2006-10-10
Tuesday's (not) Gone
I just wanted a paperclip.
I wanted a paperclip and I wanted a proposal that I expected would be filed by now, considering I gave it to the Expert of Everything when she first started and she said, "I can do that. I can go through all this stuff and it would be a great way for me to learn and I'll get it done."
And I assumed (woe is me) that when she said it, she was already taking into account her 2 hour lunches and her early exits and even the late arrivals.
I thought, "I'm the newer, softer Sarah. I can give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she is All That."
But when have I ever been wrong about something?
I mean that rhetorical question to be only in regards to gut instinct, of course.
Several bitchy office altercations later, the kinds where you are stage-whispering and you notice the new lack of typing noise coming from the cubes surrounding you as their occupants tune in to hear what's going on where you are. Several altercations later, I emerged as the Office Bitch and she was given one more chance with the benefit of the doubt.
Sort of.
I think there's finally a massive cracking noise in the ice there because seriously?
You can't think that if everyone around you is doing one thing and you're not doing it, and I'm not talking about the way you wear your hair or any other loose interpretation of artistic expression, than there is NO WAY you can't think that you are better than everyone and that whatever "it" is doesn't apply to you.
You do have to pick up the kitchenette.
You do have to have those files done when I need them done.
You do have to listen when people say things that make you uncomfortable.
For the nth time:
YOU ARE NOT OWED.
Neither am I.
But I will cop to feeling owed in Paperclipgate.
I go to the supply room, the domain of HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII as it were, and I get a box of paperclips because the paperclip holder form my first job, onto which I taped a particularly hot picture of Chris Isaak 7 or 8 years ago, is totally empty and I've got things that need to be grouped together with little to no chance of escape.
I got the paperclips and, still feeling a little blue about how much I'm figuring out about the discomfort of correction and about the differences between us, I melodramatically pulled out a paperclip.
It's unbent.
And then another.
This one is also unbent.
From each of the unbent ones is a dangling mess of non-unbent ones.
This leads me to believe that a certain someone is acting out on previously-expressed and deep-seeded hatred for a job that requires paperclips.
Not cool.
I don't hate them.
I don't hate my job.
I don't have tolerance for people who act stupid or for people who expect to be owed something just for being alive.
Sadly, I have to deal with them in all areas and today is one of the unfortunate days where the very nature of my existence is to clean up after their selfish little messes.
I have to untangle the paperclips and I am the one with a voicemail lurking from the person who All That got all confused.
It's not a martyr syndrome, kids; it's the fact of being a responsible adult who happens to not hate herself, at least not right this minute anyway.
arizonasarah at 11:08 a.m.