MY WORLD:
I think companies should have “Monday rooms” in their offices. They should with big bean bag chairs and mirrors so you could go in, dramatically drop to your knees, curl up and watch yourself gently cry as old Carole King songs played softly over the speakers. Mondays really are for the birds and, guys, I am no bird. I’m a man! A HUMAN MAN! (If my brothers are who I think they are, they better text me a socially unacceptable joke about me being a man. Clock’s ticking, fellas. Also, if they don’t text me, I will convince myself that they don’t read my blog, hold it against them and probably tell my mom that it bums me out that they can’t find the time in their day to support a brother-me-WHO HAS BEEN NOTHING IF NOT SUPPORTIVE OF THEM SINCE THEY WERE BUT A TWINKLE IN MY PARENT’S EYES!!!)
At least I’m not starting a new job today, though. Aside from a Hangover-Monday, Starting-A-New-Job-Monday is mos def the worst version of this wretched wretched day. I don’t have an absolute nightmare story of a Starting-A-New-Job-Monday (thought about making one up but I respect the 18 readers of this more than that) but I’m going to do my best to remember as much as I can about the first Mon-Fri job that I had. I’m hoping that remembering this day will put today’s Monday in perspective so that I won’t be a pouty baby at my desk and say things like “I said I’m fine!” later.
I was 28 years old when I started my first 9-5, Monday through Friday job. (See? You’re better than me!) Now, chill out. I’d had jobs since I was like 13, but they were all restaurant jobs that didn’t make a day of the week feel like a 9-5 Monday. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of I-hate-my-life moments when working in restaurants, but there isn’t a whole day where the entire staff returns after getting 3,2,1 BLASTOFF DRUNK for the past 60 hours.
So I was 28 years old. Restaurant jobs, grad school (cue the crippling debt tremors) and a general fear of well dressed people in tall buildings kept me away from the 9-5 path up until then. I had been dating the VP of Ops (known then simply as “Hot Fire Sexy Baby”) for about 4 months and was beginning to feel…feelings…oh boy oh boy oh boy! (Hey Erin, that was cute, right? Pay rent today. K, Thx) The sting of having dissimilar hours as HFSB along with the paralyzing insecurities associated with being a grown man whose work uniform consisted of a t-shirt reading “Fresh Pasta & Seafood” had pushed me TOO FAR! It was mostly the insecurities.
I thought I should work in advertising because I live in Chicago, had a lot of good friends who worked in advertising, and I had seen commercials before. That, my friends, is what you call a Natural Fit! My good girl friend, nicknamed “Trone”, had become kind of a big-wig at one of these agencies, and posted something on Facebook about how her agency was looking for people for some entry-level position. In my basically empty head, working at an ad agency probably consisted of me getting to write commercials for major companies who were too busy doing those secret hand-signal things on Wall Street. Business stuff. So I e-mailed Trone and probably made her cry with my well-worded, deeply personal plea for help.
She set me up with an interview, and I went shopping. I had to buy cool, business pants because the loose, pleated khaki look that I had been NAILING on Easter Sundays for years just felt a bit pedantic (callback joke. Comedy term. Comedy mind.) So I went to The Gap. I think that’s supposed to be embarrassing, but once a Gap kid, always a Gap kid. So shut up. I nailed that fucking interview in those cool pants and proved, once and for all, that lying about being excited to work for a company you’d never heard of before getting an interview with them, WORKS!
I was hired to be a “Search Analyst” for an advertising company that I’ll call “Buttlicker Digital”. (Good luck getting that burn to heal properly!) I started in 3 weeks…on a Monday. Would have been cool if I started on a Friday at 3:45PM, but GAH FUHBID A COMPANY DOES SOMETHING THAT CREATIVE!
The 3 weeks leading up to this career change were V scary for me. I quit my restaurant job in a professional way because I was about to be professional and that’s what professionals do. I went to the J.Crew outlet mall with my parents so my mom could help me pick out cool clothes like any mother would with their 6 year old. I paid for these clothes by opening a J.Crew credit card because that I figured I’d have to be in J.Crew a lot going forward to keep up on hot trends. (Instead, I paid off that initial $350 spend like 3 years later after making minimum payments until I got a bonus big enough to cover the remaining like $307. I make money, guys). Clothes bought, restaurant job quit, hair cut. All that was left was this fuggin’ Starting-A-New-Job-Monday.
I drank more than I had planned in the weekend leading up to this SANJM because I was supes nervy and drinking’s fun! Thankfully, my constant state of worry, kept me up most of the night, so getting up was not an issue. I was thinner than I am now (we’re all doing our best here) so I looked pretty sah-weeeet in my new clothes. Before I left, The VP wished me luck and was encouraging and comforting and…DEAR GOD, JUST GO FOR ME ERIN!!! YOU DO IT!!!
I took an Uber because I was paranoid if I took the train I would immediately black out and somehow end up at a Cracker Barrel in Southern Arkansas. (I’m also the guy who has to get to the airport like 9 hours early just to be sure we have enough time to get through security. This is not the VP of Ops’ favorite quality of mine.) I got to Buttlicker Digital plenty early and took the elevator up to my floor. Real talk, I went to the building the day before and mapped out where I was going to go so I wasn’t having a panic attack searching for an elevator on THE Monday.
I was starting with like 8 other people that day, so we gathered in the lobby together and said stuff like “I’m excited” and “I hear good things about this place”. We met our new boss, an absolute self-centered douche who enjoyed flirting with me and wearing suit jackets that were 2 sizes too small. But, I didn’t know that yet as he led us to our “pod”.
I was put in basically a large cubicle with 3 other nubes. I had my own desk, nameplate, laptop and…wait for it…CHAIR! I was given a schedule of “webinars” to take for the next 3 hours, until we would meet for lunch. I remember ABSOLUTELY ZERO of the skills these webinars were supposed to have taught me. I put my headphones in, went to the websites and thought about whether there was a military job looking for a scared 28 year old who DID NOT want to see combat, but did want to tell people, years later, that he was a “military man”. Webinars are cool though.
After kinda doing what I was supposed to for 2 hours and 38 minutes (subtracting 22 minutes for at least 4 trips to the bathroom where I’d sit in a stall, take deep breaths, go through Twitter, and text the VP so she could remind me how brave I am. I’m so brave.) AND THEN IT WAS LUNCH TIME. Douchey flirty boss was taking us to PF Changs because midday diarrhea is even more fun when it’s the first day at a new job! Bossman ordered like 19 apps for the table to show us that he was important enough at the company to waste their money. V chill move. I ate practically nothing. I think I had a lettuce wrap with some chicken because brave boys like myself do need protein for their brave boy big muscles.
After we finished, Bossman let out a lot of deep sighs and eye-rolls as he typed on his phone. This, kiddos, is a passive aggressive way for insecure people to remind you that they work hard and are constantly insulted because they are smarter than everyone who has ever sent them an e-mail. I don’t like people like this (even though I’m sure I’ve pulled a move like this to impress people younger than me but…ME! ME, DAMNIT! ME!)
The day continued with my 36 other bosses calling us in to big empty conference rooms for meetings that didn’t really have to happen. They’d talk about goals and synergy and Excel and, surprisingly, not why the Bears couldn’t find a franchise quarterback in the 30 years since their only Super Bowl. I went to the bathroom so many times that I’m sure my co-workers thought I had IBS or a coke problem (IBS. Come on, Jimmy, you’re not cool enough to pull off the “coke problem?”-look).
5 O’Clock came and we all had to play the game where everyone knows it’s 5, but doesn’t want to be the first to leave so you pretend to type e-mails while praying to the Lord Our Savior that you hear someone drop a “see you guys tomorrow!” Months later, I had learned to leave my jacket and bag in an empty conference room so that I could walk away from my desk at 5 (ON THE DOT!) and my co-workers wouldn’t know I was leaving for the day. By the time I got to leave on the first day, I knew I was going to get many promotions during my sure-to-be-long-and-impactful stay at Buttlicker Digital. Jk lol guys, I hung on by my fingernails and ended up quitting in a very cowardly way.
Really, in hindsight, it was a completely normal, not-that-bad day. (Whoops). BUT! It was a worse Monday than I am going to experience today, and I ate a bunch of bread and pimento cheese yesterday so there. will. be. stomach. issues. Which reminds me that a close third to Starting-A-New-Job and Hangover-Monday’s is the, all too familiar, I-Ate-Like-Absolute-Shit-All-Weekend-Monday. Tell the people my story.
OUR WORLD:
The VP of Ops and I were driving back from Nashville all day yesterday, so we only got to see the final hour of the Oscars. “The Shape of Water” winning for Best Picture is something I want to get angrier about, but we’re in the honesty business on this blog and, honestly, I’m not mad, just disappointed.
If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin it for you. “The Shape of Water” had Michael Shannon and his big chin doing big chin things and a secretly V sexual mute woman who develops feelings for a fish that, no lie, was a pretty hot fish. I’m guessing hot fish guy goes to an underwater gym for at least an hour 6 days a week. You’re not just born with pecs like that.
This movie wasn’t one where I was excited to text my dad abut after, or one that I brag about seeing to people who doesn’t see movies as often as I do. That’s the “Best Picture” test. Are you excited to text your dad about it? Are you telling your co-workers that they’re basically uncultured neanderthals for not having seen it yet? (The only reason I’ll ever go to a museum is just to then have the ability to tell people that I went to a museum. That’s a fun thing to say, but you have to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal. Like, “yeah, I went to The Art Institute because it was a Saturday and that’s a thing we do on Saturdays.”)
In the final hour of the show, the Frances McDormand speech is what stands out to me cuz she had a hairdo that I had never seen before and said a thing I had never heard before “inclusion rider”. I’ve come to learn (shoutout google.com) that an “inclusion rider” basically says moviemakers can’t be racist/sexist dickheads when staffing their movies. This sounds reasonable. Her hairdo, along with Christopher Walken’s high-waisted pants were off-putting though, right? I can say that, right? (Why are my female co-workers glaring at me? Is that a knife? Seriously Keli, why do you have a knife?)
Real talk, my favorite part of the final hour was that you could feel how uncomfortable white, American males in the audience were. That’s fair. The rest of the audience has had to have that feeling on movie sets, in conference rooms, at award shows, and everywhere else for the past very long time because those white dudes and their dads were too busy being cocky to realize that the rest of the room felt lesser than. Fuck having to feel like that. I’m a white dude, but I’m poor so I don’t get lumped in with the bad ones, right? (Being not-rich but not-actually-poor is the best!)
LETS LIKE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
LETS HATE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
MY BOVADA PICK OF THE DAY THAT PROBABLY WON’T WIN:
I made a $50 deposit on Saturday night while secretly vaping in a bathroom stall. I then IMMEDIATELY bet on 3 NBA games that included a parlay. I won 2 of the 3 games and lost the other and the parlay. Overall, that means I lost $5.72, but it’s basically even which is basically a win so….I AM SO FUCKING BACK IT HURTS. GET ON MY BACK PRETTY BABIES CUZ WE ‘BOUT TO GET DAT PAPER!!!!!
Tonight’s sure fire lock of the century is Milwaukee (+2.5) over Indiana.
(My account currently at $44.28)
K bye.
Jimmy's Chair 