Getting A Real Job

When I was younger, I would dream about being an actress, a marine biologist and a vet, but never a mom. That wasn't a real job. My mom was the pinnacle of stay at home parents, but I couldn't appreciate all that she did because she made it look so easy. It never looked like work. She was happy to hang our clothes out on the line and help us with homework. We had homemade meals every evening and clean clothes waiting in our drawers every morning. I knew it wasn't a fairy who cleaned the house but I didn't think that could be considered work. My friends' moms went to the nursing home and the county courthouse for 8 hours a day. Their mom's weren't home after school which seemed pretty cool to a 12 year old who wanted to raid the fridge and watch MTV all afternoon. My mom was waiting for us after school with fresh cookies and a smile. It seems great but sometimes irritated my preteen senses. I couldn't  make bad choices with her hanging around the house all day. I had yet to understand that she had signed up for the toughest gig around by not having a 'real' job.

 The vet and marine biologist gigs didn't pan out for me and I gained a new found interest in having babies. I was home with my kids for the first years of their lives and worked part time jobs off and on to mingle with people who spoke in whole sentences and consumed more than breast milk. When I was at work, I felt validated by a paycheck and other adults who appreciated my efforts. At home, I worked harder to bathe, diaper, feed and entertain my kids without the perks or the paycheck. The benefits were happy kids and an enjoyable home life, but the hours were long and there were moments when I felt insignificant. I was just a mom. My friends had careers, college educations and retirement funds. They were living up their 20's at bars, wine tastings and indie movie premiers. I couldn't stay awake for an entire movie and I drank boxed wine. Bars were either soap or what I wanted to be behind so I could sleep for 8 hours straight. This mom thing was starting to feel like a 'real' job and I owed my own mom a big apology and an even bigger thank you.

My son asked me the other night at dinner when I was going to get a real job. I have recently left a company and can now make my own hours. I work while my kids are at school and write while they are asleep. I've become a pro at making it look easy. So easy that my kids don't think I have a job. I guess it takes becoming a parent to understand that the job your parents did raising you far surpasses what they did for an occupation. And sometimes it is one in the same.

Yeah, I'm Not So Good At That.

I started working when I was fifteen and have been lucky enough to only be out of work a couple times.  Once when I moved back home to get married, one when I got laid off and then stayed home with my kids. Which is considered a job by some and a luxury by  people who have never done it. I like to work. I need to stay busy for the majority of my day, so working has never been a problem for me. Here's what I am not so good at....moving up in a company and making a decent salary. I have had opportunities and I seem to jump off the bridge at the last possible second with an excuse that there is surely something better at the bottom. Am I afraid of success? Possibly. Do I fear being stuck in a cubicle with hand painted mugs full of pens and 'Hang In There Kitty' posters? Yes.
I had a great job at a university hospital when my husband and I bought our first house. It had started as a temp job where I would cover for an employee on maternity leave for four months. It turned into me being offered a secretarial position that paid fairly well, had great benefits and had an option for partially paid tuition. On the outside it looked like the perfect opportunity for a twenty-two year old with no college education. The catch was, all the women in the office were older than my mom. They had clearly moved into their cubicle three decades ago and spent more time there than they did at home. Framed family pics, holiday decorations and seat cushion made out of fur adorned every corner of their office. They knew the filing system by heart and told stories about the doctors' many wives and their many late nights. The work I could handle, the possibility of being there for the rest of my life, I could not. I declined the position and attempted to find work closer to home.
A few years later, I was working for a corporate coffee shop. I was doing a bang up job in the position I was hired for and was approached by my manager to see if I was interested in moving up in the company. The store manager pay wasn't fantastic but the benefit were. I considered what my life would look like with two young children while working 70-80 hours a week and being on-call 24/7. I didn't need to make a substantial amount of money because my husband provided financially for our family and I provided the insurance. While I saw that there could be a great opportunity to move up in a fantastic company and possibly work there for many years, I turned down the offer. I wasn't passionate about never seeing my kids, having the stress of a store on my shoulders and sacrificing my family time to be a corporate bitch.
I'm not lazy, I don't think. I want to spend my life doing something that makes me happy and I have the option of finding out what that is. If we needed money, I would happily work three jobs to support my family. Thankfully, I don't have to. I am good at a lot of things, sacrificing myself for a "secure" career isn't one of them. My hope is to one day make money at writing, but only if it fulfills me in some other way as well. When it starts feeling like a water cooler job, I'm out.
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Teenage Dreams & Other Breakables

It's Monday!!! I'm sorry I didn't get to update the blog Friday...I was busy doing the drawing for my new Facebook page, having lunch with my brother and shopping at Costco. I need to design an app that I can use to blog while I drive, I always have so many great ideas but it's tough to write while speeding down the highway at 80 MPH.
If you are new to my blog, WELCOME!!! I love writing and this is where I vent, share, over share and hone a craft that I hope to one day get paid for. We have themed days but I want you to get super stoked about next week....we are all going on vacation!!! Next Wednesday we are headed to San Francisco where we will be seeing Rhianna in concert, watching a couple baseball games and eating lots of amazing food. I will be blogging about all the restaurants, outings, bars and events we hit up so you can enjoy the beauty of Cali in the comfort of your home. I'm excited to share this journey with you. If you have a favorite store, coffee shop or restaurant in SF please email me or comment here so I can check it out.

On Monday we tackle office shenanigans, shitty bosses and all things work. It is meant to relieve some of the pressure of having to hole up in a cubicle for eight to ten hours a day. I have never been destined for office work, my first job was at a grocery store where I started at a training wage. That's how they justified paying a fifteen year old $3.66/ hour. I started at the bottom of the totem pole bagging groceries for elderly women and pushing carts through sheets of rain. My parents raised us to work hard and then even harder, just to make sure you did twice as much work at half the cost. I blame them for the passion I have for hard labor and shitty pay. I have since followed my first job up with numerous receptionist gigs, a couple coffee shop jobs and the mother of two monkeys. I still haven't received a check for that last one.
If working hard made you rich, I would be living in Hawaii, doing yoga on the beach and napping every afternoon. Instead, I am working in an office, paying bills and wishing the temperature would surpass 40 degrees in March. Working hard and working smart are two very different paths and at the fork in the road, I should have gone right not left.
I was dependable to a fault and made my way up the proverbial ranks and into the Video Department. This promotion came with a laughably small raise and the responsibility of checking movies out to creepers and loners. Just so you know how ancient I am, I got paid to handle VHS tapes and restock huge walls full of movies that today, I could fit on my laptop. As a teenager, it was a good gig. I didn't have to flip burgers or hang out with too many of my peers, so I put my best foot forward and ended up in the Produce Department. This is where my first job takes a turn for the worse. I was very young and a little naive. There were no boys my age asking me out, taking me to prom or stopping by my house with flowers. My boss in this department started showing me a bit too much attention. He was fifteen years my senior and married to a beautiful blond with long legs and a voice that you had to strain to hear over a breeze. I had no idea what she was saying half the time and her whispers were no match for her husband's overbearing tone.She desperately wanted a baby with a man who wanted to relive high school with his employee. He degraded her at every turn, I assume to impress me and let me know that I had options. I wasn't too young to understand what a fucked up dynamic this was.
He would take smoke breaks with me, bring me coffee in the morning and compliment me on my sense of humor. I wanted to believe we were friends, but as time went on I realized there was no good reason for a thirty-five year old man to desire the attention of his sixteen year old employee. I have always had a pretty sensitive bullshit detector and once I stopped justifying his shitty behavior I realized that I had needed to run for a long time. What would a happily married man need with an awkward teenager who lived in her parents' basement? It took a few years for me to come to the conclusion that this guy had some major issues. Thanks for sharing them with me, ass bag.

I'm A Dick...At Work

Not everyone is fun to work with. Like me. You may be shocked to know what a complete dick I am at work. It can be especially painful if you happen to be a newbie and I happen to be having a severe nicotine withdrawal with no break in sight. I have a tendency to be snappy and bitch you out for not knowing every detail. Case in point: I was previously employed by a coffee company that I am sure you have heard of. I wore a green apron and marked cups with secret scrawl that you, as a customer,  were always trying to decipher. It was one of the lowest paying jobs I have ever had and I ended up being there for six years. It is really addicting making drinks for complete fucking assholes. It's like crack for a Type A personality. Once, while working with a new person, I grabbed a cup that this newbie had marked so I could 'happily' make an overpriced coffee concoction. I looked at the boxes and found only the bottom one marked, with approximately fifteen random letters. 

Me: "What is this suppose to be?" (Insert seriously pissed off face here.)

New Guy: "It's a blah blah blah with whip and light ice. Is that not the right marking?"

Me: "Okay. That is not even close to the right marking. So let me know when you learn how to mark cups and I will be happy to make that." (Hand cup back to new, untrained person. Refuse to make drink.)

I really am a dick to work with. Here is how you piss me off on the job:  1) You are new. Training new people to do a job you have been doing for years, is like teaching a monkey how to steam milk and scoop ice. The monkey is you. 2) You are incompetent and should have never been hired in the first place. I smell you coming a mile away and we will never be friends. The end. 3) You are a baby. The only thing I can count on from you, is that you will never show up on time and that you will call in sick every Friday and Saturday night. I hate people who don't take work seriously because that is a guarantee that I will end up doing your job and my job for the same paycheck I was receiving before you were hired. 4) You are a chameleon. I won't go into too much detail about this, but let me just say that there is a weird dynamic when you get hired and start becoming my creepy Single White Female stalker. If you don't get the reference, Google that shit.  

I am the first to admit that I don't work well with others in some situations. And by some, I mean most. Mostly every fucking situation. I hate being asked stupid questions and unlike what your teacher/mommy/BFF told you, there is such a thing as a stupid question. If you don't think this is true, you are the one asking them. Here are a few of my favorites from my coffee slinging days:

"They want a water, what should I do?"

"There is no more whipped cream in the fridge. What do we do now?"

"What should we do about that coffee spill over there?"

"They don't have enough money, should I give it to them anyway?"

"What if I don't have any clean aprons?"

Now I will answer all of these stupid fucking questions for you, so you can see how stupid they really are:

"Give them a fucking cup of water"

"Get off your ass and make some"

"How about....CLEAN IT UP and stop telling everyone about it." 

"If they ordered a drink they pay for a drink. In full."

"Tell your mommy that you need her to wash an apron for you or grow the fuck up and learn how to do a load of laundry."

Call me crazy, but I think when you are hired on at a grown up job where you work with other grown ups, that you shouldn't need your mommy to change your diappy every afternoon. You need to grow a pair and get your ass to work. Learn your job, wear clean clothes, take that metal shit out of your face and get a grip on being an adult.  I know that you are just letting us know how edgy and independent you are but when your mom drops you off at work and gives you lunch money, the gig is up.

Perhaps there are folks out there who get along with everyone and are patient little teachers at their place of employment. I am not that person. I am hard to love, overly critical and have zero tolerance for stupidity. However, once you make the nice list, there is no mountain I won't climb or shift I won't cover for you. The co-worker who needed to be bitch slapped for his cup markings? He is one of my best friends and we still laugh about what an asshole I was. Life is good on the other side of my shit list. 

Yummy butt crack

Let's go over the definition of nitpicking shall we...and no it's not the real definition that you will find in some dictionary so don't check. It's my definition. I was reviewed at work today by management and really had no care in the world because I work my ass off every single day, have excellent customer service skills and am so terrified of doing something "wrong" that I go way overboard. Yes this affects my life away from work, but that is a whole other blog. So here we are going over my last 6 months..good work ethic..check...good with customers...check....comes to work on time...check....dress code..NO CHECK. Really? And here is why...apparently tucked in shirts are mandatory. Okay. I seem to remember seeing someone come work on the floor with street clothes recently, but I am sure I am the problem. So in the most uncomfortable conversation I have had with an adult man in my entire life, he proceeds to hint at what has been "seen" during these unfortunate untucked moments. Tattoo, underwear and possible crack....it was not so much said as implied. Got it. Here is my issue. I literally work with people everyday who have full sleeve tattoos, gauges the size of a dinner plate and hair that is falling like autumn leaves and that seems to be no problem what so ever. Hey, I have an idea for a company that pays minimum wage and expects the world...lets not try so desperately to find fault in an untucked shirt and turn a blind eye to some asshole who shows up to work in pajama pants. Just a thought.