2007-01-12

One Love

I've been in an uncharacteristically good mood lately, believe it or not.
In the classically esoteric image of a writer, this means that I don't really have a whole to lot write about.
Tap into general contentment?
Boring.

But there is one thing that will never, ever fail to send me into the place where my palms flash with heat, my eyes twitch back and forth in their sockets and my adrenaline spikes.

I'm sitting at my desk, listening to the Lite Rock and maybe singing along if it's like, Journey or REO Speedwagon.

Generally, I am deep in concentration trying to figure out how best to break the news to someone, or maybe trying out different combinations of carefully chosen words for a letter begging a Megalithic Corporation to please pay this one tiny thing, that it would mean so much, that it's got a reasonable case for being paid.

Sometimes, I actually have to space off in order to do my job.
I know, it's pretty sweet.
But that's how things come to me, bro. It's how I roll.
If I look catatonic, chances are that I'm about to have a stroke of pure genius and save another person sometimes thousands of dollars.

I'm as deep in meditation as I can be with the white noise of the office and from out of nowhere, there is an awful, shouting squawking unintelligible noise.
Well not form out of nowhere.
From the mailroom, from HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You would not believe how much this pisses me off.

It's become a noise that, as soon as I hear it in the morning, I am set on edge and waiting for the next time I am ripped out of my process.
I'm dead serious.
I have to be creative and argumentative in order to do my job.
I have to have air-tight, researched points and I have to tie them together in a way that does not offend but doesn't offer any reasonable option besides the one that's best for my client.
This requires concentration.

When I am ripped from that concentration by a totally unnecessary and reverbrative squawking noise, made by an adult male of the human species, my first instinct is to shout back, "FUCK YOU!"

My reverie is deep.
It's soft.
I like the Lite Rock because it is so innocuous and there is nothing about it that interrupts my research or my hand-selected words that I string together to make a long-shot argument sound logical and natural and obviously the right thing to do.

Being forced out of that reverie at odd intervals and in a completely unprofessional manner is nothing short of infuriating.

Whatever delicate crafting I've found for my work is shattered by the impulsive shouting and my mind turns to things like baseball bats, brass knuckles, and vengeance.

Some days are worse than others.
Some days, I am up against three or four impossible difficult situations and can't do much to make them easier.
Working on how to explain this is excruciating; having that work rattled by shouting in an office where even the phones ring gently can make the Russian Rage rise hot and fast.

I want to storm over to that area and step into his personal space and start screaming, "How do you like this? Is that okay? Does this make working easier? WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM THAT YOU FEEL LIKE IT'S OKAY TO BEHAVE THIS WAY????????????"

And I have a hunch that if I did that, I would be fired which is not okay.
But I have a feeling that if I took it down about 83 levels and went over and calmly asked for the screaming to stop (Surreal isn't it? That I have to ask for the screaming to stop? Cubicle Castles don't have screaming and it's something I like about them); if I asked for no more screaming....

"Ummm, that noise? It kind of interrupts me a lot during the day. I might be being a little bit overly sesiti..."
"Do you have to be so uptight all the time?"
"I'm not being uptight, I do this job where I write a lot for people who..."
"You are so uptight. I'm over here doing my crappy little job and you are so uptight you get off on sucking out all the fun that anyone has anywhere in your immediate area.."
"?"
"... you never smile, you're not nice, you have no fun and you resent it. I'm not going to stop yelling just because you are always wound tight."
"..."
"..."
"Finished?
Now listen close," I say as I move into personal space )this is important because that screaming is taking place in my personal space, the space I use to work, which is where I am and what I'm doing at the time of every annoying outburst)
"I won't be explaining myself to you but to say that my job matters to me. I don't think it's a crappy little job. It's hard, I have to think, and people rely on me. Your not taking that seriously affects them because it affects me so take your effing screaming and
shove
it.
And if you ever make assumptions about my character, my personality, my job, or my life, I will not hesitate to exact pointed and appropriate revenge.
Are we clear?"

While it's good to have an active imagination, it also kind of sucks because now I'm actually at work and I'm waiting for the skin-crawling scream and I'm fully aware that I really wouldn't do anything but tattle.

And I'm fully aware that maybe it does look like I'm some kind of awful shell of a person with no smiling and who sucks all the fun out of a room.

But the people who think that haven't ever been in a room with me.
They tell their parents that they work with this one girl who is a bitch.
They tell me they can squawk all they want to because their jobs don't matter to anything outside of these walls.

They don't get it. They've never spent a second outside of the walls with me.
They mistake my concentration and concern for my clients and assume that I am a bitch.
They assume that I also think of my job as a crappy little job and I should therefore understand that loud outbursts are a way to break up the day.

They are wrong; I just love my job.

arizonasarah at 11:22 a.m.

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