Tag Archives: people

Pat’s Day 2018, keep your mouth shut edition

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I’m a day or three late. Maybe more. Blame Comcast their lack of faith that our internet truly shit the bed. After begging and weeping and prayer, the tech came and left a new modem and cables behind.

Late I may be, but it was worth being late, or at least I tell myself that my lateness is good lateness. It’s better than telling myself I’m tardy.

The Ides of March have come and gone. The day I think of my mother, since she would have been 89 on March 15, had she not decided to not be. I think of her all the time really, not just on her birthday, and she left about 17 years now. Maybe 17. Time flies, and she’s remembered.

Every year since she died, though, I like to remember how they broke the Pat mold and haven’t built another one like it. I remember to not let the bastards grind me down (which I wish was illegitimi non carborundum).

Because of Pat, I remember that non-creative small minded people kind of suck. I remember that there’s both honor and wobbly steps (I edited that from treacherous steps) in not conforming, following, acquiescing, going gently into that good night. Most of all, I remember that like Pat, I am a square peg in a world of round holes, and so it is.

But, that’s not today’s adventure.

Today’s adventure is about work, the thing I have to do. We sell our skills and brains on the open market to live.

I have the shoulder to the wheel thing down, but sometimes I outstay my welcome, or that’s what the authorities at past workplaces have told me. I outstayed my welcome, when a director was boning two women in the office and they all hated me for my non-office-boning knowledge, and they told me I just had to go. Or the time when after about 5 reorgs, the jackass above me was minutes away from being unmasked as a doer of nothing who couldn’t balance a bake sale, and I was shown the door to go.

I’ve always thought of my working as having a shelf life, and my expiration date would come soon enough.

Through all of the trials of the workaday world, Pat’s voice in my head says, “Just keep your mouth shut.” She knew I ultimately wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. And, she’d worry as I lost another job. Albeit lost a job and gained a great story.

I also suspect she was a bit proud of my inability to keep my mouth shut and dodge a fight. Sure, I need to work, and she always needed to work, but she respected that I have some fight in me.

Friday, despite her having been gone so long, her voice was loud and clear in my head, “Just keep your mouth shut.” Here in California, the strange land where I work, in a company that is more earnest than ironic, I’m doing alright with a big mouth and ingrained, East Coast bred sarcasm.

Pat’s head would be blown.

She would say “keep your mouth shut,” but she’d be confused by the work company I’m keeping. I’m working among lawyers, the kind that read and talk about the law not hang out in courts. Until now, the only mix of work and lawyering was when I hired a labor lawyer to help me out of my last employment jam.

On Friday, I was parrying wits with someone who used to be the head of one of the top schools in the country and clerked for a justice from the SCOTUS, while in the company of a double Ivy grad from Yale Law. Magically for Pat’s daughter, they asked me to speak up and no one’s getting fired.

So, I marvel at what a fucking crazy world it is. That I’m me, that she was she, and of all of the things she taught me to worry about or be cautious of and the kind of authority she feared. I’ve ignored her lessons of fear and aversion, and I live on to tell the story.

Here’s the Hemingway version of the story:

People who give away money for a living and run an organization for the purpose of giving away money are asking my opinion on how to make that workplace work better. They are paying me to not keep my mouth shut.

And for two hours, the day after Pat’s day, I got to share openly with the authority figures I was taught to avoid, and I’ve only just begun.

She would have been suspicious and recommended cautious. But, still and all, I think she’d be proud that I have a voice. For her, speak up, speak out and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

It’s all relative

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If I had anything like a soul, I might put fingers to keyboard and write a list of all the things for which I should be grateful. It’s the day before Thanksgiving after all.

But, soulless I remain, so instead I will write about people in sufficient generalities to not attract specific ire.

First, my absolutely first world, privileged, fat, dumb and happy problems. Here I sit in the soft bath of sunlight streaming through a skylight in a state of the art, certified green and excessively comfortable office building. Free Wi-Fi. Free Diet Coke. And, in fact, a free, whole, family-sized pumpkin pie beside me.

Yet, I do not feel free. I have to wait for a ride.

So, my inner whiner is thinking “Oh, poor, pitiful, me. However, shall I survive in a luxurious office, closed now for the holiday, waiting to be transported home?” Moreover, I’m not sure how I can carry my holiday groceries and my free pie to the car, once my ride does come.

It’s a thought that someone who not only saw these images in real life but took the pictures while looking at them with my own eyeballs shouldn’t actually think.

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Ultimately, I will have my soft, white flanks seated upon the rich, puffed fabric of my relatively new car. I will envision if tomorrow’s dinner should have a wee panache of gourmet or just old-school holiday cooking.

If waiting for a ride is the worst of my life, I guess I do have reason to be grateful. (Not to mention, when I see the cliffs and the ocean of our chosen town, I will forget when I lived close enough to work to bike it.)

All of the above is not what I am writing about. Well, it is. I just did. Only it was an accident.

Instead, I’m writing about sweet, sweet irony and confusion of this life. The relativity that gives this post it’s title, and my theory of relativity is what makes the world go around and around. I suppose Einstein thought the same thing about his.

Every day in my universe, I have to interact with a person who makes me kind of crazy. It’s the special kind of crazy that hits that never grew up from junior high, don’t want to get picked on any more, why is life so hard adolescent scab that never quite healed.

Her gift is one of narrow vision. She’s one of those lucky people who go through life with myopia thinking their field of vision is the ultimate truth. For example, she has her own calculus for all things normal. My in-box, often filled with receipts and other non-paperclipped, letter-sized documents is NOT normal. My clothes elicit a mix of good-natured joshing with full-on criticism and laughter.

Among her offhanded remarks that hit the sullen teenage corner of my lizard brain are consistent and fairly frequent criticisms of all things on the internet but most especially any creation of content. The reader might note — these words are on the web, and I created the content.

Facebook — Silly. (Oh, and even better, Facebook causes divorce. I bet they said that about telephones when they were invented.) ‘Blogs — doesn’t read, nothing there. (I guess in any of them?) Self revelation of any kind in public — self-serving or worse mentally unstable. Smart phones — waste of money. Twitter — unknown. Comments on websites — Stupid. (OK, I might give her that one.)

Maybe I just get cranky, because she also has a lot to say about my Diet Coke and candy fixes. Probably a chemical reaction from my reliance on the richness of preservatives in my diet.

Early on up there, before I started complaining, I mentioned the irony. The irony is that today I heard about the person in her life who criticizes what she does and her choices. I’d give the examples, but, hey now, I’m avoiding the specific.

Probably worth saying my disclaimer — for the purposes of drama I made up all the shit above, not just how the words are strung together but what they are meant to mean.

So, here’s what I learned. Even the most critical people, the ones that go around opining on the right and wrong of life’s minutia. The puritans who pee on your candy and Diet Coke parade. The ones who cannot not share the negative comments and thoughts that leap into their brains. Even those folks suffer criticism.

Maybe, just maybe, the secret will be if we could all stop tell other people what to do. Of course, as I write that I am telling each and everyone one whose tired and wary eyes may fall upon this page what the fuck to do — Let it go. Stop judging and criticizing and offering stuff up to the universe that doesn’t construct anything.

Except for the extreme right wing. As far as I’m concerned, there’s always open season on those morons.

If Nixon could have an enemies list, why can’t I?

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I’ve written about it before, and if I weren’t too lazy, I could find it and link it. It is my mother’s knack for sorting the good eggs from the bad’ns.

This skill has been on my mind, because in today’s universe, or maybe it’s the California-tinged corner of the universe where I now reside, I’m not sure that’s considered a skill anymore. Somehow, it seems, it’s not politically correct or otherwise not cricket to call a person who whiles away their days behaving in a douchey manner a douchebag.

It used to be that if you called someone who stole your lunch money, called you names, pulled your hair or otherwise fucked you up in the schoolyard, a jerk and said you didn’t like him, you’d be an astute observer of human behavior. Now, there are bullying programs to try to reach the behavior and educate the assholes to stop being assholes.

The good guys, the victims, they are exhorted to not be judgmental, to examine their own behaviors, to show compassion and help teach the wayward fuckwads.

Yeah, here’s another idea, can’t I just tell you to fuck off and leave me alone?

Probably not hard to surmise that even as I approach half a century and think about how I want to live the waning minutes I have left, I still want to call a bully out for his horseshit. (By the way, my iPad just spellchecked that last word with an option of horses-hit. Trying using that in a sentence.)

Back to my mom, Pat. She was in many many many ways extraordinarily shy and/or reserved. She ate cold steak rather than “cause a scene” and send poorly prepared food back at a restaurant.

I witnessed her getting taken advantage of by the more sly and calculating and assertive in the world. For years at the school where she taught, a cadre of politically well-connected and outspoken teachers ruled the hallways. The rest of the teachers had extra bus and lunch room duty and no chance for any of the work that might garner extra pay. The power elite kept those gigs to themselves.

Over the years, she lost pooled sick time to slackers, while she herself literally never took a day of leave. OK, there was the one day, when my brother had appendicitis in Moscow, but that was only on account of the time difference for the frantic phone calls with our Russian-speaking family dentist to the embassy.

But, all at the same time, she was outspoken about injustice and bullshit when it was pervasive and hurt others. No underdog could have a stronger advocate in their corner to stare down anything from serious evil (like testifying in court for a student scheduling and physically abused) to petty misdemeanor.

In the latter category, I think she won this battle, but the memory is hazy.

For a school awards banquet one night, she was one of the teachers on the set up and decoration committee of parents and teachers. A couple of local moms, wanting to gussy up the auditorium had a brilliant idea — beautiful fresh flowers arranged in sprays and bouquets around the area. The source of the posies was none other than the neighboring cemetery. Their rationale, and by god it was the definition of rationalizing bad behavior, they wouldn’t be missed since the funeral was over and people had gone home.

Not being down with grave robbing and desecration and just general shittiness, I think old Pat succeeded in shaming them to put every stem back where it came from, in the dark.

Ironically, I wrote all of the above the day before M. was an invited speaker at a local high school tech club. In a swanky auditorium at the swanky community center in the swanky town, it appeared that the students had done everything themselves — from professional looking brochures, queuing up all A/V in advance and executing it behind the speakers and behind the scenes, and getting snacks catered by a local restaurant. At the end, they presented M. with a gift, a lovely orchid that was clearly alive, thriving and not stolen from a graveyard.

Anyway, I wish we could go back to the days of not pretending that we are all on the same page. Some people are not bothering to use facts when they argue factually. Some people like to blame and finger point. And some people are just fucking assholes, and we should be allowed, nay encouraged, to call them out.

Big asshole (Karl Rove) or small (line cutters and annoying colleagues), I know who you are and I’m not above calling a spade a spade.

Maybe without the marrow sucking

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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
— Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau has been running through my head, although it’s really not in line with his Walden fantasy. It’s more like the reality, when old Henry David would take a break from living deliberately to scam a meal over at the Emersons’ house. Instead of the woods, I’m living deliberately in the halls of a place literally valued in the billions.

Anywho, here’s the dealio, a professional coach has recommended I journal to focus and reflect on some daily interactions and communications. You know, like I could try writing stuff out to think about it. Now why ain’t I thought of that.

Nah, the point is I’m trying to really pay attention to some of the mundane interactions during the day to learn how to handle it all better. I plan on being the zen master of office communication, a meeting ninja, another martial arts cliche of epic proportions for giving and receiving feedback. To that end, here are some thoughts from the world of thought experiments.

Observation 1: I don’t have any idea how to handle other people’s internal dialogs. Like the woman who always phrases a question like it’s a game show challenge. “Am I in charge of this invoice?” Um, I don’t know how to rule paper, as it were, so none of us are in charge of it. Let’s Roshambo for it.

Similarly, if you launch into something and I have no idea what you’re talking about, because like maybe I haven’t yet read the email that just came in two seconds ago, the look on my face isn’t meant to convey anything but confusion. Please don’t ascribe a mood to my furrowed brow, I’m just busy thinking, nothing more or less, until you give me a chance to say, “Huh?”

The paragraph above also pertains to when you walk up quietly and I’m reading. The look on my face — Startled. It’s not personal. When I’m on the way to the kitchen — Hungry or thirsty. Also not personal. About to talk with someone else, and you stop me with your question — Momentarily unfocused. Not personal.

Here’s a secret prayer for the person most apt to walk up to my desk when I’m in the middle of something and start speaking just at the right time to make me jump. Start talking a little sooner and a little less abruptly and if I’m staring at my screen or typing fast, you might want to ask if it’s a good time.

Here’s my ninja coping strategy, as my prayer goes unanswered. Smile. Ninja’s don’t show their pain.

Observation 2: Since people drop by and ask for my help or for feedback already, I’m not feeling too corrective. I think I’ll just avoid the people who don’t want my help any way. Win win.

Observation 3: Sometimes I think people are waiting for me to say things at meetings. Sometimes I think people are waiting for anyone else to say something at meetings, and then to stop saying things. Meetings aren’t really communication.

Observation 4: Man, humans can put spin on anything, and personal insecurities can amplify that to 11. There’s a person I know that a hefty portion of conversations sway from what I think is an amusing anecdote to her set of worries. “Hey, this guy said this funny thing to me about that.” “Oh, really, do you think he was suggesting that the world as we know it is off kilter?”

Oops, yeah, nevermind. Note to self, ninjas don’t share amusing anecdotes.

Observation 5: The “open” questions my coach says are a nice trick for negotiating a conversation don’t work for everyone. I’m not saying those folks want to be led, as much as maybe they are rehearsing for a revamp of Abbott and Costello. “What do you think we should do?” “I’m not sure, I thought you’d know, do you?” “I’m OK with whatever you think, will X work for you or do you want Y?” “Do you think Y is better?”

Time might be infinite, but my life is limited. I don’t know if we both have time to passively consider every course of action in the known universe. How’s about we just decide and keep it moving?

Observation 6: It doesn’t take me any different amount of time to write a vaguely interesting or amusing email than to keep it straight. I tried both this week. But the amusing ones actually get a response.

Addendum to above: A lot of people are shitty writers (and maybe don’t know it) or struggle with writing. Those folks don’t understand the possibilities, but I’m guessing that it’s not a good target to cater to them.

Addendum two: People who shave off prior chunks of an email should either (1) start a fresh email and give enough info to start anew or (2) stop shaving off the prior chunks of email. You know what’s confusing? “See below” when there’s nothing down below.

Subpart to this addendum: those people are also the ones who don’t cc everyone who needs to know stuff.

Observation 7: Mindlessly playing with my iPhone keeps me from biting my fingernails at meetings. Putting away my electronics, because other people think it’s disrespectful, means after a week of meetings, I have hangnails and a couple of bloody cuticles.

Observation 8: Mostly, I work with some cool people. The ones that aren’t, well, whatcha gonna do?

Observation 9: All of the above — Problems of the privileged and whiny. I wonder if Thoreau hated himself a little at the end of a day, especially if he encountered some of that there meanness.