I Want My Name Back

So, it looks like 2-3 posts a month is about as much as I’m capable of. Meh. My excuse this time, and for the next couple months, is that counting calories takes a long time. Granted, I get to play with spreadsheets so I don’t mind, but it does make me less likely to write anything after I finish.

Adrienne, you never told me this blog stuff was so much work.

So instead of writing anything, I’m going to steal someone else’s material. This Thursday is the Vice Presidential Debate. Grab yourself a 30-pack of PBR (PBR Light if you're counting calories like me) and settle in for the:

SARAH PALIN VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE DRINKING GAME

Take a chug whenever Sarah Palin says any of the following:

· Maverick

· Reformer

· Any sentence including the words "neighbor" and "Russia"

· Small-Town Values

· Gwen or Joe

· Off-Shore Oil Drilling

· Alaska

· "Thanks but no thanks!"

· Witchcraft (you never know…)

Take two chugs whenever Sarah Palin does any of the following:

· Utters a complete and coherent sentence

· Talks about her new friend Henry Kissinger or Hamid Karzai

· Explains how being the part-time mayor of Wasilla, Alaska counts as executive experience

Chug a whole beer (and buy your plane ticket to Canada) if Sarah Palin mentions the following:

· Palin Presidency

Clique-ity Clack

If you’ve had the enormous pleasure of listening me talk about my job, you may have noticed that our cast of characters is particularly um…special. Seriously. And as I listened to three of them talk today about how much they hate our residents, I decided the absurdity of it all was worth a few paragraphs of story-time, even if mere words are not enough to capture it. So today, we’re going to talk about relationships.

Zenzal, the oldest employee on staff, likes to say that everything in life is about relationships. Relationship-building is her job essentially, and she let’s everyone know about it. And yet, I feel like the relationships we have built with each other and with our residents are so complicated and love-hate.

To start with, we have more cliques than your average middle school, and we’ve only got 21 employees. Everyone belongs to multiple cliques, and sometimes you don’t even know which ones you’re in and which ones you aren’t. For example, Jessie and I are the young-people clique. We do stuff outside of the office together, vent about our co-workers, and always check in after a weekend to see how each other is doing. And we tell secrets. But I’m also a part of the admin clique. Not because I’m supposed to be a part of the admin operations, but because I always end up taking part whether I want to or not. Also the IT clique. We’re the group that laughs at the rest of the employees for their complete and utter lack of computer/office machine literacy. There’s only two of us, sadly.

Then there’s the smoker’s club. They all sit in the corner adjacent to my desk and cackle in their raspy voices about how much they hate our residents. This clique is particularly interesting to me, because of their relationship to our residents. Employees typically are one, two, or three degrees of separation from the low-income folks that live on our properties. Property managers and maintenance are the ones that deal with residents directly, all the time. The smoker’s club consists of the employees that are two degrees of separation away. They deal with residents often, maybe even every day, but it’s not their primary job. Three degrees would be me and the rest of us cubical prairie dogs. But the smoker’s club hates our employees with a passion. They get that they’re poor and hurting and they are deeply compassionate and caring for them…in theory. But they sit in their corner of the office and mock them and complain about them. Those who are only one degree away deal with the frustrations more often than the smoker’s club, but they are all just as poor as our residents. We have two black property managers who are raising children and grandchildren on single-parent salaries, two maintenance workers who are Hispanic, working for peanuts, and barely speak English, and one maintenance worker who has to push-start his car and who most would consider to be white trash. But these five employees don’t hate our residents. They might complain here or there, but for the most part they are in the same boat and would do the same thing themselves if the roles were reversed.

Our residents don’t make it easy though; they are racist and mean, and generally very demanding. With 95% of the population at one of our properties being black, they refer to Jessie and Nicola as “that white woman” (yes, they are one and the same, even though one is a 26 year old, 5’10” and 120lb with long blond hair and one is a late 30s, 5’7” and uh, much larger woman with short black hair), and when they’re not berating us for the ‘expensive’ rent and the police presence (they prefer privacy to safety), they also treat us as couple’s counseling. They will come in hollering about how their wife dumped out their Folgers and replaced it with “cheap-ass” Maxwell House and she will respond with a “Why you gotta be tellin’ these white folks about our personal biznis!?”
Our staff is very diverse, and that race issue pops up, even amongst ourselves. The other day Jessie elbowed me in a meeting and showed me what she had written in the margin of her notepad: “We self-segregated!” I looked up, and saw 5 black faces on the side of the table across from me, and then looked up and down my side of the table and saw white after white after white. It certainly wasn’t intentional, but I doubt it was purely coincidence either. Jessie was telling me the other day about Property Manager meetings, and how they’ve gone from productive work events to drinking gossip fests, and how she is the white macadamia chip in their chocolate-chocolate chip cookie. Five black women and Jessie all get together and gab, and make fun of her for not understanding their ‘black’ jokes…yet, they don’t invite Letitia, who is actually black. Because although her skin might be black, Letitia is perhaps whiter than I am (yes, I know that’s hard to imagine).

We’ve got an extreme-faith clique (Oh, you thought they were all extreme? Well consider them extreme and extremer), a Spanish-speaker’s clique, a mother’s clique, an accounting clique (for some reason accounting laughs more than any other department…I think all the numbers made them crazy), and on and on and on. I understand some of it, and past jobs have certainly had that grouping mentality, but I’ve never been in a group that has formed so many smaller groups. Forget an org chart—I want a clique chart. AKA, I’m going to spend the next 45 minutes here at work creating a color-coded Venn Diagram of our cliques. Awesome.

Digital Dating for Dummies

You might think that I should write a post about politics. I was in the stadium for Obama’s latest speech, after all. And I come from Sarah Palin’s state and could throw my two cents about her qualifications into the oozing, bloated mass of commentary already flooding the internet. But that would be too predictable.

Instead, there is a much more important matter that requires my attention: dating advice. It’s come to my attention that some of my more silent readers are having dating issues that need addressing, and I would be remiss to not tackle them here and now. And so I give you: Digital Dating for Dummies.

Way back in the 20th century, after a first date, you spent the next several days gnawing your fingernails and dialing six numbers before hanging up as you tried to decide how long was the right amount of long to wait before calling to ask for a second date. Oh, the good ol’ days. Now you have the option of dialing six numbers before flipping your phone closed, halfway typing “How R U?” before hitting Clear repeatedly, partially writing an email before selecting Save to Drafts, or double-clicking on her ‘fLiRteeKitTeN1989’ screenname to bring up a window, but not typing anything before closing it again. Is a phone call too eager? A text too informal? What if she doesn’t check her email regularly? What if she forgot to sign off and her mom is on the computer now? OH GOD IT’S ALL SO STRESSFUL.

Never fear, dear readers, for the Dating Advice Columnist is here to teach you what the correct response to every situation is using the many tools available to you in this digital world.

Situation One: You get an email from your potential amour and her girl logic has you confused about what she’s saying. So you email it to your best girlfriend for advice. Or did you hit reply? Shit.

Do you:

a) Call her immediately, explain, apologize, and then humbly accept her decision to block your number and never speak to you again

b) Email her 50 more times with funny forwards so that that first damning email gets pushed out of her inbox and on to the next page and hope that she just deletes all the emails from you after realizing the first couple were all just stupid forwards

c) Send her a series of texts that lead her on a scavenger hunt, keeping her away from her house long enough to sneak in, hack into her computer, and delete the file

d) Do nothing, and when she asks, claim that the neighbor’s cat was walking on your keyboard and must’ve accidentally sent the email.

Obviously A is not a good option, as honesty rarely is. And as awesome as it might be to get away with B or C, getting caught would definitely be awkward, so better not to risk it. Go D, and then if she does ask, and you pull out the cat excuse, you can then immediately segway into your I-Hate-Cats speech and if she doesn’t sympathize it wasn’t mean to be anyway. Stupid cats.
Situation Two: You and your potential amour exchange phone numbers. Soon you’re happily having 5-hour-long text message conversations and are so enamored that you’re ready to take it to the next level…the phone call. Unfortunately, she does not answer your calls, nor does she return your voicemails.

Do you:

a) Think that maybe she’s right, you’re moving too fast, and settle into a happy text-only relationship

b) Email her a gift certificate for prepaid cell phone minutes in case her plan is unlimited texts but no phone calls unless your Circle and her Fave Five overlap…and they don’t

c) Start responding to her text messages with voicemails, staying within the 160 character limit so they’re short and choppy

d) Change your phone number and then call, and if she answers, you know it’s intentional that she’s not answering your calls…what a bitch.

Talking on the phone can be stressful, so I don’t blame her. With a text, you can always think about what you’re going to write before you LOL back, even if it was only sort of funny and you only really chuckled a little bit; on the phone, you’d have to actually laugh, God forbid. I don’t think you need to actually change your number to try out D…just call from a friend’s phone, and then hang up and text-dump her if she answers. And I wouldn’t spend any money on her, like option B yet…she’s obviously shady. So that leaves A and C. If you’re the wussy, accommodating type, go route A; if you’re the manly, sarcastic type, option C it is.

Situation Three: As you browse dating profiles on your e-match site of choice, an email pops into your inbox of love. Moderately attractive, somewhat intelligent, warm, breathing, and you’re reasonably sure she’s female? That requires a reply! So you jot a few witty lines in reply and send them off into cyberspace. Lo and behold, she wrote back! You breathlessly open the email and begin to read… “I’m so glad Jesus finally brought me my perfect other half and cannot wait to learn everything there is to know about you. I just cancelled my account, so I’m free forever! When do you want to meet?”

Do you:

a) Clap excitedly and call the phone number she included after taking a moment to genuflect and murmur a little heavenly “Thank You”

b) LOL, then call her bluff with a little reply email… “Sweetheart, I’ve had this ring and no finger to put it on for so long. What God has brought together, let no man tear apart…”

c) Shrug, and tell yourself she can’t possibly be crazier than the narcoleptic Tourette’s she-male who set your couch on fire, and send her a little smiley face IM

d) This is no time for jokes. Run. Change your email, phone number, address, and legal name. Say goodbye to your loved ones, because you can never see them again. Hurry!

Alright drama queen, take a deep breath and stop shouting the letter ‘D’. She still only has your e-match email, remember? And if she cancelled her account, then you’re definitely safe. So I guess that makes this a trick question. I can’t in good conscience recommend A, but although B and C will likely produce awesome stories, you may end up rigor mortised in a dumpster with her name carved in your chest. I’d go with option ‘E’ and set her up with that guy at your office that so desperately needs to get laid that he starts sweating uncontrollably if a female walks within 10 feet of him.

Well, all this advice-ing has me plum tuckered out! Hopefully you all can handle your dating issues for a few weeks without me. I need a vacation.

Exhaustedly yours,
Dating Advice Columnist Lady