In the short while (SWEET!!!  I thought it was going to be 8 or 9 months since my last entry, but it’s only been 2!) since my last post, all of my writing has been dedicated to the delightful task of trying to find a JOB.  I told my still brand new husband that if we got off the rock (meaning Hawaii), his business would grow exponentially.  And you know what?  I WAS RIGHT!!!  However, for me, one who lacks the specific skills, patience, and ambition to stay up all night writing code for web sites, it’s not been as easy.

First…I got swindled.  For goodness sake, this was even on Craigslist AS A WARNING.  It was for an ‘office assistant’ position, which is what I really want to do, learn from a mentor of sorts.  I applied, wrote a brilliant cover letter, sent my resume that I just spent 5 hours re-perfecting the bullet points, and about a week later…I got an email saying I was hired.  The lovely man named Edward Crisp said I would be doing typical administrative things for him from home for $550 a week.  I should have known something was up when I asked if that included withholding or an I9 and he never answered.  He said he was at a summit in London, and he does a lot of philanthropic work, and he was going to sent me a check, I was supposed to buy some stuff for this ‘orphanage,’ send it, and keep $550 for myself.  Orphanage?  Not an uncommon term overall, but in the US, one doesn’t hear it as much here (warning #2).  Then he sent me an email with a delivery confirmation and sent a note about it, why hadn’t I gotten the stuff for the orphanage.  I looked at the confirmation, and it was to a New Hampshire address (warning #3).  Finally, however, a letter DID come, there WAS a check in there, and it was a BANK check!  I told him I’d send him the money as soon as the check cleared.  He told me to wire it NOW because a boy who needs a heart transplant  depends on it (warning #4).  Eh?  what would $2,300 do that was so important.  Finally, I called the bank, and it WAS a real bank, believe it or not, and the first question the person asked was if it had a certain name typed on the lower left line.  Yup, there it was.  Elizabeth Ortiz.  Oddly,  that same day, I got an email from someone else saying I won the same job, but at $400/month.  I told him that he and his lackeys should get their info coordinated if they’re going to scam people.

And then to Mr. Crisp-I was really starting to consider him my future employer.  I sent him an email every day the check DIDN’T come.  I sent him an email that lightly touched on karma, and SHAME ON YOU for trying to rip off nice people who are trying HARD to just get a job.  OK, learned my lesson.

The next day when I went on Craigslist, I looked under the SCAMS area.  Mine was the FIRST ONE they showed.  Now I just felt like a fool for all the time I wasted.

Well, if there is anything to be learned from this is that I learned this the hard way (no, I never lost any money, just time), is that I’ll REALLY know what to look for when perusing the Craigslist classifieds.

Until next time, wish me luck on getting a job!!! sarahanne

So, the last time I stopped here, wrote something, and actually posted it was 5 months ago.  In work time, that’s about a decade, as time seems to come to standstills frequently here.  In bridal time, it was a minute.  Everything of your life getting taken over for this 4-5 hour zenith that you are really TRYING to enjoy every moment from, but goodness Lord, there are 175 people and I only knew 30 of them, I don’t like the way I look in the pictures.  The best part-my dad in his rented suit walking me down the aisle.  There’s this picture of us at the beginning and we both have our heads looking down-like father, like daughter.  The pictures of the ceremony that look like I’m about to cry-I’m not.  My brother was in the back, and I was about to crack up the whole time.  When I put the ring on Dale and got more than a few tears out of my normally stoic pops, being quite proud of his offspring for her tone and diction-enunciating at the perfect times, not too loud-honestly, I was pretty dang proud of myself in that moment too.  I know my voice can be heard from space and I was damned if it was going to boom out then.  My brother got his tears out of me with his moving speech.

The WEDDING was perfect.  The RECEPTION I’d prefer not to comment.  I felt gyped, and that’s pretty much it.  And with that, the 60 seconds quickly came to its end as reality kicked back in.

Since then, the primary objective was FIND A PLACE TO LIVE IN PORTLAND.  I am signed up with many different agencies who look for apartments, some looking on other agency’s sites to see if there is anything.  I came across something I liked; it was perfect, end of search.  Then hubby decides that we need to put a $900 cap on rent, and the place I had was around $1,200.  I said I’m sorry, I’ve been restricted, alas.  So the pursuit of a 2BR apt. began in full pursuit.  The one almost constant variable involves carpet.  If a place is carpeted (and I know it is SO MUCH COOLER to have hardwood floors or stone floors or whatever, but I’m SICK OF ROCKS and want carpet, damnit!), the color will be grey.  Most likely a bedroom will be shown, and you will see the PERFECT marks of a freshly steam-cleaned carpet.  EVERY time, that triangular pattern.

I am NOT going to slack and put this in Drafts, but it has approached 5pm, which is when I say goodnight to everyone here.  So post I go.  Will be back soon

Actually, to be truthful, I never left.  My absence was a simple case of my site needing to be upgraded, and me being unable to do so from my work computer.  However, with the problem fixed, we can return to our regularly scheduled programming…

I look on my Google home page at the countdown to the big day  which will end Dale’s and my betrothal (10/24) as we .  With exactly 100 days until ‘the BIG day’, I am not sure if I’m on top of everything or if I’m falling horribly behind.  I learned a certain form of ‘pidgin Chinese’ while working with my dressmaker.  After finally reaching the conclusion that yes, my thyroid has konked out, yes, I’m going to need to be on yet another medication for the duration of my life, and no, I will probably never be that willowy thin gal I used to be, I guess my measurements are going to be the numbers that they are right now. 

The beauty and the bane of slacker jobs is that little is expected of you.  It’s a gift from the gods when you have other things you need to do; it’s a glimpse of hell, watching the second hand of your clock turn slower and slower to the point where you are SURE that time has STOPPED.  If I were to be doing that certain something I have yet to find, that trade/job/occupation/career that I absolutely LOVE, where I jump out of bed every morning and can’t wait to face the day, you would not find me here.  However, given that is not the case,  I feel like if I am to participate in the grown up world of legitimate work, if I can’t do what I love (as I don’t even know what that may be), I might as well take on one with few pressures.  I can at least attend to the other parts of my world that are of more importance, and perhaps through all that, I’ll stumble on that ultra-super fantastic vocation I was created to perform.

Until then, I’ll answer the phone, pick out some bridesmaid’s dresses, and see what’s going on in Facebook.  THAT, unto itself, is an entire topic upon which I will have to elucidate further when the words about it ring clear in my head. 

I’m happy to be back.  Even though my entries have not been as prolific as I hoped they would be, I like it here.  It’s MY little spot in this infinite otherworld.  Until next time…sarahanne

In the beginning, you join, and that’s lovely, but you just don’t know what you’re in for.  All of the sudden, people start coming out of the woodwork, and you’re connecting with people you haven’t seen since elementary school, or from your college years, or from your twenties, all those people who were so important to you at that time but somehow faded into the woodwork.  When you become someone’s friend, you can see all of their friends (and vice versa), and then suddenly there are ALL of these people from the days of yore, and your friend list explodes like a field of dandelions.  Then friends of friends are wanting to be in your world (why?), and for me, I suddenly had 300 ‘friends.’  I honestly do not even KNOW 300 people.  However, Facebook IS  an interesting application, and since it involves me sitting here staring at my computer, I look like I’m working.  On something important.  In the beginning, it is EXTREMELY addictive.  And I would know.

On Facebook, there are all sorts of applications-ones where you can send good karma to your friends, help save the rainforest by sending virtual plants to one another, another where you can help our oceans by…yup, sending virtual fish.  Yet, there are also games on it that are a bit more…involved…shall we say.

And you know what I’ve got addicted to?  Virtual FARMING!  No joke.  They start you off with 5 plots of land planted with tomatoes, $1000, and a cow, I think.  Your goal is to grow crops, make money so you can clear land and grow more crops (clearing & plowing are 20 bucks a shot).  That’s all.  It almost takes on this Zenlike quality because there’s no competition, no worrying, no nothing.

In the beginning, I plowed and grew sooooo many tomatoes (because you can harvest them in one day and they have a high ROI) that it took a big chunk of my day. After you harvest, you have to re-plow and re-plant (no, there is no crop rotation or things of that nature on it-yet).  If you had friends who were also farming, you could send them trees and animals.  Receiving gifts of trees was great  because they ripened every 3 days, and you made money harvesting them.

Now, I am wrought with so many trees that I don’t know what to do!  I only farm a crop on the perimeter of the plot now, more for aesthetics than anything.  I have so many different trees and animals that I’ve piled everything off to the side in hopest that the blank space will inspire me to design something that looks really absolutely ultra fantastic.

In the beginning, one could send 30 trees/animals to friends.  Then it went up to 40.  Then there was about a week where there was a glitch in the system, and you could send as many as you wanted.  You see, if you RECEIVE a gift from someone, it’s free.  All of the items are also for sale, but they are incredibly expensive. 

When I’m hanging out on my ‘ether-farm’ these days, I am amazed.  I have SO many animals and trees, and they were ALL presents.  People talk about Facebook negatively, saying it is shallow and you don’t REALLY rekindle your friendships, you just have them in your friend list and send them silly things.  That’s probably the truth for most.  But that’s probably good enough for most too.  However, one thing I CAN say is that through this little game I’ve been playing, and in the sending plants and fish and karma, I have re-connected with some people  I never thought I would see again in a million years.  True, there’s not much personal communication with most of them-you see that they’ve sent you something, you send something back if you’re so inclined, you write an occasional comment on their wall, but that’s about it.

This would serve as proof that Facebook is a shallow thing.  But one day, a girl with whom I went to boarding school came across my farm.  We fast became ‘farm buddies, and soon, we were writing more in depth messages, not merely leaving comments on one another’s boards, but really emailing one another and discussing the paths our lives have taken (which were VERY similar, even though we had little in common in boarding school), where we are now, where we hope to be.  I would say that ‘back in the day,’ we were barely more than acquaintances, and now, I feel I can consider her a real friend.  In the ethers.  

If it WEREN’T for Facebook, we probably never would have crossed paths or seen/heard/or particularly cared if we did.  In spite of all of the superficiality found on that site, it IS possible to reconnect with people there, if you choose to, and maybe that’s what was meant to be.  If it was any time earlier, we would have been in very different worlds living very different lives, but NOW was the right time for us to meet again.  I guess some things are just supposed to happen that way.  Thanks, Facebook.

This ain’t our first rodeo, people.

Let’s take a look, shall we?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States

Wow, this is my 5th recession!  And I’m not even very old!

I can’t say I remember anything of  ‘my’ first one, where people were lining up to fill their gas tanks. We lived on a ranch and had our own gas tank (because of all of the tractors and equipment that require gas in order to work), so I don’t remember waiting all day to fill up one’s tank.   Then again, I was about 3 years old. Nothing is too bad when you’re 3.  However, it was a bad recession, or so I’m told.

The early 80’s recession…that would put me in early Jr. High School. My life pretty well sucked during the entire experience of Jr&Sr high, all of which took place in the 1980’s. I’m sure I was focusing a lot more on the myriad elements that comprised my life sucking than I was on the early 80’s recession. The lovely ‘trickle down’ theory didn’t trickle down as low as Reagan had assured us, if it even trickled at all…

The early 90’s recession: Ooooh, I remember this one! It wasn’t just Ivy League graduates who had nowhere to go, it was EVERYONE graduating from college around that time. You just went through all this schooling, and now there’s nothing for you?  If you could afford it , you’d get mommy and daddy to pay for you to just stay in school and get your master’s degree right then.   A lot of us weren’t so lucky, but even so, many opted for the ‘take out more loans, get my master’s/PhD and hope times are better when I’m done with them’ route.  I remember being utterly petrified the 2nd semester my senior year.  I had no idea what I was going to do.  I ended up packing up and moving to the big city of San Francisco.  The one advantage to this time was that so many schools had been cranking out kids with business degrees that suddenly, companies wanted to hire people who had a more ‘well rounded’ education. Though Psychology was #1 and English #2 in the list of slacker majors, they definitely counted as ‘well rounded, and somehow employment was found.

2001-2003-Oh, the dot com bubble! And right on the heels of the Japanese recession of the late 90’s! I had friends who were working really hard, trying to get in on IPOs, then BAM! It was all over. They had spent the best part of their 20’s working their asses off in hopes of the big payout, and I spent most of mine NOT doing that, and then, years later,  there we were, in the very same place. It was as if the ‘ant and the grasshopper’  fable was turned on its side.

And NOW we’re in the late 2000’s recession, and everyone’s running around like chicken with their heads cut off, screaming like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” It’s not as though this has never happened before.   And everyone’s saying ‘This time it’s going to be different; THIS time we’re going to find a new way, a super great ultra utopian way, THIS time we’re going to become self sufficient, join hands across the land, and by the end of it, we’ll all be working at high paying jobs, and we’ll all be so much wiser for this experience that it’ll NEVER happen again.

I’m not denying that maybe this IS the chance for people to get together, get off their asses, and elicit major change for our country.  We are so used to being the king of the hill in terms of world leadership that we have been on autopilot for so many things, and we’re paying for it now.  I think this time we do face unprecedented challenges, and just maybe, the necessary elements WILL come together, and people will realize the benefits of doing things in a new way, more economical, ecological, self sustainable.  Really, we don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter.   

No matter the situation, it’s STILL a very lucky thing to be an American.   However, we’re a little amiss in thinking that the troubles we face now are new.  Our 225+ year history has been wrought with  some sort of financial problem, panic, recession, depression, crisis, or crash going on since we became a country.  Yes, it is incredibly important to learn from our mistakes, misfortunes, and things of the like.  However, to think that if we change things, radically change things, we will forever be free from such troubles as we’re facing right now; it’s a beautiful idea, truly, but whether or not it’s realistic is questionable.

Something has happened to my body.  I’m not too sure who took it over, but they’ve done a great job messing it up.  After being in the 120 pound range for the last two decades, suddenly, the question I get asked most is “When are you due?”  Last year I probably used up 85% of my vacation time going to doctors.  Nothing. 

Could it be me?  Could I be eating more than I think I am?  My general doctor had created a diet which he said always worked.  A dry piece of toast for breakfast.  A salad as big as I want for lunch.  A lean cuisine type entree for dinner.  Follow this draconian diet for six days,  and you are allowed ONE ‘free’ meal.  The only problem is I hate salad.  So I took my salad fixings and blended them into a sort of mush in the food processor.  I figured this way, I’d be able to have a few bites, and that would equal out.  Another bad idea.

The pounds just have been staying, inviting their friends, and have been in no hurry to leave.  I have a bit of chronic kidney disease, a doctor told me.  Couple that with it not really being the best time out of the last 28 days, and that’s me today.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on learning about fashion and taste, because I really want to be wearing something other than wrap around skirts for the rest of my life.  I’m trying to figure out how to turn this eternal hippie wear into something more timeless.  I want to look cool, but classy as well, and in a day to day way.  I can do classy for something like an event without a problem, but on Monday, I’m lost.

Today I went to Nordstrom’s.  I had one of my books with me so I could understand what they’d been talking about.  I found some jeans.  I tried them on.  I could button and zip them…barely.  I see a lot of people wear their jeans this tight.  I couldn’t imagine being one of them, but I could if I wanted to.  I handed the ill-fitting pants to a saleswoman and gave a quick excuse-not a good time of the month to be trying on things.

But we got to talking, and I told her about my newly diagnosed thyroid /kidney condition.  She told me a relative of hers had the same thing-a huge weight gain out of the blue, and everyone asking her if she was pregnant because she looked like it.  Hey, that’s what happened to me last year!  The saleswoman said she could tell I was supposed to be thin-she could see it in my wrists and ankles.  Unfortunately, she then said that the condition the other girl had eluded doctors.  Bummer.

However, it was the first time since my body has been practicing circus tricks that another person understood.  Another person had seen this before.  Another person who (among the very few) said it wasn’t my fault.  She said to get over the ‘womanly week,’ and come in again.  Her name was Dana.  It was the first good ‘bad’ shopping experiences I’ve ever had. 

And I’ll be looking cool, timeless yet modern, and all that other fashion stuff some day.

However, that site is not the point here.  What the point is here is karma, and I seem to have far less in real life than I do in the ethers of computer land.  I’ve even taken steps to improve my karma.  For example, I was at the check out counter at the health food store, and the cashier accidentally rang me up for one deli item, when in reality there were four. So I, trying to live my good karma life, I pointed the error out to her, that she had accidentally UNDERCHARGED me.  I left the store fifteen bucks poorer than I could have been, but I was smug in the knowledge of the good person I was and how most people would have kept silent on such an oversight. 

After that, I had to see a foot doctor.  He was really nice.  Unfortunately though, I have either fractured some bone in my foot or I have doinked the tendon that connects to it.  So I get thrown into a cast and sent on my way until they get my bone scan results next week.  Here’s how I got this injury:  I got this problem because unlike many millions of minions who consider lunch hour as ‘that time when you move from your sitting at your desk to sitting in the kitchen,’ I actually go OUTSIDE and walk 3.5 miles while reading.  Yes, I can read while walking, and I do it quite well in fact.  Don’t worry about me Honolulu, even though you have a high pedestrian fatality rate, I’ll keep on walking, with my book open, I’ll even promise that you won’t hit me (that last sentence should be read in a ‘don’t cry for me, Argentina’ melody in the background).  I can’t justify sitting ALL DAY.  In fact, I have to do far more sitting than I would prefer in the first place.  So one day tra la la, there I was, going on my route, and then this pain started.  That wasn’t unusual, this bit of discomfort had been going on for over a month.  But then it got bad.  REALLY bad.  And believe it or not, I even ‘cowboy’d up’ and finished the whole route. Then I came upstairs, got on the phone and yelled at my dr. to fix this problem.

And then yesterday, my coworker who sits next to me, she was about to send a friend a birthday present.  Her original view was to include a Starbucks gift card, but she decided not to at the last minute.  However, it just so happened that I HAD a Starbucks gift card in my wallet that I received for one of my freelance jobs.  Now if THAT wasn’t karma or a sign from the universe of good karma for her, then I know not what is.

So here I am, I’m walking at lunch, getting in a workout, I’m telling the checkout girl I should be paying her MORE money, I give my coworker the exact gift card she’d been thinking about, I should be having supergreat things happening all around me, right?  Rather, I’m sitting here in a hot (and increasingly smelly) walking cast that’s created a painful blister on my shin, and I’ve lost all trust from my boss for being on Facebook too much.

If you subscribe to Louise Hay’s notion of ‘what you put in to the universe comes back multiplied,’ ultra super great things should be happening all around me, right?  Is karma like a point system, where when you gather enough you get a free DVD or something?  I don’t know. 

O we Americans are so impatient; perhaps we would have been better served if we were kept oblivious about such notions like karma.  You know we’ll just mess it up.  We’ll do something good today with the expectation that something great will happen tomorrow, when in reality, that good karma you created is perhaps making up for a bunch of bad karma you kept dragging along with you from several lifetimes ago.  Or maybe your good deeds today will put you in good standing in your next life in some way.  However, we’ve adopted the belief that these things/experiences will have a quick turnaround,  a sort of shelf life of a few days rather than a few lifetimes.  We’ve become a silly, overweight, shallow, lazy, ungrounded and lost nation that can’t even take care of itself.  We’ve been around the world, and we’ve exploited and/or taken advantage of  every resource, every labor force, low pollution standard, and have cherry picked just about everything else we think could be useful.  And lately, our scenery is one of extremes:  stock market volatility and panic,mortgages lenders tumbling, banks free-falling, insurance companies going bankrupt, and we’re fighting a war we know will never end.   In light of all this, from an objective light, perhaps karma has come back to kick our asses for all of our prior (and current) transgressions. 

So I guess I’ll just be satisfied that I’ve done a couple good deeds and know that good things will come back…someday.  I think it’s when you STOP expecting something, when you’ve essentially forgotten the great deeds you did a ways back,  when you’re least expecting it that some ramification from the good karma you created will decide to shine on you.  Until then, I’ll try to be a good person and not be so peeved over the fact that I’m stuck in a baking hot walking cast while it’s just as hot outside-like wearing a pair of Uggs over wool socks in the middle of summer…

Two years ago today was the day that my life changed forever when I had say goodbye to my beloved, Rufus Palmer.  And true to The Pet Psychic’s words:  “We never get over the loss of a pet.  We just get used to living without them,” that’s what’s happened to me.

Unfortunately, this all happened on September 11th, which has become to Americans “The day everything changed.”  For many, it’s a day of much grief and sorrow over loved ones who died.  That’s where I start feeling weird.  I actually say this to almost no one, because I feel trivialized when I do.  To me, this day sucks because I lost the one being most dear to me that I’ve ever had-he just wasn’t a human.  And I feel that for some reason, the fact that he wasn’t human makes my grief not as worthy or justified as those who lost human people in 2001.  As in ‘it was ONLY a dog…’   If people only knew…

There’s a growing number of people these days who are taking a look at the world around them and deciding that they don’t want to be a part of repopulating it.  There are some who are averse to children; there are some who simply value the time they have to themselves just too much to sacrifice it to raising a young version of themselves.  Perhaps there are even those, and I’m probably one of them, who are trying to skip karma by not having children, knowing what hellions they themselves were while growing up.  Whatever the reason, the American Dream has expanded to include those for whom the 2.4 kids just ain’t gonna happen. 

That doesn’t say there’s no parental instinct there.  For many, it just comes in a different form.  Many articles have been written about the new ‘trend’ some people are moving to, and that is to essentially act as thought their pets were their children.  And it’s true.  We even refer to them as ‘our children,’ and in a lot of ways, we mean every word of that.

I’m really sorry for everyone who was affected by 9/11/01.  I remember seeing it on CNN; the first airplane had hit, and the second was about to.  It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.  The only thought in my head was ‘our world is never going to be the same.’ And it hasn’t.  But for me, it’s a hard day because I had to say goodbye forever to the one being who gave meaning to my life when I found none.  And believe me, it hurts just as much.

I watched the line and its meaning dissolve in 1990 in Boulder, CO.  Prior to that date, people would start ‘lining up’ for just about anything,  usually concert tickets (OK, Grateful Dead concert tickets).  They had such devoted followers that being in line for a few days became a party unto itself.  Coming out of the 70’s, some bands were HUGE, and stadiums filled with people would sell out in minutes.  You had better be in that line.

However, in an attempt to curb people camping out, and to keep order for those days leading up to the on sale date, the main record store in Boulder first tried this:  If you were in line the night before the ticket went on sale, you’d be given a number based on their allotment, and if you got a number, you were guaranteed a ticket.  Perhaps it wasn’t the best ticket, but at the very least, you were IN.  Then, if there were people who didn’t get numbers from the day before or just decided to wait, if any tickets were left, they’d swoop in on like vultures once all the ‘guaranteed’ ones were sold.

The day the line died (funny that-the music died with Don McLean’s song in 1972, but the line seemed to survive) we can thank our friends at Ticketmaster.  Not only could you NOT wait the night before and have bestowed upon you a ticket guaranteeing you will get what you want the next day, you couldn’t even try to make a nice new line right then and there-on the day of the show-so if you got there at 4 a.m., you’d at least be rewarded for getting up so damn early.

It was the RANDOM numbering system.  This was done, of course, to discourage people from loitering around the ticket place and taking up space.  NOW, it didn’t matter if you got there at 4:36 am or 9:52 am (most Ticketmaster ticket sales begin exactly at 10:00 am), the numbers were distributed randomly.  Once the numbers were handed out, everyone had to change their positions in line based on whatever number they got.  You could have waited there for four hours and get pushed all the way to the end of the line, or you could have traipsed in at the last moment and be standing with ticket #1 (and everyone else hating you).  With no advantage to coming sooner, the line died….almost.

Oddly enough, the people who are now pining in lines are those who are waiting for the release of some GADGET.  And for some reason, since this seems to be outside the auspices of TicketMaster…so far.  Here you CAN wait all day, and you will be given a number corresponding to when you got there to hold what’s promised for you.  You can’t camp, you have to leave when the mall closes, but you can sit in one place for days on end…waiting in line

People are waiting in line so they can BUY something?  Eh? What happens three months down the road when everyone you know has the same thing?  Ooooh, is the dude’s phone, for example,  sooo much better because he waited in a line for hours and hours to purchase it on the first day, and this other girl spent five minutes and got the same thing three days ago?  Did they add some ’secret’ extra features for the ones who demonstrated their devotion so openly?  I doubt it.

It’s kind of sad, really, that THAT’S what kids are waiting for these days.  The days of nervously hoping that you’ll get in before tickets sell out, or before the GOOD seats sell out are gone; now it’s just another line to wait in…

 Having run into a brick wall of unanswered voicemails, I asked her in passing a single question for further clarification.  I was told “Let me tell you about managers.  When they give someone a project to work on, they expect to not have to think about it until it is completed.  I don’t have any time (she was socializing when  I asked her) to give you further information.  You’re just going to figure it out yourself.  Or if you can’t, then you can’t.”  O…K… that was helpful.  I just made myself feel even MORE like a chump.  Fortunately, I was ultimately able to get a hold of someone who had the information I was seeking.

I give this information to the manager, and from it, I was given a new assignment.  It was similar in nature, and I lucked out to find the information I needed plus more on one of my first calls.  I complete this task and give it to her.  It was odd because there was this element of simple busywork to these ‘projects.’ 

Then the truth comes out.  “We’re giving you these projects to see what you can handle.”  She asked me of my other responsibilities in this job, which generally aren’t of much importance, but they do count as work.  “We are seeing whether it’s even necessary to have this position at all, or whether it could be replaced by the phone.  You need to show us that your position is justified in keeping.”

Eh?  I always thought that even if it got down to 10 people in the office, they’d ALWAYS need a receptionist.  Alas, how wrong I was.

I get stuck with all the work no one else wants to do.  I am REQUIRED  to possess a friendly demeanor-on the phone and to people coming in.  I have to get permission to go to the BATHROOM for God’s sake in case the phone rings, I do all the low work no one else will, and in these hard times of recession, I’m the one you want to eliminate?  What about all of your project workers who’ve been sitting at their cubicles doing nothing?  If you’re going to save some money, why axe the lowest paid person?  Doesn’t make sense to me. 

So who knows?  My days here may be limited.  That’s all right; collecting unemployment for a while sounds kind of fun too.