Pickles & Dimes

For a video shoot for work yesterday, I traveled to the house of the cutest couple in the world. They were both in their 70s and as welcoming as could be, despite the army of people invading their home with monitors and cords and lights and cameras. The husband got touched up by the makeup artist while a few of us chatted amiably with his wife.

With everything almost ready, we analyzed the setup, looking for possible reflections or distractions in the shot. Finally, we were banished to the living room to watch the interview on a tiny monitor. The first few minutes went well, until the sound guy interrupted and proclaimed the ticking of a wall clock to be too loud. A few minutes later, we stopped again because the humming refrigerator was too distracting. A few minutes after that, we realized the chair the husband was sitting in squeaked every time he moved.

With everything finally settled, the interview continued for a few more minutes until we heard: THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. Everyone looked around in confusion while the wife shook her head. Turns out the cat that had been banished to the bedroom was voicing his displeasure by pawing at the door.

The cat got resettled downstairs and we started again. During the heart of the interview, I suddenly developed a tickle in my throat. It was awful – just one cough or throat-clearing would take care of it, but I didn’t dare do it. It got to the point where my eyes were watering. Just as I was about to ruin everything, the interviewer stopped anyway. The next minute was a flurry of normal noises as everyone coughed, cleared their throat, rearranged their seating position, or otherwise existed. Total silence is hard to achieve, man!

After instructing the interviewer to ask a few more questions, we started getting some really great sound bites. So of course that’s when we heard WHOOO! WHOOO! WHOOO!

It was a train. OF COURSE IT WAS. Which, according to the wife, only passes through twice a day. About the only thing missing from our menagerie of noisy interruptions was a police siren and perhaps some stern yells emanating from a megaphone while a SWAT copter hovered nearby.

But as I was leaving, I realized we had probably gotten off easy. Sitting in the next-door neighbor’s front yard, ready for action, was a circular saw.

A few of you have asked how work is going. In a word? Great.

Anyway, I’ve been here exactly one month today and I’m still marveling over how lucky I am to work at a place doing what I love. So far I’ve written copy for video scripts, presentations, brochures, websites, and a bunch of gloriously goofy and seriously silly health posters. My favorite project so far: naming an iPad app. I love naming projects because it’s fun to try to guess what the client really wants, and to come up with names that achieve that while finding something that hasn’t already been trademarked. Plus, it’s a nice little ego boost to have the client choose something I thought of out of a list of 50 options, you know?

In the middle of all of this, there is one shiny, awesome-as-sparkling-unicorns beacon: a project manager who is pretty much the living embodiment of Susie from Curb Your Enthusiasm. She is the most foul-mouthed, in-your-face straight-shooter I have ever encountered.

And she is delightful.

I get giddy when I see a meeting invite from her. She cuts through all of the B.S. with no apologies. The fact that she is less than five feet tall only adds to her charm. (Direct quote: “I’m so f**king short, when I sit at a restaurant, my f**king chin touches the table.”) Today, when she was speaking about the aforementioned higher-up who needs to micromanage everything, she said, “Well, this project is probably going to get delayed since you-know-who has to spray his f**king scent on everything.” HA. She also routinely starts meetings by saying, “F**kers, don’t mess this up,” or “You b*tches got anything else to add?” I am fascinated by this woman. Every company needs someone like her.

Today we were discussing the possibility of customizing a Magic 8 ball for a client, and she mentioned that she wanted one for herself. Before I could blurt out that hers would be full of swear words, she pantomimed shaking a Magic 8 ball and shouted, “F**K OFF!” followed by another imaginary shake, yelling, “Eat sh*t and die!”

So that’s how the new job is going. Also, there is a farmers market on site every Wednesday, and I just noticed that there’s one of those basketball shooting games right next to the skeeball.

Today I had a work seminar. It was not, thankfully, the Speed Networking one I mentioned a while ago, because that trainwreck would’ve ended with 1) my resignation, 2) someone getting punched in the nostril or 3) both of the above. This one was about proposals (studio audience: booooo!) and while I do not wish to spend any of my time away from work talking about the thing I do all the time at work, it was the result of a vague compromise to my boss, who wanted me to attend four work seminars in 5 days. (Me, plotting: What can I do to make this not happen?)

So, after an internal adjustment of my Attitude Meter (formerly set at “Bad, Very Bad”), I vowed to be all outgoing and chirpy and passionate about my work at this seminar. And it was nice. I met people I knew previously from only a series of flurried emails from past last-minute proposal collaborations. I was talkative and outgoing and I left feeling excited about my job.

A few weeks ago, J. and I had dinner with a friend who mentioned that his employer had a few openings in my area of expertise. When I looked at the qualifications and realized I had everything but some highly specific marketing software experience, I was enthusiastic about learning those programs and expanding my knowledge base. And then our friend told me that the starting salary of those openings was anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 a year more than what I make. And my enthusiasm quadrupled.

So I’m volunteering to learn new software and programs and marketing initiatives, and become more involved in things (including work seminars). If it looks great on my résumé and leads to something elsewhere, fantastic. And if it leads to better things with my current employer, that’s fine too.

In the meantime, I’ve regained some perspective, and the fact that I haven’t had any proposals due in an entire week (which has never happened before) has also helped. Immensely. Intensely. (Add another word starting with an “I” and ending in “ly” here.)

It’s like when you’re absolutely sick of your hair, and it starts looking nice the moment you make an appointment for a haircut, or your car starts driving smoothly again after you finally make an appointment to see what that ungodly knocking noise is. Just knowing that I have options makes everything seem so much better instead of struggling with that unsettling feeling of dissatisfaction I’ve had for months. You know the one? The one of being trapped by rabid wolverines that are armed with staplers and org charts and InDesign files?

You sometimes have that feeling too, right?

This time of year always puts me in a weird place mentally (not that I’m not usually in a weird place mentally, but anyway). The snow has been plentiful, to be sure (We’re already on Minnesota’s Top 10 Snowiest Winters Ever List, FTW!) and the 13-inch snowfall after a week of melting temperatures was a frostbitten slap to the face, so I’ve decided that I’m done with winter. I’m no longer surviving it, but instead, simply no longer acknowledging its seemingly friendly-white-drifts-hiding-malacious-black-ice existence. More snow’s on the way? Fine. Whatever. I have a husband who gets home before I do and feels compelled to shovel. The temperature’s only going to be 28 degrees? Screw you, I’m wearing short sleeves anyway and I have a space heater at my desk. I feel like winter is purposely trying to get a rise out of me, so the best way to deal with it is to just ignore it until it gets bored and goes away. If that fails, I plan on jumping off of our deck railing onto the 6-foot-tall snow pile in our backyward because that also seems like a good way to tell winter to go screw itself.

Monday was the day of our giant snowfall, and after Jason & I got up at 4:15 a.m. to shovel our driveway (LET ME REPEAT: 4:15 a.m.! You should know, the Wanting to Barf Level was very high) we decided that since our street hadn’t been plowed but the side streets had, my car would never make it over the resulting Plow Wall at the end of the street. So I called in and worked from home. And it was glorious. After answering a bunch of emails at 6:30 a.m., I finally called a halt to the nonsense and took a shower, ate a nice, leisurely breakfast, and forced myself to wait until 8:00 a.m. to start working again. (Whenever I do work from home, I overcompensate by working longer/harder because I feel everyone thinks I’m slacking off. I am not.) The whole day was nirvana: no commute, no streaming line of procrastinating project managers, no endless supply of questions fired at me by people in my vicinity. Just a sleeping puppy in his bed near the desk, an electric blanket/purring lap kitty combo to combat the basement’s chill, and a crazy amount of productivity. I totally need to figure out a way to work from home (at least once in awhile). Plus, it totally fed into my introverted, no-need-to-talk-to-people-unless-absolutely-necessary philosophy.

This is probably why I had such an immediate and visceral reaction when one of my coworkers sent me a link to a marketing event that’s the business equivalent of speed dating. (Seriously, the whole evening consists of sitting at a table with 5-6 strangers and having 5 minutes to describe your business before being herded to another table of strangers to repeat the process. For three hours.) To tell you the truth, I would rather quit my job than do this. And it’s not because I’m afraid of speaking to strangers (I’m not), and it’s not that I’m anti-social (I am, but not really). It’s just that these types of events are filled with smarmy, teeth-itchingly-annoying cheeseballs that back you into the proverbial corner all night promising you all kinds of business advice (for free!). And then, once the evening ends and you’ve stupidly given them your work number or your email just to ensure your escape, they keep calling you. And calling you. Forever. And if you’re a nice person like me, you passive-aggressively give them subtle hints like ignoring their LinkedIn requests while simultaneously yearning to punch them in the face. And yet they keep calling.

Would you ever go to a work event like that? In case it’s not clear, I would not. Ever. At all. Ever.