Ouch. That Smarts.

"You know," I said to a caseworker in the dictation room this morning, dead eyes meeting dead eyes, "I would never cheat on my wife, but this job can definitely suck my dick."

I've been trying to leave for maybe eight months-- maybe nine.  Maybe it's been since my kids were born, I don't know.  I don't remember.  I've sent out so many emails, it's disgusting.  I've been on Idealist.org so many times it's appalling.  Every time I attach another horseshit resume to another fantastically made up cover letter email, I want to shit studs and puke drywall.  It's repetitive and demeaning and unkind.

The rejection emails do not bother me, not even a bit.  I could care less.  I couldn't care less?  Who cares?

Not me!

I just submitted an excessively and predictably lengthy application to work for the V. A. as basically a mid-level bureaucrat, desk-jockey, paper-pushing, phone-weilding asstriloquist.  And, I've got to tell you, plate tectonics and priorities really must be shifting in this harried little head of mine, because I'm practically salivating at the thought of sitting at a desk all day, answering the telephone, talking to down-on-their-luck, washed up, beaten down, PTSD'd vets about the process of securing, exploring, appealing, and exercising their benefits and horning in on markedly more money than I'm making and sucking at the glorious teat of a federal pension.

mmmmmmmmmmmm...... suck suck suck suck suck suck suck................. moist

But, of course, I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.  The job was open from the 18th-20th, and there are fourteen (FOUR-FUCKIN-TEEN!) positions open in Philadelphia.  Now, because it's the government, they want to make sure you're nice and smart before they hire you, you know, so you fit in with everybody else already on the federal payroll, so you had to submit your transcript(s) in order to complete the application process.

This wasn't easy to accomplish when you work full-time, have two children, and only two days to accomplish this feat.

Muhlenberg, my undergraduate alma mater, made it pretty easy, and relatively inexpensive.  For an unofficial transcript, you fill out the form online, pay $7.25, ($5.00 for the transcript, $2.25 internet service fee) and they email you your grades in around 24 hours.  Done and done.

La Salle, graduate school and true to its staid Catholic roots, is a little bit more rooted in the dark ages.  After tithing $32.50 (don't ask me where they came up with that bizarre number) they will Express Mail you the transcript.  They don't do the eThing.  Fortunately, I had until 11:59pm on the 20th to fax the transcripts to the gub'mint, and I did it by 8:20pm.  And everything was going fine.  What wasn't going particularly fine was looking at my Muhlengrades, which I hadn't really thought about since I graduated back in 2002.

I graduated as prick # 211 out of 450 some other pricks and pracks.  Solidly middle of the pack-- indistinguishable, certainly academically, from one schlub to the next schmeck.  Sure, I wrote, edited, published, promoted and sold a book as an undergraduate, and I was in a lot of plays, and wrote a lot of plays and had one of those plays be a semi-finalist to go to the Kennedy Center, and I distinguished myself as the first Jew on our hallway to have sex with a Catholic girl, (I didn't even have to tithe) and I probably distinguished myself in other ways, too, but, academically, not really very much happening there.

I got a D in biology-- having sex with the Catholic girl didn't help like I thought it might-- and I guess that's because I never went to class.  I guess the biology class I took in high school, where we spent untoward amounts of time coloring in pictures of amoebas, talking about "Power Rangers" and watching "The Money Pit" didn't help like I thought it might.  A cold, hard C- in Critical Thinking, which I think, objectively and non-academically, is something at which I'm pretty adroit.  I bombed a couple other classes, too.  Oh, right.  Intro to Psych.  C-, which is kind of funny, considering that I work in an inpatient crisis psychiatric hospital and I supposedly know my dick from a mushroom.  I did very well in all my theatre courses, but I guess you'd have to be Nicolas Cage on ice and ether to fuck that up.

Joking aside (really, it's no joke: I hate that flat affect fuckstick) I was surprised at how saddened I was by my college grades.  I ended with a cumulative GPA of 3.302.  I looked at the scanned transcript and I was disappointed in myself, something I would have bristled at had it came from my parents-- but it never did.  At least, I don't remember them saying they were disappointed in my grades-- certainly not in college.  Where grades were held in extremely, I think excessively, high regard in my wife's family, in my own, they were not really relevant.  Far more weight was given to the overall experience.  I remember my parents being concerned for how I was doing in college on an emotional level, particularly since, mid-way through my sophomore year, I started going to the counseling center for once-a-week sessions and didn't stop until I graduated.  I had suicidal thoughts for the first, and only, time when I was a freshman.  Bullied mercilessly, lost and lonely, and stripped from the tender clutches of my once-adoring mother, I got very dark indeed-- and told no one.  Because, well, why would I?

In grad school, I ended with a cumulative 3.7, because, I guess, La Salle gives out A's like communion wafers.  I got tons of them, and never went hungry.

I guess, if I'd wanted good grades in undergrad, I would have, I don't know-- studied?  I didn't think you were supposed to study in college, so I didn't.  I never really knew how to study anyway.  In high school, I did my homework on the bus on the way to school, and I did fine, so I didn't really know what all those people were doing in the college library all the time.  I went there because there were hot girls there and I liked hot girls.  Now, when I got to the library, there's just mentally unstable people cursing under their breath and blowing air on their notebooks filled with religious ramblings.  I masturbated, a lot, in college-- and my eyesight was always poor and my palms are still hairless to this day, but I guess educational mediocrity is the price for my ambivalence and spilled seed.  And I suppose, in the end, I'm okay with that.

Especially if it gets me a comfy office chair and a G7 pay rate.

Cultural Die-versity

I try not to write about work because I have this fear that it'll get me fired. I have a rather a bad history with writing. While my writing has gotten me published and it's gotten me accolades and compliments and speaking engagements and even a luncheon in my honor, it's also almost gotten me thrown out of college, and it also got me fired from what will go down as probably the only teaching gig of my life. A friend of mine insists that it wasn't the writing that got me fired, it's that I was Jewish-- but I doubt that's true.

I've got to be more careful with my words. I'm normally a careful man. I drive a Volvo with six airbags in it. When I make a steak, I cook the everloving shit out of it, just to make sure that there isn't a speck of bacteria that could survive and fuck up my intestinal regions. Instead of moving to NYC to give acting a shot, I came home to roost and took a 9-5 job. There isn't a car or house or office door I stand or sit behind that isn't locked, and I like it that way. But I'm not so careful with my words, and maybe that's why I love writing so much, because it's my time, it's my way, it's my venue for recklessness-- and being careful and reckless at the same time, well, just doesn't work.

Maybe that's why I never became a professional writer, because I could never quite figure out how to reconcile the two. Or maybe I wasn't reckless enough. So, today, I'll write about work. And I'll be a little more reckless than I'm comfortable being.

I went to a Cultural Diversity seminar last week at work. In preparation for this seminar, I did some practice work on my Earnest Listening Face. I don't know what your face looks like when you're listening earnestly, but my brow knits, my head cocks very slightly to one side-- not in the dog-listening-to-Jeopardy! way, but in a you-really-have-my-attention-now way-- and I worked the muscles in my neck to give those imprecise, at-key-points nods of approval and I-get-it-ness.

You have to practice before going to something like a Cultural Diversity seminar-- especially when it's run by your boss. And practice I did. It's a good thing I'm a trained actor, or it would have been written all over my face that I'd have rather been rubbing my face into a gravel pit than be at this seminar.

Truth be told, it wasn't all bad-- as few things are. I learned something about my own culture, actually, that I didn't know. An Israeli psychologist spoke about a Jewish custom whereby a first-born Jewish son must be "bought" from God by its parents, and the boy is placed on a silver platter and surrounded by jewels, as an offering of sorts. It's a good thing our daughter was born first-- we're fresh out of jewels and silver platters. Had our son come out first, we could have managed a Fiestaware plate covered with broken pocket watches.

A black psychiatrist spoke about what it was like growing up in the segregated south. I hate to sound arrogant, but she didn't say much that everyone in the room didn't already know, except for the fact that, where she lived, white folks and black folks did some social activities together, but more regimented activities like meals and school and such were done strictly apart.

She spoke about how we are all equal, all human-- about how race is an artificial construct devised to wield superiority over others. She spoke about how, the instant one group asserts its will over another, or attempts to dictate behavior or morals or influence, that this is disrespecting the ideals of cultural diversity.

Then, this same psychiatrist caught my attention with an offhand remark about genocide.

"Y'all remember that genocide in the '90s, the Hutus and the Tutsis? Thousands and thousands of people killed and, to me, that was even worse than the Nazi holocaust, 'cuz the Hutus and the Tutsis-- you couldn't even tell 'em apart to look at them-- they were the same."

It became harder for me, at that point, to look respectfully attentive. My brow knit harder and my throat got thick. I hate the word "outraged" like I hate the word "amazing", because I think both are overused to no effect, but I'm beginning to think I was outraged-- outraged not because she was minimizing the systematic attempted annihilation of my religion-- but because of the blatant, shameful hypocrisy she exhibited by, at one turn, speaking of how one human life is just as valuable as the next, and how we are all part of the one human race, and then to put two mass murders on a scale and proclaim one worse than the other.

I wanted to walk out, but I'm too chickenshit. Only reckless in word-- remember?

The fact that this Cultural Diversity seminar imploded at the exact moment this psychiatrist made that comment only serves to prove that such seminars should not exist in the first place. Should we be talking about matters of race and ethnicity and prejudice and shame and pride and culture and sex and virtue and vice? Sure. Yes, we should. Of course we should. But let's do it by the water cooler. Let's talk about it at the chartroom table-- over lunch, over coffee, at a diner, at a bus stop-- let's take this out of the boardroom. Let's lose the PowerPoint. It's so stifling, it's so belittling. It's insulting, frankly.

Mark Twain once said that change begins at the edges-- in the thousands of little interactions that occur between every day people, every day-- the postman, the dentist, the librarian, the taxi driver, in the hellos and goodbyes of daily life. To me, cultural diversity means going through your life not treating people like shit because they go to a funny place on Sunday, or on Friday night, or not at all, not because of the color of their skin or because of what they eat or what they don't-- it's treating people like shit because they deserve to be treated like shit-- through their actions and their behavior. Because they're mean or because they're impolite or because they're intolerant. See, not everyone deserves to be treated equally. And, unfortunately, in this society, we do impose and impart our will on others-- especially at a psychiatric hospital, where we take away peoples' freedom because we believe that you don't have the right to kill yourself, we sometimes force medications, we restrain, we lock you in your room. We do that-- because we have keys, and you don't. You're crazy, and we're not. Well, at least, not on paper we're not.

Cultural diversity.

Right.

If you put it down on a handout, if you talk about it upstairs around a round table, if you have to spend forty minutes defining terms like "Ethnicity" and "Race" and "Culture" then you're just wasting your time and everybody else's. Because Trayvon Martin's getting gunned down in Florida. Because this country still won't let institutionalized and sanctioned prejudice against homosexuals go. Because people in America the beautiful still hate "THE POLICE", even though every day gays, blacks, women, Asians, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, and 800,000 people in between wake up and pin badges onto their starched polyester shirts to make a buck and enforce some laws they probably don't agree with anyway. Because we still judge at the drop of a hat, and that isn't always a bad thing-- we're just not yet smart enough to recognize when it is and when it isn't. And if a seminar where every third person pipes up with an inane comment that's meant to show how progressive they are is supposed to fix that, well, count me out.

In fact, don't count me at all.

You Never Know What You'll Find

The biggest cliche, I think, about the show "COPS," which I don't mind admitting to you that I love with all my soul, are the "talking head" pieces that welcome the TV viewer back from commercials. If you still watch TV on a television, you know what "commercials" are.

The typical talking-head piece is filmed inside of a Ford Crown Victoria and it's a shot of the officer behind the wheel, and he or she briefly pontificates, in that cop sort of way, on some aspect of policing-- more likely than not, the "Reader's Digest" version of his or her affiliation with law enforcement.

"Well, I grew up in Fort Worth, and my dad was a cop, and his dad was a cop. I got three uncles in the Fort Worth Police Department, and my dog's a K-9 officer, so this kind of just seemed like a good fit for me. I've been on the job now for fourteen years and I love comin' to work every day-- every day is different. You never know what you'll find."

I've come to grips recently with the fact that they, the police, are never going to accept me into their fold. While I have written a book on their behalf, donated to their causes, penned passionate essays in newspapers, given speeches at police cafeterias and assembly halls, while I have shaken hands with precinct lieutenants and captains and even the Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, I won't be wearing their uniforms or enforcing their laws.

I do, however, work at a mental hospital, and as such I can faithfully state that their catchphrase, "Every day is different-- you never know what you'll find" holds true for me. When I slide my gold-colored key into that steel door in the morning, my coffee hot and my hair still wet, I can never quite tell what I will be greeted by.

"I'll never forget my first day here," a co-worker of mine said to me, half-wistfully, just the other day. "It was three years ago-- and the very first hour I was on the unit, this coked-up black guy wandered out of his room-- completely buck-ass naked-- into the hallway and started doing pushups. Then he stood up, peed into a paper cup, and drank it."

My first day was September 13th, and it's hard for me, almost three months later, to remember the exact details. But one thing I can say for sure: yesterday was different from my first day, which has been different from every other day since. On Sunday, I was running an art group for the acute ward patients. There was one of me, and six of them, seated around a long, rectangular table, making holiday cards. For whom, you might ask? Oh, well, one patient was making a holiday card for his daughter. Another patient made one for "the aliens." Another had a big bloody skull on the cover and was addressed to "obamanigger."

"I might not be able to mail that one," I told the patient in question. In truth, we're not allowed to mail anything to the White House, regardless of how the President's name is spelled.

While the patients were drawing, I had classical music playing and, for a rare moment, everyone was peaceful, focused, and content. And in walked Kim-Chee (not his real name!), a fifty-year-old Asian patient, wearing three pair of jeans. He had face cream all over every inch of his face-- maybe he had used five or six packets of it, and he looked like some kind of bizarre Kabuki performer from long ago, all you could see were these tiny little eyes peering out from behind this gloppy, white mask. Everyone at the table looked up from their holiday cards and turned to regard this sight. Kim-Chee looked back at us for a moment, the moment where I always wonder if something violent is about to happen, and then he turned around and walked out. My patients wordlessly returned back to their holiday cards.

This is one of the first jobs I have ever truly enjoyed-- which is funny, because I've had a lot of jobs in my life, and if you told me that I would enjoy being inside an acute mental institution, one of the most unpredictable and potentially violent places in the state, well, I would have told you that you were crazy. But I guess there has always been some part of me that thrives on a delicate mixture of predictability and chaos. The predictability is provided by the schedule, and the monotonous, mountainous paperwork, and the chaos is provided by, well, duh. But there's hope here, too-- it's not just about the zany antics and the unreal shit that they say, which shouldn't crack me up, but sometimes does. There is great, deft humanity here ensconsed within these cinder-block walls, and I'm privileged to be a part of it. You never know what you'll find. Sometimes it's an eerily familiar last name on the admissions sheet. Sometimes it's someone trying to choke themselves in the shower with a torn pillow case. Sometimes it's a faker, or a cutter, or a genius, or a soloist, or a racist. Jesus is here almost every day, in one form or another. A patient gave me a little card with his picture on it just yesterday. I put it on my wife's pillow.

Yesterday found me running art group on the acute ward again. An elderly man, white hair and a beard, frail and gowned with a flannel shirt on, too, was brought back onto the ward after being transferred here from prison. Who knows what he did. The nurse sat him down and covered his bare, spindly little legs with a blanket. As she did, she noticed that the front pockets of his flannel shirt were bulging impossibly. She told the patient to empty his pockets, and out came twenty or thirty ketchup packets, napkins, and plastic forks and spoons. She stood him up and had him reach into his diaper, which I thought was a little much, until he pulled out more forks and spoons. The nurse turned to me and we made eye contact as she picked up the utensils with a gloved hand, throwing them into a trash can nearby.

"Take your feet out of your slippers," she said to the patient, still looking at me. I smiled uncomfortably.

The patient sat down and slipped his feet out of his slippers. The nurse turned to me again.

"Are you kidding me? Really?"

She wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow as she pulled out two sausage patties, one in each slipper.

You never know what you'll find.

Oh, The Humanity

I almost threw up at my new job yesterday.

It wasn't because, as a psychiatric technician and allied therapist in a psychiatric hospital, I am exposed to pee-pee and poo-poo, and patients who enjoy creating mayhem and artwork with both. No, I don't especially mind that. It also wasn't because I am exposed to patients who like to... expose.

"lookatmytitslookatmytitslookatmytitsaforeifuckinkillyoumotherfucker"

I... didn't. And, fortunately, she didn't, either.

I almost threw up at my new job yesterday not because of the patients, but because of the staff. My coworkers. My.... peers.

I almost threw up, but I didn't-- because I couldn't even bear the thought of eating after what I saw and heard today at work. Plus the fact that my day started at 7am and my lunch break was at one. What was the point? My appetite was ruined, as was my outlook on mental health as a profession, and my faith in this facility and my zeal for this job.

Gone. Awesome.

Patients were openly ridiculed by staff, openly insulted, openly... threatened.

Staff Member: "How 'bout I come over there and cut you? I'll come over there and cut you so bad your own mother won't recognize you. I'll fuck your motherfuckin' shit up."

Staff Member: "I'm about ready to shove that walker up your ass."

Staff Member: "Hey, did you know that everybody with your last name is a fuckin' queer?"

Staff Member: "Can you say, 'I'm the turtliest turtle in the turtle pond' while wiggling your head around?"

Staff Member: "Do you even know what your name is? Do you know how to tie your shoes or are you still wearing those retard referee sneakers?"

Staff Member: "You're a homo."

These same staff members would then harshly reprimand patients who exhibited sexually inappropriate tendencies-- which isn't hypocritical at all. They fudge paperwork, they slack off on the ward, they're all related or they're all fucking each other-- or both-- and their inattentiveness and inappropriate actions and reactions led to an outburst of violence today that could have been avoided.

They're mostly tattooed college kids-- one has multiple lip-piercings and, really, I wouldn't mind the lip-piercings if they were on the lips of someone who was even mildly appropriate with the patients. They make fun of patients, imitating the noises that the most severely disturbed patients make, right in front of them. To them, in reply.

When a patient approaches a staff member, the default response is invariably,

"WHAT?!"

or "What the hell do you want?"

Or, they're just ignored. A patient can be standing three feet away from a staff member (this is the required distance we're supposed to keep from them) asking a perfectly sane question like, "Do I have courtyard privileges today?" and the patient can be ignored for any number of minutes. But it's the direct verbal abuse that made me want to vomit, and I probably would have had there been anything in my stomach.

Fortunately, there wasn't.

When I took this job, I didn't think it was going to be all peaches and plums, or even apple tart, but I didn't think I would be working with people who exhibit such routine and such open hostility and disdain for the patients supposedly under their care, I didn't think I would be working with the scum of the earth-- disenfranchised people in it for the paycheck and, apparently, the opportunity to fuck with people who have limited cognition, limited coping skills, and unlimited vulnerability.

Yes, the patients are inappropriate-- but they have that excuse of being, you know, crazy. Schizophrenics are supposed to act bonked-up, the psych techs kind of don't really have that excuse. We're not supposed to be the borderlines and the manics and the bipolar.

But, it's not just the patients who get "institutionalized." It's the staff, too.

Management likes to make a bit to-do about the fact that many people who work at this facility have been there for fifteen, eighteen, twenty, even twenty-eight years. And that sounds very nice, but when you see the burn-out, when you see the hostility, when you see brutality-- well, maybe such longevity isn't such a great thing.

It sounds stupid to say this, but I think that the openness of the obscenity-laced, threatening interactions with the patients, which the technicians then tried to manipulate to confuse the patients into forgetting what they had just said, that openness was the most horrifying thing. There are supervisors and nurses and videocameras everywhere-- and, clearly, nobody seems terribly concerned about that. And, clearly, I can't imagine anybody would be terribly concerned or surprised if I reported this to my supervisors.

Hopefully, the state will be both concerned and surprised when I find another job, posthaste, quit this one and report it to the Department of Health and Department of Public Welfare.

Sometimes I joke about being twelve-- when I call my closet's green doorknobs "Elphaba's nipples," I feel twelve. Oftentimes, when I get a new job, I feel twelve, too. I get wooed, positively swept off my feet by lofty mission statements and palaver from VPs and managers about proper protocol and professional conduct and ethical standards, and they pile horsehit lovingly onto my plate until I practically need a bib.

And then.... I actually start the job.

Proverbs 31:10 asks, "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."

I know it's a rhetorical question. I know it's just supposed to be longing and beautiful. I know it's just a job. But I also know that I cannot permit myself to be counted amongst these people, to wear their I.D. badge, to park in their lot, to swipe at their timeclock, to sign my name on their papers. And maybe that means that I think I'm rubies and they're costume jewelry.

And maybe I don't give a damn if it does.

Sometimes, You're Just a Small, German Child

I just finished writing my first scholarly paper since graduate school. I didn’t enjoy it very much, because, really, there isn’t very much to enjoy about writing scholarly papers-- unless you’re writing them whilst receiving oral sex, which I wasn’t.

I wrote this paper as part and parcel of the process of acquiring a BBJ (Big Boy Job—nothing to do with oral sex anymore, sorry) and, if I get it (God I hope I get it! How many losers do they need?!) it may very well be the first BBJ I’ve held since 2003. Since then, I’ve had a quaint series of jobs, but none of them have been BBJs. They’ve just been, you know, Little J’s, as opposed to the Flying J, which, apparently, is a franchise of highway gas stations for eighteen-wheelers, and not some sort of Jewish person doing avian acrobatics.

You might surmise that, since I didn’t especially enjoy the process of writing this scholarly paper that maybe I’m not applying/vying for the right job. You know, since, if I get hired, that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing, um, all goddamn day long. Well, that and applying for other jobs. And waiting for a satisfactorily suburban police department to announce that they’re holding a written and physical agility testing session. And blogging from work.

Actually, come to think of it, since this is a BBJ with an actual, real company, they’ll probably have all kinds of internet filters and firewalls and blocked sites and super-scary Big Brother e-monitoring/iSnoopery going on so that if I so much as try to buy Stan Rogers music on Amazon they’ll probably fire my tight, though distinctly bony ass.

And then I will look for other jobs, and wait for police departments, and blog from home. And, sporadically, observe pornographic still images/moving motion pictures via a computer with no ookie spy shit on it.

Writing the scholarly paper wasn’t hard—then again, maybe I just didn’t do it right—but motivating myself to do it was extraordinarily Herculean. I would do anything before I would sit down to write this paper. I did the dishes, I walked the dogs, I watched clips of Tim Conway cracking Harvey Korman up on “The Carol Burnett Show.” I made obscure Gilbertian references on peoples’ Facebook pages—and you all know I’m not into that.

By the way—did you know that the first lemur ever born in captivity in the United Kingdom was born on Gilbert’s property?

Anyway, I am a hopeless slackass and, really, I ought to be more motivated and zealous about an opportunity to land a BBJ when I won’t have any J or j in almost precisely a month but maybe I’m just not ready for a BBJ. Maybe I don’t want another desk.

Or, far scarier, maybe another desk is just what I need.

Ever get the feeling that you’re the small, ruddy-cheeked German child in any number of Brothers Grimm fairy tales? You know—you’re hopping along through the forest, wearing a red cape or lederhosen or chaps coated in Vaseline or whatever and the woods get all dark and scary and shit, and the trees are all gnarled and twisty-like, and there you are, just standing there with a basket of pastries in one hand and your plump little choad in the other and you’re faced with two paths. One of those paths leads to a precious little cottage, safe and warm with a white damask sleeper sofa from Jennifer Convertibles, all ready for you, and your favorite hot bowl of regurgitated mushflakes, and grammaw crocheting you a facemask or something…

…and the other path leads straight into the lair of your friendly, local clustertoothed, semi-retarded, lascivious wolf or T-Rex or rabid llama who will assrape you with a frozen garden hose until you sing the “Star Spangled Banner” like Stevie Nicks.

Well, that’s kind of how I feel, looking for jobs, and, not to sound too dramatic here but kind of standing on the precipice—making choices, being a small, German child kind of all alone in the woods, on the lookout for drooling, hairy creatures clutching the frozen garden hoses of the world, petrified to bend over to pick up that tempting pastry I just dropped.

A Friday Kind of Sunday Blog

So, I’ve been doing this bloggity thing for a while now. I’d call myself a pro, but I’m not getting paid, so I think I’ll stick with the moniker “experienced amateur” as that perhaps more accurately describes my blogger status.

As I’ve made my way through the months, blogging every day, sometimes multiple times a day, since March of 2009, I’ve noticed a few things. Want to hear them? Sure you do, Sugar:

• People may like it when I blog about serious topics, but they comment more on the funny shit.

• Hardly anybody ever comments on “Dear Apron,” yet, when queried, people profess to like it.

• Some people of the female persuasion admit to reading my blog in a state of semi-nudeness, and that makes me feel strange considering I always write fully clothed, mostly because, if I didn’t, our new dog would claw at my balls and tear open my scrote.

• There is, like, one male that I know of who reads my blog, and I don’t know whether he reads it in a state of semi-nudeness or not. And I don’t care.

• I can make you read a post about dog shit.

• You don’t mind that your loyalty to this blog is not rewarded with appreciable amounts of eye candy in the form of flashy graphics, backgrounds, wallpapers, pictures of cats wearing cowboy hats, hyperlinks, music videos, audio clips of Mel Gibson demanding pre-Jacuzzi blowjobs, Lady Gaga references (except for that one) and/or totes fab giveaways. OMG, LMT.

• Basically, nobody reads this blog on Friday.

The last point kind of baffles me, just a little bit. As most of you know, I’m a tad obsessive about my stats. Not that they’re astronomical or anything—hardly—but I find them interesting. And I like to know when you, yes YOU, are reading. It’s like my own, private Nielsens. Does that disturb you?

Good.

So, while my stats are usually admittedly modest, on Fridays, they are unfailingly modester than usual-- to the point of bordering on pathetic. When I first started noticing this trend towards end-of-the-week awfulness, I immediately set about to search for the cause of the aberration. My first idea was that the vast majority of my readers must be Orthodox Jews, Friday being Shabbat and all, and the use of the electronic that would be required for blog viewing would be verboten.

But then I realized that Shabbat doesn’t start until sundown on Fridays, so there would be plenty of time, especially in the summer, to enjoy oneself a little peek-a-boo under My Masonic Apron before the dying rays of the setting sun were at last extinguished and you, you know, couldn’t see the goods up there anyway.

Anyway…

So that idea sort of went nowhere—like the majority of my ideas. Then I started trying to convince myself that you people don’t like “Dear Apron,” since I write that exclusively on Fridays. But then I started hearing from some people that it was the highlight of their week and that they would eat their own babies if I stopped doing it and that this one chick threw herself under a four-hundred pound gorilla while wearing a bathing suit made of lowfat peanut butter because I had stopped doing “Dear Apron” every single week.

And so that shot that theory to shit.

Then I remembered that my former best friend works in NYC and that, during the nice weather, all New Yorkers who make $45,000 or more annually get excused from work by 2:00pm, like they’re elementary school students or something. And so I thought to myself, well, if they do this in New York, it must be done in other cities and faux-cities all across America, maybe even the world. And then it hit me. People read blogs at work. So, if people are let go from work early, then nobody’s reading blogs!

Eufuckingreka!

Amazing what you learn by blogging. And, occasionally, thinking.

No Comment

You guys are really super-doop good to me-- you know that?

You read-- you're loyal. You comment, some of you, and they're mostly insightful, interesting, engaging comments. Every now and then I'll get innocently flirted with, and that's always good for my ego. Sometimes you'll crack a joke, or reference an item in a column that's 200 posts ago, and that's pretty good for my ego, too. You're nice to me and respectful of each other, and you never ever whine that I'm not much for commenting on comments, probably because you know it's kind of a pet peeve of mine and that, if I have a comment that I feel requires one back, I'll leave one.

In short, you don't expect a lot of me and, in that respect, you're rather like my middle school math teachers. Except that I'm sure most of you shave regularly.

And there are a couple of you out there who stand up to me, calling me out on my rampant, AIDS-like hypocrisy, and I'm most grateful for those of you. (Not that I want all of you to start doing it, that would be a total suckfest.) Yesterday, Colleen was catching up on some of my blogs after returning from her vacation (I know that because, all of a sudden, seven comments showed up in my inbox on blogs from a week ago, not because I look through her mail and obsessively finger her kitchen utensils while she's at work) and she left a comment on a blog of mine about how much I hate my job-- a subject I touch on with frequency and aplomb. After reading my tautly-paragraphed whinings about my passive-aggressive chair and my boss that smells like farts, she responded with:

"'Boohoo, I'm one of the 90% of Americans who has a full-time job.'

Quit your bellyaching. And be grateful for your malodorous chair."

Oops. Was it something I said?

Of course, Colleen's right-- I'm a complete and utter crybaby because, no matter whether my office chair smells like fresh-baked croissants, industrial varnishing, or goat excrement, at least I have an office chair to befoul forty hours every week. Did it ever occur to me that under or un-employed individuals might take exception to a post about how much I hate work in a climate when 10.2% of Americans are unemployed? Yes-- the same way some of my pathetic, acne-ridden, hopelessly single readers might get turned off when I write schmoopie blooperings about my disgustingly adorable marriage, the same way my poor, unfortunate reader who tools around in a funkified, rusted out shell of a1987 Ford Festiva might get his panties in a barb when I complain about the fate to which I have been consigned-- a 2001 Chrysler PT Loser.

Here's the thing-- Colleen said something. She even managed to do it in a cute, hey-you're-a-jerk-but-it's-okay kind of way. In case you haven't realized, I can be pretty insensitive sometimes, I can run off at the mouth and I can alienate-- it has been known to happen. Hey-- I lost my best friend simply by opening my mouth. So, I know that.

I know.

And I don't want to lose any of you. I've lost too much in my life already. So, long story short, stick around. And open your mouths when you need to.

I still hate my job, of course-- that doesn't change a thing, and nothing changes.

Happy New Year From the New Asshole at Work

Though this blog will post, like clockwork, at 7:18am EST, Sunday, I'm banging it out at 9:31pm EST, Saturday. COPS ended half-an-hour ago, a pleasing amalgam of a taut, breathless vehicle pursuit through the streets of Las Vegas and some moron in Hesperia who drunkenly plowed his sports car into a tree.

Now? I'm blogging while my wife puts cornrows in my hair.

Were it not for the Victoria League cloisonne pin on my hoodie and my orange, flannel pajama pants, I might very well resemble a suspect on COPS in half-an-hour. Of course, I'd need some tattoos on my hairline and boxers pouring out from my waistband.

It is another luscious, languid night of vacation. The heat is on 60 (that's tropical for us), the dog is snoozing away on the floor, we've just loaded up a bones-cheap shelving unit with my wife's fabric and I'm getting my hair braided or whatever. I feel like a Dionysian God. Except that I'm not drunk. I did have two virgin cranberry spritzers, though, and home-made pepper-and-onion pizza and garlic fries from Trader Joes.

MmmMmMmMMmMMmMmMmmmmm.......

So, why, in the midst of all this blissful, delicious vacationness am I feeling melancholy?

Oh, right. I have to go back to work tomorrow.

In my window-free, basement office.

With my passive-aggressive boss.

And my desk-chair that smells like farts.

I can has cry-paper now?

Seriously-- hold me.

I remember being a little boy and dreading the end of vacations from school. The days ticked by with merciless and brutal consistency. Sweaty-mouthed Mrs. MacDowell and arm-pinching Mrs. Wolpert were waiting for me. Vacations are never long enough. Never.

I wonder if retirement will be long enough. Probably not. Actually, I wonder if I'll ever be able to retire. Probably not.

I could sit here while my wife is twirling and twisting my hair into some ungodly formation and tell you that I've made a whole bunch of life-affirming resolutions about my job, but I like you way too much to lie to you. Besides, you wouldn't believe me anyway.

I know what's going to happen on Monday. I will walk up the path to the basement entrance and, as I put my hand on the door handle, I will say to myself, "Okay, you bad boy: be nice." And I will walk in, and my boss and I will exchange the obligatory pleasantries. I'll last two hours, maybe three. But then, after twelve o'clock passes and I will not have had a chance to eat my lunch, I will open up bastard throttles at full tilt.

You might like me on the blog, but, at work, I'm a prickly little fuck.

And why? I don't want to be there.

I'm restless and listless and feckless and, well, less. Less of everything than I was before. Less attentive. Less focused. Less driven. Less interested. Less into it.

I am always curious by peoples' reactions when I tell them what I do. The reactions range from "Wow, that's really interesting." (adults) to "God, that sucks!" (kids).

I tend to trust the reactions of the kids, because kids haven't learned that it's polite to lie constantly to peoples' faces.

I really don't want to go back to work on Monday, because the first three hours of my day will consist of assisting the Executive Director in interviewing a part-time "Development Specialist" to "help in the office." This individual, of course, is the person who, when my specified contract is up (August) will replace me.

Fucking duh.

So I get to help load the bullets into the chamber of the firearm that is pointed directly at my conk. I love doing that!

The thing is, I don't care. I want to be replaced. I wouldn't care if I were being replaced by some dump-assed middle-aged saddle-bag with nostrils, or an officious prig with a pencil dick and a handlebar moustache, or a Roomba, or a cardboard cutout of Carrie Underwood. I don't care. Replace me with a fig or a ferret. Go ahead. And good luck to you.

I kind of can't wait.

Notice the "kind of?"

Well, that's because I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do when I go, or where the fuck I'm going to do it. I'm kind of sick of being occupationally misdirected, and I'm sure my wife is kind of sick of it too. As I'm approaching thirty rather rapidly, I know that it's way past time to get my shit together.

I know.

I'm hopeful, of course, that, once I figure out where I am and where I'm going and what I want to do that I will no longer be the new asshole at work, or, as time progresses and my ass gets fat, the old asshole at work.

I don't know. But I hope so.

I want to have a job that I'm excited about. That thinking about returning to after 10 days of vacation doesn't send shivers down my pancreas.

Is there such a job?

Maybe not. One thing's for sure-- I know there's no job out there that's better than lounging around in pj's while your wife does your hair.

For now, though, hold onto your dreds, because here comes the new asshole at work.

My New Skill

There is a new skill I've been demonstrating at work of late, and that's good. It's always nice to demonstrate new skills.

Unless, of course, that skill is data entry.

Back in middle school, when crusty Mrs. Droopy Cheeks taught us typing on baby blue Remington electric typewriters, I averaged 60 words-per-minute, and I expect my pace has increased since then. My boss has frequently marveled at the speed and alacrity with which I bang out letters, emails, and other correspondence.

Sadly, she realized that I would be a right down reg'lar whizz-bang at this snappy little database enhancement project we've got going on 'round these here parts.

Street address. State. Zip. Name.
Street address. State. Zip. Name.
Street address. State. Zip. Name.

Lather. Rinse. Hate-fuck me raw with a broken Coke bottle. Repeat.

This, apparently, is what my life has become. I am now, unofficially, a data-entry clerk. Shall I introduce you to my Master's Degree? It's in the house somewhere, under some dust, shame, and possibly dog pee.

Rather than bitch and cry and moan about how I'm now a data-entry clerk, I think I'd (and you'd) be better served if I presented you with a list of things I'd rather be than a data-entry clerk....

* Tied up inside the trunk of a Gotti's Cadillac.

* Imprisoned & sharing accomodations with a prisoner named "Baby Fuck Johnson."

* Unemployed.

* A retarded rabbit being product-tested upon by crazy Revlon lipstick scientists.

* Trapped in a broken elevator with the Lawrence Welk Show.

* An ICU patient.

* Onstage with no trousers and no memory of what my lines are.

* Hairless.

* Have a disease that only enables me to blink once every New Moon.

* Naked, wrapped in cheesecloth and defecated on by the Oakland Raiders.

* A devout Catholic.

* A thong worn by any daytime performer at the club "Castle Muffenstein."

* Be a guest at Martha Stewart's house for Christmas.

* Sixteen and pregnant.

* Whole-Milk-Boarded by America's bravest.

* Conjoined twins with Jesse Ventura.

* A herpe.

* Forced to eat one (just one) of my late great-grandmothers blackened liverwurst hamburgers.

* A twitchy, one-eyed cat at a pet adoption agency.

* A night neighborhood watchman in Harlem.

* The butt of a Borat joke.

* Tased on COPS.

* A hemophiliac descendant of the inbred, chinless ruling class of the Hapsburg monarchs.

* Fingerless. Try giving me data to enter now.

You'll Be Fine

A few long years ago, I was working at a small optical shop, selling glasses, scheduling doctor's appointments, throwing out the garbage, and laughing behind the backs of customers with my boss.

Then I got this crazy idea into my head that I was going to become a cop. So I wrote my boss a letter saying that I was going to resign from my $10.55/hr job to enter a municipal police academy as a police officer candidate. I was surprised when he didn't tell me that I was fucking crazy, because that's what my parents told me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said how proud he was of me, which is just what I wanted to hear from my parents about this decision, but didn't. And then he said something that rubbed me the wrong way, even though I think it was meant as a compliment.

"You'll be fine," he said to me.

"Look, you know it doesn't really matter what happens to you in there-- if you make it or if you wash out. You're handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious-- and you're a white male. Opportunities are just going to fall into your lap. I mean, shit: they fell into mine."

And I guess they did, for him. He grew up dirt-poor in a trailer in a shitty part of New Jersey. His father died early and his mother, still living, is a trembling, alcoholic wreck. Miraculously, my boss survived a long-haired, drug-hazed adolescence filled with unprotected sex and behavior of a dubious nature at best. He bummed around life and held a series of odd jobs-- landscaping, construction, house painting, and being a traveling soda vendor. A friend approached him and suggested he ought to stop peddling suds and start peddling sunglasses, and so he became a rep for a recognizable sunglass line. Another friend suggested that he buy an optical shop and, when the opportunity presented itself, as it invariably does to all handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious white males, he did.

And, when he saw another handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious white male at the age of twenty come into his shop with a quick joke and a shaky handshake, well, I guess he decided to return the favor. Well, kind of. He started me at $6.50 an hour, and my first job was to soap, rinse and dust each one of the approximately 2,000 pair of glasses that surrounded the store. It took me the entirety of my first week of work.

I was annoyed by my boss's assumption that things would turn out okay for me because of the color of my skin, or because I knew how to comb my hair or because I used uncommon vocabulary words like "effecacious" and "remuneration" in daily conversation. Were any of these facts sturdy enough to act as a cushion or a safety-net against homelessness, mental illness, depletion of cash, unemployment, accidents, or the hopeless, unstoppable failure that radically alters so many a promising life?

As we all know, my good looks and charming personality were not enough to keep me enrolled in the police academy. I left after two days, forty-eight minutes-- despite an acceptable sit-and-reach score, and a blistering mile-and-a-half run time. I soon learned that my combed hair or my impressive vocabulary was no help when it came time to lift the barbell.

Neither of these elements of who I am stopped me from seven months of unemployment, and they didn't help me the first time I tried to pass the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's EMT Practical Examination. Fortunately, I passed on the second try, and that lead to a year and seven months on the street with a transport ambulance company, alternately freezing or sweating my ass off for $11.00/hr, transporting spindly, 90-pound cancer sufferers to hospitals and hospice centers, or schlepping around 400-pound gorillas to MRI appointments or up three flights of stairs. Or down. I can't remember which anymore.

Promotions at the ambulance company that seemed like they would be open to someone of my liberal arts qualities-- positions in management or supervision-- were routinely given to others with lower education levels, lower communication skills, and probably lower chromosomal quantities.

So I left.

After two years in my current desk-jockey job, I am emotionally exhausted, burned out and apathetic, and I am, at 29, finding myself once again at a cross-roads in my life where I am wondering if what my old boss once said to me will turn out to be true or false.

"You'll be fine."

I never put much stock into what he said, unless it was funny, and I'm not sure I believe him now. I want to, of course. But I think he might have been prejudiced, and it's hard to believe what tainted people say.

If he is to be believed, though, and if I understand him correctly, some tantalizing plum will kind of just... fall into my lap. I just hope that, if it does, it doesn't break my balls.

You See Yourself

I made the mistake a little while back of doing a favor for my boss.

You, I'm sure, would never commit such an occupational solecism.

My employer informed me that her friend, a published playwright, had written a play and her publishing company asked her to make multiple revisions on it before it could be published. My boss asked me to review this script and make suggestions, revisions, comments, criticisms, & c "as soon as possible."

Actually, before she asked me to do this, she volunteered my services to the playwright.

"Please don't do that again," I said to my boss when I was informed that my services had been volunteered without my knowledge or acquiescence.

"Do what?" she asked innocently, quite possibly resisting the urge to bat her eyelashes.

"You know what," I said flatly. I've known my boss since I was eleven, so I can talk to her this way, rather like the way we churlish boys abuse our mothers.

"I thought you'd love the opportunity to be more creative!" replied my boss, feigning hurt.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see slaving over someone else's bullshit children's musical and working diligently to further her career as an opportunity to be "more creative" nor do I see it as something I, or anybody else, would "love" to do.

But that's beside the point. I did it, partly because I was already commited to do it, and partly as a favor to my boss.

The musical, by the way, sucks donkeynips. It has all the hallmarks of a musical about high schoolers written by a fifty year-old woman, because that is precisely what it is. There are the stereotypical characters, even referred to in the character list as "The Jock," "The Nerd," "The Cheerleader," and "The Artsy Girl."

I mean, seriously? Shoot me in the teeth.

But I took several hours, on a Saturday, mind you, to review this woman's daft little musical, because her publisher was breathing down her neck to receive the final revisions by Monday. I reviewed and edited the work, even adding monologues and dialogue of my own, and emailed her four pages of notes. Then, I washed my hands of it.

Until she emailed me back not 25 minutes later with 10 more questions about the play, and other character ideas to consider and get feedback on. Now, I should have said, "Sorry, you got your feedback already. If you want more jumpy mattress, you'll have to put another quarter in" but, of course, I didn't. Because I am a slave, a doormat, an assfuck, a limpwimp. More of my weekend got pissed away making changes and suggestions and additions and deletions to this manuscript that I don't give a hoot in Christ's left nip about. I sent her another email, indicating in a very polite way that this was the end of my critique session. She emailed back and was appropriately grateful.

I didn't hear from the playwright until yesterday, when she called up my office.

"Oh, I'm actually glad you picked up the phone," she remarked. Gee, thanks.

She went on to say how helpful the revisions were and how they made the play much stronger, which was nice to hear. She also mentioned that the publishing company was pleased, which was also nice to hear, since nothing I've written has pleased a publishing company since 2001. She then mentioned that she gave me "credit" in the script for my aid, and I won't lie and say that didn't please me either, because it did, though a fee of $1,000 would have pleased me a good deal more. Unfortunately, she did not stop there.

"And I wanted to let you know that I'll be contacting you again in the future to consult on some of my other musicals that I have coming down the pike that need a fresh voice, because I really see you as a dramaturg. Isn't that how you see yourself?"

This is where I ceased being pleased.

From the ever-trusty Wikipedia, for those of you not familiar with the term: "the dramaturg will often conduct research into the historical and social conditions, specific locations, time periods, and/or theatrical styles of plays chosen by the company, to assist the playwright, director and/or design team in their production."

In short order, The Playwright's Bitch.

I think this is what one might call a "back-handed compliment." I have definitely been on the receiving end of such compliments before, and I know distinctly what they feel like when delivered. Now, this playwright may very well think that it's a high honor to be called upon to flush out and finesse her simple and fatuous theatre pieces, but I do not share that opinion.

Proud? Sure I am.

Snob? Probably.

I think, though, I was less offended by her suggestion that I be her own private, in-pocket, free-of-charge dramaturg than I was by her incredibly and outlandishly presumptuous question, "Isn't that how you see yourself?"

Isn't that how I see myself? As what? As chained to your hip, spending my free time reviewing outdated and ridiculous feel-good musicals about pimples and algebra?

No. Most definitely not.

"I see myself as a writer," I said to my boss this morning, recounting the conversation to her in a voice close to breaking, "but I suppose nobody else does," I said as I turned on my heels and walked out the door. On my way to go to Staples. To stand there for half an hour making photocopies. Of one of this woman's stupid plays.

And so maybe I'm just not.

Of course, I'm a blogger-- you know that. But, is that the same thing as being a writer? I vacillate on that point. I perform in amateur G&S operettas-- does that make me an actor? Maybe. Does it make me a singer? No, I'm no singer. Does affiliation with the arts always have to be dependent on whether or not you get paid? I don't necessarily think so, but that is how culture defines you. The insipid, scripted question you hear the most when meeting some painful new schmuck at a party, "So, whaddyoo do?" refers, of course, to what you doo, for money.

I don't know what titles or jobs or hobbies or anything really means anymore. One thing I do know quite clearly is that, at no point in my life will I answer the question, "So, whaddyoo do?" by saying,

"I'm a dramaturg. Nice to meet you."

Because neither of those statements will probably be true, especially if you write children's musicals.

What I Want

I know what I want now.

I know what I want to do with my life. I know it truly and passionately. Indefatigably even, if I may use so many syllables. I finally realized it this morning. I know what I want.

I want my own business. I want to work for myself.

I don't want to work for you. Or him. And I definitely don't want to work for her. Sorry, ladies, I've had three female bosses now and they all leave a lot to be desired. One of them used to leave the office mid-day and then would call me at 4:55 to make sure I was still there.

Tight.

So, yeah, I figured it out: I want my own business.

I don't know what it is, nor do I care much about what it is. I don't know what I want to sell you, or what sort of service I want to provide, I don't know how to start it or what to call it, or where to open it, but I know I want it.

I want it bad.

You want to know why I want it bad?

Because, when I work for somebody else, I have to behave in the manner and tone that they have set for the operations of the business, and I'm tired of doing that. I'm tired of kissing the puckered, pimply ass of the ungrateful world, I'm tired of bending to everbody's will, including my employer, I'm tired of small-talk and going along to get along and I'm tired of politics and I'm tired of not being able to take my balls out and swing them around a little bit.

Yesterday, I was dealing with a guy, a sniveling, manipulative, unkind and obnoxious bastard of a guy that I just wanted to kick in the knee over and over and over again, until his patella turned to dust. Now, I realize that, even if I were the business owner I couldn't really do that, but, if I were the business owner, I could have told him to fuck off and never come back here, because that's my right as the business owner. My business, my property, I get to call the shots. Unfortunately, I work for a gentle-hearted 60-year-old woman who would faint or implode before she told someone to leave. Unfortunately, I had to do likewise. I had to stand there and eat shit and defend our business practices, and myself, in a passive-aggressive, sychophantic way that nauseated me so, disgusted me to the point that I found that I was hating myself even more than I was hating this incomparable prickball, and that made me sad.

And it made me want my own business.

My uncle has his own business. It's a failing men's clothing store that is stuck firmly in the year 1958. Yellow shorts with lobsters on them. Madras dress shirts that cost $179. Cashmere sweaters at the cost of a monthly car payment. That kind of thing. Whatever you want to say about my uncle and his general ineptitude as a businessman, he doesn't take shit from anybody. If someone comes in and makes a comment about how high his prices are, my uncle merely smiles and points to the door. And he's absolutely right. He shouldn't have to listen to that shit in his own store. Yes, his prices are high, and that's why I don't shop there. I can't afford it, even with the family discount, and I have no need for lobster shorts anyway. However, when you walk onto someone else's domain, you play by their rules, or you don't play: simple. If you decide that $179 is too much for a Madras shirt, then you walk out, you don't stand there and make comments or, worse yet, try to haggle.

When I worked as an optician a thousand years ago, my boss would not only bend over backwards for insipid, cheap customers, he would bend over backwards and lick his own taint for them. He did anything they wanted, took hundreds of dollars off frames and lenses, because he was petrified of losing even one customer.

"You know," I said to him one day, "some customers you really don't want here."

He nodded his head, but he couldn't help himself. A while later, my old boss found his balls when he threw out an Indian couple who hounded me relentlessly about the cost of their glasses.

"Is that your best price? Is that your best price? Is that your best price? Is that your best price?" they repeated endlessly, as if it were some sort of tantric mantra. Finally, my boss walked over to us and he told them to pay or leave. They left.

My father has had his own business since 1987.

"Daddy can't work for anybody else," my mother said to me.

At seven, I didn't understand what that meant and, truthfully, I didn't understand what it meant for a long time, but I think I do now. It's not that my father couldn't do what someone else was telling him to do-- he was a soldier in the Israeli army, for Christ's sake, he knew how to take orders, even from people who weren't as smart or competent-- it's that he couldn't work under the tone set by someone else. If you buy a t-shirt or a thigh-support short from my father's company, you'd better know your size, because his policy is "NO RETURN, NO EXCHANGE."

That's it.

He set that rule because he's the boss and he doesn't take shit from people, and he doesn't want your smelly, stained, discolored merchandise back. You think you're an A cup and you're really a B cup? Oh well. Now, if he had a boss, the boss might say, "Hey, you know, I think we really ought to accept this return, I mean, we don't want to lose business here..."

Lose business? My father has screamed on the phone at his own customers, called them names, absolutely freaked out. And, yes, he has lost business. But the fanatics keep coming back for more, because he's honest and he's decent and he manufactures good shit. And, for lots of people, that's enough.

There is a definite danger in taking too much shit from people for too long. You become Willy Loman. And I don't want that.

So, let's be our own boss. I have two questions:

1.) What should I do?

and

2.) Wanna come work for me?

The New Guy

There's a new asshole at work.

The trouble is: he looks, talks, smells, shaves, farts, and clears his throat exactly like me.

In fact, I'm beginning to think he is me.

The new asshole at work is grouchy, disagreeable, curt, defensive and irritable. And he farts a lot. This is not someone with whom you'd be exactly leaping around to do a project with. Or spend a few hours with.

Or employ.

That's right-- my totally non-essential job has weathered the unremitting storms of the economy, but I truly believe my boss would be absolutely justified in taking it away from me, because I'm definitely the new asshole at work. I like to think I'm this way for a good reason, but sometimes I'm not sure. I feel like I'm constantly being corrected, managed, instructed, patronized, hovered over, unappreciated, reminded, henpecked. And, maybe that's all true-- but, really, isn't that what real bosses are supposed to do? I don't know. I've never had what I would consider to be a "real boss." I feel like I certainly don't have one now-- maybe that's why I resent her for trying to behave like one.

I tried some inner-monologue stuff as I walked along the pathway leading to work.

"You're going to be good today, right? Please, be good. Be a good boy today. Be good."

I wasn't good yesterday.

It didn't work.

What I fear most isn't really my behavior, or the consequences (I can't realistically picture myself being fired anytime soon) it's my inability or unwillingness to stop acting the way I do. I feel like my employer's behavior, her negative attributes, are spiraling downward at the same time, but maybe they're doing that in reaction to my own attitude. Maybe it's the reverse. I really don't know anymore. But I feel like I, who is recognizing what he's doing, should be able to stop. I should be appreciative of the job I have, when so, so, so many have no job at all-- when I know that, if my job were to be offered up in the local rag, there would be at least 30 breathless, desperate people panting for it.

I like to think that I'm good at what I do, that I do not deserve the constant smotherings I receive at work, but I'm not so sure. Our office is totally disorganized. My desk is a nightmare. Our systems are, well, who am I kidding-- we don't have any systems. I forget to return phone calls. I forget to give messages. I forget to record things in databases and spreadsheets.

I forget.

This is not me. I wasn't meant to be in an office, I tell myself-- but what is that, really? It's a convenient excuse-- it's a defense mechanism. It's a half-hearted apology for my ineptitude. I didn't belong in an eyeglasses shop, either. I didn't belong in a loan processing office. And I certainly didn't belong in an ambulance. And yet, there I was.

And so the bumbling and fumbling continue, and perhaps my ire and anger is really not directed at my boss at all, but at the new asshole at work.