No, I still don't have a job.
I was definitely feeling some malaise last month...and I think it was because despite my tropical roots, I become kinda bitter if I have to deal with the following for an extended period of time:
1. Soul-crushing, smoggy, swampy, were-humans-even-meant-to-withstand-this-extreme-weather?! kind of heat. D.C. weather is NUTS. Minor inconveniences like a missed appointment or a bag of ripped groceries OR those two goddamn giggling teenagers making out in the stairwell that I nearly tripped and DIED trying to get past, are sending me into a Hulk Rage.
No seriously, can we talk about this? Perhaps I don't remember what it's like to be a dopey sixteen-year old deep in the throes of puppy love (maybe because I was TWENTY TWO when I finally experienced that!), but some sort of two headed Hugh Jackman/Ryan Gosling mutant freak couldn't get me to PAUSE in that sweltering airless death-trap of a stairwell. And yet, our apartment complex's very own Romeo and Juliet are practically swallowing each other whole for what seems like hours at a time. Kids these days.
2. UNEMPLOYMENT 2012! I have a love/hate relationship with the two temp agencies I signed up with when I moved to D.C. One is small, boasts "personalized" service, and told me I'd have my dream job, personal iced coffee machine and all, in a week or two. Naturally, it's been five weeks and I haven't worked a single day for them. The second agency is, uh, a bit less concerned with finding me my awesome full-time public health job and...more likely to throw me in front of any organization with some mini-skirt and clear heels, and say "Work for them! Be grateful! It's an excellent opportunity!" ...Yes, stocking kitchen pantries and filing medical records are my hidden calling. I just didn't realize it until I had been paper cut A THOUSAND TIMES during my two week assignment.
3. MAKING RENT: Moving to D.C., even with no definitive job offers, was totally necessary for my sanity (If I had a stayed a week longer in Womelsdorf, I would have probably been locked into wearing a dirndl and selling hotdogs at the Kutztown Folk Festival for the summer). BUT.. it's turned that totally boring, universal adult responsibility of paying rent into the Amazing Race. For SMF, literally. He's out there pedicabbing and making money literally by the sweat of his brow. I, however, put in my 40 hours dutifully at a nondescript office and then discover my paychecks have been shot directly into the SUN. So, all this amounts to is manically checking the mail-box for the checks that will never come and then rushing all of SMF's pedicabbing cash to the bank in the middle of a paralyzing heat wave, just so our landlord doesn't confirm that we are in fact as broke as we looked when we first moved in.
Luckily, last week, I scored the dream temp job. My fellow temps and I had an absentee boss (two actually), a series of meaningless tasks with a vague deadline ("Please finish this spreadsheet...sometime before you die."), and a well-stocked kitchen with an espresso machine and a Keurig (apparently the de modo kitchen appliance for every modern office). Just in front, on the counter, sits a small wicker fruit basket. A placard in front reads entreatingly, "Please don't hoard the fruit." The woman who gave me a tour of the office on the first day explained that every morning a man came to stock the fruit basket. After she saw me looking at the No Hoarding note, and said sighing "The fruit goes fast around here. It's usually gone in ten minutes."
After settling into a pleasant mindless routine my first week, I became fixated on getting my share of fruit. In this strange stressful time where I'm new in the city and underemployed, I'm reverting back to the poverty diet of college: crazy amounts of rice and beans and what little fruit there was to be had went quickly at the apartment. Free fruit seemed like the only way I was going to avoid scurvy. I quickly realized a few things:
1. The fruit basket is no match for the hordes of health-nuts in this office. I usually race towards the kitchen at around 9:15am. The second I spot the cadre of three tech guys eating bananas, I know all the good stuff is gone.
2. The Fruit Man is stingy. My first week, even when I began to show up at 8am, I never actually caught this mysterious figure. But one day, I saw him. He came in around 8:45 and slowly unpacked a crate of semi-ripe fruits. Despite the fact that the man had a rainforest worth of fresh fruit at his disposal, he only placed a few items into the tiny wicker fruit basket. And then only the greenest bananas, some rock-hard sour oranges, and a few sad looking plums at the bottom.
There's clearly ripe fruit in the crate so where the hell does it all go? I envision the Fruit Man brazenly taking all the good bananas, apples, and the normal non-hybrid plums to his apartment. Maybe the "no hoarding" sign was actually for HIM.
3. At the end of the day, nobody will eat the genetic hybrid freaks, like the Pluots. You know, these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluot
Sorry, guys.
Anyway, I have a break from my grueling 30-hours-a-month-usually-much-less work schedule because I'm visiting the motherland (Cupertino, not India) for two weeks. I can't wait to field the usual mix of asinine Baskin Robbins customer questions, only this time with a side of faux concern over my unemployment. It's especially enlightening when it comes from one of the many trophy wives that frequent my parents' store....nice work if you can get it, let me tell you. More often than not, these inquisitions are coming from the random old timers that have taken some sort of bizarre personal interest in the lives of their local ice cream shop owners. On top of this, did I mention that this is the first time I'll be back working at BR since I developed my dairy allergy? Seriously, are there ANY benefits to my parents owning this place?
-----
"Everybody who comes in here is way too uptight. This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."
--- Randall, "Clerks"
1. Soul-crushing, smoggy, swampy, were-humans-even-meant-to-withstand-this-extreme-weather?! kind of heat. D.C. weather is NUTS. Minor inconveniences like a missed appointment or a bag of ripped groceries OR those two goddamn giggling teenagers making out in the stairwell that I nearly tripped and DIED trying to get past, are sending me into a Hulk Rage.
No seriously, can we talk about this? Perhaps I don't remember what it's like to be a dopey sixteen-year old deep in the throes of puppy love (maybe because I was TWENTY TWO when I finally experienced that!), but some sort of two headed Hugh Jackman/Ryan Gosling mutant freak couldn't get me to PAUSE in that sweltering airless death-trap of a stairwell. And yet, our apartment complex's very own Romeo and Juliet are practically swallowing each other whole for what seems like hours at a time. Kids these days.
2. UNEMPLOYMENT 2012! I have a love/hate relationship with the two temp agencies I signed up with when I moved to D.C. One is small, boasts "personalized" service, and told me I'd have my dream job, personal iced coffee machine and all, in a week or two. Naturally, it's been five weeks and I haven't worked a single day for them. The second agency is, uh, a bit less concerned with finding me my awesome full-time public health job and...more likely to throw me in front of any organization with some mini-skirt and clear heels, and say "Work for them! Be grateful! It's an excellent opportunity!" ...Yes, stocking kitchen pantries and filing medical records are my hidden calling. I just didn't realize it until I had been paper cut A THOUSAND TIMES during my two week assignment.
3. MAKING RENT: Moving to D.C., even with no definitive job offers, was totally necessary for my sanity (If I had a stayed a week longer in Womelsdorf, I would have probably been locked into wearing a dirndl and selling hotdogs at the Kutztown Folk Festival for the summer). BUT.. it's turned that totally boring, universal adult responsibility of paying rent into the Amazing Race. For SMF, literally. He's out there pedicabbing and making money literally by the sweat of his brow. I, however, put in my 40 hours dutifully at a nondescript office and then discover my paychecks have been shot directly into the SUN. So, all this amounts to is manically checking the mail-box for the checks that will never come and then rushing all of SMF's pedicabbing cash to the bank in the middle of a paralyzing heat wave, just so our landlord doesn't confirm that we are in fact as broke as we looked when we first moved in.
Luckily, last week, I scored the dream temp job. My fellow temps and I had an absentee boss (two actually), a series of meaningless tasks with a vague deadline ("Please finish this spreadsheet...sometime before you die."), and a well-stocked kitchen with an espresso machine and a Keurig (apparently the de modo kitchen appliance for every modern office). Just in front, on the counter, sits a small wicker fruit basket. A placard in front reads entreatingly, "Please don't hoard the fruit." The woman who gave me a tour of the office on the first day explained that every morning a man came to stock the fruit basket. After she saw me looking at the No Hoarding note, and said sighing "The fruit goes fast around here. It's usually gone in ten minutes."
After settling into a pleasant mindless routine my first week, I became fixated on getting my share of fruit. In this strange stressful time where I'm new in the city and underemployed, I'm reverting back to the poverty diet of college: crazy amounts of rice and beans and what little fruit there was to be had went quickly at the apartment. Free fruit seemed like the only way I was going to avoid scurvy. I quickly realized a few things:
1. The fruit basket is no match for the hordes of health-nuts in this office. I usually race towards the kitchen at around 9:15am. The second I spot the cadre of three tech guys eating bananas, I know all the good stuff is gone.
2. The Fruit Man is stingy. My first week, even when I began to show up at 8am, I never actually caught this mysterious figure. But one day, I saw him. He came in around 8:45 and slowly unpacked a crate of semi-ripe fruits. Despite the fact that the man had a rainforest worth of fresh fruit at his disposal, he only placed a few items into the tiny wicker fruit basket. And then only the greenest bananas, some rock-hard sour oranges, and a few sad looking plums at the bottom.
There's clearly ripe fruit in the crate so where the hell does it all go? I envision the Fruit Man brazenly taking all the good bananas, apples, and the normal non-hybrid plums to his apartment. Maybe the "no hoarding" sign was actually for HIM.
3. At the end of the day, nobody will eat the genetic hybrid freaks, like the Pluots. You know, these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluot
Sorry, guys.
Anyway, I have a break from my grueling 30-hours-a-month-usually-much-less work schedule because I'm visiting the motherland (Cupertino, not India) for two weeks. I can't wait to field the usual mix of asinine Baskin Robbins customer questions, only this time with a side of faux concern over my unemployment. It's especially enlightening when it comes from one of the many trophy wives that frequent my parents' store....nice work if you can get it, let me tell you. More often than not, these inquisitions are coming from the random old timers that have taken some sort of bizarre personal interest in the lives of their local ice cream shop owners. On top of this, did I mention that this is the first time I'll be back working at BR since I developed my dairy allergy? Seriously, are there ANY benefits to my parents owning this place?
-----
"Everybody who comes in here is way too uptight. This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."
--- Randall, "Clerks"
