Cubicle wisdom

The half hour of my workday with the least obvious benefit to me, or anyone else, is the final half hour of the day, a period granted the simultaneously sterile and cloying title of "Supervisor Interaction Time." The idea seems to be mostly to get us used to dealing with the people who will eventually be our immediate superiors, but while we're still in training, which is done by trainers, they have precious little to impart.

To wit, yesterday, the half hour was spent reading from a list of motivational quotations, attributed variously to Einstein, any number of self-help authors, and "anonymous," which I assume means "someone who wrote one of those chain e-mails."

They asked, after we discussed the page of treacly wisdom, if anyone had any quotes by which they tried to live, or at least to keep in mind in the workplace. I spent a period of my teens reading any number of collections of literary and philosophical quotations. In spite of that, it's probably for the best that the boss didn't call on me for mine, because after 8 hours of sitting in that chair, everything but Mencken escaped me completely.

Economic Indicators

While, undoubtedly, there's a great deal for a person to learn about the world of whatever-it-is-I-do, it has seemed clear for the past six or seven weeks, that four months of training probably isn't necessary. I spend half the day doing the actual job, at this point, which makes it very difficult to convince myself, or the majority of those in my training class, that the remaining four hours of training and instruction are valuable enough to warrant full attention or even complete consciousness. HEY PARENTS, THAT WAS A JOKE, I'M A HARD WORKER AND EVERYONE AT WORK LIKES ME.

Seriously, that's a little true. Except for my trainer, who has an unnerving lack of affect and seems to find my casual confidence and easy command of the material a little tedious, all the coaches, supervisors and even less popular co-workers seem to find me charming and interesting.

It's really a relief to have a job that feels permanent. It's been a while. It's been quite a bit longer than it's been since I had a job that was, technically speaking, permanent. The pun seems obvious, but my job at SHPS always seemed destined for disaster. I guess every disaster looks like it should have been predictable after the fact, though. That's probably a good lesson for me at the moment.

The biggest annoyance at the new job until recently was a web filter tight enough to turn rubbing alcohol into vodka. Luckily, the new future phone has solved by daily Facebook DTs quite nicely, albeit only at pre-determined work-appropriate intervals. The phone has also been a nice reminder of how much I had missed being able to buy something nice without agonizing over its impact on my finances over the next six weeks.

I tell you, kids. Things are looking up.

Forward. A bit.

My apologies, Internet, for the unforgivable lapse in this admittedly fairly young blog. Many of my readers are no doubt aware that this was not, as one might assume, the result of usual shiftless nature, but rather distraction by another, somewhat more productive project.

Back in early August, in an uncharacteristic fit of ambition and optimism, I decided that I should start posting Craigslist ads. One hundred of them, in as many days. I didn't tell everyone about the project immediately, as I usually do with a new undertaking, which makes it all the more surprising that I was as conscientious about continuing it as I was, until recently. Eventually, many or most of my friends/usual internet readership became aware of the project, and I was convinced to transcribe the ads, in their entirety, to a new blog, 100 Days of Craigslist.

As you can no doubt tell from reading the most recent entry, as well as, I suppose, the earliest, the project was met with success quite aside from its dubious acclaim throughout the local 50-year-old divorced woman community. The project lasted 50 days, though, which makes only slightly less catchy of a title for a book.

My standards, according to friends, co-workers, ex-girlfriends and a recent fortune cookie, are unreasonably high. Of the several dozen applicants, only five or six reached the point of phone numbers being exchanged, and one three culminated in actual face-to-face meetings. Pleasant but awkward, initially, but the most recent put a firm halt to the project.

I was on my way to Uptown last Tuesday night because of an unusual bout of generalized irritation with being at home, so I sent a few text messages to see who was interested in passing an evening drinking extremely cheap beer in school-night-appropriate amounts.

Maria, a considerable amount of champagne into her own evening of irritation at being at home, agreed enthusiastically, and I picked her up for a lovely evening on the patio at Cause (pronounced "Sauce.") The majority of our conversation consisted of my recounting of The Craigslist Ad Project up to that point. I told her about a few odd coincidences, some hilarious setbacks (which, if you know me in person, I would encourage you to ask me about, because they're not necessarily appropriate for Internet publication for various reasons), and the remaining possibilities ahead. Most of my focus for the future was on the lady-scientist who was among the more recent respondents, but who had failed to respond to her text that evening.

Maria wished me the best of luck, and read 40-some days worth of ads after I dropped her back at her apartment, and I drove home and went to bed, after writing another quick ad for that day.

At about 7:20 the next morning, as I was driving to work, I got a phone call. Oddly the first phone call I had received since getting my new phone, so I spent what seemed like a very long time figuring out how to answer, and then glancing quickly back and forth between the screen and the brake-lights ahead of me.

Eventually, I gathered my senses enough to say "Hello," and was met by a surprisingly chipper apology for having missed my text the previous evening, and an offer to go out after work that day. It seems that if I want a date after work on any given day, all I have to do is wake up too late to shower. I nonetheless agreed with more enthusiasm that pre-10 o'clock Dan is known for.

Jimmy's is a delightful bar. I had never been there for happy hour, but its one small double-paned window doesn't mar its dreary dankness in the least during daylight. We talked our way through the initial awkwardness and the first couple pitchers of "whatever is the strongest" between the two nearly interchangeable domestic taps at Jimmy's, until deciding to move on to The Vegas Lounge. It went very well.

If you've never heard a drunk girl with an English accent standing on a sidewalk in Northeast, complaining about what George Lucas did with Star Wars starting in the late '90s, then I really can't recommend it enough. At the end of the evening, we arranged another date for Friday, and I went home to put The Project on hold, much the the mixed chagrin and congratulations of its readership.

Some time the following day, through a mixed haze of post-first-date head, and Old Style hangover, we discussed that she was leaving town the following week, and, that being the case, squeezing in an extra date before the one we had already scheduled seemed like a good idea, just to make sure we had as good a time as the bar-light and beer had made it appear. Eventually, that tally grew to four dates in five days, with the total time spent together just over that of a normal work-week.

I know I always say "cautiously optimistic," but I can't actually remember a time, past the e-mail stage, when caution has been the right choice.

I'm going to be pretty annoying for a while.