I'm having a hard time being back. There. I said it.
I don't want to abuse the privilege of this platform by using it as a place to complain about really trivial things, but, seriously, can I bend your ear for a moment? I feel like I've earned it, karmically. I mean, I could give you daily updates on the crazies on the bus, and the uppity types at the all-natural grocery stores and my very vivid, very lucid, very apocalyptic, dreams, but I very consciously keep that stuff from making regular appearances here. I've also spared you the stories of the craziness I have to put up with in my profession. (Mostly, though, that's so my own ass is protected. I can't very well go mouthing off about the people who pay my rent, now can I?) Well, what if I change some names and details? What if I just loosely disguise the characters but still reveal the plot? Oh, wait. What's that creaking noise? Is that the sound of Pandora's Box being slowly opened? Why, yes. Yes it is.
I can't tell if I am just in the throes of PMS... or if I have just overstayed my welcome here in the Emerald City and every extra minute here is a sharp stick in the eye. It just seems that everything is conspiring to send me packing, and I'm of the mind to think I would be a fool not to listen. Also? We could spend whole lifetimes chalking bad days up to PMS, and, really, that's not fair to all the dumbasses out there.
I've long resisted the popular opinion that Seattle is an especially passive aggressive place because I think that every place has its share of jerkwads. I used to think the East coast was no more passive than the West. But today, that theory was turned on its head. EVERYone I had to deal with today was a bone-crushing steamroller of displaced angst and bitterness. I am trying very, very, very hard to not let this get to me. Very, very hard. I am trying to understand that maybe it's just me. I am trying to identify what part I have to play in all this and to, in the parlance of our times, "take responsibility" for my actions.
Of course, that's a stack of self help books talking. And maybe a little of Oprah's farewell speech thrown in for good measure. In any event, I'm looking for the silver lining to this whole thing, looking for the reason Seattle is being so damned nasty to me right now.
It started with a client being very unclear (which she typically is, so no surprises there) about a task she wanted done. A very confusing hour later, when I asked for clarification, she giggled condescendingly, as if to say, "Silly girl, I told you how to do this this morning and here you've gone and bungled it". For my part, I apologized for not understanding, but I am still fuming at that horrid (passive aggressive) laugh. Of course, my higher self is saying to my wounded self (in Glenda the Good Witch's voice, because that's who my higher self sounds like) "There, there, my child. You see? She is unhappy in her marriage and her husband is an ass and she has to put up with a business partner dumber than a bag of hammers. You'd be short tempered and irritable if you were her, too." And my wounded child's shoulder's sag in defeat and I trace a semi-circle in the dirt with my toe I admit that maybe I am being too harsh on her. And then I rear back and clock Glenda in the face for trying to shine this turd.
Because that's what this whole thing makes me: an angry, angry beast who punches nice ladies in the face.
Hours after that little incident, I had to call both the city and state to clarify a tax question and my cell phone cut out with the state just as I was about to get to the meat of my question. The state rep, who has a history of not really knowing how to answer questions, got all pissy, as if I had purposely tried to make the phone cut out.
The coup de gras, though, was the city rep. Now, because I have been doing this for a living for the past five years, I know the players around town. I know the accountants and the silver-tongued man at the general help desk with the city who ends every sentence with a slow and velvety "ma'am". I know the sweet old ladies in sensible shoes down at the state unemployment office. And I know this particular woman at the city. And I know she is hard to deal with. And just like her tone indicates, there is no one but her to deal with, so you'd better buck up and get used to it. She doesn't just run this particular department at the city, she RULES it. She LORDS over it. If you have questions, you'd better be prepared to deal with the only person who can answer them. And you'd better be prepared for her to be impatient, rude, and to speak in confusing sentence fragments.
In a series of questions that led to both of us answering each other like miffed thirteen-year-olds (FINE! SEE IF I CARE!), I finally got out of her that we needed to follow a series of steps to get things straight. She listed those steps, of course, as snidely and slowly as if she were talking to a developmentally disabled manatee.
The downfall, really, of our modern small-personal-electronics society is that you can't really angrily slam a phone back down in its cradle anymore. There's no two-pound receiver to crash into a fifteen-pound desk phone with a little bell inside that will reverberate for a second or two afterward while you sweat and take deep, heaving, agitated breaths. I was tempted to throw my cell phone at a brick wall to have, at least, a fittingly dramatic ending to the call, but my warranty doesn't cover "Soap Opera style outbursts of exaggerated violence". Instead, I just wound up pressing "end call" with as much ferocity as I could and yelling, despite my rules about using the word, BITCH! on the echo-y upper floor of my client's business.
Of course, we all know the weather isn't helping things. All of this would be moderately tolerable if it was at least sunny and warm. Maybe I wouldn't have this compunction to want to march right back to my client's place of business and, in front of everyone, yell, HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME THAT WAY. You know things are in the red zone when you start pulling the "How Dare You's" out. Not good, people. Not good.
Do I realize that by posting this here instead of approaching my client and using my "I" statements and saying that how she behaved really hurt my feelings is just as passive as all the shit I am complaining about? Yes. Yes, I do. Am I tempted to correct that? No, no I am not. Does this blog serve, from time to time, as a giant padded room where I go to scream obscenities at the tops of my lungs just to get some release? Well, duh. Isn't that what the Internet was invented for?
Comments
Oh dear…this post made me laugh out loud. I’m married to an accountant. My twin sister is an accountant. Her husband is an accountant. I studied music in college, because I like to make choices that DON’T make my life harder. ;-) Hope you got it all straightened out!! And sorry about the jerks in the Emerald City. They haven’t had their dose of Vitamin D today.
I’ll read any rant that includes passages like this one: “And my wounded child’s shoulder’s sag in defeat and I trace a semi-circle in the dirt with my toe I admit that maybe I am being too harsh on her. And then I rear back and clock Glenda in the face for trying to shine this turd.”I’m sorry you’re feeling bad, but don’t you feel better now? Shhh yes, yes you do.
Lo -I feel your pain. It’s really no wonder why drugs and alcohol have ruled for so long. Seems all of ush are or have been in thish funk. I hav become nubm to it though the lasht cupl of years.-J
Don’t forget to plan a visit to the Green Mountain State.
i know exactly how you feel. towards the end of my time at enterprise, i wanted to jump over the counter and stab people with a ball point pen. my coworkers knew that when i said ‘i’m not following…’ after a customer’s usually lengthy tirade, it meant ‘you are an idiot and i wish there was mandatory state-sanctioned sterilization for people like you.’ so long story short, i feel your pain.