The Napkin Diaries

The new job is such a nice change. Oh, and get this… we keep BEER in the fridge?! I knew this was a good decision!

Yesterday, I really said to myself these words: “I actually do like what I do.” I like got EXCITED when I made a new form. Who does that?! My organizational skills actually make me want to gag some of the time. It was a really good feeling though, to feel like I'm doing something important and to actually like the process of doing said important thing. Gives me hope that I'm actually doing something right.

And! And and AND! I’ve been researching how to be a good interviewer, and HR guru, and right arm to VP. Boss Man was like "crap, you already know all my secrets so now I can't hide shit from you! You're like my WIFE!" in regards to talking shop about hiring. I shook my fists in victory and told him that's exactly what I was going for. So, now I'm researching what the hell my job title should be. I used to be a "Business Process Coordinator." Whatever the fuck that means, right? Right. I'm searching for an equally confusing yet empowering title to scroll across my business cards. If you have some fantastic idea for some catchy frou-frou name worthy of scrawling all over my email signature, office door, and any other obnoxious place, please let me know. I can only be so creative on my own here, people.

And yesterday, Boss Man and I were standing in my future office, you know, the current catch-all room? Did I mention it even has a window! (that window might only face the brick wall of the BAR next door, but it totally counts.) And did I mention that we live next door to a BAR?!

And he said “I might have someone else share this room with you, but it’ll be someone on a more senior level who’s mature and trustworthy; not one of the kids.” And I took that as a complement, because obviously he doesn’t look at me as “one of the kids” even though I’m younger than some of them. Holy crap – RESPECT?!! What a concept.

New job, I think I love you.

Sometimes, I'm pretty sure Husband and I don't actually say real words for entire days at a time -we just ramble in our “normal” banter of inside jokes and funny quotes we've picked up along the way.

So, without further ado, please allow me to enlighten you on The Butterfly Effect:

One typical Saturday we were in the truck going to Target because throughout the week I was able to make up a list of “ohmygah I absolutely have to buy this NOW” things and conned Husband not only into going with me, but actually driving my ass there. Win.

On the way to waste away my dolla dolla bills, a pretty, floaty yellow butterfly came fluttering toward our windshield. Oh this is going to be gross… I figured we’d have fluorescent smears all over the place but miraculously the bastard did some kind of stealthy butterfly-y sneak attack move that hoisted his fluttery ass up and over the truck.

“Dude, you almost just hit that butterfly,” I proclaim to Husband with a look of worry across mah pretty little wife face.

Without skipping a beat, Husband immediately assumes the persona of said butterfly. He releases his hands from the steering wheel, because, you know, driving is no longer the important matter at hand; being a BUTTERFLY is. So, he throws his hands up in the air with his elbows all tucked into his sides and starts nonchalantly flapping his hands and looking around. He looks over at me, as if I had now assumed the role of driver that nearly took his little butterfly life, and simply says, “Well fuck you too then,” in his best little matter-of-fact butterfly voice.

.........

Needless to say, anytime we have a near insect-killing incident in the truck, it’s pretty much a race to see who can start cursing and flailing around first.

Well, fuck you too then.

I'm free! Free from the hell that was my first real, big girl job. Let's do a little recap of the last 2.5 years of my life that I've wasted away:

I had moved to Charleston with Husband (at the time he was Boyfriend, then soon became Fiance). He got me hooked up with a part-time admin job which I kept for about 5 months. I left that job because I managed to land a real 40 hr/week job at a bigger company. Just happy to have a real job with a real paycheck, I was too naive to notice the shit storm I was walking into.

My first boss was a living nightmare. He was this squatty little asshole with a serious case of dandruff who looked down on you (okay we'll figuratively since he had to look up at nearly everyone) if you didn't have 17 college degrees like he did. On a good day, he stood 5 and 1/2 feet tall. And yet for being dwarf-sized (in man height), he had an ego and an attitude big enough to accommodate, oh I don't know, fucking Big Foot. Initiative and creativity were bannished from the building. You were punished for having new ideas. If he didn't come up with it, then it wasn't good enough and would not be considered...

As if having his miserable ass prancing the halls wasn't bad enough, he then decided to hire this lousy excuse of a man who had a serious case of The Dunlop. Dunlop was fat, annoying, loud, full of himself, and disgustingly disrespectful to women. I was one of his first targets because I was a young, pretty, and intelligent woman. Those three things basically put a giant bulls eye on my back (though I wonder if he ever gave me credit for my brain). After taking his abuse for a few months, one day I decided I had had enough. That was it. I was no longer dealing with his meat head bullshit. He asked me to do the most retarded task and I said "you know what, NO. I'm not doing it."

This of course upset our Dunlop. "What? You only do what YOU want to do? What YOU think is important?"

I was fuming. Livid. Ready to strangle his big fat wrinkly neck. "You know what?! Yeah. I get to decide what deserves priority and what actually needs to be done! I besides, I don't actually work for YOU."

He yells at me with his fat all wiggling with rage, "I guess we're done here then."

I give him the meanest stink-eye I can muster up and growl, "I guess so!" And march my young, pretty, WOMAN ass out of his damn office.

I didn't give a fuck. I was tired of being treated like shit. I was tired of being discriminated against because of my age and gender. I was just tired.

Things quieted down soon after. Dunlop and I didn't speak. I didn't have a list of 50 irrelevant bullshit tasks piled on my desk, and I could actually do my job as it was intended.

And then something magical happened one day.

Our Dandruff-Doused Squatty Shithead Boss resigned. The sky opened up, the rain stopped, birds sang, and the entire building seemed to enjoy a collective sigh of relief. That hell that went on for the first year and a half of my life in this job was now over.

After shithead left the building, things got better. Shithead's boss took over and he basically could have passed for Santa Claus. He was a sweet, fat, jolly even, man who actually cared about his employees. However, while he cared about us, he didn't really care to make changes for us. So we were still floundering around with no real direction with our figurative thumbs shoved up our figurative asses. (And for some people, those asses are mammoth, let me tell you. I work with some of the ugliest, fattest people Charleston has to offer. Sheesh.)

Then the Gate Keepers of Hell (aka: Upper Management) decided to fire Santa Claus. Because obviously us minions were entirely too happy and that needed to change. They also fired a few of the other respectable people... so that left about 3 people in the entire company that were actually worth a shit. Amazingly enough though, the Gate Keepers appointed the RIGHT person to take over the Charleston office once Santa had left. Our new boss was a band member turned business man who talked to much about drinking, actually drank too much, but also gave a shit about his people AND and and and, DID something about it!

So, our new Lead Singer (if you will) has been in the lead for the last 6 months. I was the right arm to this man.

Big ass decisions? Consult Nic.
Have an HR Talk with this heathen of an employee? Consult Nic.
Happy Hour on a Tuesday? Consult Nic.

He trusted me with everything. He actually cared what I had to say. He actually saw the potential in me and let me do crazy important shit - like write papers to help win the company millions of dollars. He said things like "I don't know what I'll ever do if you leave." This guy actually saw me for what I was worth... so I decided that I actually needed to be paid for what I was worth.

And then the battle started.

I came in livid one day because I was just sick of everyone expecting me to always do the right thing and do it quickly. I sat down with him and said, "pay me more or I quit," (that was the short version - this actually took about 2 hours to say). So, after battling with the Gate Keepers of Hell, I actually managed to wrangle myself a sweet ass raise. Things were looking up.

And then the Gate Keepers really showed their wrath. The rain started again. Only this time, it was sideways rain. The birds didn't just leave, they died. There was no sunshine. No rainbows. No smiles. We were in Hell.

The Powers That Be decided we needed to do this "reorganization" and our department needed to be swallowed by another department. Which basically meant "Anything that you did before?? Well fuck that. It's our way or the highway, bitches."

They made my job difficult. No, scratch that. IMPOSSIBLE. They added 14 steps to any given process. They bitched at us for not hiring enough people, but they were the ones slowing us down with their newly instilled 14 extra steps. I even sat down with Satan himself and asked if Charleston could continue to function the way we did before. His answer: "No. We're doing it this way now."

Turns out Satan is far more of a shithead than Shithead Boss #1 ever was. He's a squatty pig-headed, Napoleon Complex of a man too. Only with a British accent on top of it. He makes me cringe. He's a total bastard.

I had finally had it. I was crying on a daily basis. I was now riding around the hallways on a broom with a frown. I was once considered a "cheerleader" for the company and I was now a haggard bitch because they MADE me that way. I went absolutely ballistic on Lead Singer one Thursday afternoon and threatened to quit.

The following Tuesday, I did. I fucking quit.

I had managed to land a sweet job with a smaller company and received my offer letter from them the Monday before the Tuesday that I sought my freedom. I even got a raise on top of the massive one I got from my current shit hole of a job. I took that opportunity and ran. Oh I fucking ran fast too.

As soon as I told Lead Singer, "There's no easy way to say this, but I've taken another job," the shackles busted off of me, the boulder on my back rolled off and I could actually breathe fresh air.

Today is my last day. Today is the LAST time I ever have to feel this way. Today is the beginning.

Fake eyelashes were invented for a very very good reason. No, it's not so Lady GAG-a can look like she has a peacock's ass taped to her face. No, it's not so drag queens can look even draggier. No, it's not even so Kim Kardashian's eyes can rival that giant butt of hers.

Fake eyelashes were made for people like me.

People who reach for sharp objects and aim for their face at the worst possible times. People who obviously should not be allowed to use electric eyebrow trimmers. People who accidentally lob off half of their REAL eyelashes while trying to groom their unruly Italian eyebrows and apparently do not have as steady of a hand as they'd like to think.

So, I've mentioned how I wander aimlessly in Target and never make it out of there without becoming at least $100 poorer, yes? The day I bought the electric eyebrow trimmer was no exception.

On a side note, let me also tell you that I have a terrible habit of doing irrational things when I'm pissed off. [Me? Do extreme things? And be all irrational and ridiculous? Never...] Especially when I'm pissed off at men. On this particular day, I was pissed off at work, but there are plenty of men that occupy the place that is work, so it counts. In the past, I'd usually take a pair of scissors and pick up chunks of hair and kind of chop them off. [Never did anything as crazy as Brit-Brit and shave my head] BUT I tended to want to change my hair when I was angry back in my college days and usually after all was said and done, I'd come out with jet-black flippy layers instead of silky strands of honey brown. Meh, it happens. We all deal with stress differently, right?

So I guess as I've gotten a little older, I've decided to take out my rage on other hair on my body. Don't want to discriminate, I suppose. However, since I could basically pass as an Olympic swimmer since I shave basically every inch of my body but my face, the only plausible option was to now attack my eyebrows. [I may or may not have an issue with body hair. And that issue may or may not have completely stemmed from the fact that I come from a gene pool of crazy hairy Italians with overbearing personalities to match their inappropriate amount of hair. And their inappropriate ability to drink their faces off. Whatever.]

So, right. I took mah rage out on mah hairs. I took that little, crazy, buzzing buzzer and smashed it to my face without every reading a direction. I tilted my chin down and aimed that eyebrow trimmer at the bushiest parts of my brows and it made that wonderful chompy noise similar to a paper shredder and oooh it was so gratifying. So I continued.

Note to self and/or any other lunatic woman who thinks dealing with rage means sabotaging her face: you should never, under any circumstances, tilt your chin down while trying to trim the bottom of your brows. Your EYELASHES live there.

So yeah, that paper shredder noise totally happened again. But this time, my brows remained in tact. My eyelashes?? Not so much.

The middle of my left eye now had eye lashes that resembled a "U" (but more like a U on an Etch-a-Sketch since no one really knows how to make curved lines on those things anyway.)

A slow and steady, "Sssshhhhhhhiiiiiiitttt," was murmured from my mouth as it fell agape while I stared in the mirror in horror. I slowly put down the buzzer and backed aways slowly.

"Okay, it's not so bad. Mascara can totally lengthen those stumpy middle lashes." ::Frantically coats left eye with blackest black mascara::

Instead I just have a limpy tarantula hanging over my eye... now what?!

I washed off the tarantula eye, put sunglasses on my face, mumbled to Husband that I need to go BACK to Target and got in the damn car. I found the big pack of fake lashes with 3 lengths to chose from. Oooh options! So I grabbed it up and got out of there as fast as I could and shoved my face back into the bathroom mirror when I got home. I did the whole open-your-mouth-as-wide-as-possible and poked my fingers at my eyes while holding these teeny bug-leg-looking lashes in my fat stumpy sausage fingers (Husband totally tells me I have sausage fingers and then totally tells the kittehs to nom on them. I now have a serious complex.) Thank God the Creator of the Fake Eyelashes also included teeny tweezers with the lashes because my sausagey fingers were way to giant to maneuver those things. After a few minutes, I successfully glued the shit out of those lashes onto my face. Thank God also that Fake Eyelash Creator included fake eyelash remover along with the super strong adhesive glue. Apparently Fake Eyelash Creator did not want that shit to fall off.

Needless to say, I've been wearing fake eyelashes for a good two weeks because my limpy-tarantula-excuse-for-eyelashes are not even trying to grow back with any kind of rapid speed so now I stick my face all in the mirror every morning trying to glue those little bug-legs to my eyelids.

All in the name of beauty, I suppose. Or at least in the name of I-don't-want-to-look-like-an-idiot.

Eyelash FAIL.

My [soon to be ex-] boss instilled this awesome delicious make-everyone-fat rule at work... Donut Day. On the first of every month (or sometimes the 2nd if he forgets because I didn't remind him) he brings in like 50 Dunkin Donuts. And there are always way too many to chose from. And I always go for the ones that are completely stuffed full of 9 billion calories of delicious frosting.

I just gorged myself on one with chocolate frosting on the outside and fluffy vanilla frosting on the inside. And I might have stuffed a couple of those Munchkin holes in my face too. And I might have washed everything down with a Diet Mt. Dew.

Please, someone check on me in 20 minutes to make sure I have not gone into diabetic shock.