, in business-appropriate heels. No, the peep-toe chafe-marks etched angularly across my big toes, toe-stubbing tenderness across the front of all of my toes, cutout-crafted blister on the side of my right foot, and skin-free wear zone on the top of the first joint of the middle toe of my left foot all bore pathetic witness to the new demands placed heavily upon my feet.

And rather than indicative of the fashion folly I'd been so readily sucked into with the intimidating (to me) first week of my corporate employedness—or a simple mundanity of a slice of life I'd long and happily avoided—I saw my wounds as battle scars wrought by the camouflage I'd reluctantly assumed to better fit into this new role. Along with the gray-covering, slightly-too-dark haircolor, and the sweat-mark-covering suitcoats, and the tattoo-hiding (even when sitting down!) extra-long pants, my corporate-unremarkable footwear was not so much representative of who I wanted to be, but rather who I wanted others to see.

This gave me pause, as it instantly struck me as a hypocritical stance, especially given all of the times I've tried to indicate to Little Girl that standing out in a crowd is a good thing—a distinguishing uniqueness that marks us as individuals, even as we are so very much alike. And although I had not changed—and didn't especially care to, at least not in a modified-Borgish way—I wondered if it was even possible for a non-theatrically-inclined individual to attempt to superficially blend in when underneath it all, the cuts and scrapes of the endeavor so clearly attested to the implausibility of the venture.

But while I was busily engaged in injuring myself, I was also carefully studying those "others" around me, and it was a good thing I did so, even if I failed in my observational goal of determining what businesslike clothing my newly-hatched corporate wardrobe was still lacking. What I did see was evidence that I wasn't the only one playing this game, and I might not even be the only one uncomfortably drafted into it. There was the lovely—though suitably understated—bracelet a one woman wore to a long meeting, and removed scarcely an hour into it, with the imprints of it redly visible on the wrist of her mouse-operating hand. There was the worn and scuffed surface of the shoes of another, clearly displayed—although not overtly so—when she turned her conference chair to the side and crossed her legs.

While hardly neon-esque, these signs did not go unnoticed by me as I struggled to find ways to hide the fact that I eased out of—or outright kicked off—my own uncomfortable shoes at every opportunity. They were signs of sameness, after all, and I could richly appreciate even the minutest of such unifiers, especially feeling so intently like a little lost blogger without a bicycle. And while I wouldn't let such things bond me with my new daytime acquaintances—oh no; not so soon after being laid-offedly reminded that work is just work at its basest core, no matter how it seems—I did find them comfortable, not unlike discovering a tiny corner of unshredded ribbon bordering a dirty old security blanket that's been dragged through a minefield of spiky high heels.

And I even thought, just for a moment, that maybe I wasn't quite as out of place as I felt, since these were corporate members of many years, and they, too, were marked and torn on the edges. But then I stood up to walk down the hall and was assaulted anew by my pinching shoes ... war paint and battle scars aside, when you get disoriented in a maze of cubes, you're still instantly outed as a corporate newbie.