Why I Regected My Job: The Final Installment

And unlike Rocky, Indiana Jones and Sister Act, this shall, indeed, be the final installment in the trilogy that is Why I Left My Job in this Bitter Economy.

When we last left off, AG was to be locked in a room for two weeks, doing a job I didn’t quite understand with a woman who was offended by good hygiene and believed that life was too short to not change her mind every five minutes.

Now guys.  I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m generally like this:

My boss was more like this:

Only older.

(Don’t worry, all, I doctored that.  Even Cruella Deville isn’t as nasty as my boss was and she wanted to make a coat out of puppies.  Let that sink  in for a minute.)

So my boss and I got through some stuff together.  Namely the East Coast Earthquake of 2011:

And Hurricane Irene:

(WARNING: Flash of Genitalia will happen).

And things were OVERWHELMINGLY busy but I was keeping up with things, doing my job and the other guy’s job AND juggling my boss’ mind changing/odd sense of prioritizing and I felt like A BOSS.  Not like my boss but A Boss.  You know?

I think you do.

But I was doing it, all.  The one thing that my boss never wanted me to do. I was MAKING MISTAKES.

Again, these were not earth shattering mistakes (honestly, the east coast earthquake was bigger than the mistakes I made), but I was clearly offending my boss.  But I kept trying.

So during that time, I heard from my boss that it was going to be my boss’ 85th birthday.  I heard this because we were in a tiny room and my boss was making birthday plans NONSTOP and then had to rearrange all of them for Hurricane Irene.  So I thought Hey. You know, turning 85 is a good thing and I’m one to do something for a person’s birthday if I know about it, so I got her a small plant the day of her birthday. And she was actually very happy with it and touched and she smiled at me and her face cracked in half I thought wow, we made it through the metaphorical AND physical storm.  Maybe we’ll be okay.

LIES.

Because about 2.5 minutes later, guess what happened.

Me: Where’s the white out?

Boss: Why do you need white out?

Me: I mislabeled something.

Boss: You did what?

Me: Do we not have white out?

Boss: WHY ARE YOU SO INCREDIABLY INCOMPETENT?!

Me: ….Excuse me?

Boss: You literally can’t do ANYTHING right-

I’m going to save you from the tirade. All you need to know is my face went from this:

to this

Nothing I do is right.

That went on for a half an hour.
Don’t worry, I would still answer the phones while she was yelling at me.

That wasn’t awkward. At all.

Don’t worry.  By the end of the day, she remembered to thank me for the plant.

That was the first of three half hour lectures I received.

So this is my advice to everyone:

If you know your worth, and you know that you’re worth more than what you’re doing and have bigger and better goals than being an old lady’s punching bag, leave.  Because even though it’s terrifying and you’ll second and third and a million times guess yourself, you know what you have to do. And everything else will fall into place.

As soon as I put in my two weeks notice, I got two interviews. And I made it to the second round of interviews for one – and got the other. So I guess my mistake making bootay will be somebody else’s problem awesomeness.

Know your worth. And go for it.

I know that was pretty heavy, so here’s a dramatic chipmunk remix.

Why I Regected My Job: Part II

…or as I like to call it:

Everybody Makes Mistakes, But You Better Not.

So it’s a fact of life.  We all do it, sometimes, probably multiple times a day.  They come in many shapes and sizes.  Some look like this:

Some look like this:

When I started my job, I really had no idea what I was doing.  It was in a field I had no experience in.  My interview went like this:

Boss: So do you know anything about this field whatsoever?

Me: No

BAM.  I don’t lie when it comes to job skills to avoid this conversation:

Bad Scenario: You lied to me!

Me: I THOUGHT I’D KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE HEART ONCE IT WAS OUT!

So when I was told I got the job, I was a little surprised but pretty confident in my abilities to learn from asking questions and paying attention during training.

Except there was about five minutes of training before they started me off. It went like this:

Supervisor: Click here here here here input here there do the hokey pokey but don’t turn yourself around except in cases where you have to click here and there.
Got it?

Me: Not at all

Supervisor: If you have any questions, ask

Me: Can you explain it again?

Boss: Why doesn’t AG understand?

Supervisor: I don’t know, I just explained it

Boss: AG, were you not listening?

Me: I’m just a little confused

[phone rings]

Supervisor: Why aren’t you answering the phone?

Me: I’m sorry I didn’t know [answers phone]

Boss: Why didn’t AG know

Supervisor: I don’t know, I just explained it

Me: Hello, Worst Company in the World, how may I help you?

Boss: We don’t answer the phone like – Why did AG answer the phone like that?

Superviser: I dunno, I just explained it

Me: I’m sorry, there is chatter going on in the background, what was your name?

Boss: We don’t ask customers their – Why did AG ask the customer their name?

Supervisor: I just explained it

Boss: AG, we never ever ever say the company’s name. Ever.  And you don’t ask the customers why they’re calling- you just pass the call along to me. And we say Good Morning or Good Afternoon, we NEVER EVER EVER SAY HELLO

Supervisor: Just like I explained it

Me: ….so there’s a customer on the phone

Boss: Who is it and what do they want?

That was my five minutes of training.

And I made a LOT of mistakes my first two weeks. You know the type.  The I’m New at this Job and I Didn’t Realize I Was Doing it Wrong mistakes.
But the conversation would go like this:

Boss: You can’t do it like this, this destroys everything I have ever lived for!

Me: I’m sorry, I won’t make that mistake again.

Boss: THIS IS A HUGE DEAL

Me: I just fixed the mistake

Boss: I WILL HOLD THIS AGAINST YOU FOR THE REST OF YOUR EMPLOYMENT!

By the end of the day, I’d feel like this:

I felt like my mistakes were destroying everybody’s lives, but in reality, they weren’t.  They were easily fixable and nobody was effected by them. And I wouldn’t re-make the mistakes.

But they kept on changing the rules.  I felt like I was playing special edition Monopoly- confusing and just as long with no chance of winning in sight.

AND THEN my Supervisor went on vacation.  And they had me take over his job for two weeks.

Sticking with the theme, he gave me two minutes of training.

Supervisor: So you feel confident?

Me: Nope. I’m going to do my best but I think there’ll be a lot of mistakes because I really have no idea what is going on.

Supervisor: Aight, See you in two weeks!

Insert the sound of a door closing and picture me alone with a woman who resents me.

(Oh that’s right, it was only me, my boss and my supervisor in the office).

What happened after that? Stay tuned for Part III in the trilogy of Why I Regected My Job….

 

 

Movies I Regect

I’m a last minute participant in the Worst Movies Ever blogfest, but better late than never, as the White Rabbit would say if he were an optimist!

You know what pisses me off?  That bad movies get made.  Not just sometimes but often. Madd often.  Why the BLEEP didn’t these people get BLEEPING rejection letters?! Can somebody answer me that?!

Money.

Well, here’s my open letter of rejection, regecting those movies that made me go R U FOR SERIOUS and yet give me a glimmer of hope that if absolute garbage can get made, maybe I, too, will one day shine on the big screen.

Probably not, though.

SPOILER WARNING: Some plot points WILL BE REVEALED! Read at your own risk, stay out of the water, etc!

Also, just want to reiterate that this is just in good fun, no intention to offend or anything; I like many a movie others would gag at, that’s the beauty of diverse opinion.

And in my diverse opinion, these movies are crap.

Anywho, my nominees are:

1. Anger Management

The movie poster I did not doctor in any way, shape or form says it all!

Fine, I doctored it a little bit.

First of all, this movie makes me want to kick a tree. Because it stresses me out. If you’ve seen the movie, you know why.  If you haven’t, please just read a book.
(Don’t worry, I didn’t kick the tree.  Because afterwards I would be overcome with feelings of guilt and buy the tree whatever it wanted.  And also, my foot would hurt.)

Second of all, it’s too long.  I started watching it when I was in HS and JUST finished it last week.  Okay, that didn’t happen, but after I watched it I felt like Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt from Jumangi when they had to go back to being kids after living a lifetime as adults.  Know what I’m talking about? Good.  Don’t? Watch that movie immediately.

Seriously, what are you waiting for?

Thirdly, just because you’re Jack Nicholson doesnt mean you’re immune to making a bad movie. It happens, especially if the writing is bad.

THE WRITING IS BAD.

Redeeming Factor:

The End.  No really, it had a cute ending that if it wasn’t a million hours I might’ve appreciated. Maybe.

2. The Happening aka Any of its working titles,

Is this Really Happening?
Why Are We Making This Happening?
Does Anyone Know What is Happening?
She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain Oh Really When is that Happening?

Things I wanted to say to M. Night Shamalamadingdong as this movie was Happening:

Really?
Seriously?
No.
Why?

Reedeeming Factor:

Drinking game. Done.  Literally, every time somebody says Happening, take a shot.  Every time Zoey Deschenal and Mark Whalberg look wide eyed into the distance, take a shot.  You’re welcome.

3. The Human Centipede

Or, as I like to call it, Someone’s Working Through Some Issues.

Seriously, it’s disgusting.

Not only is it disgusting, which is essentially what it was made to be, but it has weak characters, a shallow plot and absolutely no redeeming value.

Not only is it disgusting, has weak characters a shallow plot and no redeeming value, but it smothers puppies and eats dreams like they’re licorice candies.

Someone’s gotta get a therapist on speed dial.

Reedeming Factor:

Any movie that smothers puppies should be sent away to the place in Eternal Sunshine where they erase minds and stuff so that it never exists.

4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, or as I like to call it, You couldn’t come up with something better than aliens and nazis?

Did anybody else watch this movie going WHY!

And also, the special effects? Not so special.

And also, Shia Lahoweveryouspellhisname? Not that great.

And also, really? Really.

And was it just me, or were we missing an actual Kingdom? I think we were. I think we just arbitrarily threw a word into the title to make it have a couple of extra syllables.   But I don’t know, I was too busy crying into my popcorn, mourning the loss of a great trilogy due to the birth of this bastard son.

Redeeming Factor:

Karen Allen.  She was all adorable and “Yeah, I’m doing this movie, what’s it to you?” Love her.

5. The Lovely Bones

It was SO GOOD until Mark Whalberg came on screen.  I also have a prejudice against Mark Whalberg, but especially when he’s got his acting face on.

Observe it.

Redeeming Factor:

I thought the beginning of the movie was great. Oh and STANLEY TUCCI IS A BOSS! But only acting, not that character.  That character is the opposite of a boss.  He’s a Gross.

6. Mr. Deeds

Did anybody actually watch Mr. Deeds besides me and Adam Sandler’s mom?

Redeeming factor:

The commercials were funny.  That’s how they got me.

7. Rent

Chris Columbus DESTROYED this.  Seriously, it’s a freakin musical, nobody wants to listen to DIALOGUE THAT RHYMES.  It’s awkward and WEIRD.  Adam Pascal wouldn’t just walk around rhyming like he’s freaking the Cat in the Hat, he’d rock OUT!  Like they’re supposed to do!

Because its a musical, nobody’s going to go to the musical and say,
Hey, Tom, isn’t it weird how all of these people are singing instead of speaking?
Yeah, Bob, I was just wondering why they weren’t speaking in rhyme.

ARRRRRGH THIS MOVIE MAKES ME NEED TO SIT IN A DARK ROOM, PUT ON MY SUNGLASSES AND LISTEN TO SLAM POETRY

Redeeming Factor:

If only.

8. Winter’s Bone: A Title Too Good for “The”.

This movie is great.  There are lots of long establishing shots that establish boredom and realistic sounds of boots crunching gravel.  You want to see a girl get beat up? You’ll have MULTIPLE chances to in this film!

It takes place over the course three hours of your life you’ll never get back.  It’s about a girl who needs to saw off her father’s dead hands in order for her and her family to keep their shack.  SPOILER ALERT she does it!

Favorite line? “Come on, hun, you gotta do the other one, they’ll say you stole the one from a corpse”. Flawed logic? Just a bit

Redeeming Factor:

The End.  Seriously, never been happier to see end credits roll.

Well, I’m exhausted.  And I wrote this in a little bit of a rush so as to publish this before midnight (WIN!), so I apologize for the messiness, but I will edit it tomorrow. And then this statement will magically disappear.

Good night, folks!
ROLL CREDITS

I have a theory:

Every writer is insecure.

(I didn’t say it was very complex.)

Sure, I know I look like this most of the time:

But most of the time I actually feel like this:

All blurry and poorly drawn.

Truth is, if you’re a writer, every word you pen is a piece of yourself that you’re ripping from your skin and putting on display for people to look at under a microscope and analyze the crap out of.

It’s like you’re fingerpainting with your soul every time you write.  Each word you leave behind is a fingerprint, after all.

BUT writing is a business and it is a business of Judgement in a world where people like to point out flaws.

I mean, here’s just a common example between – we’ll call them A and B

A: Oh, hey B, how’s it hanging?

B: Beautifully, no complaints

A: Awesome.  Hey, have you seen K?

B: Yeah, ran into him at the market the other day.

A: Yeah…Hey, can we just be real for a minute.

B: Sure

A: I mean, K’s a really great laugh at a party and it’s kinda cool that he’s worth so much in scrabble

B: And he’s not completely worthless like X

A: Right? But…what’s the use of K

B: YEAH! I mean, C really takes care of the CAH sound

A: He’s really just stealing jobs away from C

B: And then, and then as if that’s not good enough, he’s got to go and be a silent bastard!

A: But only sometimes!

B: He doesn’t do anything anybody else doesn’t already do!

A: Just taking up space

B: I know UGH look, I can’t bleieve I just used him in a sentence, you wouldn’t even kn…REALIZE if you weren’t reading

A: Right!

B: RIGHT.

A:….hey B, you seem rounder than usual

B: SHOVE IT UP YOUR A

nnnnnnnnyway,

See, even letters judge and point out flaws.
It’s the nature of words.

This is the business of rejection.  The business of flaw-finding.  And because these words are your soul, it’s always personal. And that leads to insecurities.

Listen, C isn’t as great as A and B made him CraCked up to be.  We all know that, right?  I mean, one can make the argument, why do we need C?  Sometimes he’s a soft sound, like an S and sometimes he sounds like a K, so isn’t C just taking jobs away from K?!  Something tells me that when A, B and C aren’t working, they’re all hanging out together and shooting the breeze and C brought up those points against K.  Poor K didn’t have a chance to defend himself.

And so is the same in this business of writing.

That’s why I say SCREW JUDGEMENT AND REJECTION!  And why I spell my regection with a g- because I’m embracing it and making it my own.

As should everyone.
As should you.

Just want to shout out and say THANKS to Alex who created the Insecure Writer’s Support Group of which this blog was written for.  Check it, and all the blogs, out.

Regected!

I hate rejections.

Nobody likes rejections.

Rejections make you feel like CRAP and you are a lying liar if you read that and say “Well, actually, I view receiving a rejection as a gift because that means I got my work out there” because I say that crap all the time and still  calculate the amount of time and college it would take to become a teacher whenever I get one of those gifts in the mail.

LIAR you are lying!

Just admit it.

And it doesn’t matter if it’s a  rejection from a huge application you spent hours on or that contest you vaguely remember submitting to when you were drunk, high and at work, it’s still like a paper cut to the heart.

And I don’t care how professional you are, or how thick your skin is supposed to get in this business of words- every time you submit a piece of your writing anywhere you are sending out a piece of your soul to be judged and twisted in the eyes of faceless stranger, and you would be a robot to not feel anything.

Not that robots are bad, they’re pretty cool, the point is they are unfeeling and their work is probably void of heart and spirit.

That’s a whole other discussion.

In order to better cope with rejection, I have created a faceless stranger in my mind.  He is a judgmental asshole and looks like this:

You can tell he is judgmental because he has no discernible features and that he’s an asshole because despite having no nose or ears, his glasses are not in danger of falling off his faceless face.

And this is how he reads my work:

OH HOW BLASE
I have read this before, unfair comparison to Tennessee Williams and David Mamet Anecdotal rant about how playwrights are soooo predictable!
Well, that stage direction is just IMPOSSIBLE
There is a number 0 on the first page.  Sigh.

I am a playwright, so I’ll be using fancy playwriting terms like “writing a play” or “doing theatre” or they’re not that fancy and pretty self-explanatory.  But whatever the genre, whatever the experience, rejection sucks.  So I’m going to make something else out of it.