Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Only A Test

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Fire drills bring out interesting aspects of people.

The opening of my cubicle directly faces one of two fire exits on our floor. During yesterday’s fire drill, I felt as if I was entertaining – there were dozens of associates clustered around my desk, awaiting word from the droning alarm system that we could return to our desks, rather than flee in terror down the stairs. I felt as though I should be whipping hor’deurves, as if fresh from the oven, out of my file drawer.

A heavy-set woman with dazzlingly long curly hair, who I did not recognize, leaned against the wall across from my cubicle. “Probably another drill,” she sighed in my direction. “I hope they don’t make us take the stairs.”

We are three dozen stories above the ground.

A woman’s voice broke into the pre-recorded pre-alarm alert that was droning over the loudspeakers; “We are investigating the cause of alarm. Please remain at your fire exit.”

Associates continued to queue up for the fire door, leaving the sighing woman at the front of the line. She turned, to address her queue: “Did you hear her? She sounded nervous.”

I turn back to my monitor to clean out my inbox. Two minutes of pre-recorded pre-alarm alert later a man’s voice broke in, repeating the previous message to word for word.

“They wouldn’t let her get back on; she sounded nervous. Do you hear sirens in the background? I heard sirens.” The woman smiled brilliantly while fidgeting madly with her silver bracelets.

Shortly after, from the loudspeaker, “The Philadelphia Fire Dept is on scene so that we may issue an all clear.”

“You know, they sent them back to their desks from the elevator lobby in the World Trade Center.” She glance from the line, to me, and back, looking for something – assurance or agreement – in our eyes. I pointedly typed in CNN’s address, comforted by its loading (I famously was unable to load any major news services on 9/11).

Finally, over the speakers, “The Fire Dept has issued an all clear. You may return to your desks.”

Associates began to disperse, muttering, while the woman’s face brightened as if a cloud had passed away. “Does anyone want to go to the caf?”

Once again, proving that the average person tends to employ their powers of cynicism during the course of a potential emergency, but not anytime before or after. Meanwhile, yesterday’s Metro lead with a story on Smarty Jones’ premature retirement, with further revelations about possible terrorist attacks on page two. Good thing I get my revelations from the internet.

Alert: Communications Overload

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I know, I know. Don’t get married to the content. This is our mantra. You are not writing the next great American Novel. You are not Dave Eggers. It’s a letter about medical routing codes. Don’t get married to it.

I have invoked the phrase under my breath enough times that I now recall it unconsciously anytime my elegant sentences are ginsued, by associates and program directors alike. I do not flinch, because I am not married to the content.

Disconcertingly, what I have become inextricably betrothed to is the procedure. All the approval emails, final signatures, pre-flight revews – the OCDness of the whole process just turns me on. When completed in the correct order, it provides an unassailable, errorless communication. Yet, a single misstep can turn you from communications-do-gooder to a despicable piece of liability.

I do not enjoy incurring liability, so I make it a point not to miss steps. However, life is not a procedure, and sometimes things happen out of order. And, this morning, I got a little confused and let an email fly that wasn’t completely informed, and got very succinctly shredded into tiny cheddary pieces by a co-worker. Not because she doesn’t like me, not because I am a bad person, but because she didn’t like the liability I represented. I would have done the same thing to her.

And, and, would you believe that, upon reading her cool clinical rebuttal of my 9:58 am email, I felt as though I was about cry? In the past this sensation has been attributed to lack of sleep, or inadvertant overdosing on allergy medication, but today all I have to pin the blame on is my strawberry smoothie, and I drink that every day. Like a little kid who just got reprimanded by his favorite teacher, the one person I trust implicitly on the team does the same thing to me that I expect – nay, require – her to do to everyone else, and I have to go sit alone in a toilet stall and take a few deep breaths.

On one hand, oh my god, I am such a freak, no one should be a little communications perfection-monkey to the point of inducing tears for a tiny, completely repairable error. On the other hand, I like that I am emotionally invested in my otherwise somewhat clinical occupation, that I can get tied up in language edits and approval processes, and actually feel proud when I do something right (and, conversely, feel utterly crushed when I do it wrong).

Where’s that balance? I do not want to be the automatons that I stand on the elevators with, who do what they’re told as best as they can right up until 4:49, and then go home to do something completely else without a thought of what they left behind. But, I don’t want to be here until seven o’clock for the rest of my life for a myriad of reasons, including that I don’t want to be here for the rest of my life, and that staying two extra hours a day effectively lowers my wage by nearly a third.

Am I just too detail-obsessed to work somewhere where detail obsession is an encouraged trait, sending me into a spiral of minutia-examining doubt on every email I send? Or, is that I am supposed to be doing something that I am truly in love with, rather than something I just geek out about?

Or do I maybe just need to leave the building during my lunch-break a little more often?

Caffinated Brain Disco

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No time to edit, just free-writing today.

They kept on feeding me coffee, even though they know what a bad idea it is. Caffeine hits me in pulses, strobes, contractions of my brain, spasmically birthing new thoughts. Like cocaine through a straw, I whispered to my co-worker, the next idea strobing through my brain that I might be giving her the wrong impression.

I’ve talked about caffiene before.

Today one of my projects was going well, and I broke into the twist in the middle of the aisle, a perfect combination of Travola/Thurman slow-grace/sexual-tension (with a dash of mad watusi), singing “firing on all pistons, firing on all pistons.”

I never before realized how hard this job is, until this weekend a friend of Elise’s asked me what I do, and when I told her she made a little “oh” with her mouth and asked – “Are you on the good side or the evil side?” And, it just made me think, god, all we do all day is try to make our communications come out on the good side, arguing with senior management and tweaking every sentence until I think my head will explode from the twenty drafts and two reams of paper I have gone through in the past week.

Sometimes I think everyone should have Elise’s friend ask them that question once a year. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch? Which one are you? Are you being good to yourself and evil to everyone else? The reverse? The inverse?

Sometimes I wonder if we make our own futures through the process of elimination, discarding the best fantasies we have because they might offset that good/evil balance too much.

Sometimes I close my eyes and see myself, lids as mirrors, and sometimes I see nothing.

Sometimes I really have to fucking pee after I drink so much coffee.

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Note to the one person on my team that i don’t like that will never get sent:

You need to spend more time thinking and less time opening your mouth. Also, “irregardless” is not a real word, and when you use it to start every one of your sentences it makes you look like more of a big fucking idiot than you actually are. pls improve, tnx.-p

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/07/108999707841577458/

Getting Cozy

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By the end of yesterday i was under the impression that i was being paid thousands of dollars to walk up and down the hallway every five minutes in the most uncomfortable pair of shoes that i own.

That illusion was dispelled today, as i have received every indication that i will continue to receive compensation even though my footwear is significantly more comfortable.

It wasn’t as if i was being an unmitigated slave of beauty. I knew the shoes were uncomfortable for walking. I would never wear them to give a campus tour, or even to race through a train station. I was comfortable with my choice because i spend my days in the corporate world, where everyone is either an email or an elevator away.

Everyone, that is, with the exception of my manager, who is too busy to reply to the constant stream of email our department generates and on the same floor as me. This is because my cubicle is stationed in what i lovingly refer to as East Jibip (just south of Siberia, where Henna sits). This puts me roughly a quarter of a city block from my managers office, where i tend to wind up at least twice an hour (not counting times i stop by to find the door closed). Additionally, i am significantly father than i can throw a stapler away from both of the printers to which my computer is mapped.

It’s bad for my shiny Florsheim shoes, but it’s good exercise. In fact, it’s great exercise. By the end of the day yesterday i think i had completed over a mile’s worth of shuttle runs to my manager’s office and back. Today i easily logged half a mile of printer sprints.

Knowing me, you’d think i’d have a pedometer already.