Do You Work Here?

August 29th, 2008

At one time in my life I worked in a job where I had to wear a nametag and a tie to for an hourly wage.  After some time I inspected my world and decided that I would make it a goal to never a job for which I was required to do those things again.  Truth is, occasionally it is still necessary but not on a regular basis and if I do submit, I get a decent free lunch out of it.

Working retail is hard.  Not heavy lifting hard (well, usually it isn’t), but having to deal with the general public on a regular basis while wearing a funny costume is a certain kind of hard.  It isn’t designed to confound and confuse you and crush your soul, but it is designed to squeeze it until the sound of cracking ribs can be heard.

There is a vicious cycle which everyone who walks through the door of a retail establishment is involved with.  You automatically have to assume that any employee falls into one of three categories:  too stupid/lazy/stoned to anywhere else and thus probably too stupid to provide any help beyond pointing me to the right aisle for the products I’m looking for. Then there is the slacking underachiever who is plenty smart but battles the spirit-crushing pressure with turtle-speed apathy.  Finally, we have the first job-er who has yet to be completely beaten down and has yet to identify which of the two other groups s/he will eventually fall into.

A situation so familiar and so horrible is ripe for laughs and the comic strip Do You Work Here? delivers well.  It is clever, it is simple, it isn’t fancy but it gets the point across well.

Another relatively new entrant into the race, DYWH has only been around since the beginning of the year, so the quantity is still fairly low.  While you could argue about the quality of the drawing or site, or even dismiss it because the subject matter is so obvious and easy. But don’t, because the subject matter is so obvious and easy and nobody else, as far as I can tell, is doing it.

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183 down, 183 up

July 1st, 2008

At the halfway point of 2008, it is time to review those now long-forgotten resolutions made on January 1 and see what has become of them.

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Moving forward anyway

January 6th, 2008

So, I’ve broken basically all of my resolutions by now, sorta. At least I’m off track on the ones that I haven’t fully broken yet.

That makes me feel crappy. Especially because I had a conversation with a coworker who doesn’t “believe” in resolutions. He said that people basically expect to fail at them, so they set lofty goals and excuse themselves when they don’t achieve them. The argument against doesn’t require much creativity: If you “quit smoking” for four days, isn’t that four days less of your life in which you live a healthier life?

Well, I still believe in them and I’m not going to give up, but I am going to make some revisions and recommitments.

The alcohol thing I’m going to modify to this: two (2) drinks in any 24h period. I’ve decided that baseball deserves to be enjoyed with a beer and sometimes a vodka tonic is just called for. I still intend to make 2008 a year to explore wine specifically, so that will be my drink of choice in most instances and instead of relaxing the restriction while on vacations, I’ll try to take in a wine tasting or two and make that my GOJFC ((get out of jail free card)) for this year.

I didn’t write yesterday at all, but that’s just because I was using my hands for other things all day. Tearing a hole in my kitchen ceiling, fixing a floor, stuffing chips and salsa into my craw, making lists of international destinations. Doing. Stuff.

Part of the reason for that was I knew that the next time I wrote I would have to address the fact that I’d given up on the wine-only resolution somewhat by committee with A (M was too drunk to vote by that time). And although I knew it was basically the right decision, I made it *after* about three glasses of wine and that’s not the time to be making decisions like that. That’s the time to be making jokes or being creative or relaxing to music or something like that.

I also didn’t write on , but I had worked up some fun stuff in advance, so I felt like that was ok. If you think it wasn’t ok, we just disagree, friend.

I had to have some hard conversations with myself and with others, but I did them and I know that the universe is a better place now because of it. At least my slice of it is and in all likelyhood theirs is too.

Ok, I still haven’t eaten fast food, but I haven’t eaten as premeditated-ly, as intentionally, as I would like to so I’m off to the grocery store to prepare to use my menu.

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Resolve two thousand eight

January 1st, 2008

My resolutions for 2008:

  1. No alcohol except wine except on vacations
  2. Exercise 50%
  3. International trip
  4. No fast food
  5. Write/blog daily
  6. Finish house project

Pushing yourself to improve in the ways you can see always requires optimism and self confidence. As each of these will be somewhat difficult here’s a quick note on why I’ve chosen to do these things. Maybe it will serve later to keep me on track.

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Thirteen : fifty four

May 28th, 2007

Today I ran in the Don Beyer Volvo Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run. And fun it was, too. I remember seeing people walking around my neighborhood last year wearing the 2006 Fun Run t-shirts and the design and color was really cool. Unfortunately, I don’t like this year’s design or color nearly as much, but oh well.

I run as exercise a few times a week and I go about the same distance I guess (a bit more, actually). But I run by myself when I exercise and some days I have a fast pace while other days I’m more slack. Today’s energetic crowd (lots of kids), really pushed my pace up so that I had to stop and walk in a couple of places to catch my breath. I also should have had more water before the race, but I got there early because I didn’t know what to expect. It was my first race ever and, although it wasn’t a very serious event I guess it meant a lot to me. I guess because when I exercise I just do it for, well, exercise but not to toward any event. I also don’t time myself or compete alongside anyone.

For the record, 3Km = 1.86411358 miles and I ran it in 13:54.

One of the things I really like about Falls Church is the sense of community, a small-town feel in this city … that is here in the middle of a strong and growing metro/sub/urban area. Something about having a defined border and jurisdiction makes the people of Falls Church have an “Us” to share. The Memorial Day festivities really brings that out in people. I chatted with several folks and I got the general feeling that people were willing to come out of their shell a bit more at an event like this. Of course, there are those who would like to keep this town a secret lest we be overrun by other people who would like to enjoy this community feeling, too.

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Spring Clean

March 21st, 2007

Today marks the spring equinox and my dance with pogonotrophy is over. For the record here is the final result of about two months of shavelessness.

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I’m a Deist!

March 1st, 2007

I hadn’t realized it before because I hadn’t realized that such an organization of thought existed, but now that I know that there’s a name for it I’m comfortable (so far) calling myself a “Deist”. Here’s the quick summary:

Deist Principles:

  • You shall honor and worship the Creator in a fashion that suits you
  • You shall treat others with dignity and respect and you shall insist that others respect your dignity as well
  • You shall live life pragmatically and use Reason as the cornerstone for all you think, say and do
  • You shall be honest and not lie, cheat or steal
  • You shall not harm another unless it is in defense of yourself or loved ones
  • You shall treat others as you want to be treated
  • You shall take responsibility for your actions
  • You shall have faith in yourself
  • You shall honor and be faithful to your Father, your Mother and your Loved ones
  • You shall learn from the mistakes that you will make
  • You shall find awe, inspiration and beauty in the creation and the natural order of the universe
  • You shall search for truth and be willing to accept new ideas based on reason as you are exposed to them

Pretty simple. Perhaps not so simple to live always, but it is a lot easier to live according to a doctrine (can I call it that?) that you really believe than one that you really believe just exists to scare the Hell out of you.

I find it interesting that two of my historical heroes, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were either self-proclaimed Deists or lived and published thoughts on living that are wholly compatible with these principles.

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Vacation Guidelines

August 5th, 2006

Wouldn’t you know it, the title of the magazine is Outside. In this article from the June edition Mark Jenkins does a good job of applying some perspective to our crazy, crazy workaholic lifestyle.

As a nation, we Americans are among the hardest-working people on earth. A 2001 United Nations report found that we 49.5 weeks a year—3.5 weeks more than the Japanese, a people who even have a word for working yourself to death: karoshi.

He goes on to illustrate something that I’m only just starting to really learn, that getting away is really as important to being productive as getting to in the first place. I didn’t realize that there is no legal requirement for paid vacation in this country. I just had no idea. I know that I sometimes meet people from other countries on multi-month excursions and I can only dream about ever taking a six-week vacation. But even in a short span like a week or ten days, perhaps especially on such a short trip, Jenkins’ eight rules of vacating are excellent guidelines:

  1. Take every single day you’re given.
  2. Go big. Plan vacations of at least one full week.
  3. Cut out clean. Put out-of-office messages on your voice mail and e-mail.
  4. Leave your gadgets at home; never check in to the office while away.
  5. Take a break from all news.
  6. Forget a raise—ask for more paid vacation time instead.
  7. Vote for politicians who support a federal vacation law.
  8. Really vacate: Ban all talk on vacation.

Update: There is a piece today on NPR’s Morning Edition that talks about vacations and says that just doing nothing, completely vegging on vacation is counterproductive. Listen here … what do you think?

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Dumped

July 19th, 2005

D & I are breaking up. I’ve pushed against it for a long time, but it needs to happen.
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