One thing that I like about my current job is that I get to wear a lot of hats. I’m usually a web designer, but at this place I’m doing user-interface design, taking staff photos, designing “thank you” notes for the head of our tech division, making signs for the conference rooms, etc. I’ve joked with my boss about how the title on my business cards should read “Random Arty-Farty Person” since my duties span so many creative areas.
However, there is one duty that keeps coming up that doesn’t fit so neatly with the arty-farty stuff: Dating Consultant. Last week when I was taking staff photos of new employees, this woman walked out with me afterwards and asked where to go to meet single people since she had just moved here from San Francisco. I just told her to go out and do things that interested her and that she’d probably meet someone that way, but in all honesty I didn’t know what to tell her. I mean, I’m the person who is at my happiest when I’m single, so I’ve never looked for people to date despite the fact that I’ve done a fair amount of it.
This is not the first person at work to ask me for dating advice, either. A supervisor there is going through a divorce and she started to ask me dating questions when she found out I was divorced as well. Since her divorce isn’t even final yet, I told her to get a pool boy.
A scene from a wedding…
Family Friend: Wow, you look so much like your mother!
Me: She’s still got some catching up to do in the tattoo department, though.
I haven’t posted much lately because I feel like the only thing I’ve been up to is dealing with my sister’s wedding and work drama. One of those is something that I didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading about and I probably shouldn’t post about the other. I’ll let you guess which is which, but here’s a hint: I love the smell of someone eating shit in the morning.
However, I will share with you one of the most painless shopping experiences I’ve ever had in my life and it will probably come as no surprise that it happened at the Apple store. Since I’ll be staying at a hotel this weekend and won’t have my laptop, I finally decided to drop $29 for an A/C adapter to go with the video iPod that they practically gave me a couple of months ago to replace my 1st generation iPod. I went to the iPod accessories section, asked the guy where they were, and he handed it to me. Then he asked if I needed anything else and when I said “no,” he asked if I would be paying with a card. That’s exactly what I was going to do and he whips out this hand-held scanner, takes my e-mail address to send me a copy of my receipt, and gives me a bag from his back pocket. I was done before I even knew what hit me!
I really hate shopping, but if more stores start doing this then maybe I’ll hate it a little less.
I was at the pizza place around the corner from my apartment last week and as usual I was shooting the shit with the guys who work there while eating a slice at the counter. One of them had to take a call for a delivery order and while he was on the phone he asked the customer to have their credit card ready so the delivery driver could do a rubbing. When he got off the phone, one of his co-workers gave him a funny look and asked, “Did you just tell them we needed to do a rubbing?”
“It could be worse,” I said. “He could’ve said you needed to rub one out.”
(Thank you… I’ll be here all night!)
Near my cube hangs one of the most hideous pieces of art that I have ever seen in my life. I don’t even think it should be called “art” because it looks like finger-painting by a mental patient on crack with Tourette’s. In fact, that’s probably the story the art dealer told the suckers in my office to make it sound more exotic. To make matters worse, this piece is huge and clashes with the design scheme of the whole office. We just moved into this office last fall and it’s decked out in warm earthy tones… a nice change from pretty much every other job I’ve had where my cube and the surrounding areas were white, grey, and/or blue.
While everyone who sees it agrees that it is fugly, I’m probably the only person who finds it offensive. Being a web/graphic designer myself and knowing a lot of arty-farty types, I think it sucks that someone was likely paid a few grand for this piece of shit while there are so many truly talented people who can barely scrape by because they aren’t kissing the right ass. However, I’d pretty much settled down about this after realizing that complaining wasn’t going to get me anywhere because I don’t know the right people yet. Also, my declarations about the painting created a hostile work environment probably did more to actually create one that the painting itself.
This brings me to today, when another piece was brought in to go down the hall a little. The new piece is actually pretty cool, but again the color scheme clashes really bad with the wall color, carpet, etc. While waiting for maintenance to hang it, the internal operations guy came over by our cubes since it was the closest available seating. He made a comment about how they were just here to splash a little color and I said “Can you spash it over here?” and pointed directly to the hideous painting closer to us. I’d been warned that I should probably watch who I complained to about the artwork, so if I’m jobless tomorrow then you know why.
I thought the worst was over when the “Revenge of the Nerds” remake was mercifully canceled, but check out what I saw at the video store today. Yes, it’s a straight-to-DVD sequel to one of the best movies ever and the only romantic comedy that I actually like. It goes without saying that the actors that made the original so awesome wouldn’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole.
Is nothing sacred anymore?!
As if I’m not behind enough on podcasts already, I recently started listening to one called “Bad At Sports” about the art scene in Chicago. True to my obsessive-compulsive nature, I started at the beginning and am up to their 20th episode. I’m not sure if this is something that continues on later, but a subject that they’ve brought up a lot so far is their dismay at how many people flee Chicago for the coasts because they don’t think they can make it here and I have to say that this is something that has annoyed me for some time as well.
I should make the disclaimer here that while I do a lot of creative things, none of what I do could really be considered “fine art.” That said, I’ve heard a lot of complaining by local artists, musicians, etc. who blame this city for their lack of success when the real issue is almost always their lack of talent, motivation, or ability to self-promote. While I’ll admit that there can be a fine line between promoting that annoys and that which genuinely reaches its intended audience, one would think that the chances of success would be a lot better in a city like this with less competition.
Besides, the only way this place is going to get a better local art scene is if people stay here and contribute to it, rather than running away.
I’ve been taking staff photos at my day job for the last few days and each day people pop in to chat for a bit. (They put me in a conference room right next to the kitchen, so everyone passes by me at some point during the day.) One of the people who stops in is someone that another co-worker and I tease about being gay because he seems just a little too interested in my co-worker’s homosexuality.
The Ambiguously Gay Co-Worker (AGC) stopped in to shoot the shit yesterday and the subject came up again, so he tried to defend himself by saying that the Gay Co-Worker (GC) just wished he was gay. Since the GC is in a happily committed relationship, I called bullshit and asked him for proof. Apparently, a bunch of people went out drinking after work and on the way to the train station, the GC had to hurl. Since the AGC is a nice guy, he went in the alley with the GC just to make sure he was okay. The GC then grabbed him and told AGC to kiss him.
“So, did you kiss him?” I asked.
“NO!” replied the AGC.
“Well, he did just barf.”
“Right.” (He pauses.) “Heeeyyy!”
Sadly, I promissed the AGC that I wouldn’t tell the GC that I new about this story, so I can’t give GC shit about this too. Oh well, I’ll take what I can get.
There’s nothing quite like going to the Apple store with a broken iPod and getting busted out by tech support for having 2Live Crew on it… in front of a family that included a small child.