So, first and foremost, I can be an insufferably arrogant bitch when I am forced into a position of subordination by a work-douchebag (i.e. someone with no credentialing in your occupation but operating under the belief that they are smarter than you). My not-so-inner jackass screeches to halt, stamps its teeny hooves and glares in utter defiance from behind my lovely blue eyes. I'm starting to think that people can actually see my not-so-inner jackass, whom I will now name Gokissmyassi. (She's Native American like most primitive totems and beings-of-inner-power.) Pride goeth before a fall, you say? To each his own, but I'd rather fall and get up a million times than be walked across for fear of stepping outside my comfort zone.
So, in any event, I go on vacation the week of my birthday. Yippity for me - - I'm 48 and unemployed!!! Whilst on vacation, I am alerted to the fact my employer has posted an opening for MY JOB on a popular Maine job search engine. Well, howdy doody, you spineless motherfuckers. I go look and yes, yes it is my job. And it reads in part:
"...We are looking for someone who can think outside the box for patient satisfaction. Candidates must have a consistent work ethic and be drama free. ...We need someone who can multi-task with a smile. Advancement opportunity and benefits."
Say, I would love this job! No, wait - - it is my job but they've described it in Utopian (i.e. horseshit) terms and it now appears there is "advancement opportunity". I might note here that two of the senior employees have been salary-ceilinged since shortly after the turn of the century. Apparently "advancement opportunity" means "if you don't like it, you may opportune yourself to advance to the exit."
Let's address this line for line shall we? "Thinking outside the box" is what got me fired. I thought for myself and each time got a milque-toast tongue lashing from our manager, whom I will call Pisser. "You should have asked before you..." was her pat response to me when I took initiative. My co-hort in the lab was back-handedly volleyed "it's a problem when a pony thinks they're a horse"-type response to his taking initiative to solve a client's issue. Does it sound like "thinking outside the box" is healthy for an employee in this establishment? Mmmm, no.
The new lamb for slaughter must also "have a consistent work ethic and be drama free." Perhaps this flies in the face of our own office manager quitting her previous job willy-nilly because she "got mad?" And as for "drama free," let me just say that my office was Bitchfest Central. Pisser, herself, would come in to bitch unceasingly about a certain hiring partner whose pantyliner was perpetually stuck to her pubic hair. The other lead bitcher/drama mama, whom I will call Wilhelmena, also spent considerable oxygen to gasbag about the awfulness of her job, her husband, her mother, and said panty-liner-constricted boss.
Let's not forget that they also require "someone who can multi-task with a smile." Does this make anyone else feel unprotected or harangued around their nether regions? Such a pat line, designed to intimate that the previous employee went around growling and scowling the whole time. I've always said the employee who gets ousted is the Villain Extraordinaire until the next employee gets ousted. I wear the badge proudly.
My recent "praying" for a fortuitous whack on the head from the Cosmic Frypan in the Sky to guide me to my next great thing has come to being. CLONG! Now being forced back to the keyboard, to my writing, to a path of intense fright and second-guessing my alleged talents, I still feel happier than I've felt in the past year. What will come of it? It may be like the famous quote by Samuel Johnson:
"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
I have felt the ground slip away beneath me. The death of illusion is complete. Now I hope to fly.
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