is a Monday, so you know what that means. Despite what all my
career books say about the want ads being the worst place to look, I find
two nice publishing leads in Sunday's paper and prepare résumés. But
there's always a hitch, and it's my printer today. I've run out of ink. I
find my spare cartridge, only to discover that it's not a cartridge at all,
but a refilling system--not for your empty cartridge but for a third
cartridge you purchase separately. I recall fondly the days when you just
bought a new cartridge and snapped it in there. Now I have a mysterious
object with a foil seal which I've removed according to the instructions,
jettisoning ink all over me, my rug, and my stack of expensive résumé
paper.
Fortunately, I have plans to go to my part-time office, where the
good people allow me the use of the empty computer and the fax machine. I
retype my résumés and letters, print them, and feed them into the space-age
fax machine. This takes quite a while, and I'm interrupted by other tasks.
It's hours later when I head home, through a freak cloudburst that builds
out of nowhere and dumps all over the freeway.
One of these jobs is an "aiming high" job. The other one, frankly,
is a bit low. But my philosophy is to cast the net wide. I don't mind
taking a step back if it means three steps forward six months from now.
I'm not necessarily expecting anyone to return my call, but it happens!
The aiming-high people have left me a message! They want to set up an
interview time. It's too late to call them back when I hear the
message--I've already got to eat and run off to Career-Building Extension
Class From Hell--but I'll call first thing tomorrow. I feel a bit disloyal
to Andy and the cohort, but there's no law against courting multiple
offers. And I don't think they would mind if they knew. They're my first
choice under any circumstances. I just have to have multiple options in
order to be making a choice.
I'm highly resistant to class, given my unspectacular experience
last time. I resolve to sit there with my mouth shut and only absorb
information that is helpful to me. The rest will pass through me, like an
excretion. Okay. I wolf down Yves Veggie Wieners before I go. The
preshaped soy protein will give me strength to make it through the evening.
It's only a matter of time before my personal pecadilloes, like this soy
food thing, expand into Howard Hughes territory, what with my relative
isolation and all.
Class is refreshingly uneventful, for the most part. The
instructor hemorrhages verbiage for an hour and a half before we get our
break. He's going off about Percy and Blanchard's Situational Leadership
paradigm, which, like most of our class material, seems like a needlessly
complex schema for interpreting common sense behavior and
compartmentalizing people with silly acronyms. I'm beginning to understand
how Titos are made. It strikes me as odd that people receive degrees in
this stuff and then go out and tell people who have been working in the
field, using actual skills, what to do. Then they close down your office.
Naturally, the pompous guy at the back of the room has a certificate in
Situational Leadership.
I'm fascinated by the instructor's attire, which includes what I
can only describe as a J. Peterman safari vest. It's got epaulets and
billions of tiny pockets and darts. He's wearing it over a short-sleeved
dress shirt and a very wide brown tie, which is really short. The effect
is "parole officer."
I admit that I'm still largely naive about big business, but it
still doesn't seem very sensible that the decisions in life are made by
managers trained in these generic, over-inflated principles of management.
I guess I thought management had more to do with business sense and market
forces and economic factors than with memorizing a bunch of ridiculous
acronyms that correspond to your "team" and their level of output.
Increasing that level of output is the desired end, and your "team" is the
means. No wonder workers are depersonalized, dissatisfied, and disloyal.
I really get my back up at these euphemisms. Your co-workers are
your "team" and your manager is your "coach." Barf. I despite sports and
hate cuddly euphemisms even more. I resent the implication that business
communication consists of some Titoesque guy coddling me with euphemisms
and pushing my buttons to get more work out of me--an outcome for which he,
not I, get the credit. Can't we just knock it off and be reasonable for
once? I hate shopping somewhere and being called a "guest." If I'm in
your house, I'm a guest. If I'm in your store, I'm a customer. If I'm
your guest, I'm not paying you for your hospitality. It's freely offered.
Okay? Everybody clear on that? And if I work for you, I work for you. If
I bowl in a league with you, I'm on your team. Okay? I hate to see our
carefully regimented social relationships conflated this way.
So I guess that's why I'm not getting much from this class. I'm
fundamentally opposed to it. But good things come from it. We participate
in a decision-making style inventory, which concludes that I'm three or
four steps away from being a despot. That's good. Also, my small
discussion group is very fond of my haircut. That's good. And I don't get
a parking ticket.
I head home to an empty house. Brett and Bart have gone to a
Sporting Event, a ritual from which I happily abstain. I greedily pour
a giant glass of milk and find a strange thing floating in it. It's a
centipede. How nauseating. Needless to say, I pour the whole carton out.
I shuffle off to bed, bringing "Knock 'Em Dead" and my interviewing
book with me. Interview questions are whirling around in my mind, and I
can't rest. Once again, it's melatonin time. This stuff probably has
horrific long-term side effects, but I'm not a fan of sleep deprivation.
When I was writing my thesis, I went almost a month sleeping only two or
three hours a night, which reduced me to the state of a meth-addled
trucker.
I have melatonin dreams. Brett reports that I woke him up by
laughing in my sleep. I can't remember what was so funny. He says it was
sort of a chuckle. I only really busted out once. I do remember dreaming
at some point that I was pregnant. I was baking cupcakes.
