Category Archives: work

goodness, humor, work

Haiku surprise!

Remember this post when described how I discovered first-hand that all-day meetings do, in fact, exist?  I just found the haikus I wrote during the last meeting that day.  I’m pretty pleased with them:

I write haikus to
keep myself awake sometimes.
This is one of them.

I needed to demonstrate to my new coworkers that I was creative, playful, and overall the kind of person they’d look forward to working with.  I had told them about this haiku entertainment strategy, so I needed something to ease them into it.  After that it just snowballed into a poetic storm of sass and topical comedy. (names changed for the sake of my precious anonymity)

Hey, Elizabeth.
Guess what I’ll do after this.
That’s right: ICE CREAM, BITCH.

if only they were all this adorable

At UCC, the
kids can major in drinking.
Drinky, drinky, drink.

The issue at hand was obviously the kids drinking habits.  College kids.  And the parents are apparently appalled at the amount they’re drinking and how easily they can get a drink.  This discussion continued for about five minutes before I felt the need to point out that the best way to keep your kids from blacking out every Thursday night was to make them feel so good about themselves while sober that they didn’t feel the need to get drunk to feel good.  I pointed out that this was the responsibility of the parents.  The reception to that comment was… mixed.

I just feel so sharp
in my little white sweater
and silver bull studs.

I wore the most “professional” clothing I owned that day so I would represent the office well at all the meetings.  I looked like quite the little executive.

"we just want our kids to grow up into their own happy, well-balanced, totally terrifying adult basking sharks."

The power couple
could sell me a live gator,
and call it a purse.

The head of this parents group at the time was this married couple who had more energy and enthusiasm about this group in their left pinkie toe than I have in my entire body about most things.  They’re a tough act to follow, and hypnotizing to watch.  Like a shark attack.

The purple lady
is inconsolable.  Pull
yourself together.

I don’t recall what it was about, but it must have been great to warrant it’s very own commemorative haiku.  Wait, is a haiku commemorative if it’s written as something happens instead of afterwards?  Crap.

Basketball event
basket ideas: tattoos,
botox, lip piercing.

This basketball event required baskets of donations to raffle off and make some money for the parents group.  Wine, sweets and sports memorabilia were popular items.  Not very exciting.  The event went off without a hitch though, and everyone loved their baskets.  But seriously, imagine how fast the botox basket would have reached its top value.

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badness, martial arts, work

Just say No

Being a nanny must be a crazy job.

I chat with nannies at the dojo who talk about how hard it is to discipline the kids because the parents consistently undermine them in order to be the good guys.  The parents don’t want to spend the little amount of time they have with their kids disciplining them, so they get away with murder while mom and dad are around, and harass the nanny with “mom lets me do that” when they’re not.  It’s an uphill battle.  I can’t imagine working for people who aren’t on board with setting up some kind of structure with their kids.  Why send a kid mixed messages?  What a complete waste of time.

that's a "bad choice"

I’ve told a few nannies (and parents) that they can just say no to their kids, but they don’t want to be too strict because they’re afraid of losing their job.  When one nanny said this, I was baffled.  Wasn’t her job to act like a parent in the absence of the parents?  She responded, “They (the kids) will lie to their parents that I’m hurting them, or ‘she made us to this or that.'”  WHAT?!  Jesus.

There are a couple of kids at our dojo whose behavior has improved since they started taking classes with us, but they still do stuff at home like intentionally break windows and hugely expensive flat screen TVs, and fight violently with each other.  I saw a new woman with them last week, so I took a moment to chat with her.  I asked if she was the new nanny, to which she grimaced, “Yeah, unfortunately.”  I was struck dumb for a few seconds.  I must have looked really, really stupid.  I just couldn’t think of what to say to a nanny who didn’t want to be a nanny.  How long have you been with them, I asked.  One and a half months.  And she’s already miserable.  The kids are out of control, the parents undermine her, she’s afraid of being too strict; it goes on and on.  I gave her some advice (don’t give up, talk with the parents, make sure you’re on the same page, ask for their support, feel free to put the kids on timeout if they misbehave), and walked away shaking my head.

So now I have a question: Who in their right mind wants to become a nanny?  Who aspires to raise someone else’s kid?  Is this a profession like bus driver, filled with people who just couldn’t cut it in any other industry?  My morbid curiosity has been piqued.

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goodness, martial arts, work

Success!

I worked my first paid freelance martial arts gig yesterday.  It went so well; I’m actually pretty shocked at how smoothly it went.  Bear in mind I was teaching girl scouts and their and moms, so the likelihood of a mutiny was pretty slim, even if they did out-number me 24:1.

why yus, yu CAN haz a marshall artz, hehe

We started by ducking, then we combo’d with a palm strike, and moved onto the first self defense move I learned when I started training.  I asked if they had questions, and the moms had plenty of “what if” scenarios to pick my brain about.  One of the moms was nice enough to occupy the girls while the women circled up and I gave them the best advice I could about getting pinned to the ground, getting lifted from behind, being attacked while entering the car, etc.  At some point I reminded them that “you’re probably not going to be attacked… ever.  I hate to break it to you, but you’re just not that popular.  Chances are, you’ll never need to use these skills in a fight situation.  The point of classes like this is to give you the confidence to ask that person standing too close in line if they could back up a little; day-to-day stuff to make yourself feel more comfortable and confident.”  That seemed to resonate with them.

They asked about pricing (yikes!  Should’ve crunched some numbers before I got there), so I said $15 an hour per person for a group of five or more, $20 an hour per person for fewer than that, and “I usually charge between $60 and $70 an hour for private lessons,” meaning that’s what I would be charging if I ever did any paid private lessons.  Ever.  Regardless, they seemed enthused.  Fingers crossed!

Most of my friends work freelance, so booking a job, then doing the job, then getting paid for said job is literally an everyday thing for them.  This was a new experience for me, so I’m pretty thrilled with the result.  And a couple friends helped me design business cards that I got to pass out to the moms when they asked if I taught adults!  And I got some girl scout cookies out of it (they went straight to my friends)!  Overall, WIN.

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badness, humor, work

Haiku distraction: Spirit fingers edition

I was raised watching musicals.  I could sing along with every song in Oklahoma, Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, My Fair Lady… the list goes on, and I love them all.  Point proven.  Moving on.

now in eye-bleeding technicolor!

One of the events I’ve been planning for over a month went well today; a reception before a musical performance of On the Town by the university students.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and after intermission, the play finally seemed to hit its stride, but I wouldn’t see this play if it were performed by professionals.  Nothing about a jazzy, WWII era New York filled with sailors and sassy women belting out verse after verse about taxis and contemporary landmarks appeals to me, especially when they spend 80% of their time gazing appealingly over the heads of the audience as if to say, “Hey, what’s that?!  Oh never mind, it’s nothing… Hey, what’s that?!”

As I noted first in this, and then this post, getting caught at an event in which I’d rather not participate requires some kind of self-created entertainment/distraction.  Hence, the Bitter Haiku was born.

You’d think the dean of
theater would memorize
her introduction.

The dean of theater was basically reading from a prepared statement.  Of all the people in the university from whom I don’t expect this… it’s her.

Really?  Not even
one gesundheit?  In a full
theater?!  My word!

I sneezed during the dean’s intro, no one said a word.  Unbelievable.  I’m already annoyed.

The play opens with
film footage.  Seriously?
Ugh, bad idea.

Ok, who’s fuckin’ idea was this?  It’s a play, people.  That’s like opening a sculpture exhibit with a painting.  That’s like asking for a manicure, and getting a haircut.  That’s like paying for apples, and getting fuckin’ oranges.  They’re not the same thing.

Everyone is so
excited.  Maybe that’s why
they can’t hit a note.

Ask anyone in the dating world; first impressions are pretty important.  So when the play opens with a few solid minutes of film footage, then the three main actors deliver minutes of dull dialog, followed by butchering the main musical number… let’s just find the silver lining, and call it lots of material for Bitter Haikus.

really? I can climb it?!

The museum scene
was always gonna be the
best, naturally!

It’s the Museum of Natural History!  Of course it’s gonna be a good scene.  Who doesn’t love jokes about dinosaur skeletons?  This was the highlight of the production for me.

.

Ninety minutes in,
and I’ve smiled exactly twice.
Is it over yet?

This is a play about some nice guys falling in love with some hilarious women.  There are loads of opportunities for comedy and that “awww” moment.  The guy behind me was laughing his ass off, but I couldn’t find much reason to grin, let alone laugh.  I felt disappointed and left behind at the same time.

They bullfight with a
tablecloth, and stacked people
dance: plagiarism.

see it done here first, and properly

There were at least half a dozen very specific examples of choreography throughout the play that were basically stolen from Singin’ in the Rain.  Two of these examples were ripped straight out of the scene where Gene Kelley, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds sing “Good Mornin” (in which two characters try to cheer up their glum friend), and were used in a scene in today’s production (in which two characters try to cheer up their glum friend).  The similarities are… depressing.

wait… it dances?

Don’t hire a male lead
who can dance!  When would he find
time to run around?

The one guy we spend the majority of the play following around spends the majority of his time looking confused, and speed-walking around the stage, trailing after extras with more purpose in one stride than the male lead had during the entire four-hour production.  When he finally broke into dance within the last twenty minutes of the play, I was shocked–shocked.  “Was he supposed to be dancing this whole time,” I thought, “or did they really hire him because of his amazing voice, despite his complete lack of dancing talent?”  Then I remembered: none of the other two male leads did any dancing at any point in the play.  None of them.  No wonder I was so much more impressed with the women.  They sang and danced, often at the same time (once while in a handstand), and still managed to hit every note.

If there was just one fewer dance number in which the cast coordinated pumping their dancing spirit fingers in the air to the beat of the live orchestra, I think I would have enjoyed it a little more.  At least I got paid.

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martial arts, work

Easy now…

Let’s not spill hot tea on my white cashmere sweater two hours before my first performance review at Office Job, shall we?

I’m going to have to miss Kung Fu tonight (again) to practice karate moves with some sensei friends.  Turns out I’m being evaluated at Karate Job too, in two weeks.  I need to work on my self-defense and grappling.  Everything else should be pretty solid.  My form has always been excellent, but they’re also making sure I know how to teach all the moves, not just do them (an important distinction).  I’m feeling pretty good about it.  Except for the grappling.  Yikes.

i am not very good at grappling

The good news is that I remember something about a raise if my performance review at Office Job goes well.  And if I pass my evaluation at Karate Job, I definitely get a raise.  So this is all good stuff, it’s just stressful.  Plus the car, and Boyfriend, and Russian Neighbor, and I’m sure I could think of something else that was bothering me if I wasted time to complain some more.  But I’m gonna pass on that.  Doesn’t seem worth it.

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goodness, humor, work

Old work goodness

I was looking through a folder called “Me from work,” meaning the stuff I had saved on my old work computer that I removed promptly before leaving.  There’s an image folder.  It’s full of hilarious wierdness.

Old Work Goodness Number 1: The Beavers

looks like someone needs a good ass-kicking

WTF is this?  I mean, aside from clearly being a Japanese ripoff of The Beatles.  This album cover made me laugh out loud.

Time for some research.

The initial search (cleverly done: “beavers”) yielded nothing but pictures of beavers, and an informative Wikipedia article which described beavers as “large, semi-aquatic rodents.”  Not the kindest set of adjectives and nouns to string together to describe an animal that can build its own home in a single night.  Be cool, Wikipedia.  Beavers are pretty great.

Second search: “beaver music”  A Swedish group came up.  I listened to one of their songs all the way through; all three minutes and forty two seconds.  Specifically, I watched the music video, which consisted of stock footage of someone typing on a typewriter, a silhouette of a happy couple in front of a sunset, and shitty home footage of some horses running in slow-motion on a beach, for fuck sake.  I should have stopped fifteen seconds in.  Here’s a sample of their lyrics:

Hesitation in a place pristine / Revelations of a space unseen / Knowing you from the inside out / That’s the only way to let you out / And that’s all that I care about.

Yikes.

Third search: “the beavers japan”  Apparently there’s a clothing store called Beaver in Japan that resembles a very abstract hairy va-jay-jay.  Just squint.  See?  Eew.

the Jimi Hendrix era of album covers

Fourth search: “the beavers music japan”  Jackpot!  Someone wrote a quick bio of one of the band members, Hideki Ishima on a website called Golden Best Japan.  Before The Beavers, this guy was a member of such ridiculously named bands as: Jarows, The Outlaws, and Spiderduction before some genius at the record label told them to change it to something “cuter.”  According to this website, they only released one album with five singles.  Here are a couple of them!

Kiminaki Sekai (The World Without You), the moody, wail-y version of something that sounds like Love Potion #9.

Why Baby Why, a poppy hit in which the band shouts ‘why baby why’ and ‘I love you’ amid much more comfortable Japanese verses, and some screeching that actually sounds pretty cool.

The author of  thought the following sentence made sense: “The Beavers were known as “Japan’s Yardbirds” so it’s not suprising that they covered “I’m a Man” and “Over, Under, Sideways, Down” on this album.”  Uh, right… thanks for the insight.

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badness, work

The runaround

Innocent bystanders at my office job are unwittingly turning me in circles, and it’s starting to make me dizzy.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone who can tell me who is in charge of reserving a plaza for a reception before a theater production.  I’ve been sent in a hilarious series of circles, and I’m close to losing my patience, so I’m letting off steam by posting the process.

it's a crazy machine; your voice goes in, the crazy comes out

-Email scheduling office, no response.

-Call scheduling, leave message, no response.

-Call scheduling back, told to contact athletics, maybe they’ll know what to do.

-Get athletics email contact from Nice Scheduling Lady I’ve worked with before.

-Email recommended athletics contact.  He recommends I contact the scheduling office.  Ugh.

-Search for the plaza on university main page.  Notice it was advertised for a reception for a previous theater production.  How did they do that?

-Email Nice Theater Lady re: previous use of plaza for theater reception.  She recommends I contact the scheduling office, and gives me their general office email.  Thanks, Nice Theater Lady.

It’s taking all my self-control not to walk over to the plaza and yell “WHO THE FUCK IS IN CHARGE OF THIS LOCATION?!”  Just about everyone I’ve interacted with has been nice, but ignorant of anything relating to that damn plaza.  Should we just show up that day and hope no one’s there?  Odds are it’ll be empty, but I wants it for mine ownsssss, the preciousssss.

UPDATE: 10:18am, April 1

Turns out it IS the athletics department that’s in charge of the plaza.  Thanks, random guy from athletics who told me otherwise.  Thanks.

I just called to confirm with them, like a responsible adult would.  The first lady I spoke with said, “We don’t reserve that space.”  I said, “But I already reserved it with you.”  When?  “Over a month ago.”  Who did you talk to?  I give her the name (let’s call her Romilda, and thank god I made note of her name).  I’m put on hold for five mins until a woman answers, “Hello?”  I say, “Hi there.”  Silence.

Her: Hello?
Me: Hi… Did she not tell you why I was calling?
Her: What?  This is Romilda, can I help you with something?
Me: Ok, I’m calling to confirm my reservation at the Plaza.
Her: Ohhhhhh-kaaaaaay… hmmm, that isn’t here… Who did you speak with?
Me: I spoke with you.
Her: OH.  Uh, ok.  Did I get back to you?
Me: We spoke over the phone.
Her: Ohhhhhhh, ok.  I must have not put it in here…  What is the event?

I give her all the information she asked me for the first time, hoping she’s actually writing it down instead of whatever she was doing last time for CHRISSAKE.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a heartless, unforgiving bitch.  People make mistakes.  I make mistakes.  It happens.  It just seems to be happening a lot with this one event.  Scheduling thought I was hosting this event in another location, and demanded a ton of paperwork under threat of canceling my event.  I stayed late and filled it all out in a flurry, sending various copies to five different departments before someone from scheduling asked for a form I had already submitted, and randomly said, “Sorry I didn’t see this the first time, it has a different location on it.”  I said, WHAT?  Hence, all the paperwork I filled out was useless.  Awesome.  Thanks, team.  Way to go.

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badness, humor, work

Stay away from my compy, blue hair

My boss has a company credit card that she uses very responsibly and sparsely.  In order to get approval for her purchases, she has to use this online system where she scans the receipts, attaches them to blahblahblah, it’s actually pretty streamline once you get it.

She asked me to help her do this recently, so I sat down in front of a program I had never once used or heard of, and figured it out.  We got it done, and we did it right.  Regardless, she wanted us to really master the program, so she and I went to a small seminar on how to use this program.  We found some seats, and a gray-haired woman stepped to the podium.  As the overhead projector flickered to life, I could feel my confidence in the seminar draining away.  What would this woman teach me that she hadn’t been taught by someone my age or younger?  I scanned the room for said youth and lo and behold, a young woman around my age sat two rows back from the front, anxiously watching the older woman (apparently her boss) fumble with switches and knobs to get the light at the podium to turn off.

I remember now what it’s like to sit through a boring lecture from an instructor so out of touch with her audience that she doesn’t understand the questions being asked.  Throughout the presentation, the young woman would quickly interject a clarification that cut straight to the point on a topic the lecturer couldn’t seem to stop hovering around and just land on.  The older woman spoke slowly (like we were children), and paused now and then to let some useless piece of information sink in, like, “You won’t be able to get to this page.  I have administration access, I can get here.  So can Lauren here.  So it’ll look different for you, because you don’t have the same level access as me… [long pause].”  She repeated herself several times (unnecessarily), she did not answer the questions I asked about site security, and had no examples set up to demonstrate how to actually  use the program we had attended the seminar to learn.

Toward the end of the presentation she remembered a few things she had forgotten to mention, and threw a bunch of unsequenced, seemingly important tidbits of info at us without visuals.  “Oh wait, I forgot.  You’re going to have to hit the Save button before you hit the Approve button or the pdf won’t stay attached.”  Three hands flew up.  What Save button?  “Oh, you can’t see it because I’ve already done this one.”  What Approve button?  “The one at the bottom of the page.”  A new hand goes up.  What page?  “The last one.  The one where we attached the pdf.”  Could you show us?  “[sigh] Uh, sure, lemme just… find… one…”

A few highlights:
“You’ll get an email with a link to the receipt.  [pause]  It’s like the little flag on your mailbox going up.”
“You see how these are shaped?  They look like folders, right?  Think of it like you have a bunch of folders on your desk.”
“When you scan your receipts, name them something that works for you so you remember what it is.”
“So that’s maybe new for those of you who have never scanned something before.”

Ok, so that last one might actually be legitimate, but I’ve been scanning shit since high school.  How have any of the people at this seminar not used a scanner before?

Young people: take charge.  You should be doing this kind of presentation, in half the time, with about a thousand percent more clarity for the audience.  I have nothing against old people, but my generation was raised with computers, so our brains are structured to understand how they function.  Anyone born before 1980 is just at a natural disadvantage.

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humor, life, martial arts, work

From the mouths of babes

Kids are cooler than adults.  Most of the time.

Example 1: Pain
Kids don’t define a day by the number of injuries they sustained.  Today I’m really sore from training, I’ll be sore tomorrow too, and in a few weeks, that’s all I’ll remember about this week.  I won’t remember that fun conversation I had with Michelle, or how, when she said, “I wanna learn how to do a flying kick,” and I said, “I can teach you that.  Check it out!” that I did a flying kick, followed by a jumping spinning roundhouse kick and almost nailed some lady that came into the office just then right in the FACE.  If I hadn’t written all this down, all I’d think about today is how much I want to use my friend’s hot tub because I’m so fucking sore that it’s hurting my back muscles to type this.

incapable of human speech

ALL HAIL HYPNOTOAD

Example 2: Truth
Most adults mush the truth around like spackle.  They use just enough to get the job done, and leave the rest sealed in a bucket.  Most kids will tell the truth about anything.
me: What does the frog say?
kid: Frogs don’t talk.
me: [Holy shit, he’s totally right.]

Example 3: Focus

adults hate crayons

Adults think kids have trouble concentrating.  They don’t.  Kids have amazing focus, they just don’t focus on stupid bullshit like getting dressed and doing homework.  But put them in front of their favorite toy, or a picture book, or box of crayons and a clean sheet of paper, and everything else in the world disappears completely.  They don’t worry about other crap.  They can do absolutely one thing at a time.  That’s what adults call meditation.

Example 4: Imagination
Fuck adults and their complete lack of creativity.  I joked with a group of kids and parents that I wish I had tentacles instead of hands so I could grab onto stuff better.  The kids laughed and said, “eew!”  The adults were just horrified and uncomfortable.  One of them actually looked sorry for me.  But the kids would not shut up about it.  “What if you had more hands instead?”  Jesus Christ, why didn’t I think of that?  Awesome.

I need to try to define my day with the funny, good stuff that happens, instead of what I’m doing this very second (being pissed that I have to teach a private lesson after the regular classes today, plus I invited my coworker buddy over to watch some anime or whatever, so I won’t have time to go hot tubbing, which is all I want to do right now because I can’t remember the last time I was in so much muscle-pain, and it’s honestly starting to freak me out).

I’m working on it.

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humor, work

Haiku distraction

Tenmyouya Hisashi, ur doin it rite

Like anyone else, I get bored during meetings and classes.  However, as previously mentioned in an earlier post, I have the uncanny ability to entertain myself pretty much all the time. When I got bored in high school, I would write poetry.  I quickly discovered the best kind of poetry to write in class is haiku, due to its quick and easy format.

Today I was in a meeting at work, and found myself… less than stimulated.  Hence:

So comfortable
with your eyes shut, little Ruth,
mole-boss in the dark.

My boss (let’s call her Ruth for now, for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the poem) has a strange habit of closing her eyes while she talks.  I’m not sure why she does it, but she can deliver a whole, long, elaborately constructed sentence without opening her eyes once.  It’s bizarre, and a little disconcerting.

None of the women
seem surprised that the men have
huddled together.

Meeting attendance by gender: Male : Female = 3:23.  The three of them sat together in a little row of inadequacy.  Pretty hilarious.

The men struggle to
stay awake, while the women’s
eyes, bright, sharp, alert.

It was all the three men could do to stay awake.  Two of them were on their Blackberries most of the time, and the third had his arms folded on the table with his head nodding dangerously low.

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