New Job Part Two: Lunch hour

“A dream is a wish your heart makes.”

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t enjoy what I do—for several reasons. If I had my way, I’d drop the media buying and focus solely on doing creative work. But in business, they don’t give you a job unless you already know how to do it, and since I didn’t have enough luck to get accepted for the creative track at BYU, I’ve never learned the programs I’d need for it. So, I’ve accepted that moving over to creative is just a dream, and I might as well become very accustomed to media buying, because that’s probably what I’ll be doing for the next long while.

“You mean I get to come away with you in your starship?”

Remember all those hollow promises my manager made me months ago about my moving to the creative department. Well, the company finally made good on them. As of today, I am no longer a media buyer and I couldn’t be happier about it. My new assignments include print advertising layout and trafficking newspaper and radio ads—and they’re even willing to let me learn all the programs as I go along!

“Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

Unfortunately, to make the position available, they had to give a lady at the office the pink slip, but then, I don’t blame them for doing it. In fact, she kind of did it to herself. She’s a “king mixer” and she’s always complaining about something.

“Now listen carefully. Lord Denethor is Boromir's father. To give him news of his beloved son's death would be most unwise... And do not mention Frodo, or the Ring... And say nothing of Aragorn, either... In fact, it's better if you don't speak at all.”

We had a meeting last week where the owners asked that we spend less personal time on the internet and that there be no more computer games played during the work day. She got really defensive about it (mostly because the requests which were made generally were pretty much meant just for her) and made the argument, “well I don’t even have anything to do until Thursday!”

So, now she’s gone, and I do creative work Monday through Wednesday and her job Thursday and Friday.

This “promotion” comes with a whole slew of plusses for me. 1.) I get to learn all the creative programs on the computer—so instead of blowing a couple of G’s on an additional degree from a technical school to learn these things, I’m getting on the job training from people who’ve been doing it for longer than I’ve been alive. 2.) Jean was a decent human being, but she really grossed me out. Whenever she was out on vacation, I had to cover for her. So I’d sit at her desk some days, and the place was discusting: foundation make-up caked onto the phone, coffee mugs tattooed with excess lipstick scattered about, loose hair and dandruff peppered the work area, and the mouse and keyboard were sticky with dried hand lotion. I won’t mind not dealing with that any more. 3.) Perhaps the most welcomed change of all is that I’ll no longer have Andrew as a manager.

“When do we eat?
“When do we eat?
“When do we eat?
“When do we eat?”

I tell enough stories to my old roommates about Andrew that they mostly just know him as “The Tool.” I won’t go too much into ALL the reasons why I don’t like him, but here’s a short example. He insists that one of the buyers be in the office at all times (including during lunch). There were only three of us, so that meant that someone had to either go to lunch an hour early or an hour late. He and the other buyer were making a big deal out of it concerning who would go late which days of the week. Neither of them wanted to give ground, so I just said that they could both take lunch whenever they wanted, and I would just wait to take my lunch until one of them got back.

“To govern, you need say only one of two things:

‘That’s a splendid idea, I’m glad I thought of it,’ and ‘Guards, seize him!’”

A few months down the road Andrew was mentioning how flexible of a manager he is, citing “allowing” me to take a later lunch as evidence of his grace and understanding. That, plus other self promoting comments he’s made makes me think that he must be pretty insecure about himself, because not since Hitler have I seen someone in leadership do so much campaigning for a position he already holds.

So, even now that I’m no longer required to alternate my lunch hour with the other media buyers’, and even though I’m always starving by noon, I still wait until after one to take my lunch. Not because I need to, but because I prefer to spend as much of my day without those guys as possible. So waiting an hour is no big deal because by waiting its like I take my one Andrew free hour that I have for lunch and stretch it to two.

It’s not that I dislike them, sometimes they’re a lot of fun to joke around with, but I’m just so often annoyed by them that the less time I spend with them the better. After all, I’m on contract to spend 8 hours a day sitting within 20 feet of them, so any chance I get to provide some distance there, I take it.

Sometimes I wish I were the one who went at noon and they left when I got back, not because I want to be the first one to eat, but because EVERY day Andrew sits at his desk and laments how boring lunches are. He mopes about how he can’t decide where to go, and when I try to advise him on eating here, or doing this he ALWAYS has some kind of complaint as to why that won’t work for him. His traditional lunch includes a sack lunch that he eats in the break room for 15 minutes, then he comes back to his desk, plops down in his chair and sighs about how boring lunches are.

My lunches, on the other hand rock the freakin’ house! Sometimes I decide to walk home—that takes me about a half hour round trip, but its very relaxing and provides a good change of pace to all the sitting that I do all day. Other days I drive home and enjoy an entire hour to do whatever. Sometimes I read, sometimes I watch a movie, sometimes I nap, sometimes I play Xbox, every time I eat. And even the days when I walk I have a half hour at home and that gives me plenty of time to mix up a fun combination of the above activities.

“When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone.”

In this life, with work, and church, and chores, and (for some people) family, we only have so much discretionary time and I don’t understand why some people dread facing those moments alone. If I ever get married, I hope its to a girl who loves the time she spends by herself enough to allow herself time away from me and allow me a portion that I can spend on my own too.

Power "tools"

“You keep using that word -- I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Tool” is a word introduced to me by my good friend D$ Glaizer. Well, as a native to the English language, naturally, I’d heard it before; but Glaige opened my view to an entirely new meaning of the word. A loose interpretation might be:

Tool (tōōl) n. Anyone (particularly a male) who shrouds his self-centered actions within the parameters of social propriety, all the while stepping on the toes of his peers, whose actions and intentions are confined to said propriety.

“I don’t understand.”
“With time and training, Annie, you will.”

This is the type of meaning that is easier to identify than to define, so I’ll try to give you some for instances. The tool is the guy at the party who’s interested in the girl you’re talking to, so he inconspicuously eaves drops until he finds an “opportune moment” to butt HIMSELF into (and YOU out of) the conversation; it’s the girl from your study group who doesn’t cite her sources when she brings up findings from YOUR research so that SHE can look smart in front of the class; it’s the manager at work who disallows a cross-department promotion be offered to YOU because replacing you would make HIS job more difficult; and (on a less competitive level) it’s the roommate who conjures an innocent excuse as to why he can’t hang out with YOU, when really he’s just trying to free up his night so HE can take out some insignificant dame he met on campus who probably doesn’t even remember his name. These are tools.

“That there’s Will Scarlett—he’s full of piss and wind.”

So there’s this absolute tool at church. Let’s refer to him as “Joe”. He’s the kind of guy who can’t make a comment in Sunday school without sounding like he’s campaigning for apostleship. Sunday school teachers must dread seeing him walk into their classroom, because without fail, he’ll have a comment to interject into each lesson, only they’re not merely comments—each time he opens his mouth, you can expect at least a seven minute sermon.

For those not familiar with LDS Sunday school, your average classroom comment usually lasts about 45 seconds and begins with, “well, for me…” But Joe’s discourses often begin with some major assumption presented as fact, like his recent proclamation, “Let me tell you the NUMBER ONE reason why people don’t come to church: its because they don’t read daily from the word of God!” Then he proceeds to recite to the class three or four verses from the scriptures with his finger waving in the air and his voice trembling in the cadence of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

“Not another lecture, Master.”

His “comments” always end in the same way: he repeats that first major statement of his, “and THAT, my brethren, is the number… one… reason why our brothers and sisters don’t come to church.” Then he creeps back into his chair with his eyebrows pursed together in an expression saying, “That completely drained me, both emotionally and spiritually.”

“I've heard this lesson before.”
“Then why don't you listen to me?”

This man is not our ordained spiritual leader, he’s a 26-year-old kid with a bad tie and an inferiority complex. I sometimes have a hard time hearing what he says because I’m so busy rolling my mind's eyes, but I usually catch enough of his comment to come up with a contrasting comment of my own. The purposes of my post-joe comments are usually two fold, 1.) to hopefully bring the class discussion back somewhere within the general vicinity of reality, and 2.) to stand as a simple yet sincere contrast to the hoopla and the hell-and-damnation of the misspent, irreclaimable past seven minutes of class time. On that particular occasion, my post-Joe comment was something to the effect of, “Well… I read my scriptures all the time, but sometimes I don’t come to church because things can get pretty awkward here.” Okay, so I didn’t say exactly that… but I did say that we’d be wrong to think that there is any one reason why people don’t attend. That people’s needs and their disappointments change from time to time, so there isn’t one all encompassing reason why people don’t come.

“It clearly states in the Book of Who...”

I referred to an applicable quote by the prophet (to restore some credability) which outlines three things that every new member needs to maintain his activity in the church. Discussion ensued—yet another contrast from Joe’s comments, which usually incite silence, and not the kind of silence that Joe assumes we’re feeling: not a silence of awe and respect, but a silence of stupor, because the way he presents his comments is so overpowering that really the only response anyone can give to them is a puzzled and uninterested, “...wow.”

“He has not just power, not just skill, but dash:

that rare, invaluable combination of boldness and grace.”

There’s another word that I’ve learned from Dustin (actually I think Ty's the first one to have used it): dash. One who’s dash is the antithesis to one who is a tool. I’m not sure where the word comes from, but I think it’s the root from which come words like haberdashery and dashing good looks. A loose interpretation of this word might be:

Dash (dăsh) adj. 1.) Of exceedingly great awesomnicity. 2.) Possesing the ideal balance of confidence, candor, capability, and constraint.

Some may say that writing what I’ve written is a breech of constraint and therefore has undone my self-proclaimed dashness and that I should just overlook his “uniquness”. “Hogwash,” says I. Let’s not confuse being dash with being oblivious. One who is oblivious doesn’t notice annoyances in others. One who is dash does notice them; he realizes that to ignore them is to be dishonest with himself, and to proclaim them is to be unfair to the offender (who, in his own right, may be oblivious). So, one who is dash, makes note of the annoyance, learns his own lesson from it and shares that lesson with those of a like mind.

Some may say that I’m simply being judgmental, that he’s who he is and I’m who I am and there’s not a right or a wrong to it. “Codswallop,” says I. Awkward is awkward and weird is weird. Joe, the man, may be neither, but Joe, the Reverend, is both incarnate. And if normal people go around exercising hyper tolerance for weird people, they are only condemning those weirdoes to continue in their weirdness.

“…When gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be.

Pass on what you have learned.”

The way for normal people to stay normal is by discussing the abnormalities they ought to avoid. I’d argue that this is how modern conventions such as underarm deodorant, orthodontics, and hairbrushes came about: people noticed something in others that they wanted to avoid themselves—eventually those who inspired the change will catch on, they’ll conform to normality, and the world will be a better place because of it.

Complications and Conclusions

“Would you like to go get some pie… or noodles?”
“Is that your idea of a date: pie and noodles?”

It’s not easy being a guy. Asking girls out is NOT an easy thing to do. If you really like the girl you get so nervous that you’ll make a fool of yourself that its hard to relax and be yourself. If you don’t really like the girl it’s hard to be energetic and act like yourself. But what makes it all worth it are those rare times when things just work and you find yourself on a date with a beautiful woman, enjoying her enjoying you.

Well, after coordinating our busy schedules I finally got a chance to take out Marianne. We met for lunch on a Thursday in Salt Lake at this Scandinavian kaffe haus that I’ve wanted to go to for a long time. To be honest, the date was a little stuffy at first—not boring, just very formal. And for me, romantic formality is a very uncomfortable thing.

“You seem a little on edge…

I haven't felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of gundarks…

You're sweating. Relax. Take a deep breath.”

But everything was fine once we got out of our chairs and looked around at the European gifts and candies. I grossed her out with some disgusting salt-licorice and she teased me about how good I’d look in Swedish gym socks. By the end of the date, things felt very relaxed, we both seemed ourselves. It took us a long time to say goodbye because the conversation just kept coming. And just as we were leaving she said she’d really like to hear from me again. So despite the butterflies I was feeling before the date, by the end of it things felt relaxed, like it was just me enjoying her and her enjoying me.

Since then, I’ve been out of town, she’s been out of town, and we just haven’t had a chance to get together again, but I saw her at church Sunday and again she said she’d like like to “get together again some time.”

“Anakin, Anakin, do you copy? This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin?

He's not on Naboo, Arfour. I'm going to try and widen the range…

I do hope nothing's happened to him.”

Throughout all this she’s been insanely difficult to get a hold of on the phone. She’s lives downtown but work keeps her in Layton, Logan, or Wyoming most of the time. I’m never surprised when I call and all I get is her voicemail. But other than that first time I called, she’s never returned my call in less than three days and that drives me crazy. The first time it happened was after we’d spoke while she was in Wyoming—I started to wonder if I’d kept her up too late on the phone and if she’d fallen a sleep at the wheel on her drive back—maybe she wasn't calling me back because I had killed her.

Everyone’s got cell phones these days, so everyone’s got caller ID to show them who’s calling before they answer the phone. When I call and get just voicemail, part of me worries that she sees that it's me calling and choses to ignore it, but I always give her the benefit of the doubt that she just couldn’t answer then—maybe she was at a movie, or in class, and maybe she got home too late to call.

“Either I’m gonna kill her, or I’m beginning to like her!”

So I figure that if that’s the case, then she’ll get a chance to call back within a day, because even if she WAS too busy or out too late, within the next 24 hours she’ll have the chance for a free minute or two, right? But when 24 hours comes and goes, I start to worry. After 48 hours I start to steam. And after 3 days I start to lose hope. Not that not hearing from a girl is that big of a deal, but for some reason, when it's a girl that you're sincerely interested in the dramatic impact of every event seems to mutiply exponetially.

“Life seems so much simpler when you're fixing things.

I'm good at fixing things... always was.”

I’ve come up with a couple of activities to distract myself from feeling like I was just waiting next to the phone for her call. Sometimes I just go about my usual xboxing, movie watching, or reading, but I turn the phone off or hide it from myself so I’m not constantly checking for missed calls. On Saturday my distraction was to leave the phone in the house while I was outside fixing a radiator problem on my car. That’s when she finally called back.

“I was beginning to wonder if you had GOTTEN my message.”

I noticed the message about 20 mintues after she’d left it, and I don’t know if it was because of all the time that had passed, or if it was the lack of apology in her voice, but despite her invitation to call (in her message she asked that I call soon because she'd be heading to her parents' house for the evening and she'd only be available until she left), I was in NO mood to make a quick reply.

So, I finished working on the car, went for a jog, took a shower, and conquered the droid armies of the Trade Federation (Xbox). Then, at around 5 o’clock I called her back. It was no surprise to see that she didn’t answer her phone. I left a message, but never heard back from her. We bumped into each other at church the next day, but only for a minute or two. Upon departing she said, “well hey, we should get together again sometime.” I felt kind of releived--oh, she wasn't avoiding me afterall--but I didn’t want to seem too eager, so I waited until Tuesday to call. It’s now Friday—still no reply.

“If we can just avoid any more FEMALE advice,

we ought to be able to get out of here.”

And that’s where my frustration lies: she always sounds so eager for us to get together, but when I call, it takes her FOREVER to get back to me--yet she always DOES get back to me. It just seems like such a contradiction to say you’re so interested yet act like its no priority.

“No reward is worth this!”

As exciting as being interested in someone is, my relationship with Marianne clearly isn’t as synergetic as a romance ought to be. I’ve got friends who are always telling me that relationships take a lot of work. And I believe that’s true… “from a certain point of view.” I completely believe that relationships are worth working for, but what I have with Marianne is NOT a relationship. The only time relationships are worth working at is when you’re already in one.

“Marty, it’s impossible.

The idea that I could fall in love at first sight?

It’s romantic nonsense. There’s no scientific rationale to that.”
“C’mon, Doc, it’s not science. You meet the right girl,

and it just hits ya—it’s like lightning.”

So how do you get into a relationship that’s worth working at? Quien Sabe! It just happens. In my experience, the relationships that work are the ones that just take off on their own, and the ones that require the most effort to get going are the ones that fizzle out “before you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle’.”

“Sometimes there are things NO ONE can fix.

You’re not all-powerful, Annie.”
“Well, I should be!”

I think that sometimes people (including myself) think that the opposite sex is just too conservative or reserved to make obvious efforts toward hooking up, and they (we) take it upon themselves (ourselves) to do EVERYTHING to make a relationship work (including all the worrying), but the truth is that girls want to end up with a guy as badly as guys want to end up with a girl and when things work, its because both parties want it to. No amount of effort or power can make someone fall in love with you.

“Well, now, I bring all sorts of plusses to the table:
I hardly ever bluff and I never ever cheat.”

So, when you get to a point like where I’m at with Marianne, you have to trust that you’ve played your cards the best you could, and if she doesn’t “see your five and raise you ten” then there’s nothing you can do but fold. Sure, you could assume she's bluffing (playing hard to get) and go “all in,” but honestly, the only time anyone ever does that is when their chips are down to the point that going all in isn’t really that much of a sacrifice.

I’ve had no signs that what I’ve been dealt with Marianne will turn out to be a winning hand, and I’ve got WAY too strong a sense of self-worth to ever considering taking the desparate approach, or going “all in.” So, I fold—I’m just going to save my chips for another hand (another girl), one who will make the game worth playing, instead of just playing games.

“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.”