Long Story Short ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir Timberly Pinkhands Last week I was at the grocery store and I was putting my cart away in those cart holding areas in the parking lot when I thought I saw my old boss, Sir Timberly Pinkhands. Turns out it wasn�t him but it looked enough like him to make me do a double take. The man had gray hair, was small boned and dainty looking, and he was wearing kind of a wool cardigan that looked a lot like an infamous twin set that Sir Pinkhands used to wear. It gave me quite a startle. I hated my old boss. Not show-up-with-a-gun hated him but hated him like you�re supposed to hate your boss. Just enough. He was so British it made my ears ache to hear him talk. �CAHly, please LIASE with MeLISSa reGAHding the Scheeeeering-PLOUGH proPOSal�. Ugh. If he told me to schedule something in his �diary� one more time I was going to have to shove said �diary� up his dainty ass. He was married to an American woman and I would always try to imagine him having sex, or eating her out. I just couldn�t really picture it, he was as sexless as the saltines I�m currently chomping. He had the stereotypical bad teeth and jug ears and gray skin. He was DOCTOR Sir Timberly Pinkhands, lest we all forget that he was a cardiologist before he became a whatever he was. Consultant or facilitator or jackass, call it what you will. He farted in my cubicle one day. And it made me feel triumphant. I was repulsed, don�t get me wrong, the idea of breathing in British tea farts made my stomach turn. But the glee I felt in running into other people�s cubes and whispering �TIMBERLY FARTED� (okay I wasn�t whispering) was well worth the gross out factor. The funniest part for me was that he actually said �excuse me� after I heard the audible toot. It was so horrifyingly ridiculous that I had to grit my teeth to keep from smirking. Yes, I�m immature, and I was even more immature at the time. It was just rich with joyous my-boss-just-farted goodness. I was a bad employee for him. I think I drove him mildly insane at times. He knew full well I was a very bright person and that I could do a bang-up job if I wanted to. Our personalities just clashed � he was neat as a pin and wore twin sets and tweed and basket-woven shoes. I didn�t always brush my hair and had holes in my pants and dog hair all over my sweater. And I didn�t give one single shit about any of the work that the company did. He really invested himself and worked from home and made all-hours conference calls and tried to suck me into his world. But all I saw was a piece of shit company selling people total bullshit. It was straight up common sense repackaged to look like we had invented it. And we couldn�t even package it to look nice! I�m sorry, I didn�t care about the details, I wasn�t going to go home at night and worry about some stupid crap that meant nothing to anyone. We weren�t curing cancer, we didn�t make the world a better place, it was just paper and mindless yammering. And he knew I didn�t care, it was written all over my face every time he handed me a really important, really serious project. I would turn around and hand it back to him as quickly as possible but my heart just wasn�t in it. I just wanted my paycheck. Why is it so awful to not care? I think it�s very possible to do your job well and still not actually give a shit about the work that you do. I recognize now the importance of putting on a face that says �I CARE!�, but when it comes down to it it�s all just something you do to pay your bills. Would I seriously be involved in what I currently do if I didn�t need money? I can say with a resounding HELL NO that I wouldn�t. And I actually like my job 90% of the time. I will admit that I was a terrible candidate for the corporate world when I started working full time. I was lazy and not a morning person at all and more concerned with getting home to walk my dog than I was with completing projects. I�d show up late, call in sick, take two-hour lunches and multiple daily coffee breaks. The time I was actually working I got a lot done and I think I did it pretty well but I hated it. I was also immature and insolent, I hated being given work that felt like it was stupid. I hated being passed around to my bosses other employees to assist them in their crappy projects like I was his personal slave. Too many times I left work in a rage and went right for my glass of wine as soon as I walked in the door. I thought to myself that if this was what Real Life was then I was in for a lifetime of unhappiness.
2:18 p.m. - 2004-10-13 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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